(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited you're here because today we're gonna talk about confidence. It's a term I'm sure you're familiar with, but you might have trouble having it, building it, or using it.

And here with me today is Dr. Aziz Gazipura, who's one of the world's leading confidence experts, and we're gonna talk about how you can use confidence to your advantage to become successful in your career, relationships, and life in general. Dr. Aziz has combined academic training in clinical psychology with real-world experiences to help us break free from the grip of social anxiety and unlock our true potential.

We'll cover a range of topics, including the concept of social freedom and how one can benefit from it, how to be better at decision-making in a world of so many ways to optimize. We'll debunk myths around confidence and being nice, which is often driven by people-pleasing. And we'll also discuss how parents can teach their kids to become more self-confident and develop healthy social skills so they too can live a more authentic and fulfilling life.

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Go to allthehacks.com/AG1. That's allthehacks.com/AG and the number one. (upbeat music) - Aziz, thanks for being here. - I'm glad to be here. - Thank you, Chris. - I think most of us know what confidence is or what it feels like, but I think it'd be good to start this conversation off by just having you define it for us.

- My favorite definition is going straight to the root in Latin, which is confides, which means with faith, which is pretty broad, with faith, but it's like faith in what? Well, you can have self-confidence. I believe in myself. That would be called self-efficacy in psychology. I believe I'm effective.

I believe I can do that. If you've been a mechanic for a bunch of years, you have self-confidence that you can fix a car, but then there's also social confidence. Are you able to talk to people? Are you able to connect with them? And then we can also have confidence in our careers, in our romantic life, but in any area of your life, do you have faith in yourself?

Do you have faith in possibly something beyond you in the future in which you can create? But that's really at its root what it is. It's really just a belief in you or in something going the way that you think you can create it. - And what do you think most people are getting wrong when they think about their own confidence?

- Their confidence is very contextual based upon the circumstances of their life. They make money, the job goes well, the deal goes through. They feel more confident. The person likes you. You get the positive response on social media or someone's like, "I think your work is great," or someone wants to go on a date with you, and you're like, "Yeah," and your confidence goes up.

And then rejection, setback, bad day, challenge, confidence goes down. Most people are kind of riding that current up and down, and they fail to realize that confidence is actually an inside job. I mean, sure, we're affected by circumstances, but it doesn't have to be a buoy on the surface of the water.

You can actually choose and practice tools and habits to sustain higher unconditional confidence that doesn't require your circumstances to be in your favor. How often are they always in our favor? We don't have control over that. - You've said you can cultivate, nurture, and grow these habits. How do we do that?

- Well, you gotta first know what the habits are, right? What are the habits of confidence? There's a handful of them that are gonna be the ones that get you the biggest bang for your buck. A lot of people might have heard of a few of them, but are we practicing them, and do we really know how to do them?

I'm gonna distill it down just to two, 'cause 10 is too many, just two. You do these, it's gonna change the lion's share of your confidence. One is inside at what you do, and one is what you practice in the world. On the inside, I call it being on your own side.

That's a phrase that is basically how do you treat yourself and how do you relate to yourself? We all have a relationship with ourselves, as well as with your family, your friends, your spouse, your kids, whatever. Then there's you and you. You're with you 24/7, and if you look inside of most people's heads, if you were to peel it back and observe, most people, even successful people, have a negative or toxic relationship with themselves.

If you were to observe two humans at a restaurant talking to each other the way that you talk to yourself, you'd probably be disturbed. You'd be like, "Do I have to sit here? "Can I move tables?" It's critical, it's negative, it's predicting the worst, it's harping on things, it's nitpicking.

This isn't just horribly low confidence. Most people are trying to push through that and ignore it, but it's dead weight on your confidence. So, you have to change your relationship with yourself, and we can talk more about how to do that. That's the first habit, to be on your own side, to treat yourself like someone you actually love and to learn how to optimize the way you coach yourself.

Most people are very bad at that. The second side is you have to consistently build the muscle of confidence, which is a byproduct of bold action. You take bold action in the world, you will grow muscle. Just like if you lift weights and push it to the edge, it's the same thing with confidence.

If you do it scares you, then the byproduct of that is confidence. If you combine those two and practice those regularly, you can have high sustained confidence through any season. - Funny how so many of these big things in life seem to be able to be distilled into two things.

We had a conversation with Vanessa Van Edwards on Charisma, and she's like, "It's a balance between warmth and competence." If you can master those two things and the balance between them. I wanna dig into this, right? Why is this not so obvious? Why are we all walking around beating ourselves up and not taking bold actions?

Is it that people don't know that's what you need to do and that's your life's work? Or is it that it's actually really hard and there are easier ways to do it? Or maybe it's both. - Great question. I think a lot of people, if you ask them, "Are those things good to do?" They'd be like, "Oh yeah, just like eating my vegetables, working out every day, spending time slowing down, unplugging from my phone and connecting with my spouse.

It's great." But are we doing all those things, right? And the reason we don't, just like we don't do all those other healthy habits, maybe some people do, but the reason it's a challenge to do something that sounds very simple is because there's an emotional driver underneath the surface.

And each one has a payoff. I start with a bold action. There's a huge set of payoffs for not taking bold action. One of the payoffs is we get to avoid the thing that everyone by default is trying to avoid in life, which is pain. When we take a bold action, we're going to experience a variety of forms of pain.

Some of it's just discomfort. To wake up, to focus, to take the action, to consistently follow up. There's a discomfort to that. And there's an emotional discomfort of what if they don't like my show? What if someone doesn't agree with me? What if someone criticizes? What if my work's not good enough?

What if I'm rejected? It all comes down to that. Most people are so afraid of that and even unconsciously avoiding that, they push the action to later. They make it way smaller. They delay it. They hesitate. And they don't even necessarily know that's what we're doing, right? It's just like, no, I'm busy.

But underneath, I'm scared. We want to look macho. We don't want to say we're scared. So, we say I'm stressed and I'm too busy. That's the payoff for the bold action. You might say, what is the payoff for treating yourself bad? Obviously, that's terrible. I would say that it actually serves the same master.

When I tell myself, it's gonna fail. I'm not good. I didn't do that right. That's creating a fog, an amnesia. I forget my strengths. I'm sure you've done that. I've done that. It's two in the morning and the way you're seeing yourself is like this helpless, incompetent person. Wait a minute.

That's weird. Why am I even believing this? Because the more we believe that, we stay in protective walls of this negative identity. I'm a nobody. Who am I? I'm a nobody who's nothing is even further from taking that bold action. All of this is under the umbrella of what I call your safety police, which is a mechanism in your psychology.

Its purpose is single fold. It is to keep you safe. The safety police is a survival mechanism inside that's run amok. It's the dial is set too high. Safety means no pain, no rejection, no threat, no danger, no risk. You tell yourself you're a nobody and you avoid the action and you get to stay in that bubble, which feels safer in the moment.

Of course, meanwhile, your life is passing you by. - Seems like both of those are a little bit like a voice in your head, this inner critic that is controlling you. Is that a fair assumption? - Yes. The inner critic you could think of as the mouthpiece of the safety police.

It's the one who's narrating. The crazy thing is why do people believe it? It's almost because it's familiar and also because it has proximity. It's coming from in your head. It's closer than your closest friend. And so, okay, I guess that's true. I'll often do that with clients. I'm like, where is that voice coming from?

