What separates those who believe they can from those who always second-guess themselves? It’s not talent—it’s self-belief, and it’s trainable.
In this third and final part of The Science of Success Series, Cody McBroom dives deep into the neuroscience of self-belief—revealing how your brain rewires based on action, feedback, and mindset.
Drawing from cutting-edge research in neuroscience and psychology, you’ll learn:
📌How self-affirmation rewires reward pathways and strengthens your ability to follow through
📌 Why positive feedback changes your brain’s circuitry and boosts self-efficacy
📌 The difference between high vs. low belief brain strategies—and how belief leads to smarter, more efficient performance
📌 Why self-belief is context-specific, but transferable through the right structure
📌 What successful people do daily to build and reinforce unshakable self-confidence
You’ll walk away with science-backed strategies to:
📌Reflect on your values to build neural trust in yourself
📌 Use feedback loops to reprogram self-doubt
📌 Transfer mastery from one domain (fitness, business, relationships) into others
📌 Practice pre-challenge self-affirmation to prime your mindset for high-stakes situations
If you’re ready to stop letting doubt dictate your potential and start training your brain for real confidence, this episode is your roadmap.
Research used in the making of this podcast:
Sherman et al. (2016), “Self-affirmation activates brain systems associated with self-related valuation”
Kosinski et al. (2022), “A corticostriatal pathway mediating self-efficacy enhancement”
Kalpouzos & Eriksson (2013), “Memory Self‑Efficacy Beliefs Modulate Brain Activity when Encoding Future Intentions”
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You ever wonder why some people are just overly confident,
believe they can do anything andtend to be more successful,
while others tend to hesitate, rarely take action and because
of that don't end up hitting their goals?
Well, it comes down to your brain and how your brain is
wired. And so today on the podcast, we
are covering science of self belief and I'm going to show you
exactly what is going on in yourbrain as you develop self
(00:22):
belief, why some people tend to develop more than others, how
you can start to develop more self belief in your life today.
And a literal techless action plan that you can use on a daily
basis to start building your confidence, building self belief
and taking more action towards your goals right away.
(00:52):
Welcome to the Choose Hard podcast.
I'm your host Cody Mcbroom. I am a father, husband, coach
and entrepreneur whose sole lifemission is to help individuals
create their best life possible.In step one in creating your
best life possible is choosing hard.
So let's build your body and develop your mind.
And today we are going to do that by understanding how to
(01:17):
create a more confident version of you.
Specifically, we're going to talk about self belief because
self belief and confidence are very, very similar, right?
We have self belief, self efficacy and confidence.
Confidence is, is more, I would say your energy, your aura, your
swagger, if you want to call it that, like how you operate, how
you show up, how people feel, your energy when you enter a
(01:38):
room and how you feel about yourself as you carry and
conduct yourself. So it's really important.
But typically the more self belief you have, the more
confidence you end up happening.And self efficacy is just the
belief that you can accomplish atask, which really is very task
specific. But ultimately what we're
(01:59):
talking about here and what thisumbrella term is self belief.
That's that's the main thing we want to know about, right?
And that's, that's what we're going to dive into the science
with. So in today's podcast, I kind of
have this this broken down into a few sections, right?
So we're going to go over the neurology.
So let me preface this. This is going to be researched
back. This is series #3 this episode
(02:20):
number 3 of the self formation series that I'm doing right now.
So if you haven't listened to Part 1, Part 2, you don't
necessarily have to listen to those first.
Keep listening right now, but make sure you go back and listen
to those. Part 1 is self-control, and
that's what it really starts with.
Because self-control is you taking action in the moment.
When you are tempted to, not when you are tempted to be lazy,
(02:42):
you act instead. When you're attempted to eat the
junk, you act eat healthy instead.
When you're attempted to skip meal prep 'cause you just want
to lounge on the couch, you mealprep anyway.
When you're tempted to hit snooze on the alarm clock in the
morning, you wake up and get outof bed.
When you are tempted to not go on the morning rock or morning
walk or morning workout or whatever it may be, you choose
the thing that is hard instead. Like it's the literal action
(03:04):
step of choose hard. Like if we take choose hard away
from the term and we take put itinto like a verb, like an action
that you do on a day-to-day basis to reach your goals and
become the best version of you. It's, it's self-control, right?
Controlling your environment, controlling yourself,
controlling your actions, your thoughts, your words,
everything. It's super, super important.
Go back and listen to that if you haven't.
(03:24):
Episode 2 of the series was self-discipline, the science of
self-discipline. And this is where we get more
into what replaces motivation, what trait we start to possess,
the skill we start to have when we use more self-control.
The more we use self-control, the less self-control we need to
use because discipline kind of takes over.
We become a more disciplined person, which doesn't need to
(03:47):
rely on things like motivation in order to take action and move
forward. And this is the amazing part
about using self-control to develop the skill and trait and
characteristic of self-discipline because that
discipline is what's going to carry you in life.
Really. I mean, just think of the
easiest way to look at this is how many things throughout your
life and your journey towards being a better human being a
(04:09):
better husband or wife, being a better parent, being a Better
Business owner, being a better employee, being a better coach,
being a better client, just reaching your goals.
How many times are you going to run into something where you
don't feel like doing it, but you do it anyway?
That is self-discipline and the only way for you to reach the
pinnacle of whatever you're chasing, whether we're just
(04:30):
talking about being the best parent or sibling or employee or
whatever, or we're talking abouta literal goal you're trying to
chase. When you get to that point where
you just don't feel like doing it, that's where self-discipline
kicks in. And the more self-discipline you
have, the more likely it is you're going to take action
anyway, even though you don't feel like it.
