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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Living Podcast. My name's Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. There's lots of places you could be, but I think you're gonna be glad that you're tuned in to this episode today. We've got a super fun and valuable topic. This, today's episode brought to you, brought to us in part by Cowboy Cuffs.
Elevate your style, elevate your life, and elevate each other. Cowboy Cuffs coming soon. Available coming soon.
Yeah, so today's subject is confidence. Specifically, self-confidence. Actually, both.
What's the difference? What they are? This is a... I think we all want to be self-confident. I think we all want to have confidence. Who doesn't want to have confidence? I mean, we're drawn to it. We're drawn to people who behave confidently, and we want to be lined up with them. We want them to be our leaders.
We're not so attracted to you. You hear about this in intimate relationships, confidence is attractive. Well, I think it's attractive in many ways. We're drawn to confidence. So why is that?
I think the reason is because the other, we're picking upon what they're putting down. In other words, they're acting a little fearful, and so we're thinking something's wrong.
It's kind of like a horse. You walk into the barn, okay, and you're fearful. Let me just tell you right now, the horse knows you're fearful. He's like, “Hey, what's, what’s going on?” And then he starts to reacton the way that you're behaving.
So what's inside of here makes a tremendous amount of difference with horses and, of course, with people in our everyday lives as well. So, you know, we want confident leaders. We want to be confident ourselves. And most of us think we're pretty confident.
If I ask a hundred people or 10 people or however many people you want to list, if I said, how many of you are self-confident? Most people would say, yeah, that's, know, and we kind of look at it.
Most people kind of look at confidence as something that we've accomplished. “We did that. I did that back, you know, when I was younger. I did that confidence thing, and I can prove it because you see that him, that guy over there, that's not, that's he's, he doesn't have any self-confidence. See the way he's acting, trying to draw all this attention to himself. No self-confidence whatsoever.
I have confidence. They don't.”
I'm telling you, that's not the right way to look at confidence as something that you accomplish and then move on. All of us probably have some degree of self-confidence, and that's good, but there's never an end mark. It's a life time pursuit. It's a progression. It's a day-to-day thing. And here's why.
The reason why is that we make meaning out of everything that we're doing and out of everything that happens to us. So our brain is constantly deciding what we think about ourselves and giving us thoughts about how we feel. So it's an ongoing daily thing.
We go out into the world, and we do this and we do that and we do the other, or our brain is making meaning about what that means about us. Okay, that affects our confidence or the way that we feel.
Most of us, it's not a checklist item. Okay. That was the point there.
So let’s just… Confidence, a lot of times, I think, can be a very confusing subject because it's not, in most places, it's not clearly defined. So I'm going to help with that right here, right now. Okay.
One, I'm going to separate confidence with self-confidence. Okay.
So let's talk about confidence. Confidence is based on my ability to do a thing, okay? Confidence is my ability to do a thing.
So let's just say that I can, I can shoe a horse. I can trim a horse's hooves, and I can nail shoes on, and I am confident that I can, I can shoe a horse, okay? And the reason that I'm confident that I can shoe just about any horse is because I've shod thousands and thousands of horses over my lifetime. Okay.
So that's something that I've done. So that I have done, so I can approach the next horse that I do with confidence. Okay.
I've done that, and so I'm not fearful or hesitant or insecure about horses when I go to work on their feet because of my past.
Which is a big point. Here's the point with confidence, guys. Okay. Confidence is based on a thing that I can do, and it's past focused. It's based in the past. Okay.
If I look to my past, I can get evidence that will help me feel good about the thing I'm doing. For example, if I go to shoe a horse tomorrow, like I went to do today, I can look to the past, and I can say that, this is all running in the background most of the time, but I can look to the past and say, “Oh, this is the next horse of thousands that I've done in the past. I know how to do this.”