And they're like, what do you mean? It's from my childhood. I'm like, no, right now. How are you even hearing that thing? And then it's like a confusing mindfulness question. They're like, I don't know, right? But it's close. And all of a sudden we assume because it's close and we've heard it a lot that it's true.

This is one of the tools I help clients break free with. If you pay attention to its track record of predictions, it's really bad. Oh, you're going to fail at that meeting. No one's going to buy the thing. You go there and it goes okay and people buy the thing.

That person would never go out with you. And the person goes out with you, right? Maybe not that one, but the next one. Think about that if you had like a financial advisor and they couldn't beat the market. They were wrong all the time. And you just keep going back to them.

You're like, what do you think this time? They're just so certain that you keep going to it. And I think that's how we are with the inner critic. - So what do we do with both of these areas and what are the tactics? - Great question. A lot of people, when they discover this, they're like, how do I kill the critic, right?

It's the enemy, slay the demon. I don't think it works that way. You can think of the parts of our psychology as that old show survivor. You can't vote them off the island. They actually are a part in there. The problem is not the survivor and the safety police.

The problem is the dial. The setting is too high. You do need some survival skills. That prevents you from jumping off the 30 foot building and breaking your legs. You have a sense of risk and all that. The issue is that we need to turn the dial down. The first thing that people have to do is even know this conversation that we're having exists and say, wait a minute, it's not just me, Aziz, or you, Chris.

There's a lot of parts inside. And one of the parts is this inner critic. The first thing I do with people is, can you know when your critic is talking? Do you know when it's you thinking versus the critic? Now, we don't have to get crazy. It's philosophical, like what is me, right?

But are you seeing clearly? Are you having a distorted view of yourself as incapable and unlovable? You'll start to hear the critic and get better at it because it's languages and extremes. It's gonna go awful. Everyone's gonna think you're terrible. It magnifies, it's a fun house mirror. One is identify the critic and just get good at it.

With clients, I'll have them do an awareness exercise usually for a week or two where they're noting it, tracking it. I'll have them name it too. Some people just call it the critic. Some people come up with these like pretty funny, creative, silly names just to break the pattern a little bit.

You start to name it. Then the biggest technique you could call it is not some hack to know what to say. It actually is deeper than that. You have to make what I call the decision of a lifetime. I have a book called "On My Own Side," which is guiding people through this.

And you're aware of this critic. It's all the time. I can name it. I can see it now. Okay, great. Take a moment and really pay attention to what's happening here. Observe it for a while. Hopefully there's some part inside of you. Like when you watch a movie, what's that one with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro from way back in the day?

Some terrible, abusive stepfather. When you're watching that movie and you're identifying with the young character, every part of your body wants that young son or character to stand up to that tyrant and say, "This is effed up. I'm leaving your house. I'm out. I'm done." Basically, people have to have that moment inside of themselves.

Because what happens is that the critic's beating them up and they're believing it. And they're like, "Okay, I caught it. Now what do I do?" But the energy is not there. You need to have a revolution inside. You need to usurp the power of the critic and take control of your inner self and be the captain of your ship, as I call it.

That means the critic is the parent kicking you around. You need to become the parent. It's a decision. And the decision comes from reaching a threshold moment of really observing, "This is effed up. What is this? What am I doing to myself?" You gotta have this sense of almost outrage or disgust or revulsion or something.

You say, "All right, that's it. I'm gonna take control here." Because otherwise, before that decision, it always goes like this. And I see this all the time. People go to cognitive therapy. They teach them how to deal with their negative thoughts, which is their critic. They'll write out the critical thoughts.

"You're a loser or nobody likes you." And they're like, "Okay, what do I do?" The therapist is like, "Challenge the thought." And they're like, "Okay, I'm good. And many people do like me. Is that right?" It's got no power because they're still framed, still living within the reality created by their critic.

They still see themselves that way. We have to shatter that and be willing to see what's really true. And I could go deeper and more granular, but I'll pause. - I'm curious how applicable this is to everyone. Or is this for people who found themselves so deep that they have no confidence?

Because I imagine there's some people listening that don't necessarily feel like they don't have confidence. They're willing to go to a meeting and feel like they're gonna do a great job, but it could probably level up as well. I'm curious if you address some of the tactics you said make me feel like I'm not even sure I'm at that point yet.

However, I have no doubt that there is something to be learned for everyone. So how does this calibrate for people? - This doesn't have to mean that you're impaired to the point where you can't go into that meeting. But a lot of people, the morning of the meeting, they're short with their spouse.

They're stressed out. Like, I got that meeting. I think if you look at a lot of people, there's some fear underneath. And the fear is this has to go good or else. They might say, I'm gonna crush it. I'm gonna just nail it, maybe. Now that's great. Then you could observe what are you doing?

You're probably reinforcing an identity, how you see yourself of capability. I got this, I can do this. And you know what that is? Their critic has been swapped out with what I would call an optimal self-coach. That's a process that you can observe. Even if your critic's not terrible, you gotta start listening to it.

You could ask this question before a meeting. Am I nervous? What am I telling myself? This is a great question. Who's coaching me in my head right now? And you could say, what would an optimal coach say? Think back if you've ever had a sports coach when you were young or a life coach as you got older or someone who was a mentor or a guide who actually fulfilled that role for you.

What would they say? How would they perceive this? And you can start to tap into that and draw on that. But I would say that there's still often a layer of fear underneath. And that fear is some level of, if this doesn't go well, then dot, dot, dot. I think the next level, if you wanna talk about extraordinary confidence, it's the people that are willing to face that and to go into any scenario of life, even the stuff that we would never want to occur, and to not say, oh great, I hope that happens, but to say, you know what?

If that happens, I'll be okay too. I know I can handle anything. That's when you get to a certain level of confidence where you're able to move through life without that roller coaster of fear and up and down. (air whooshing) Even if you're responsible with money and always spend less than you make, having a grasp of your cashflow has so many benefits, from spotting expenses that you definitely need to cut, to being able to better forecast your net worth, or even just being able to ask yourself whether you're really aligning the way you spend your money with your own priorities.

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Whether you have no confidence or a lot of it, sounds like you could have more and the impact on your life of having more would be great. So you just need to confront and stand up to this inner critic. Are there more habits to build or types of coaching to keep it going?

'Cause it seems like it'd be easy one morning to be like, you know what, forget it. This is gonna be great, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna last forever. - Here's a simple one. I think it's helpful when you think about what habits to do, what's the outcome, what are we trying to do?

And you say, I'm trying to build my confidence. Yes, but when your identity is expanded enough for whatever it is you're trying to do, you don't need to pep talk yourself. So I'm sure there's things that you can do something in your life. You don't have to think about it as confidence 'cause you've just done it so many times that it's no big deal.

Is there anything in your life like a hobby or a work task? I know you do a lot of travel. For some people, travel is overwhelming. My God, where would I even go? I don't know if that even feels that way to you at this point. - I don't stress out.

We're taking this trip we talked about right before we started in a couple of weeks. And we have no idea where we're going. I know a lot of people will be very overwhelmed going on a trip for a week. In two weeks, we have no idea what we're doing.