And that's what's going to allowyou to win.
As you do these two things, self-control and
(04:52):
self-discipline, you take actionwhen you're tempted not to or
you have temptation and you are acting in favor of your goal.
Instead you developed self-discipline.
These two things combined lead you to get serious results and
those serious results start to create self belief.
But today I don't want to just talk about how those translate
(05:13):
into self belief. Although truthfully, if you just
do Part 1 and Part 2, that is the biggest part, Part 3 and
part 4, self belief, and then last one will be self respect.
They're actually two of my favorite things.
Not because you teach them, but rather because most of the times
what we're showing people is we're giving them the proof that
(05:36):
a person without self belief canhave self belief if they use
self-control to gain discipline and get results.
And eventually as you have thosetwo and you become somebody who
has a high level of self belief,it turns into self respect
because you earned the respect of yourself.
And so I really like these last two categories I'm going to
touch on, even though they're they're easier to touch on,
(05:56):
they're shorter and they're basically just a the fruits of
your labor with Part 1 and Part 2.
But I love them because of that because it gives hope and it
gives face. So if you're somebody who, you
know, you sit around, you kind of wonder like, why are some
people just so good at taking action, believing they can do
whatever it is almost like to anignorant degree, like they just
think, yes, I can do blank no matter what.
(06:18):
It's almost like they don't hesitate at all.
Yet you sit back sometimes and you second guess and you doubt
and you don't believe in yourself and you lack
confidence. Maybe you have insecurity or
maybe you just hesitate to take action on the things.
Deep down you know you need to take action on and you don't
know why you do that. Well, it's probably because
you're lacking self belief and there's some simple things that
(06:40):
comes down to and there's some strategic things that you can
put into your daily routine, weekly routine and just journey
as a whole. And that's what I'm going to
touch on today, as well as some of the science.
So I'm going to cover some research studies, really talk
about the the neurological underpinnings of what develops
and what rewires in your brain to create self belief.
(07:00):
Just like I did in Part 1 and Part 2 each one.
I'm going to start with that. Then I'm going to discuss
feedback because feedback from other people as well as feedback
from yourself is a huge piece ofdeveloping self belief.
That's like game tape if game tape, if you if you don't look
at the game tape, if you don't look and reflect and see what
you did to earn the result. Watch yourself replay in your
(07:24):
head, journal it out, reflect onyou actually following through
on what you said you would do. You're not going to develop as
much self belief because when you don't follow through, that
proves to yourself that see, youreally can't do it.
See you don't do what you said you would do.
See you don't follow through towards your goals and that
creates self doubt. It's still proof, but it's proof
(07:44):
in the negative manner and we don't want that.
OK, so we want to make sure thatwe're following through and I'm
going to go over that. Then we're going to talk about
some strategy. So to really avoid stress and
understanding what the positive and the negative triggers for
self belief and self doubt are, I'm going to kind of show you
what kind of strategies you needto put in place.
And this is based on research. And then we'll go over an action
(08:05):
plan. Like what do you actually need
to do on a day-to-day basis to make all this stuff in the
research come to fruition and work?
OK, so the first thing we're going to talk about is self
affirmation. Boost your brain value and the
signals that create behaviour change essentially.
So we're going to look at a research study by Sherman ET al
(08:25):
from 2016. And the research study was
called self affirmation activates brain systems
associated with self related valuation.
So really what this was is like the goal was to understand how
self affirmation practices. So like reflecting on your core
values specifically, there's a lot of ways to do self
affirmations and I'm going to talk about the best ways to do
(08:47):
those later on. And just a shameless plug,
that's why I have self affirmations in our journals.
So if you want a journal, choosedash hard dot shop.
You can go to the link in the description, but we have prompts
in these journals and it says, for example, I am blank, I will
blank. We talked about this in the
discipline podcast too, where I talk about if then statements,
(09:10):
if blank, then I will blank. Those are affirmations.
You're declaring statements. They're IM statements.
These are extremely powerful fordeveloping all the traits that
we were talking about in the series.
But this specific study looked at self affirmations that were
reflecting on actual core valuesand how they changed the brain
activity related to self worth, self value, how they influenced
(09:31):
positive or negative behaviour outcomes, so on and so forth.
So I'm going to read, you know, what they did in this study and
what the findings were and then I'll kind of breakdown my
takeaways from it. So the first thing is the
method, you know, what did they actually do?
And the participants were in a FM RI scanner, which wrote about
personal core values. So they wrote about their own
(09:52):
personal core values. These are the affirmations or
neutral daily activities. So go in this F MRI scanner and
write about your personal core values or just write about your
daily activities, which might sound weird, but it's also
really cool because if you thinkabout journaling, that's kind of
what it is. Even our journal, like I'm being
honest, there's affirmations, there's core values, there's
(10:14):
things in there that are really important and valuable in, in
personal identity driven, I would say core value driven.
And then there's like, what are your top three tasks today?
What do you, what's your agenda?You know, still valuable, still
good journaling. You got to get it out.
But like that's not going to have as big of an impact on
yourself belief, right? And this is what they're
guessing essentially #2 the partof the method brain activity was
(10:38):
measured in self related and reward regions.