So therefore I feel confident. I feel secure. I feel unafraid. I don't have any hesitancy. I feel self-assured that I have no problem walking over there, catching this horse, tying him up, picking up a foot, trimming a foot, and going through all the process it takes to now want a new set of shoes for this horse. Okay.
And that's why, because it's based in the past.
Confidence is past based. Okay. It's based on things that we've already done.
Now confidence says that if I constantly have to look tothe past to feel good about what I'm doing now, I'm only going to be good at what I've already done. I'm only going to be excellent at things that I've already done.
Now, we're going to look at self-confidence, which is different than confidence.
Self-confidence, first of all, let's come back to definitions, both confidence and self-confidence are feelings. Okay. They are feelings. Okay. Feelings are caused by thoughts that we think in our mind.
Self-confidence is future-based. Okay. I don't know. This is based on the unknown. I don't have my past to look back to, to help give me evidence to support my thoughts about what I'm going to do in the future. “I don't know. I don't know how this is going to go.” Right?
Self-confidence is what makes us good at learning, what makes us good at growing, what makes us good at failing. Okay.
Self-confidence, what it feels like, what it feels like is being, it feels like being self-assured. It feels like a quiet inner knowledge that we're capable. It feels capable to feel competent, to feel self-confident. It feels secure. It feels like I'm courageous. It feels comfortable, and it feels empowering. It feels comfortable to have confidence.Okay. We want to have confidence. Now we got to cover this.
A lot of times this is easily confused. Okay? Confidence or self-confidence, both are both confused with arrogance. And when I hear people say, you know, like, "he's like too confident, overconfident. ”Words like this. Okay.
First of all, I'm here to tell you there is no such thing as too much self-confidence. Okay?
What I'm thinking and feeling about me, if that's a positive thing and it makes me feel all those things I just said, excuse me. I got a bit of a cold going on, that's why I sound funny, FYI, just saying. Comfortable, empowered, capable, secure, courageous. It's the emotion of growth, okay?
Those are choices. That's another thing. Another part of the definition is that confidence is a choice. It's not something that you have. It's a feeling that you can choose to feel based on what you choose tothink in your mind.
What I was back to my confusing point, confidence and self-confidence both get confused with arrogance. Okay.
Arrogance is the opposite. Arrogance means that I think that I'm better than you. I think that I'm superior to you. Not confidence. That is not confidence. Okay.
I said, you can't have too much confidence. You cannot feel too good about yourself. Okay. Unless you're talking about arrogance, which means I feel superior to you. That's not confidence. That's not what we're talking about here. Okay. Totally separate thing.
And by the way, just keep this in mind. Arrogance.
The fact that I think, if I'm being, if I'm acting arrogant, or I think or believe in it, have an acting and thinking in with arrogance, that means, well, the root of that, the root of arrogance is a lack of confidence. Okay. It's the opposite.
Means I feel bad about me. I don't feel competent. I feel a lack of confidence, a lack of it. I feel insecure about me. I feel poor about me.
I feel like I'm inadequate. I'm no, good enough. I'm deficient. I feel all those things. And so therefore, I'm trying to prove to you, to the world, and really to myself that I'm better than you, so I feel better about me.
So arrogance, not self-confidence, and arrogance rooted in a lack of self-confidence or a lack of belief of self-worth about poor or low self-esteem. Okay. Is where arrogance comes from, not self-confidence.Totally opposite.
The opposite of self-confidence is self-doubt. Okay.
What self-doubt feels like, it feels like insecurity. Okay. It feels like, it feels like being afraid. It feels like low self-esteem. It feels incompetent, right? I can't do this. It feels even unloved.
It feels inadequate, inferior, and insignificant. Really, fear is at the root of it all. And the fear is at the root root of it all that I'm not good enough.
That is self-doubt, and that is the opposite of self-confidence. And let me just say this, self-doubt can feel so real. Right? And we determine what's real, so therefore, we make it real, okay?
And sometimes it just feels so strong and so real that itcan be a lot, okay?