I just know that we're gonna be able to find a great trip. It doesn't even bother me. My wife's like, well, I might need to buy some clothes if it's gonna be cold or warm. So it'd be good to know on more than a day's notice. But for me, I'm like, I have warm clothes, I have cold clothes.

I'm pretty confident we'll have a good trip. - You can hear there's like a relaxed sense of certainty around that. A lot of people wouldn't have that. I don't travel. I used to travel a lot when I was younger. I haven't traveled that much in the last seven, eight years.

For me, I don't know if I'd be overstressed about it, but it would be more than you. 'Cause there's something different there. What's the differentiating factor there? My sense is you probably traveled a lot. You do a show that involves travel, right? So you've expanded your identity. Chris includes travel.

How did you expand the identity to include that? You weren't born that way. Did you grow up with world traveler parents? - A little bit, yeah. My grandparents traveled a lot. My parents traveled, we went places. So yes. - You had this exposure, practice, and it becomes familiar and normal for you to do that kind of thing.

So now we're gonna go on a trip in a couple of weeks. No big deal. I had a buddy when I was young who was like straight out of a movie, Hacker Nerd Kids. And this was '97 or something, '95. Everything was simpler in a way. Computer systems, the internet.

He could just furiously type and literally at the school library, be like in the administrator section of the school. I'm like, what are you doing? Right? Because he grew up on computers. He just knew how to do that stuff. What does all this have to do with confidence at work in our lives and that sort of thing is that we need to expand our identity so that we see ourselves as like, this is no big deal.

This is normal for me. Otherwise it's always a, oh my God, am I gonna pull this off? I don't know. That whole, I don't know. That's a reflection that you don't see as a part of your normal identity yet. We want to expand our identity. The habits have to be expanding our identity to include that.

One thing we can do is to do the thing, right? Start getting exposure to it. That sounds so simple, but if we're not great at it yet or it causes stress for us, we slow the process down. We're like, I'll get to that next month. I'll do it once in a while.

The biggest change is gonna go on offense, I like to call it. Let's say you do okay at work meetings, but you want to own the room. You want to be a powerful force of leadership, speaking up and authority. So then you say, okay, I'm gonna have a commitment.

Every single meeting, I'm gonna intentionally speak up and I'm gonna intentionally steer at once. I'm gonna intentionally ask a question. You start to build that. That's the action side. Now the habit that really strengthens that, it serves multiple purposes. It neutralizes the critic and it builds your optimal coach.

And this one is right after the meeting is done, force yourself, don't just do it in your head, force yourself to do it on a note file on your phone or on a sheet of paper if you want to do it old school, where you write down three wins from the meeting right afterwards.

What are three things that you did that went well? This is gonna really encode it into your identity. They say, well, I spoke up there, I did this. And it doesn't matter what you write down. It matters that you're training your brain to say, hey, when I go into these situations, I'm competent.

Remember you were talking about Vanessa Van Edwards, competence and warmth, right? You say, I know I'm competent. Not all of you knows that all of the time. What this is doing is linking your brain. I'll do this with clients where I'll say, okay, write down three things like that a day.

There was a man I worked with who is already very successful. He ran multiple companies, but he basically felt like he wasn't never successful enough. We started to do this because in his mind, at the end of the day, he cataloged all the things he didn't do well enough, even though he was successfully running three companies.

With this practice, he started to simply write down three things at the end of each day that he did well. And within three weeks, a big shift happened. He's like, I was talking with my wife and in an offhand manner, I referred to myself as successful. And for him, this guy who runs three companies, multi-millionaire, for him, the moment that he knew he was a success was when he casually told his wife something implying he was successful.

That's the power of upgrading your identity. - And is that making a point to speak up in a meeting or take charge? Is that the bold side of the two habits you wanted to build or is that something different? - Yes, that would be an example. For a number of people, that might be a challenge.

Whatever the bold action, how do you know what it is? It's whatever makes you uncomfortable or scares you a lot. Generally, if it freaks you out, you probably have to work up to it. Think of it as weight training. You're not gonna just bench press 300 pounds if you can't bench press 150.

Practice and repetition of the smaller amounts, that would be an example of bold action. - We went to a birthday party for a three-year-old this weekend and one of the parents said, "Oh, have you traveled with your kids?" And I was like, "Yeah, we went to London and Paris." And they're like, "Whoa, we could never do that." I was like, "Okay, then why don't you go for a weekend?" I was just trying to tell them, they're not gonna ever feel like they could travel with their kids as much as they want until they just do it.

So I assume that is a little bit of what you have to do. You don't have to take an international trip right away, but maybe you just go somewhere for a night, go somewhere for a weekend. - Most people, in their mind, it's the hundred pound weight or nothing.

Ah, we're gonna go international. We'll do it when they're teenagers. But what about the overnight? Ah, that's not enough. Ah, I don't know. And we all do this with the small stuff. Ah, I don't know. But really, that's the only way to get that confidence. - And when it comes to the inner critic, can you talk to me about what the difference is between planning for the worst and feeling like the worst is gonna happen?

I think sometimes my wife and I have these debates where I'm like, "Everything's gonna be great." And she's like, "What if this happens? What if this happens?" And I don't actually think she's necessarily saying it's going to happen. She's just like, "We should be prepared because if something does go wrong, we wanna make sure that we have a contingency, a plan, enough diapers, enough extra snacks." And I'm like, "Well, if the kids are hungry, we'll go find a store and buy some stuff and it'll be okay." I think we both realize that we balance each other out well 'cause I'm like, "Nothing's gonna go wrong.

Everything's gonna be perfect." I wouldn't say she says, "Everything's gonna go wrong." She just wants to make sure we're prepared if it does. - Not making this about my wife per se, but is that a self-critic or is that a preparedness or is there a blurry line between the two?

- That's a great question. Also, similar dynamics between me and my wife. I don't know if that's roles or personality styles or male/female energy, but it's definitely like, "What do we need? Whatever, let's just grab, let's go." We've definitely been on hikes with my boys where we ran out of water and stuff.

And I'm like, "Well, we survived." I think you're highlighting a great point here. It all comes back to risk and our willingness to take risk. Each person has a different level of risk tolerance. If someone's risk tolerance is a little lower, it doesn't mean it's bad. It might mean they're prepared, right?

I'm not gonna take the risk of bringing nothing. Let's bring these three things so that we have some supplies. There's a downside to that. You gotta think of the things, you gotta carry them around, right? We all find our balance there. In day-to-day life, as you're describing, probably not too significant of an impact.

I'd say the problem can come in when people start becoming less willing or even unwilling to tolerate risk. That would be your wife saying, "I can't go until I have three backpacks, diapers, foods, disaster supplies." You know, it starts to become really extreme. You might say, "Well, that's over the top." But people do that in their lives.

I'm not gonna start my business until I have this lined up and I've achieved that. And I have X amount of money in the bank and this and that, and the kids are older, and now the business has never started. I'm not gonna have children until I got A, and B, and C, and D all lined up.

And then they don't have children, right? People will avoid significant positive risks in their lives because they are unwilling to tolerate. And that's the key thing. To lean into the risk, we have to be able to tolerate uncertainty. The I don't know what's gonna happen. And the boogeyman that stops us from doing that is the mind says, "We don't know." Could be awesome, could be fun, could be spontaneous.