So medial prefrontal cortex, ventral stratum and this is all
during reflection. So they're just looking at
different parts of the brain, what's activating and measuring
the activation in these self related and reward centers of
the brain while they were doing these different affirmations and
reflections. And then the last part of the
(10:59):
method is that the participants also took part in a physical
activity program to see if affirmation predicted follow
through. So this is really cool because
it's fitness specific and that'spart of the reason why I chose
this study because I'm a fitnesscoach, I own a fitness company,
I own a fitness app. Like we want people to use
fitness as the catalyst and the gateway towards improving all
(11:20):
areas of their life. And so this is very relative to
what we do as well as you as thelistener, 'cause I'm assuming
that's probably why you're listening to this podcast is not
just for the mindset gains, but also for the physical gains as
well. So the findings were that the
self affirmed participants, so the people that were actually
focusing on writing self affirmations and core values in
their journals showed increased brain activity in the areas tied
(11:44):
to self evaluation and emotionalregulation.
This increased activation predicted greater success in
adopting physical activity behavior afterwards.
So basically reflecting on your values inside of a journal and
and writing it, it boosts the way your brain values you and
the neural shift helps you follow through on your goals,
especially physical goals. So what they found here is that
(12:08):
journaling your core values and self affirmations created more
brain activity in the areas of the brain that lead to self
belief, self efficacy and followthrough, right?
Even emotional regulation, whichis really good because if we
think of what emotions we need to regulate when we're trying to
(12:31):
achieve greater levels of self belief, it's probably the the
competing energy and nature and dominance of self doubt and self
belief. When self doubt creeps in, when
negativity creeps in, how do we remain positive, optimistic, and
say to ourselves, we can and we will accomplish this versus
letting the little voice in our head try to talk us away from
(12:52):
it, try to slow us down, try to pull us back, try to tell us
that we're not going to accomplish it.
There's no reason to believe that.
That's self doubt. You have the little Angel,
little devil on your shoulders, just like the old cartoons,
right? Looney Tunes and the old Tweety
Bird devil. Tweety bird Angel.
Well, when we actually reflect on our core values on a regular
basis, we are going to boost ourbrain activity in the regions
(13:16):
that are most important for increasing our self value, self
worth, self belief and emotionalregulation.
And they showed a positive shiftin improvement on follow through
with their physical goals. Unbelievable.
So literally this is this is like a funny sales pitch, but
I'm going to do it because it's,it's literally true.
(13:38):
If you want to lose weight, follow through on tracking your
macros, walking more often, going to the gym, doing whatever
you got to do to lose weight. You can literally improve
yourself belief and and follow through to accomplish those
goals, your physical goals of fat loss.
(13:59):
You can improve that and you canimprove the likelihood of you
accomplishing that fitness goal by writing in our journal,
literally by writing affirmations about who you are,
what you will be, how you will act right in in setting core
values, which is cool because guess what?
My company on the back end, the team, we prioritize our core
(14:21):
values above all else. It's a, it's a very frequent
discussion. It's what unifies our team.
It's one of the most important backbones of our company and in
our unit, our team, our squad, how we operate, how we act, It's
the most important aspect of thecontent we put out everything.
Our brand core values are at thecentre of it.
We also teach our clients how tocreate their own core values.
(14:45):
We encourage our clients to figure out their own personal
identity. That's why we go so much deeper
than training in nutrition, right?
And it's why our clients get such good results.
It's because we don't just stop at macros and Rep counts like
most companies do. This is so important for the
coaches out there listening. You need to understand how to do
this yourself so that you can show up this way for your
(15:05):
clients. This is how clients get better
results. This is why if you go, this is
technically a fitness and healthpodcast, and you'll see there's
a whole podcast on personal identity and standards.
There's a whole podcast on how to create your core values.
This is why this is a perfect study that shows you will be
better at following through on your fitness activity goals if
(15:28):
you focus on what your core values are and you journal them.
That's literally what it's talking about.
It's wild. So I love this guy.
So really cool study, study #2 because I got to keep moving
even though I really love that study.
I could probably keep going on it.
Study number 2 is about the neural circuitry in your brain
and, and self efficacy essentially.
And so how your feedback and these feedback loops from the
(15:48):
actions you take and the people you talk to and stuff like that
change yourself belief and shapes yourself belief.
And so the source is Kozinski ETal 2022.
And the study was called a Corte.
I'm going to Butch this word. Just going to be honest.
A corticostriatal pathway mediating self efficacy
(16:10):
enhancement, some of the the neurological connections in the
brain, the wires, the nervous system, like there is some crazy
words to pronounce. Thank God most of the testing I
had to do in school for this stuff and certifications, it's
all like multiple choice, true or false.
I don't have to speak it out. Anyway, the goal of this study
was to identify how positive social feedback alters self
(16:33):
efficacy beliefs and which brainnetworks support this change.
So essentially what they're trying to do is see how feedback
from others in your life externally can shape yourself
belief. So now we're, we're, we're
turning the, the table a little bit at first, we're like, OK,
let's journal and reflect on ourown core values, our own
(16:54):
affirmations, what we're tellingourselves.
Now let's turn talk to other people.
There's a reason why I wanted tofocus on the study too.
So the method is pretty simple. Participants gave a public
speech in an MRI scanner, which is hilarious if you think about
it. But in an MRI scanner, they're
giving a speech. They received either positive or
neutral fake feedback. Researchers measured brain
(17:18):
response and changes in participants belief in their
future performance. So essentially they gave a
speech, They had connections to their brain MRI.
They're scanning their brain while giving a speech and then
they got feedback. Did they do good or was it
neutral? Like not good, just normal,
right? Not bad.
We're not giving bad feedback here.