So self-doubt sounds like, “I don't know how, I've never done that before, I'm not experienced enough, I'm not talented enough to do that, it's too hard, I'm too old, I'm too young, I'm just not good enough, I'm not good enough to do that, okay?” And yeah, all those things can feel so real.
Self-confidence, on the other hand, sounds more like it's the ability to have your own back. You know, “I got me.”
Self-confidence is your ability to manage the thoughts that you have about you. It's your ability to trust yourself.
Self-confidence is acting on faith in yourself. Self-confidence is acting on faith in yourself.
So here's an example of self. I'm going to get so, okay,okay.
We've all at times exercised self-confidence. Okay. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to progress at all. We have all also experienced self-doubt and been too damn chicken to generate the feeling of self-confidence to make progress.
Okay. We've all done both. Okay.
So what this is about is understanding what it is and how to, the skill of generating self-confidence, so that you have the ability for more progression and advancement, to elevate yourself in this lifetime. That's what I'm talking about right here. Okay. This is a big damn deal.
So I'm going to say that again. The purpose of this conversation here today is to become clear on what self-confidence versus self-confidence, to understand the meaning of what that means, and to know that self-confidence is the emotion of growth and the emotion of progress, and to learn how to break this down, to learn the skill of generating self-confidenceso that you can continue to move forward in your lifetime rather than chicken out or, you know, have feelings that don't feel so good.
Because let me tell you something. You know why we're drawn to it? Because self-confidence feels good. It feels good. All that other stuff doesn't feel good.
And by the way, remember I said it's a choice. Okay.
So quick example I'm gonna give you one from me. A couple of, I'll give you one each of me. All right. Ready? Go.
Now when I, I had been drinking every day. I want to say the last day that I drank alcohol, I drank somewhere in the neighborhood of, I don't know, 24, 26 beers that day. And that was like any other day. Okay. It was like the day before and the day before and the last 20 years.
Actually, 20 years back was more like a 12-pack. You know, it progressed.
But anyway, so there I was, completely an alcoholic for 22 years, and I said to myself, I finally decided that I was gonna do something. I'm gonna do something about it.
Well, I said that a thousand times, but this time I actually used my, exercised courage to generate some self-confidence, and I acted on it. I acted on faith that I had in myself.
Now what I did, I didn't know if I could do this. Okay. Because remember, I'm looking into the future. I can't even remember the last time I'd sober. I can't remember nothing.
I've been drinking for, you know, when you're drinking a lot, it's funny how many years, and I mean, you don't have a memory that's worth the damn. I'm telling you right now. So half of it just like vanished, vaporizes.
But I don't I've never quit. I've never been addicted, okay, to something this bad, this long, this serious, this, over this powerful, and tried to quit it.
I don't know how to do that. Don't even know if I can do it.
All I've been hearing about for the last 20 years is people being addicted and dying, and people being alcoholics and, you know, dying, dying earlier, and dying unhappy, and a lot of heartbreak and misery that goes along associated with it.
And I've heard a lot about relapse and this and that and the other, and not a whole hell of a lot about recovery and healing. Not a lot. Okay.
In comparison to what I'd heard, it is now I'm looking in the future going, man, I don't know if I can do this.
This is self-confidence. So this is a time that I exercised it.
And what I did is I, I had the confidence and I had the faith in myself to drive myself to a detox place because I didn't want to die. I didn't want to have a seizure because of my body reacting and needing that alcohol.
So I took myself to a medical detox facility, and I checked myself in. I stayed there for three days and two nights, and I drove out of there.
And the next day, I exercised more self-confidence. I just said, “I don't know if I can do this, but I'm going to act on faith in myself and act like I can.”
And so I did.
And in a few weeks here, that's going to be 10 years ago. Okay. And that's the end of the story.
Three days and two nights, done, after a 22-year deal.
Well, how did that happen?
The reason it happened is the process that I'm describing in this podcast about self-confidence. Now, there's plenty of times, let me tell you, that I have not exercised my courage and my self-confidence. Plenty of times.