It could be death. It could be the terrible thing, right? And because of the human prediction machine that is our brain, it can, within a quarter of a second, imagine, see, and even feel like the death of your child or a financial ruin, which is pretty intense. You're sitting there eating your cereal and all of a sudden you go, "Ah, financial ruin," right?

That's a significant emotional impact. What do you do with that? People that have anxiety or catastrophizing, we can really live in that place and start to imagine that's gonna happen. The key there is to take a step back. I would say, start with your nervous system. Are you ramped up?

Are you breathing really rapidly? Are you shoveling junk food in your face? Take a moment, as simple as it might sound, take three breaths, slowly breathe in, and count to where you're breathing out longer than you're breathing in. And ask yourself, what kind of risk am I afraid of?

What's the line here? Usually we can see there's a certain line that makes sense. At some point, we have to be willing to go into the what if and say, "You know what? The odds are very, very low that would happen, but if that would happen, let's face that." And I'm not saying you're really gonna have a kid die or something, but I mean like in that moment, you emotionally face it 'cause the fear feeds on avoidance and flight.

If you turn to face it, face the fear for just a moment, what you'll notice is that it gets really intense, but if you just let it rip through you without needing to do anything, the moment will pass, the storm will pass, and you're okay to take the step forward.

The problem most people make is they're like, "But what if it leads to that?" And then they just stop. It's like getting to the edge of the cliff and not even looking down. What you need to do is become really mindful of the edge. And if you look at every catastrophic thought, it's all about loss, pain, and survival stuff.

Underneath, we all know that this is impermanent. None of this stuff, we don't have control. We don't really know what's gonna happen. The people that we love, it's extraordinary and our hearts are bonded, but something could happen to anyone. Our lifestyles, everything is in flux and change. It might be steady for decades and then it might change.

We know that. We're facing our catastrophic thoughts. We're facing impermanence. The problem is not that things are gonna change or that something "bad" could happen. The problem is that you are fighting it, racing against it, and unwilling. You're saying, "No, I do not sign that contract with life. "I will not accept that something unpleasant "could happen to me." And you clench everything inside.

You get anxious and it doesn't do anything. It's not like the universe is like, "He's really tight in his bowels. "Let's give him what he wants." The only thing to do, the only sanity, is to practice having a practice of surrender and letting go and saying, "Look, if that happens, (exhales) "I will face that then." It's not a verbal thing.

It's in your body. It's a physiologically softening and letting go. - An interesting takeaway for me is confidence doesn't have to be optimism. It sounds like confidence can be acceptance that it might not be the optimal. I think in my mind, it was always, "I think this is gonna go well "so I can be confident going into it." But you can also be confident going into it and say, "It might not go well.

"I'm just confident that whatever happens, "I can deal with." - The underpinning of confidence. The other one's not bad. The other one, you could think of it as optimism or positive anticipation. And that will tilt the scales in your favor. If you go into a social interaction being like, "People are gonna like me.

"This is gonna be great. "We're gonna have fun." You tilt it in your favor versus going in and be like, "This is gonna suck. "I don't even like people already." Right, of course, that's gonna tilt it the other way. Now you can go and be like, "Oh, this is gonna be fun." Let's say you're meeting a friend of a friend at this party and, "Oh, we're gonna connect.

"I've been wanting to meet this person for so long." You can get there and the person's standoffish. You don't have control. So we have to say, "Look, it's probably gonna go well. "I am capable. "I can talk to anybody." That's the identity piece that sets you up for positive anticipation.

But then you remove the background fear. "But what if it doesn't?" "Well, I'll be okay." And that is the sentence that I think captures the most unconditional confidence is, "Either way, I'll be okay." - So quick recap. There's these two big habits. One of them is you wanna be on your own side and you just gotta stand up to the self-critic.

And the other is that you need to put yourself out there and take some bold actions. Any other kind of bold discomfort practice that people can do, exercises? - Yeah, my favorite one is a visceral. It's not with the mind at all and it's a cold plunge. If you don't have a cold plunge, you can do a cold shower.

Maybe that's come up on your show. I don't know if it's a big hack, but from a psychological perspective, there's physiological benefits too. But facing every morning before I go into the cold plunge, there is a voice in my head that says, "I don't want to." Like every morning, it doesn't matter how long I've done it.

So I get to practice. I'm going to override this because it's for my benefit. I'll even sometimes say to myself, "I don't want to." And I'm like, "I do want to." Because when I face what's uncomfortable, my life is better for it. And of course, the cool thing about the cold plunge is that you get an immediate payoff.

It's not even when you get out. For me, the first four seconds of getting in is submerging my head and then when I'm sitting in it, it's uncomfortable but intense and fun and weird. I think I'm in an altered state almost. The hard part was getting in. Hard part's getting in.

And that's a great metaphor 'cause that's the same thing for whatever it might be. The hardest part of the risk is jumping. It's walking towards those people you don't know and want to create a business connection with, right? It's calling the person up. It's starting the thing. It's initiating.

'Cause then once you're in it, you're in the moment, right? You're talking to the person. Now it's off to the races. So I think that's a really powerful practice is the cold plunge. On the physical side, I like to do those as well 'cause I think they transmit a message that's not just us talking to ourselves.

Another physical thing for anyone could be some sort of athletic pursuit where you have a practice of doing something consistently that's uncomfortable even though you don't want to sometimes whatever it is for you. But I think that and the cold plunge are really foundational things that you might not think be related to your confidence at all, but they're very much related to the psychology of being able to go into discomfort because going into discomfort equals freedom.

Oh man, talk about rejection practice and other things. Those are on the social side. Those are truly liberating as well. - Just talk a little bit about that exercise. - Okay, this is for fear of rejection. A lot of people might say, "I don't have a fear of rejection." Okay, try these exercises and see if that's true or not.

Here's a great one. Basically, you walk up to someone and ask a question that you are 100% certain you're gonna get a no for. One of the simplest ones for that is can I have $100? Or whatever the currency of your choice is, that's equivalent to a large amount of money.

Do it in a friendly, warm way. That's where it makes it fun. It's like you're asking them, "What time is it?" Or, "Do you know a restaurant?" But you're saying, "Hey, can I have $100?" And it confuses people 'cause you're not begging. You're not like, "Yeah, poor me." You're just like, "Hey, I have $100." You get all kinds of fun reactions, but you'd be surprised.

Your heart might be pounding before you go do it. Why is your heart pounding? 'Cause you're in fight or flight. Why? Because it could be the rejection. It could also be that you're breaking social norm. You're disturbing. This is a whole topic we can dive into, what I would call the cultural field.

There's an invisible field, just like gravity is invisible. The cultural field is affecting you right now. Even in this interview, it's affecting us. How I talk, how I use my face. You know, why I'm not, for those who are watching, why am I not going like this? Like, "Me!" I just did it.

But it's cultural. If you were to do that in a work meeting, people would be like, "Does he have a condition? "Is this okay?" It's unusual. But social freedom, which is part of confidence, as long as you're not hurting somebody or being aggressive, but just to be free to wear what you want, say what you want, laugh out loud, ask whatever you want of anybody, that requires this kind of bold action of getting rejected.