And the findings were that positive feedback strengthened
(17:40):
the connection between ventral striatum, the reward center, and
self processing brain regions. So parts of the brain that
actually help with self processing, adapting to the
feedback and changing, processing, analyzing, shifting,
changing, articulating. And participants also updated
their self efficacy more after positive feedback, while those
(18:01):
with higher anxiety slash depression updated less.
So if we got positive feedback, we improve our self efficacy.
Our self efficacy is our capability of accomplishing the
task at hand. And so that is a direct
measurement through action taking to tell us whether or not
(18:22):
we have more self belief. If you have self efficacy, it is
self belief in action. It is self belief that I can
speak this into this podcast. This is very specific self
belief. The self efficacy is just I, I
believe I can do this right? The accumulation of self
efficacy through multiple actions turns into a personality
trait and a skill and a level ofconfidence which we would call
(18:44):
self belief. OK, so the take away is pretty
simple here. Your brain uses positive
feedback to boost your belief inyourself.
Surround yourself with affirmingpeople who help build that
circuit. So more than anything, it's
like, OK, what, what do we need to do in order to boost our self
belief when it comes to our environment and our social life?
Well, we need to be around positive people.
We need to be around a circle that is uplifting and inspiring.
(19:07):
So This is why they, they constantly say like, you know,
be the dumbest in the room. Well, it might not be be the
dumbest in the room because you also are somewhat isolated in
that sense. And what I mean by that is you
should put yourself into rooms where you're the dumbest in the
room for a certain category. So if I have a group of friends,
in my friends, I have one that is by far the best business guy.
(19:28):
I have one that is by far the best fitness guy.
I have one that is by far the best husband and Family Guy.
I have one that is by far the best builder and Carpenter.
Like they all have skills. So depending on what domain
we're in, we can all be the dumbest in the room, but in a
general room, we're all very smart because we bring a unique
(19:48):
capability. And, and what this means is we
should be around individuals whoare accomplishing things.
We should be around individuals who are striving for more.
These kind of people are the kind of people who are going to
boost your confidence by encouraging you to try harder,
encouraging you to take risks, encouraging you to push forward
and take action and challenge yourself, right?
(20:08):
We should be surrounding ourselves with people who want
to see us win. We should be around people who
know us well enough to know thatwe can do it and they believe in
us. So this is really important, but
it also means that we should be seeking feedback through
accountability measures. This is why a coach is very
valuable. You get feedback from a coach
(20:30):
and it boosts your confidence inaccomplishing the goal.
This is why posting on your Instagram story what you're
doing. I'm doing 100 days of rucks
everyday. I'm going on a 30 minute ruck.
I got a 30 LB rucksack walking through the woods in the morning
at 7:00 AM and I'm posting it everyday.
And for people who watch my Instagram story everyday some of
them might be like Yep I get it that's fine.
(20:52):
What this is for is me being accountable and when I'm
accountable it increases my follow through.
My follow through goes up. That means my consistency of
taking action goes up. That is a direct action that
leads to more self belief. And it's just another thing on
my resume that I can look back at game tape wise, like I said
(21:14):
earlier and go, well, I did that, so I can do anything
around today's, right? Maybe not anything rocking isn't
as hard as anything, but you getthe point, right?
So really good. We got to surround ourselves
with people who are affirming, who are encouraging, who are
empowering, who are striving forgreatness themselves, who are
really trying to push their limits and their potential.
(21:35):
And when we do that, we win and we have more self belief.
You are who you surround yourself with.
Very much so. OK, the third and final study
that I have here is about how our own belief shapes our brain.
And it's actually like talking about like modulating memory
encoding in our brain and, and how that relates to self
efficacy. So see if I can pronounce this
(21:58):
scientist's name, it was Cal Calposos Calposos.
I'll link all this in the description too.
So you can check out these studies if you want.
And Ericsson 2013 memory self efficacy beliefs modulate brain
activity when encoding future intentions.
So essentially what they want todo is determine well, here's
(22:18):
their actual definition to uncover whether people's
confidence in their memory, which is self efficacy, effects
how their brain processes and stores information.
So can we use memory and the reflection piece and really
going through some of these likeintention based tasks, right,
(22:40):
intention based actions, things that we're trying to remember to
do and stuff like that. Can we use that as a way to
boost our self belief essentially, which sounds weird,
but as you, as I go through thisstudy, you'll, you'll understand
why this is important. Here's the method.
Step one. Participants rated their general
memory self efficacy. Step 2.
(23:01):
While in an fMRI machine they encoded future intention tasks.
So for example is like remember to return the book right?
Like that I have or whatever to the library.
Step 3. Researchers compared brain
activity patterns between low versus high self efficacy
participants and what they foundwas that low self efficacy
individuals over activated the hippocampal regions, which is
(23:24):
like tactical memory effort, like really trying hard to
remember stuff, yet performed worse.
The high self efficacy individuals activated prefrontal
executive areas of the brain, prefrontal cortex and performed
better. This is like the decision making
brain and everything. And So what this shows us is
that belief shapes strategy. When you believe in your
abilities, your brain uses smarter routes to succeed.
(23:46):
So crazy enough, what this showsis is, and again, this is, this
is a good study to actually likego look up and look at the
context because when you read more about it, not just the the
especially not the method. The method is very like the way
the method is described can be confusing.
It took me a little bit to go through some of the study pieces
and like understand this, But what's essentially happening
(24:09):
here is very similar to there was a study a long time ago on
self-control and it was very similar.
And it was just the belief, the basically the belief as the
belief, as I'm trying to think of how to explain this, the
belief as a placebo essentially lead to better success rates.
