You know that you've been in difficult scenarios. You know that you get to learn under stress and pressure. You know that you get to overcome obstacles to get to where you are. And that's what makes you feel confident.
Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. I love our community. I am looking through your reviews of On Purpose right now. And I just want to say, I am feeling so grateful.
I've got a big smile on my face. I know you can't see me, but I promise you I have, and I have to do this. I just have to do this. I want to read out some of your reviews.
So this one is from M. Member, Jay's content is fire. He dives super deep into various topic and often goes way beyond the surface level. So listen carefully, because there are hidden nuggets in several of his messages.
Thank you so, so much. This message is from Otswe. Each week, Jay puts out amazing content to listen to. Even if it doesn't apply to me, I still enjoy listening and learning new things every week.
Some weeks, it even seems like he reads my mind on what's troubling me and has a podcast for it. Love the podcast, love the content. I hope to be able to continue to listen for years to come. Thank you so much, Jay.
No, thank you for listening. And I want to read one more and this one is from Sophie Chica. I found Jay's podcast at the time I needed to change up my life or otherwise stay in the unhealthy state I was in. His wisdom and abundance of episodes on different topics all resonated and help me get out of my funk.
Now it will help me continue to grow and get the most out of life. I really can't praise this guy and his podcast enough. I just want to say a huge thank you to each and every single one of you that have left reviews. We have over 15,000 reviews and each of you make my day when I get to swipe through and see more reviews.
So keep those coming. And today's topic is a popular topic. It's a topic you all care about. You ask a lot about, I see it in the comments.
I see it in the one that you listen to the most. It's all around confidence. We're all seeking confidence. We all lack confidence.
We all have moments where we feel insecure. We have moments where we feel uncertain or unstable. There are days, months, years that go by where we never feel like we know who we are or who we truly are. And if you Google or look around for articles on confidence habits or what do confident people do, you'll get a list of very vague ideas of things like they listen more than they talk, which is true.
But we've heard that before or you may read something like they know how to communicate or articulate themselves effectively. And these are all true. These are not wrong. But today I wanted to go deeper.
I wanted to go further. I wanted to share with you what's hidden beneath those habits and practices and how do you actually get there? So today I'm going to be sharing the seven habits of highly confident people. And I'm a big fan of the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
And I think those habits are brilliant and fantastic. Today we're focusing on confidence, more than effectiveness or productivity. This is all about self confidence. It's all about you.
And this one that we're going to start with is actually quite challenging. Challenging is the right word. It's pushy. It's making you confront some real stuff.
And I wanted to start there because sometimes people say start with the easiest first. Sometimes I feel like you got to start with the deepest, biggest truth. And then when you break through that, you feel, OK, I can get through to the next one. Now, this is not the easiest one or the hardest one, but it is the one I wanted to start with.
And I had this understanding a few years ago, because I started to see a play out in my own life. So one of the habits of confident people is that they have worked through their past. They have done the work to work through their past. They don't just push it under the carpet, under the rug.
They don't try and avoid it or dodge it. They have processed their past. They have worked through their past. That includes their parenting, the experiences they had.
They have navigated those difficult times and seen how they've been affected by those moments of the past and how that affects them today. So let me give you an example of what I mean by that. All of us experience things when we're young. And those experiences create impressions or the Sanskrit word for that is some scaras.
And these impressions almost leave marks on our consciousness. It's almost like a wound from the past. But the difference is the wounds still cause you pain, right? A physical wound may not cause you pain or a physical scar may not cause you pain anymore, but emotional wounds and scars continue to cause you pain.
Every time there's pressure put on them, every time there's pain put on them, right? That's the difference between emotional scars and physical scars. I have a scar on my head from an accident. I had when I was younger, if I press it now, I feel no pain.
If I touch it, I feel the texture, but there's no pain. But if I've gone through something in my past with my parents or my family, that can be easily triggered. So what we have to do to become confident in this phase is try to understand what in our past has had a healthy impact on us and what has had an unhealthy impact on us. And you may be sitting there thinking, Jay, how does this affect my confidence?
Like, what's this going to do with my confidence? Well, you can only feel truly confident when you've processed your past, because if you haven't processed your past, you're always for a week. I'll give you an example of how many of you remember the movie, Eight Mile? In Eight Mile, Eminem has to list out all of his failures of his past.
He has to list out all of the moments that he failed, all the mistakes, all the things that didn't go his way. He has to process them and accept them. And when he does that, they become his strength, his weakness becomes his strength. It becomes his confidence.
But before he did that, he was always trying to hide that. He was always trying to cover that. How many of us spend lots of our life trying to hide and cover our past because we insecure about it. We feel uncomfortable when we reflect on it.