Asking for $100 is a great one. And I have some fun stories of at my events, people will go out and ask for all kinds of things. Shockingly, they actually end up getting yeses more than you'd think, for stuff that would almost certainly seem to be a no. - You gotta give a couple examples there.

- Okay, this one, you can see. Someone walks up to someone at a restaurant, they have chips and guacamole, "Can I have one of your chips "and dip it in your guacamole?" They say, "Okay." Yeah, you might say, "That's not crazy." Here's another one that I was really surprised by.

A man walks up to a woman who's outside at a Mexican restaurant, and she's eating a burrito. And he says, "Excuse me." She says, "What?" "No preamble, excuse me." "Yes?" "Can I have a bite of your burrito?" And she's like, "Okay," and gives him a bite of her burrito.

Another one, someone says, "Hey, can I take your bicycle?" The guy's on a bike. "Can I take your bike for a spin around the block?" Guy says, "Yes." This is my favorite one. A woman goes up to someone who's got a dog, and she says, "Hey, can I take your dog for a walk?" "No preamble." And the woman's like, "Okay." And then this person who's participating at the event, their goal is to rack up rejection.

She doesn't wanna sit there and walk someone's dog, so she's like, "Actually, I don't want to." She walks away. The person's like, "What?" So, there you go, social freedom. - Let's talk for a second about social freedom. Until I was reading up on your work, it's not even something I'd heard of.

What does it mean, and what can it do for your life by having more of it? - As far as I know, I haven't heard that term anywhere else. I just came up with it 'cause I was thinking, what's the opposite of social anxiety, right? I was like, "It's social confidence," but actually, it's like social freedom.

The idea is you're free to be 100% you and do what you want in the world and not be restricted by the cultural field. Obviously, you have constraints. There's laws. There's things that don't feel good to your own personal ethics. But most people are in a cage that's much tighter than that.

It's not the laws. It's my mom told me I was bothering people when I was young, so I don't wanna bother people. Oh, I learned when I was in junior high that if I look too interested, then I'm desperate. Okay, I'm gonna look cool, right? We have hundreds of little conclusions and if-then statements of how we should be in order to be good, lovable, worthwhile, attractive, all these things.

We're operating in this cage that ultimately, though, it's not really you. The kicker is you're actually more attractive, more lovable when you step outside of that cage and you let your natural, enthusiastic, funny, quirky, weird self, all the things that you were connected to when you were 10 years old, you bring them back in.

And that's something that we actually have to consciously do. I've seen people who are powerhouses in business. They're so confident and they seem like they have no issues with this and to go walk down a street and say hi to 15 or 20 strangers, it makes them nervous because, oh, I'm confident in this role as a business person, but the social freedom of I get to be whoever I want around people scares them.

That's just another place that we wanna practice those two things, right? Changing the way you talk to yourself, being on your own side and doing the bold things that make you uncomfortable so you can free yourself socially. - I feel like I might be late to the game with this, but I'll share it anyways.

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Social freedom, we've got confidence. Are there other byproducts or ways to use these two habits to increase our happiness, our satisfaction in life, or anything? I don't know if you can officially claim this one on internet marketing, but I have an internal phrase that I say, which is double your confidence, double your income.

I truly believe, and I've seen this in people, that as you grow in your confidence, if you're willing to take bold action, which it's not just saying hi to a stranger or getting a date or something, a bold action is to ask for something, to ask directly, to ask unapologetically.

There are hundreds of examples of if you're willing to ask, life can give you what you want. I've seen people who ask for promotions, who renegotiate salaries, who've been at companies for years and have never done that. And they're waiting for the employer to be like, "Oh, here you go." And maybe that happens, but often you gotta kinda advocate for it.

All of a sudden, they do it and they're expecting, "How dare you, you ingrateful, horrible person, "you're fired," or whatever. The negotiator's like, sometimes like, "Yes, okay, here you go." Other times it's, "Not now." And then I coach them instead of being like, "Okay, fine, sorry." They're like, "Okay, can you tell me more "about when that might be, or what I do "that might warrant that kind of promotion or pay increase?" Being in that direct contact with their employer, with coworkers.

Running a business is all about asking people to promote you, to work with you, to buy your products or services. And I can't tell you how many people are not as successful in their own businesses because they're afraid to boldly ask people to buy their stuff through the form of marketing.

For me, it would be like, "I'm gonna put a lot of free teachings out there." And then maybe if you wanna buy something, you'll just do it, I guess. And I learned I had to actually be able to say, "Hey, if you're enjoying this "and you're benefiting from this, "go check out this program.

"Here's why you want it." Being able to ask boldly. So if you do those things, plus you keep expanding your identity to see yourself as successful and capable, I've seen people change jobs, start businesses, grow businesses, and definitely increase their income from just these two habits as well. - I got an email the other day that said, "Hi, I work for this company "and we have a client who wants to understand more "about the automated investment advisory space.

"Would you be up to do a one-hour call?" I do a two-minute call with this guy. He's like, "Yeah, right now the rate is $300 an hour." I was thinking $1,000 an hour. It's one hour, it's not a long-term commitment. It felt like an opportunity to just see what happens.

And he's like, "I think we could do that." And I was like, (laughs) that was more than three X for just a response. - Double your confidence, triple your income. Doesn't have the same alliterative flow, but you know, look at that, double your income or more. And that's the crazy thing, right?

You are bold enough to ask, and you could have gotten a no or a negotiation or whatever, but so many people, myself included, we just won't ask, why? Because it's uncomfortable and it's unconscious. Oh, I don't know, I don't know. But that moment right there is no different than getting into the cold plunge, right?

That's exciting. And then once that happens though, what kind of cascade? - That's my new rate, by the way. - Exactly, right? It sets up a cascade where you're like, hey, this is what I do. People pay me $1,000 per hour, which is true. Now, you could even say that, right?

And this person's like, "Well, how much do you charge?" We were thinking 300. Well, people typically pay me 1,000, so that's what I'd be willing to do. If you want to do some sort of longer term thing, we might be able to negotiate something different, but for a one-off, it's 1,000.

That's your identity has expanded. That's just normal for you now. - I think that one was hard for me, and it took some practice over some time. So we've talked a bunch about the inner critic and the fear. One of the places I face that the most is when I'm trying to make some decision, usually in an area I'm actually more confident in, so it's saving money or it's booking travel.

I have this fear that I could be making a more optimal decision. It could be as silly as I'm buying groceries online and I'm trying to make sure that I get the best deal of the basket of goods, or I'm trying to pick a hotel and I want to get the best hotel.

This critic is telling me, "Maybe if you just do a little bit more research, you'll come to this optimal answer." Can I use these habits in that situation, or is there something about that fear that I need to recognize that I won't make the best choice? - Well, I think that would be the interesting question to look at.

Maybe that's true. Maybe you could find a hotel that is cheaper or has better bang for your buck based upon whatever things you're looking for. Let's just say that that's true. There's a part of you that's like, "No!" I guess we want to investigate that. Why is that so unacceptable?

That's the part that we would want to go into. My sense is if we don't get the best thing, something bad is happening. Is that what it is for you? - Maybe it's I could have gotten a better deal/experience, but I think I've heard you even say something along the lines of even the optimal outcome still has some negative possibility.