One of the ones that I work on now is a little one, but I'll just tell you. I work on a lot of them, but this is the first one that's come into my mind right now, and that is this.
When I'm in a group, particularly if I am not familiar with this group of people, and I have a thought that I think that I can contribute to the conversation no matter what kind of group it is, there's a percentage of the time that I won't say anything.
You know why? I won't say anything because I'm afraid of what somebody might think about what I'm gonna say, right? That's really what it comes down to. And so I have self-doubt about saying or doing whatever, so I don't do it.
And you know what? That has cost me, in my lifetime, it's cost me developing relationships. It's cost me networking. It's cost me. It's cost me. It's cost me. Okay. Not a good plan. Living in some chicken out zone over there. Okay.
So what I'm working on is generating self-confidence in those moments to participating conversations if that, when that happens. Okay.
And then I'm starting to get better results, which is working out pretty, I'm happy about that. But those are examples. Okay.
That's an example of not doing it, sitting on the sidelines, sitting back, thinking this and that, not exercising the courage and generating the self-confidence, the feeling. Okay.
So how would I do that? Let's just think about that.
What I would do is I would think about what I was thinking, and I would change my thoughts, which is going to change the way I feel. And then I can take the action because my feelings drive my actions.
And confidence is an action feeling. Self-confidence, feeling self-confident, is like, “Hey, I got this.” Right? It's like, “I got this!”
And I'm going to talk more about this. This is a big this is more coming up.
So yeah, the question is, is specifically, how do we generate the feeling of self-confidence when we feel fearful so that we can get more out of this life and progress.
And what it, what it comes down to, okay, is this. What it comes down to is the willingness to feel any emotion. Okay.
The thought that has helped me the most, and I got this from Brooke Castillo, the thought, one of the thoughts, okay, I have a lot, but this one is a good thought to think when you're feeling fearful. Okay.
And that is that I'm willing to feel any emotion.
Because if you have the willingness to feel any emotion, it's easy to be, to, to feel confident. Okay.
So let me talk more about that. Just think about the worst thing that could happen. Okay. In this thing that you're fearful, fearful of.
Okay, what's the worst thing that can happen? 99.9% of the time, if you boil it down to the worst thing that's gonna happen and you boil away all what it really comes down to is how you're gonna feel. That's what it comes down to. Okay.
You don't like public speaking? You don't like to stand up in front of a bunch of people and pour out your whatever or give a speech or say anything or give a talk at church or whatnot because you have a fear of public speaking? Why?
And just think about that example. What could happen? You're going to fall down? You're going to stumble? You're going to give a horrible message?
And if you do all those things, you'll feel embarrassed.You might feel ashamed of yourself. You might feel unhappy with yourself. You might feel like crawling in a hole because you're just, like, super embarrassed.
It's how you feel, right? I mean, that's the worst it's gonna be.
The thing that we're avoiding when we minimize ourself, when we hide, when we have this fear and doubt and we don't act, we don't act on, we don't have courage and act, okay? We don't generate self-confidence. We feel fearful, okay?
If you think about it, you're just afraid of how it's going to feel.
So the willingness to feel any emotion. Here's the deal.
If I'm not afraid to fall on my face, if I'm not afraid of failure, like whatever part of the process, more times I fail, I win. Let's go.
That's confidence because I, I, those thoughts are what generate the idea that I got this. I got my own back. I can do this.
And hey, guess what? If I don't, it's going to feel bad for a little while.
Oh well, I'll do it again next time. That is confidence.
The thought that I am willing to feel any emotion helps me in those moments when I feel fearful to change my feeling back to confidence.
I sit there and I say, "Shane, are you serious? You're afraid of how this is gonna feel if it all goes to hell?"
And by the way, just for the record, when I act, everything, it doesn't go to hell. I mean, almost never goes the way that I think it could go, that I'm afraid that it's going to go.