And one of the ways to do this is thinking back to your parents and asking, what is a healthy habit that you learned from your parents? And what is a unhealthy habit you learned from your parents? And usually it's more subtle. So what is it that your parents did give you or didn't give you?
So when I think about what my parents did give me, they gave me this unrelenting discipline. They made sure that I was focused. They made sure I was prepared. They made sure I knew how to research and get ready for an exam or a test or a game.
They made me develop that skill set. I want you to think about where that has become useful and where it might not have been useful. So what did your parents give you consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally? And where in your life has that become useful?
And where is it actually unhealthy? You may find that the mindset or mentality adopted is unhealthy in your personal life, but it's healthy in your professional life. I know that if I was to take that disciplined, regimented approach to the people I love, I wouldn't work, but it works phenomenally for me in my career. So when I'm aware of that, I can be confident about it because I know how to use it.
We're confident when we know how to use something, when you don't know how to use a device, when you don't know how to use a app, how many of you feel uncomfortable when you don't know how to use something? Well, the same is true for your skills. The same is true for your habits. The same is true for your mindset.
If you don't know how to use a mindset that your parents gave you, if it's not under your control, you're not going to feel confident. Now, the second thing I want you to reflect on is think about something your parents didn't give you, but now you look for in everyone else. What did your parents not give you that you seek in everyone else? Is it validation?
How many of you felt your parents put you down, they didn't validate you, they didn't make you feel good? And now you look for that. You search for that with everyone else. How many of you know that your parents didn't give you a sense of the ability to understand your feelings, understanding your emotions, and how many of you now are looking for someone who will sit with you and understand your emotions, that will sit with you and experience that with you?
Think about how you're trying to fill that void in your life. Now, notice where is that healthy and where is that unhealthy? You may find that your desire to make sure you're doing things right and doing things in a good way is useful in some areas, but where is it not useful? You may find that in romantic relationships, it's not useful at all because you're constantly seeking validation and attention from the other person.
You may find that it's not useful in your friendships because you're too dependent on others. Where is what you didn't get? How has it impacted you? How has it resulted in your life and where is it useful or not useful?
This helps us develop confidence because we know where the things come from. When some things in our life and we don't know where it's come from, we question it. We're confused by it. We worry about it.
We feel anxious about it. But when you know how you feel and you know where it comes from, that develops confidence. So that's how you develop confidence by connecting your past to your present, by knowing where things come from, why they exist and knowing that you know how to use them in a useful way or ignore them or avoid them and purify them if they are not useful to you. The second habit is developing a high value skill.
This one is something that is so underestimated. People think confidence comes from how you dress, right? It comes from the fact that you work out. It comes from the fact that you think you look good.
But we know that's not true. We know plenty of people that have amazing bodies, amazing minds, but don't feel confident, right? And when I say amazing body or mind, I mean, whatever you define that to be because that's my point. Some people subjectively have the mind or body you want, but they don't feel happy.
So what is it? It's a high value skill that they value. A high value skill can be anything. It could be marketing.
It could be modeling. It could be acting. It could be singing. It could be public speaking.
It could be web design. It could be photography. We have a high value skill. We learn to value ourselves and we don't let other people dictate our value.
When you have a high value skill, you don't let someone else dictate your value. A high value skill doesn't have to be just the thing that's trending right now. A high value skill can be something that it's timelessly trending, like good communication, timelessly trending, right? These things have been prominent for decades and decades and decades.
Writing is a high value skill. It's been prominent. Whether you do copywriting or whether you write books, it's been a high value skill art, design, high value skill, math, numbers, high value skill. When you have a high value skill, you develop confidence.
Why? Not because you have the skill. See, this is where people get confused. It's not that you have the skill there for you feel confident.
It's the journey to getting the skill that makes you confident. You know that you've been in difficult scenarios. You know that you've had to learn under stress and pressure. You know that you've had to overcome obstacles to get to where you are.
And that's what makes you feel confident because you've overcome challenges. You've overcome difficult scenarios to get that skill. So it's not the skill that makes you feel confident. It's the journey you took to get that skill.
I remember I started public speaking training when I was 11 years old, from 11 to 18, I studied public speaking. Then from 18 to 21, I practiced public speaking. Then as a monk, we were speaking consistently when we were giving talks on the scriptures or spiritual texts. I've been public speaking for easily the last 21 years, 21 years.
And I don't get a result. I don't get a, you know, I do have a certificate from public speaking. Not being eager at all, but I do. But you don't get a certificate.
You don't get like a qualification to show people, but because you've practiced that much, I know what it feels like to have to give a talk last minute. I know what it feels like for a topic to change. I know what it feels like to have to find the words to express yourself effectively in a moment. That's what gives you a sense of confidence.