There is no optimal outcome, I guess, is the real answer. - Well, you're choosing a circumstance, and every circumstance in our life, every hotel, every trip, every date, every day of your life is going to have a mixture of good and bad, pleasure, discomfort, pain. There is 100% no day that's avoidable of that.

And if you have the greatest day of your life, it's all orchestrated and all the activities are fun, you'll have challenge with your emotional state. You'll be like bummed out or anxious for whatever reason, you don't know why. So we cannot control it all. I think that's helpful 'cause the allure of the maximizing pattern is if I could just nail the right combo of external factors out there, I'm gonna get the perfect day, the perfect trip, the perfect experience.

That unconsciously is thinking perfect means all pleasure, no pain, all good times, no frustrating moments. And when you say, you know what? This amazing hotel is gonna have some great things about it. There's gonna be something at this hotel that I don't like, even if it's the best price, best deal, best everything.

And this one also over here is gonna have some great things and some things that I don't like. So I would put a cap on it. I'm gonna do 10 minutes of research to make sure I'm not going to some total dump. But then look, these things, they're basically gonna give me the same.

Every path is gonna be a mixture. When you see that, when you really get that, all of a sudden the back and forth doesn't have the same urgency because ultimately, it's all gonna be a basket of pleasure and pain. You might say, but if I pick the right one, it'll have a higher percentage of pleasure over pain.

Yes, maybe, but you generally don't have the data to know that. - I almost think it's trying to avoid the pain of making the wrong choice than have the joy of making the right choice. - Interesting. And how do you know it's the wrong choice? - That's probably why it takes so long to make a decision 'cause there's no criteria to know that.

- I think the wrong choice would be you're in that future moment and something happens that's unpleasant. And you say, ah, you see, I made the wrong choice. It's this fantasy world where if I chose the other one, I would have nothing unpleasant happen. But then no matter where you go, you have unpleasant stuff happen.

And then it's like, I need to decide harder next time. And so, when you really embrace that mixture of stuff, it's so relaxing, it's so relieving 'cause we're trying to avoid these inevitables of life. All it takes, I think, is just to observe that pattern from start to finish.

I'm maximizing on the hotel thing. Let me just pick one. This is where bold action comes in. For the maximizing habit, the bold action is to set a cap and decide within the reasonable amount of time. A trip or something like that, pretty quick. It could be deciding on where we wanna go from just one conversation.

One feeling. And then picking the accommodations, maybe you set aside an hour and just bang 'em all out. Here's the funny thing. Let's say you get someplace that really sucks. I was down in San Diego. My wife was getting some medical thing done down there. And we were there for, we was like, oh, we'll spend a week down there at the same time.

We get this Airbnb. I pick the Airbnb. I do no maximizing, which is a problem. So we go there and they had it listed as a beach view. There was no beach view, so that was a misrepresentation. But we get there and the place is just real tiny and cramped and dirty and some things that I could not have predicted.

It got real, real fast. My first time on Airbnb experience where we messaged the person who was hosting and she got real aggressive and crazy and just started saying these threatening things. I had to get Airbnb support involved. And there's this illusion that Airbnb is this company that's gonna take care of you.

It's just like some support dude in India who's like, let's see what I can do. Anyway, we ended up having to leave dramatically. We had to get out within 15 minutes to not be charged. So we're hustling out of there. She's sending these threatening texts and then we leave.

And you might say, wow, what a terrible experience. It ended up that we found another place that the guy was amazing. The spot was way better and it was cheaper. And so I think that's a really helpful thing to remember as well. What if this happens? Well, what if that does happen?

And then it leads to something extraordinary and you wouldn't get the extraordinary if that challenge didn't happen. - It's funny 'cause my example of this is the exact same example, which is when we went to London, we had this horrible Airbnb and the host, we had problems and we surfaced the problems and they told us we have to leave.

We got Airbnb support, literally the exact same thing. Where it deviated was Airbnb support was incredibly helpful and booked us a place that costs twice as much, but didn't charge us any extra. - Ooh. - We ended up staying at this ridiculously amazing place that I still think about because they had this kid's room.

There was a Harry Potter themed room with a train bed and a little tree reading nook. They turned the radiator into a castle and it was crazy. - Wow. - But it was really awesome. - And that experience wouldn't have happened had we not picked the crappy Airbnb. - What if you really internalize that?

It's like talking to yourself. Hey, the unexpected, the problems can actually lead to extraordinary. Now we're talking about something that if we were to go way back to the beginning of this conversation, how do you define confidence? So I've been doing this for like 20 years now. I started my own self-confidence at age 20, I'm 40 now.

There's confidence for yourself. I can handle whatever happens, but I discovered that there's a cap on that. How joyful and awesome our lives can be, there's a ceiling on self-confidence. And to go higher into really thriving in life, I think we need to have confidence in something beyond ourselves.

Whatever you wanna put in that box, I don't care. But that's the kind of belief that's tapped into that. Even out of the challenging experience, something extraordinary is gonna come. And that's a beautiful example of that. And you have that memory for the rest of your life, right? It's a little reminder so that the next time you're sitting down to book something and you're like, "Ugh," just like, "Whoa, I'm maximizing.

"I'm gonna give myself three minutes, pick a thing, "and who knows, it's gonna lead to extraordinary." - I love it. I've been thinking, ever since we stopped talking about social freedom, there's something that's been resonating in my mind. All of these kind of social obligations that my wife and I always look at each other like, "Gosh, I don't wanna do that thing." And she's like, "Yeah, I don't wanna do that thing, "but because this friend invited us this thing "or this family member said we have to go, "we have to do it and we don't wanna do it." Does that play in there?

Is social freedom truly being able to tell your friend or your family, "Hey, we don't actually wanna hang out "with you." - I know you've written a book called "Not Nice." - Yes. - How does this all come together in situations like this to be able to actually do the things we want with our lives and be happy, but not make everyone around us think we're assholes?

- Definitely tell 'em just like that. I just don't wanna hang out with you, period, full stop. No, I think there is really tuning in and asking yourself, what do I, or in the case, maybe you and your wife, what do we really want? Or maybe it's what do I want, what do you want?

Let's really get clear on that. And a lot of people don't even let themselves discover that, because that's bad to not wanna go to your uncle's friends reunions thing, right? How bad of me, what a bad nephew and son I am. But just in the safety of your own brain and maybe with your partner, it's like, "Hey, what do I really want?

"I don't wanna go to that thing." And just give space to that. That sounds so simple, but most people don't. And they're just an override, override. Sometimes just airing it and hearing that part of you feels good. Then you actually have a choice there. It's like the cold plunge.

"I don't wanna go to the cold plunge, "but I do because here's why." And just tune in, is that true in this situation? So Christmas time, we go visit my wife's side of the family. I love her side of the family. When it's travel and this and that, and driving there and packing everything up and then staying in their place.

Some part of me is like, "Nah, that's a lot of work. "I don't wanna, just go without me. "I'll just stay home, that's fine." But then I tune in. Yes, there's a part of me, it's like, "It's easier, "but what do I really want? "Oh, I really want to be apart and connected "with my wife, with family.

"I'm gonna endure some of the discomforts "because I ultimately value and prioritizing "or optimizing for connection and deep relationships. "That doesn't mean I go to everything, "every function, every person's thing. "We have to have that choice of what are the relationships "that I want to really nourish and invest in?" And it does involve saying no to a good percentage of things.