In all of it, not just in the, you know, being more involved in conversations in group thing I talked about, but in all the times in my life when, and I think this will be true for you if you think about it, that when you're feeling fearful and you have actually changed your thoughts so you can change the way you feel so that you can act on it and move forward and takethe action. Okay. That you want to do in your life that it turned out to be not so bad.
And even if you totally failed, it wasn't that bad anyway because it's just a feeling. Okay.
When you become willing to feel any emotion, you have opened yourself up to unlimited progress. Okay. This is a deal. This is a deal. This is a big thing.
Unlimited progress if you're willing to feel any emotion.
So when you recognize how you're feeling, you recognize you're feeling self-doubt, feeling fearful, you're hesitating, you're feeling insecure, you're feeling like something's wrong, you're feeling like not taking action, okay?
Then, that, if you recognize it, if you have the awareness to recognize it then you can use thoughts like, I'm willing. I'm willing to, you know, if I fail, it's not going to feel good, but that's okay. I can handle the feeling bad for a little while. Okay.
And then you can exercise courage, which is feeling uncomfortable and doing the action anyway. Okay.
The confident feeling that I got this, I got my own back, no matter what it's just going to be a feeling, even if it all goes bad is what gives you the feeling of, got this, I can do it.
And that's what people get behind, and that's what's gonna, that's what propels our life to go forward.
There's four steps to develop confidence, okay? And confidence is a good thing.
The
12more things that we're confident in when we look to the past, those are more skills that we have in our tool belt that we can draw on. And that's what we wanna do when we look to the future, we want to develop these things in the future so that we can become confident in them because confidence feels good. Okay. That's what we're going for.
So there's four steps to develop confidence, and that is I'm gonna give you the four steps.
That is, number one is to make a commitment, okay? So if there's a thing that you want to do, okay, that you, you actually make the commitment to do it. You make the no matter what commitment. I'm gonna do it. Period. Okay. So make a commitment.
There's four C's in this.
Commitment is one.
The second one is I generate self-confidence by thinking thoughts. One of those thoughts that you can use that helps me is that I am willing to feel any emotion, okay?
I'm willing to feel any motion. I mean, when you're willing to feel any motion, it's like, just opened up so much stuff.
So you can use that or any other thoughts that give you that feeling of capability, of strength, of empowerment, of got my own back. I'm going to be okay. No matter what. I believe in me. I have faith in me.
You can use all those different kinds of thoughts to generate that feeling that will drive your action forward.
Driving your action forward, the second C, is when you exercise courage. You use the skill by changing your thoughts.
The skill of generating self-confidence is changing your thoughts so that you feel self-confident. Then you can exercise courage. Okay? Exercise your courage to do the thing.
And if you continue to do that, you become capable. You increase your capability to do the thing. Okay. That's your third C.
And then the fourth one, once I'm capable of doing this thing over a period of time or a number of times or whatever, then, hey, I automatically feel confident in this thing. Okay. That's, that's progress.
Okay. Four C's again, but no matter, no matter what, commitment is the first C. Second is to exercise courage. Okay. That's where self-confidence comes in.
So you can make progress in your life instead of being living on the sidelines.
And then the third one is that you continue to do that, to exercise your, act on, act on your self-confidence and exercise courage until you develop capability in the thing. Right?
You're getting better at it because you might've fallen down and failed the first time or five.
So you continue to do it until you develop capability.
Once you're capable of doing the thing, now you can have your past and look back to it. And then it feels pretty good, right? I've got evidence that I've got this thing. Okay.
What's next?
Then I start over with my self-confidence on another thing.
Anyway, that is, that is the world of self-confidence.
Remember, that is, self-confidence is the emotion of progress and evolution in your lifetime.
And it is, my friends, a choice that I hope you start making more of.
Thank you for being with me. Remember, you cannot fail as long as you Don't Ever Stop Chasin’ It.