So ask yourself in your life, not what high value skill you have. If you have one, that's great. But what high value skill do you want to develop? And yes, it's going to take time, but that high value skill is going to give you so much confidence.
I know so many photographers that can walk into the room full of confidence because they know that they're going to get the best shot that night. And they know that because they've had to do that before under pressure and a very different circumstances. The third way to become confident is constantly learn new skills. So the last one is about going deep in one place.
This is about knowing a little about a lot. So one way of developing confidence, which I highly recommend, is knowing a lot about a little. And this one is the opposite where you want to learn a little about a lot. When you dabble in articles, one of my favorite places to go is Time Magazine, or The New York Times.
Just dabbling in an article or need to know, signing up for an email of highlights from your favorite magazines or online papers like TechCrunch, for example, just so you can dabble. Having a little bit of insight allows you to engage in conversations that you otherwise might be shy to engage in. Now everyone's talking about NFTs and cryptocurrency. This is not about posing as an expert.
This is about having enough knowledge to start a conversation and partake in a conversation. Confidence comes from the ability to engage in a conversation. Engaging means listening and speaking. And often a lot of us feel unconfident because we don't have that one line in to help us understand what someone's talking about.
And so we withdraw and we avoid that interaction, but avoiding it makes us less confident because now we didn't learn by listening. So engaging in a confidence allows you to have a little knowledge about a lot of things. Being able to understand a little bit about a lot of things allows you to engage in way more conversations which increases your confidence. So again, I don't know everything about anything, but I definitely don't know everything about a lot of things.
There are a few areas where I consider myself to be an expert. There are a few areas that I have deep knowledge in, but there are a lot of areas that I may have read one book on, may have read a paragraph on, may have read an article on, and it allows me to dive in more conversations. Maybe you're someone who's sharing podcasts, maybe you're someone who's been in a clubhouse room, and you're sitting there going, oh my gosh, everyone's so smart. I don't know what they're talking about.
I promise you, if you read one article, there's very few people who apart from being an expert deeply know about that subject, but you're stopping yourself from a wealth of knowledge by blocking yourself because you think your knowledge is limited. The fourth habit to develop confidence is probably going to be kind of counterintuitive for a lot of you, but it's compassion, compassion for yourself and compassion for others. How does compassion make me confident, Jay? When you're compassion on yourself, you give yourself a break for not knowing the answer to every question, for not getting it right every time, for being okay to figure it out.
I get asked challenging questions by my clients all the time. And in the beginning, I'd always felt like I'm smart if I can answer the question quickly and immediately, and that will make them feel like I'm smart and confident. And I started to realize what they really enjoyed was the discussion, the conversation that came out of it, hearing my train of thought. Confidence isn't just someone being perfect, but that doesn't even exist.
I'm nowhere near perfect. Confidence shows that you're okay with being wrong. You're okay with figuring it out. You're okay on taking a journey, and that's being compassionate with yourself and compassionate with others.
When you're compassionate with others, they can see how confident you are in who you are. Compassion breeds confidence. And this is the interesting thing that when you work hard for a higher purpose, when you work hard for the right reasons, you actually become more soft-hearted. People mostly, when they work hard, they become hard-hearted because they think, well, look how hard I work.
How come no one else is working as hard as me? Look how much effort I'm putting in. They don't even put in half the effort. But actually, you start to realize when you actually work hard, you become soft-hearted because you realize how hard the work is.
You realize how difficult the challenge is, and that's what makes you more confident because you realize no one's perfect, no one's getting it right all the time. No one's always on their A game, and that lets you be compassionate. So we need to build compassion for ourselves and others, admitting that we're wrong, knowing we don't know the right answer, knowing that we don't have it right away, knowing that we're going to have to figure it out. That is compassion, compassion for yourself and others.
So when you're working hard, make sure you're becoming more soft-hearted, not hard-hearted. It's a really, really important skill to increase compassion for others. And compassion also builds confidence because when you have compassion for others, you also realize the journey that they're on. And that gives you confidence because often you walk around thinking everyone else is perfect, everyone else has it figured out, and you're the only one who doesn't.
But when you're compassionate, you start to recognize that, oh, that person's still trying to figure out too, they're not fully sure of what they're trying to do, I can allow myself to not be perfect. So confidence is less the definition we've given it. We've made confidence seem like this unreachable, completely difficult place of perfection when actually it's so much more about being honest about the journey, the process and the story. That's what confidence is.
Now, confidence comes from not reacting but responding slowly. Sometimes you'll see in a room the person who's the quietest, the person who says the least, their opinion matters the most. They may not say a lot, but they're listening and when they speak, everyone listens. Why?
Because they don't waste words. A lot of us waste words, and therefore we lose our confidence because we say things of less value. If you say things less but of more value, you can say more things but of less value, or you can say less things but of more value. The goal is to say less things of more value or ideally more things of more value, but we can work towards that.