(24:31):
So when people just generally said, yes, I think I have
self-control, I think I have self-discipline, they end up
actually displaying more self-control and
self-discipline. They talk themselves into it.
It's a complete placebo. This is kind of the same.
So when these people were asked these questions, and honestly,
some of them could probably like, you know, do you have a
(24:51):
high level of self efficacy? Do you have good memory?
Do you generally remember thingslike just ask a question?
People are going to be like, yeah, yeah, I think so.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure they're not like
getting enough time to like recall situations or the
researcher going, hey, like, well, what about this situation
back when you forgot this completely?
Like that doesn't happen here. These people are just saying,
yeah, I do. And the people that worried and
were like, no, I don't. They performed worse.
(25:12):
And what this shows is actually kind of on the other side of
self belief. Those who believed in themselves
more ended up using a different part of their brain to execute a
task because that part of the brain was actually a better part
of the brain to use for that task.
Which is crazy. So your brain will shift where
(25:33):
it is sending its energy, it's focus, it'll use and activate
different parts of the brain based on if you have a higher
level of self belief or a lower level of self belief before
making the decision. And what this means is that you
need to talk yourself into having self belief.
Like literally you just need to journal it.
(25:54):
You need to reflect on it. You need to be around
encouraging people. The two studies before are the
big take home points and you need to do small action steps,
which I'm going to talk about ina minute because one of the big
things we tell our clients constantly is like, do little
things, commit to small, little habits that you know are so
easy. But it's the point of I'm going
to write this down. I'm going to tell somebody I'm
going to do it and then I'm going to do it.
And it's really small. I'm going to take out the trash.
(26:14):
I'm going to write journal. I'm going to take out my trash
today. Tell my wife, hey, honey, I'm
going to take out the trash. Then you actually go do it.
An hour later you remember to doit.
It's a small easy task. Even if you set reminders we
talked about in the self-discipline, you can
actually kind of cheat the system and automate
self-discipline by just actuallyhaving reminders and plans and
strategies. You don't need to like grit
(26:35):
through it. You can just set up automated
systems to take action more and then you have more discipline
and they study this. It's really cool.
But like when you do those little things, you can build
more self belief. And then if you just reassure
yourself that you can do things and you plan on having self
belief, you are going to use your brain more effectively and
efficiently, which is so wild. So when somebody doesn't have
(26:56):
self belief, this is the sad part.
When somebody has less self belief and more self doubt, the
moves they make, the actions they take, the way they operate
is actually hurting them and creating more self doubt as time
goes on because they are making the wrong decisions in the wrong
way. They are even using the wrong
(27:17):
parts of their brain subconsciously because the brain
is going to be sending signals and wiring in a very, very
subconscious manner. It's just automatic.
Something happens, you react, you do this right, it's a very
quick moving thing. But if you don't start creating
self belief by using these simple strategies I'm talking
about, your brain is going to automatically use worse signals,
(27:42):
worst parts of the brain, it's going to, it's not going to work
as effectively. You, you're not going to operate
as well. So this is like, well, shoot,
you know, how do I get self belief before I have it?
Well, This is why I'm going to give you some strategies.
And this is also why you got to do the small things.
You got to like start tiny and do these little steps to build
the self belief. Once you have self belief,
everything you do in the future that requires more belief,
(28:04):
you're going to use your brain more effectively and
efficiently. That's what this study is
showing. And it's just so wild.
OK, so, so really what we've gone over here is there's
different parts of your brain, the reward centre, the emotional
regulation and decision making centre, like these are the main
parts of your brain that are going to be active and firing.
(28:24):
These are the parts of brain that we need to shift between.
We want to rewire and there's certain things that we can do to
do that. And we also have proof that
simple actions like journaling, affirmations and simple things
like getting positive feedback and changing our social
environment, those two things can boost self belief and allow
us to take better action. And not just like figuratively
(28:45):
saying like, yeah, if you have more confidence, you're more
likely to dive in. Even if you fail, you're less
likely to worry about it becauseyou have more belief and
confidence, right? Confidence people don't worry
about failure as much, which is true.
But also people with more confidence make better decisions
in the heat of the moment because their brain is working
and operating differently, whichis what this third study showed.
And now what I would like to answer really is the first thing
(29:06):
being, can you translate self belief to other areas?
And this is this one was a really important thing for me to
figure out and and try to answerin this podcast because I want
it to be, you know, known that, hey, if you are a phenomenal
mother who is extremely on point, discipline, controlled
and responsible, does that applyto fitness in your fat loss
(29:26):
journey or your business? Or is it completely separate
domains and you got to start from scratch?
This is a really important question to answer.
Then I want to give you some practical strategies of like,
here's your checklist. Do this everyday, do this as
often as you can and you will literally guarantee to gain more
self belief. OK, so first does self belief
transfer across different contexts and domains?
(29:48):
And So what I could find is a couple things.
One of them is called Banduras theory.
And this is that it's it's related to research showing
around mastery. And so banduras theory and
related research show mastery experiences.
So this is like success in one area.
This is that mother who is just crushing it on all fronts can
(30:10):
generalize boosting confidence for future challenges in other
domains. So does self belief transfer?
Yes, self belief does if you accomplish something in one
world, this is going to build a universal level of confidence
because you did one hard thing you've succeeded at one
difficult task. You've gone 1 long journey.
(30:32):
You've endured and been resilient for one specific thing
and you did it. And so that means whatever this
other world, even if it's in a completely different domain of
my life or a different journey for a different accomplishment
and reward, I'm going to be morelikely to approach it with
confidence because I gained confidence in this realm over
here. But point #2 not so positive
(30:56):
self efficacy, which is self belief.