And doing so in a warm and loving way. "Thank you for letting me know. "I'm not gonna be able to make it to that." You don't have to give a ton of reasons. "I've got to take the kids to the dentist." No, I'm not available. I'm not gonna be able to make that.

Thank you so much for thinking of me. I believe you have a great time. But do know there's a social currency that if you have a friend who's always inviting you to things and you always say, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." Then when you invite them, they might not be a yes.

There's a certain investment. But the question is, where do you want to put that investment? Some friends you want to invest a lot with. Some you're like, "Oh, I'll see him once in a while." And some, honestly, if it's mainly obligation, "It's time to let it go." - I think sometimes I've already let it go.

There's people that just keep asking, "What's the polite way to say, "I don't want to go to this "and feel free to not invite me ever again." I haven't figured out the nice way to do that. - Well, I think just a simple, "Thanks for the invite, I'm not available." If you do that, I mean, first of all, some point it'll extinguish, I'd imagine.

Continually, no. At some point, they'll be like, "He's not available." The next level, that would be kind of like just being more direct. I always tell people life is a choose-your-own-adventure. You might say, "I can't be that guy. "That's an asshole thing to do." Maybe it's not. - I mean, just go back to what you said about being bold.

There are times where I think it took me a while to get the courage to tell people that I don't have time in my life to do a thing. Especially with work obligations and responding emails. I was having a conversation, or maybe I was preparing for a conversation with Derek Sivers, who had said, "I like to tell people I don't have time." And when I got his email at one point where he was like, "I might not respond to this.

"There's a lot of stuff going on in my life "and I'm really trying to focus on the things "that are the most important. "And right now, spending time with my kids "is most important." I was like, "I'm not mad that you told me "you can't reply to my email.

"I'm actually jealous it had this effect." Maybe the answer to use the same set of habits here is you might think you're being an asshole by saying that, but maybe you're not. Maybe it won't actually be interpreted in that way. - Right, here's the thing. Yes, it sounds like he communicated with some vulnerability or transparency.

It wasn't just like, "Fuck off. "I don't have time for you," right? It was like, "Hey, this is what's going on for me." That's a great way to do it. It's sort of the technique or the communication style. But here's the thing. I think this is the biggest part of social freedom.

Are you an asshole or not? It's in the eye of the beholder. If you're bad in your mind, that's the biggest problem. If you're not allowed, it goes against your, I call this your personal bill of rights. You might not have a right to say, "No, I'm not available for that." You might not have a right to not respond to all the emails.

As long as you don't have that right 'cause you haven't claimed it, you're gonna feel guilty, you're gonna feel stressed, you may even feel irritated at them. "How dare you ask me?" In my personal bill of rights, I have a right to not respond to all emails. Because in this day and age, if you feel pressure to reply to all your emails, good God, the more emails you reply to, the more emails they are.

It's like they multiply. I'll reply to some of the emails of my clients. I'll try to get back to a lot of them, but not everybody, not all the time. Someone out there sometimes might think he's an asshole 'cause he didn't do X for me. And you know what?

That's okay. If we're operating in life where no one must ever think that of me, then you're gonna be in a pretzel position faster than you can imagine. It's unsustainable. It's not you. So really finding that permission to not do the things that you truly don't wanna do. And that's certainly bold action, by the way.

- Let's go back to this bill of rights because when I talked to Ramit Sethi about money, he has Ramit's money rules. They just really simplify his decision-making about things 'cause he just took the uncertainty out of it. He says, "If someone is raising money for charity, "I always give money.

"If I fly for more than five hours or whatever the number is, "I always fly business class." And it just makes it super simple 'cause he's thought about the decision abstractly from actually having to make it. Like I always buy books. If I wanna learn something and a book might have the answer, I always buy it.

I never stress out if it's $10 or $12 or 20, I just always buy it. Talk about this bill of rights 'cause it seems like something that I and maybe everyone listening would benefit from having. - Yes, we all have one. It might be a very short list of rights or it might be a long list of rights.

The more socially not free you are, the more you're in the cage, the shorter your bill of rights. A bill of rights is just a statement of permissions. I'm allowed to, I have a right to. And you'll know what's in your bill of rights based on how you feel and what you do.

Do I have a right to say no to that person requesting I come to their thing? Did you say yes when you didn't wanna go? Then you might not have a right that says I get to say no to people's requests, to people's invitations. Or you might say, I have a right to repeatedly say no to someone's requests.

That's a different thing. Here's some core ones that I encourage people to adopt and make sure they have on their bill of rights. I have a right to ask for what I want. I have a right to say no. I have a right to approach anyone, whether that's virtually or in person.

Doesn't mean they wanna talk to you. If you stop yourself before you even allow the opening or the approach, you're gonna limit your life significantly. And people have all kinds of stories. I'm gonna bother them. Maybe they'll be bothered, maybe they won't. Let's find out. You know, in the case of the person wanting to hire you for your services, I have a right to ask for whatever fee I want for my services, whatever feels right.

Actually, it's an exercise. It's very much worth doing. And I do it with clients. Like have them sit down and like, well, write it out. It doesn't have to be perfect. What would feel empowering to you? As you write it, you're nodding your head, like, yeah, all right. Just come up with a list of five, 10, like a nation that has a bill of rights for its people.

This is your bill of rights for you. Those must first be written and then they have to be practiced. Otherwise, they're just flowery language on paper if you're not actually doing them. - Are there a few more examples you can give to inspire people as they're hopefully thinking about what would be on theirs?

- Yeah, I mean, I think one thing to break it down is just think of the different areas of your life. Think about in your relationship, your romantic relationship. I have a right to tell my partner when something's bothering me. That might sound real simple, but a lot of people shy away.

I don't wanna upset them. I don't wanna bother them. This one I had to add to my bill of rights. It's a doozy. I have a right to disappoint people. Particularly, I have a right to disappoint my partner. I would be running around in my whole life trying not to disappoint anybody.

I don't wanna have anyone be let down. Look, it's great to be connected with your spouse and not constantly not give a crap and disappoint them all over the place, sure. But no matter how loving you're trying to be, how generous you're trying to be, if you're being authentic and true to what you really want, sometimes you're gonna disappoint 'em.

They want you to go to that thing and you don't wanna go. They wanna have time to connect with you, but you are unavailable for whatever reason. Being able to say no and then withstand that discomfort of someone is disappointed in me. The reason I created that bill of right for myself is 'cause I lived with this kind of chronic background anxiety that someone somewhere was gonna be disappointed with me.

And so yeah, sometimes people are disappointed with me and I have a right to do that. And really resting on that, that's what it feels like. It feels like you can rest on your bill of rights and like all is well. Like I'm allowed to do that. And it's almost like teaching a child, like hey, you're allowed to do this, but we kinda have to do that for our own selves now.

So you can look at that relationship life, look at inside of your career and your work, you know, unique to your thing. I have a right to ask a question in a meeting. I have a right to disagree with somebody. That's a big one. You can think about it socially too, right?

Like this is a great one. I have a right to change the subject of a conversation. Nice people can get trapped on the rails. Oh, we're talking about their thing. I don't wanna talk. How do I get out of this? And they pause for a minute. And because you don't have a right to change the subject, instead of changing the subject, and then the conversation keeps going and you're trapped, right?