And that comes from responding, not reacting. When we react in a haste, in a rush, we say things we don't mean, we wish we could take them back. We don't feel confident, people don't feel confident in us now, they don't trust our word. But when we take a moment to respond at the pace of love or respond at the rhythm of love, what I mean by that is there's a pace you can respond at where you're coming from love.
There's a rhythm with which you can respond where you're coming from love. How many of you know when your pace is pain? How many of you know when your pace is pressure? You respond immediately but it's full of pressure, it's full of pain, that doesn't make you feel confident.
It makes you feel weak because you've acted out of haste, you've acted out of force almost. How can you feel confident if you've acted out of force? How can you feel powerful and strong if you've acted out of rush? It's so important to respond slowly, not react and respond at a pace of love.
Ask yourself, what pace am I moving at? Right now, just check your heartbeat, check your pulse, what pace are you moving at? And say, I'm moving at the pace of love, do you just take in a deep breath? Notice how your breath changes, your pulse changes?
I'm moving at the pace of love, I'm responding at the rhythm of love, doesn't everything feel different when you just slow down for a second and respond from that place? The sixth habit to develop and exude confidence is knowing your own motivation, self awareness is confidence. When you don't know how you feel and why you feel that way, you feel unconfident. And I'm going to give you a model that exists in the Bhagavad Gita of the stages of motivation and intention.
So there are four stages, ignorance, passion, goodness, and pure goodness that's in ascending order. So at the bottom of the pyramid is ignorance, higher than that is passion, higher than that is goodness, and at the top is pure goodness. In ignorance, your intention is fear or anxiety. You're working from a place of fear and anxiety.
In the mode of passion, you're working from a place of result or a goal or action. In the mode of goodness, you're working from a place of responsibility, accountability and goodness, kindness. And in pure goodness, you're working from a place of love. Now what you'll find is that someone who's not confident will either be in a place of fear or anxiety or think they're operating from love.
These are both delusional. They think they're in fear and anxiety, right? That actually can be real. But then people who think they're operating from a place of love when they're not.
The truth is if you're in a place of fear and anxiety, all you can do is upgrade your intention to passion, goal and result, start moving. So what I mean by that is a confident person will say, okay, and this, I feel this all the time. I'll say, okay, I'm feeling fear and anxiety right now. What action can I take to move into the mode of passion from ignorance?
Let me not fake it and just try and be loving and give love and be love. Let me not do that to myself because that's doing a disservice to myself. If I'm expecting myself to shift from anxiety to love, that's doing a disservice to myself. That's putting pressure on myself.
But if I'm allowing myself to move from anxiety and fear to action, that's real. Now, if I'm at action, let me move to peace or accountability instead of working for a result or a goal. Let me work for a higher cause. Let me work out of responsibility and accountability.
So a confident person knows where they're at. They admit and accept where they're at and they're just trying to get to the next stage. A confident person when they're climbing up a ladder doesn't go, oh, I'm getting to the top, I'm getting to the top. They just make sure they place their next foot correctly, same as if you're on a climbing wall.
If you're on a climbing wall, a confident person is not just talking about the top, a confident person is just trying to place their next footstep correctly. That's what you're trying to do in your intentions and your motivations as well. You're not trying to falsely appear greater than you are to be confident. You're just trying to make sure you place your next word, that you place your next step, that you place your next move confidently.
And the seventh and final habit that I want to share with you today, wow, we went through those fast. How many of you have been taking notes, scribbling it down, feeling really empowered by the session? And I hope you are, because we've really uncovered some deep points here. This one is a confident person is always planning and adapting and visualizing.
So a confident person doesn't just turn up a confidence person prepares a confident person plans and a confident person visualizes before I go on any major stage. I recently, I'll give an example. I recently got asked to officiate a really dear friends wedding and I am humbled and grateful and absolutely blown away by this opportunity, honestly, I'm just so humbled by law and I was so touched by it. But I immediately asked for a call so I could go over what energy they wanted, what emotion they wanted, what feeling they wanted, what words were important to them, what messaging was important to them.
Now you may say, well, a confident person would just show up, a confident person would know what to do. But when you're really trying to develop confidence, you plan, you prepare because you're preparing your energy. You may not need to prepare the words, you may say, I don't need to prepare, I already know I'm good at that, but you're preparing your energy, you're preparing your consciousness and you're preparing your mindset. So those are the seven habits of highly confident people.
I hope this episode resonated with you. I can't wait to see on Instagram, what stood out to you, what you share and which one you're going to practice. I know that inside of you is a confident, incredibly powerful individual and I want you to tap into that confidence that already exists within you. Thank you so much for listening to On purpose, I'll see you again next week.
Take care. Have a good one.