But again, like I said, I'm a bunch of times throughout the
podcast is very specific to the thing you are doing.
Self efficacy is domain specific.
Confidence in your fitness routine doesn't automatically
make your belief in your career greater unless you transfer the
underlying experience structure.Success under challenge,
(31:19):
feedback, reflection, tenacity, endurance, resilience.
So this is where it's gets kind of murky and difficult.
And so to summarize this, there is what's called Banduras theory
and it is very true because thisis based on the research of
mastery and people who have experienced levels of mastery
and different things. If you create success in one
area, that will generally increase your confidence and
(31:42):
self belief as a human being no matter what.
Like you are going to be more successful across the board if
you just consistently challenge yourself.
Like This is why choosing hard is good, not just doing hard
things, because doing hard things sometimes can be putting
up with hard things that you have to to face.
Choosing hard things is I'm making a conscious decision to
step into challenge and conquer it.
And that creates belief, right? So we have that.
(32:04):
Now, the other part of this is that self efficacy is very
domain specific. And that means that not all that
confidence from being successfulin this other area is going to
apply over here. If you're a great business
person, it doesn't mean that you're going to be a great
fitness person, right? And vice versa.
So generally it does work. I believe that if you are a very
(32:25):
fit individual and you lost a bunch of weight in your lean,
you probably are a more disciplined, resilient,
experienced, organized. Did I say resilient?
Resilient. I mean, a person who gets in
great shape is a more disciplined, resilient,
organized, gritty, energetic, positive, optimistic person.
(32:46):
And there's researchers for all those, but it's mainly because
the actions they had to take to get there forced them to be
organized with their training and their meals.
It forced them to be disciplinedto work out when they didn't
want to. It forced them to be resilient
when they didn't get the result they wanted or they fell off the
diet and they had to bounce back, right?
These things apply across the board, but it doesn't guarantee
success across the board. That's the big thing here.
(33:08):
Now, what they did find is that if you prioritize focusing on
the underlying aspects of what accomplished the goal, you can
apply it otherwise. And that's why I, I pointed out
being organized, disciplined, resilient, so on and so forth.
But as humans, we need understanding.
We need reasons why. And So what you have to do with
(33:28):
this is you have to actually define these things.
This is something we try to do in our discussion with clients
and I encourage everybody to do in their journal, in their
meditation or just writing it down or talking it out.
You should be looking at the hard things you do in whatever
you're chasing and you should really ask yourself, what else
do I get out of this? OK, I'm, I just lost 40 lbs and
(33:51):
it took me 6 months. I'm clearly a patient person.
Now you're creating an affirmation of being a patient
person that's going to translateeverywhere else and help you be
patient in areas that you're notso patient.
I'm clearly organized because I set up my meals, my training.
I had to dictate my schedule to fit all this in and do the work.
And I actually organized the timeline to periodize how long I
(34:12):
can be in a deficit to lose thisweight.
OK, I'm an organized person now.I have an affirmation.
I comply elsewhere. There were so many days that I
didn't feel like eating my meal,the healthy meal that I had
planned. There were so many days where I
didn't feel like waking up earlyto go on a walk and get my steps
in. There were so many workouts that
I really just didn't feel like doing.
I did anyway. OK, Clearly I'm a disciplined
person because that's discipline.
(34:34):
OK, cool. Now I have an affirmation I can
apply elsewhere. So what I'm getting at is if you
look at the underpinnings of what created your success, you
can journal, reflect on those and those will apply elsewhere.
So does self belief translate across all domains?
Not necessarily. Your overall confidence will
grow across the board yes, But the only way to translate that
(34:55):
self belief from one area to another is if you actually
reflect and define what skills and traits that are non specific
to the thing you accomplished you took from it so that you can
logically apply and explain why that will help you elsewhere.
You know, working out when you don't feel like it builds
discipline. But the act of doing an upper
(35:18):
body day and performing a horizontal press under load like
a bench press, that skill doesn't do shit for you.
OK you built muscle because you bench press, but the bench press
doesn't apply to your success inmarriage right?
Like it's making hard decisions,having hard conversations, being
organized, like those kind of things, you know, So that's
(35:38):
really, really important. Now to wrap this up, just like
practical strategies of, of whatyou should be doing.
And you kind of probably alreadytook them all away because I, I,
I kind of alluded to them all throughout this podcast.
But the first one is we have to have reflection, specifically
value based reflection, like core value based reflection.
So this is going to boost the neural circuits in our brain and
the and rewire our brain to increase self worth and self
(35:59):
belief and just our overall confidence as a person.
But what you should be doing is starting each day with an
affirmation. Again, get the journal.
If you don't have the journal, choose dash hard dot shop.
There's a link in the description of this podcast or
you just go to chooseourpodcast.com and you'll
be able to see the the shop menuyou click.
(36:21):
It'll take you there. But the point is, is that if you
can start each day with writing something about your core
values, writing a focus word forthe day, writing an I am
statement and I will statement who I am becoming statement.
Like journal about your core values, journal about who you're
going to be, journal about the traits you possess, journal
about self belief and how you are a person who has a lot of
self belief and confidence and you're going to attack the day
(36:42):
with that. It will literally rewire your
brain so that you show up that way #2 For practical strategies,
you need feedback loops in your life, but they need to be
strategic ones. Let's avoid negative feedback
loops that that point towards laziness, addiction,
contentment, like being just complacent and those kind of
(37:04):
things. We want to avoid those
negativity and, and just things that don't align with who you
want to be and what your goals are.