I lived in that one for a long time. So I have a right to change the subject. Ooh, here's a good one. I have a right to interrupt people. 'Cause sometimes you're talking to someone and they're going on and on and on. And you say, hey, I wanna ask you something.

That's a great technique for interrupting by the way, as if it just came to you. Hey, right in the middle of their sentence. Blah, blah, blah. Hey, I just thought of something. I wanted to ask you something. And then boom, you can steer it a new direction. - Wow, so many things.

Last thing, you talked about relationships. You have kids, I have younger kids. I feel like what I've taken away from this is that there's virtually no reason that confidence wouldn't be a skill to improve for anyone. How as parents should we think about this and helping our kids have confidence?

- The biggest transmission to children, bar none, is modeling. They're going to observe you all the time. They're gonna replicate your style of speaking, your belief systems, your attitudes toward the world. Later on, they'll rebel and they'll create their own views. But as young, they're gonna really model you.

Show them is much bigger than telling them. You might say, I just go out there and do it. What are you afraid of? There's no monsters in your room. But are you boldly approaching the things in your life? You might say, well, they don't see me at work. Doesn't matter, they pick up on you and your essence in the world.

So practice these things yourself. I love to look for little opportunities to teach them through games and practice. So we live out in the country and down our road, there's this big plot of land that was clear cut. And there's a trail that goes through. It ends at this creek and then the trail continues, but you have to jaunt onto someone's property briefly.

Every time I go down there, I'm like, I wonder where that trail goes. But going on people's land randomly out here, I don't know if that's one of the social freedoms I want to break. So I'm there with my son, he's seven. And I'm like, let's go to the guy's house and ask him if we can just walk on the edge of his property and keep going on the trail.

And my seven-year-old's like, no, I don't wanna, I'm scared. Here's what I do, and this is intentional. We're walking side by side on our way to where we would ask the guy and I hold his hand. So I'm transmitting a message of safety. We're okay, we're together. And that's what we would do with the part inside of us before the action that's like, ah, I'm freaking out.

You like, you don't tell yourself like, stop being a coward, you suck. No, we're treating yourself like someone you love, almost, on my own side. And so I grab his hand and I'm like, oh, are you afraid? And he's like, yeah. And then this really struck me. He's like, wait, isn't this what you do for work, dad?

Help people that are afraid. And I was like, as a matter of fact, it is what I do. Here's what we do. How about we ask them? And the worst that he could say is no. So I'm just modeling for him to bold action. Then I let him change the level of weight.

He starts getting more scared. He's like, I don't want to ask. I was like, well, how about I go to the front door and you just stay back and you can watch me, but you don't have to be there. And he's like, okay. I titrated it for him as opposed to like forcing him.

'Cause if you try to force them to do what they're scared of, that doesn't build the confidence 'cause they're not taking the efficacy. So I let him hang back, but modeling, watch me. So I knock on this guy's door, this old man opens the door. It's already going bad when he opens the door.

He's like, can I help you? And I was like, just on the edge of your trail. Can we own the land? And he's like, no, that's our land back there too. We like to keep it private. And then I said, okay, but even if we just go right along the edge, would that be okay?

And he's like, no, we want to keep it private. I was like, all right, that's fine. And then, so we walk away. We're walking back and my seven-year-old was like, why did you ask him again? And I said, you always want to ask twice, just in case you miss something.

Maybe you could offer a new idea. And he said, he's like, but he said no twice. And I was like, yeah, well, that's what happens. If you get a no, you can always ask one more time 'cause maybe they'll change their mind. So that's a little bit of like teaching and modeling.

I'm playing a long game on this. This doesn't mean tomorrow he goes and applies all this. He's shy, both of them are, especially him as a little new people. And I don't push him, like you got to do it. It's more just like creating this spacious, really long game modeling and knowing that over time, he'll find his confidence and highlighting his strength.

One last thing I'll say, which yours are kind of young, so they might not, this language might not mean a lot to them, but my kids age seven and nine, telling them that you're proud of them, not only when they like score the goal and get the A, but just like we're sitting there eating breakfast and I just put my arm around one of them and was like, hey, I love you, I'm proud of you.

I don't have to explain why. And you just see them, they're just like their top button, like, you know, they feel 10 feet tall. Why am I doing that? Because we just have this negative toxic critic in most of us where maybe it's not tearing you down to the bottom of confidence, but it's doing a little bit of who do you think you are?

You haven't done enough yet. And just letting them know that they can feel proud of themselves without even achieving, you know, going to the moon or not, can really build this core sense of I'm on my own side and I'm worthy. - I love it. One-year-old's not really learning a lot of these lessons.

But at three, she was trying to climb this ladder at this birthday party. I have a different approach to how I might've taken that now than trying to tell her she could do it. I knew she could do it, but she didn't. And I have some new ideas that I'll take there.

- Well, one thing is like, you want me to hold your hand while you do it? Is there any way that I could be an aid in getting you to do it yourself? - That's what we do on the slide. When there were some steep slides, she was like, "I don't want to do it." I was like, "Do you want to hold hands?" "No." "Do you want me to come up and go with you?" - Did you find one that clicked?

- Yes. And now she's like, "I don't want your hand." - Aha, there you go. Make sure that if you encourage them to do the thing though and they don't, that you yell shame at them until they're crying. I'm just kidding. One last thing I'll say, for your kids age one and three and anyone you're listening, even at this age, seven and nine that I have, but one and three, man, I just say, give yourself a lot of credit.

You're spending time with them. You're being on the playground with the slide. I remember when my kids were that year, part of me loved it. And part of me was like, "This day is going on forever." I'm so bored, you know? Giving space for that and knowing that at that age, the most powerful transmission you can do is I see you and you matter.

You're not saying that a thousand times a day, but just your energy, your attention on them. And I know in this day and age where we're all overstimulated and stressed, just like slowing down, this doesn't mean 24/7, but just, you know, you're there a certain amount of hours every day.

Hey, I see you, I'm with you. It sets this foundation also of I'm worthy of attention. That's really healthy too for confidence. - I didn't necessarily feel unconfident coming into this, but I still want to go and work on a lot of this and kind of level it up.

So thank you so much. Where can people go get more from you if they're interested? - Go to my website, draziz.com. That's D-R-A-Z-I-Z.com. There's a free mini course about the five steps to build confidence. And again, you don't have to be in the gutter. As Chris is pointing out, right, this is about optimizing.

So in there, you'll learn key strategies for free. I also have a podcast called Strength for the Shy Guy, YouTube channel. You can look me up there too, but just lots of free content to take it further. Anything else you want to learn about my events or other things are on the website as well.

- Thank you so much. You also got books, lots of stuff. So thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. - Thanks, Chris. - Wow, I really enjoyed this episode. I hope you did too. In fact, it was so good, I'm quite confident that if you're still listening, you enjoyed it as well.

So many good takeaways that I hope you can put to use in your life. I know I will. If you want to get in touch, podcast@allthehacks.com. And if you know anyone you think might like hearing this episode, please pass it along. There is no higher praise than sending a new listener our way.

That's it for this week. See you next week. (upbeat music) (whooshing) (whooshing) (birds chirping)