But what you should be doing is,is be seeking meaningful praise
from people around you that are encouraging you and empowering
you and challenging you and wanting you to win.
And you should be asking for honest feedback, but mostly
positive, like give me honest feedback so I can get better.
There's a good way to give constructive criticism that's
(37:26):
not negative and down right. But also like you have to have
these really honest and logical kind of progress checkmarks or
signals or signs or, or readingsthat tell you, you know, are you
on track? This is positive feedback.
It keeps you aligned. And some of the best ways to do
this are having a good tight circle of positive people.
(37:47):
Having a strong community aroundyou is one of the biggest ones.
And if you don't have a strong community, find one.
Having a coach or a mentor that you can check in with.
Because every single week you'regetting that positive feedback
and that is going to guarantee your success #3 We want to track
mastery in context, right? And what I mean by this is
pretty simple. Log your simple wins, like the
(38:09):
little things that you're great at, the little things you do,
the little things you win at that you don't think about that
you don't give yourself enough credit for that.
You don't look and go, I mastered that or I'm really
great at this. Start doing it.
Reward yourself, compliment yourself, give your like one of
the things in our journal as well and that this I literally
did not plan on trying to like market this journal during the
podcast, but it says I am grateful for it and there's 123.
(38:31):
So you have 3 spots to, to do a gratitude right.
What you're going to do with that if you need more of this is
write about yourself. I, I give this advice to a lot
of people. If people aren't rewarding their
self, they're not giving themself enough praise or
applaud or, or really commendingthemselves or acknowledging
(38:51):
their wins and, and what they'redoing.
Well, it's really helpful to write in a gratitude journal but
write. What are three things I'm
grateful for I'm grateful for meshowing up as my best version
Today I'm I'm yesterday I'm I'm grateful for how hard I work
when I'm in these scenarios. I'm grateful for choosing the
(39:11):
hard path when an easy one is present.
I'm grateful for being a strong leader in my household.
I'm grateful for doing the rightthing when I have an easy way
out. I'm grateful for investing in my
health, investing in my personaldevelopment.
Like whatever it is, and it can be specific to you, I'm grateful
for the fact that I, as hard as it was, kept my calm and
(39:32):
remained cool and responded in a, in a very logical and
respectful way during blank situation at work or at home
with my kid or whatever it is, right.
So we got a really log these small wins and it can be
anything from the gym progression to meals you
prepped, weight loss, like actual things that you're
accomplishing or just the way you're showing up.
(39:52):
OK, really, really important. And then try to look for
patterns. So if you're writing these
things, go back to what I said in the last study and go okay.
Or in the last section when I'm talking about transferring self
belief to other domains, you sayI'm grateful for my way that I
did this, or I'm grateful that Imeal prepped and I stuck to my
meals or whatever. Okay, cool.
Real quick before you move on tothe next thing you're grateful
(40:13):
for or the next win you're accomplishing and you're
applauding yourself for. What are the things that led to
that? What are the traits that were
required to accomplish that? What are the things within that
that can? Because remember, it's not meal
prep as a skill doesn't translate to other areas, but
being organized and choosing thehealthy option and making
(40:34):
positive choice, whatever it is like that is a general thing
that does apply to other areas. OK, So take that away and make
sure that you're you're really pointing that out as you're
writing these out. And then the last thing that
I'll leave you with for practical strategies is to just
really focus on practicing theseself asked for affirmations.
The ones that you know work the best for you before challenges.
(40:57):
And they can be very specific tothe challenge right before big
events, whether it's a work meeting or a competition or
whatever it may be. Like reflect on past wins and
what values you take away from that, just like I said in the
last one, and then really reflect on that and practice a
self affirmation, right? I'll give you a literal example
of this. So for me, before I podcast, I
(41:25):
by myself out loud pray and I say a prayer that when I'm on
this mic, when I'm on this podcast and say, Lord, please
give me the words that the people listening need to hear.
Please give me the mindset that allows me to speak in a clear
and concise commutative way thatteaches or give me the wisdom I
(41:47):
need in order to provide lessonsto the people who need this
podcast to improve their life. I, I say these things before I
get on a podcast because I'm trying to speak them into
existence. I'm asking God to bless me with
that before I get on this mic sothat I can perform because it
matters to me. So this recording right now is a
very, very big deal to me. So I am going to practice prayer
(42:11):
or for somebody who's not religious or anything,
meditation and affirmation. So after that, I'm going to
think about other situations where I crushed the podcast or I
had a big guest on and I still killed it with the interview.
And they gave me compliments afterwards about how I was able
to really give them a good safe space to, to bring their their
(42:31):
personality out and ask the right questions.
And I affirm those things in my head or in the morning in my
journal. I will literally write those
affirmations. I am a fantastic podcaster who
has been told I have a great podcaster and a very good way of
bringing the best out in people and educating people on complex
topics in a simple manner. And I will crush the podcast
(42:53):
that I have on my schedule todayjust like I have done in the
past. Like that can be my IM and I
will statement in my journal because I know the big event for
me today might be a podcast interview.
And those are statements that I didn't make up.
People told me I have a great podcast and I'm a great
interviewer and I bring the bestout on them.
And then I'm able to take complex topics and simplify them
in a way that teaches people right?
(43:15):
Like those are feedback loops that I have created off of what
other people who are encouraging, positive,
challenging themselves, wanting to grow.
Those people told me these things.
So they're, they're worth listening to and they're they're
credible. Now I can use them as
affirmations and I can't say, Nah, that's not true endowed
(43:36):
myself because I didn't, I didn't say it.
This is not my words. And This is why it's really
powerful to use others feedback in order to build my own
confidence and self belief. OK, so focus on value based
reflection, be strategic with these feedback loops.
I want you to track where you'recrushing it, what wins you add,
really reflect and and honor yourself and award yourself and
(43:58):
just really just think about, applaud yourself with the stuff
you're doing well with. And then practice these
affirmations or meditation or prayers before you get into a
big event or something is important to you and you do
these things, you are going to consistently improve yourself.
Belief. And above all else, the thing
that is obvious that I didn't put in here is getting results.
(44:19):
I can't stress it enough. I've said it a little bit in
this podcast, but understand that as you develop self-control
by taking action and you start getting results, which motivates
you to be more disciplined on a consistent basis and then you
develop the skill of discipline,now you're getting great
results. Half of self belief is just
getting results because you haveproof.
So when you do the reflection, when you're looking for
(44:41):
strategic feedback loops from people, when you are trying to
track your wins, and then you'reusing these affirmations before
a big event or an important thing, you got to realize that
the reflection you are doing is reflecting on the fact that you
accomplished goals, you did the work.
Results are proof. The proof is what you reflect on
to show yourself that you can keep on getting results and have
(45:03):
self belief. The strategic feedback loops are
going to be automatic and subconscious.
It's going to be habitual because people are going to tell
you holy shit, you look amazing,you are crushing it, you're
doing so well. This is positive feedback from
people around me that is encouraging.
And it's only happening because I'm getting results and I'm
showing up right? And that feedback loop comes
(45:24):
back to me naturally. So you almost don't even have to
think about it. You just got to make sure you
don't have a negative circle or environment you're in.
And then tracking is easy because you got all these wins.
Track them, applaud yourself, honor yourself, be happy about
it, talk about it. And then you just got to
practice those affirmations and just remind yourself like look
(45:45):
at all this stuff I did. Create an affirmation, a prayer
or a meditation about how you are that person that can keep
doing it and then you'll win. You'll have a never ending
growth in surge in an increase of self belief.
If you do this and it's based onresearch, it's based on
experience and it works and it'sthe most important thing ever.
If you have more self belief, you will have an endless amount
(46:05):
of success in your life and fulfilment.
I promise you that. Now I'm going to wrap this
podcast up. This is Part 3 of the Self
Formation series. Next one is going to be self
respect and it's going to be good.
It's going to be a little bit more hardcore.
It's going to be a little more brutal.
It's going to be in your face because I think there's this
aspect of it. It's about earning.
Respect is earned, not given. That means you got to earn your
own respect too. So it's going to be a spicy one.
(46:27):
Stay tuned for that. Leave a five star rating and
review on Apple or Spotify or both.
If this podcast is delivering value for you.
I deliver these for free withoutany crazy advertising and
marketing and all that stuff. Just natural plugs.
I throw a brief ad in here that here and there just to promote
our products and stuff. But this is totally free
information. So do me a favor, share this
podcast with somebody that coulduse it.
(46:49):
Leave us a rating review if you enjoy it and help us grow the
show. Be a part of this movement to
create more people choosing hardand creating better lives for
themselves. I'll catch you next time.
(47:28):
Music.
You ever wonder why some people are just overly confident,
believe they can do anything andtend to be more successful,
while others tend to hesitate, rarely take action and because
of that don't end up hitting their goals?
Well, it comes down to your brain and how your brain is
wired. And so today on the podcast, we
are covering science of self belief and I'm going to show you
exactly what is going on in yourbrain as you develop self
(00:22):
belief, why some people tend to develop more than others, how
you can start to develop more self belief in your life today.
And a literal techless action plan that you can use on a daily
basis to start building your confidence, building self belief
and taking more action towards your goals right away.
(00:52):
Welcome to the Choose Hard podcast.
I'm your host Cody Mcbroom. I am a father, husband, coach
and entrepreneur whose sole lifemission is to help individuals
create their best life possible.In step one in creating your
best life possible is choosing hard.
So let's build your body and develop your mind.
And today we are going to do that by understanding how to
(01:17):
create a more confident version of you.
Specifically, we're going to talk about self belief because
self belief and confidence are very, very similar, right?
We have self belief, self efficacy and confidence.
Confidence is, is more, I would say your energy, your aura, your
swagger, if you want to call it that, like how you operate, how
you show up, how people feel, your energy when you enter a
(01:38):
room and how you feel about yourself as you carry and
conduct yourself. So it's really important.
But typically the more self belief you have, the more
confidence you end up happening.And self efficacy is just the
belief that you can accomplish atask, which really is very task
specific. But ultimately what we're
(01:59):
talking about here and what thisumbrella term is self belief.
That's that's the main thing we want to know about, right?
And that's, that's what we're going to dive into the science
with. So in today's podcast, I kind of
have this this broken down into a few sections, right?
So we're going to go over the neurology.
So let me preface this. This is going to be researched
back. This is series #3 this episode
(02:20):
number 3 of the self formation series that I'm doing right now.
So if you haven't listened to Part 1, Part 2, you don't
necessarily have to listen to those first.
Keep listening right now, but make sure you go back and listen
to those. Part 1 is self-control, and
that's what it really starts with.
Because self-control is you taking action in the moment.
When you are tempted to, not when you are tempted to be lazy,
(02:42):
you act instead. When you're attempted to eat the
junk, you act eat healthy instead.
When you're attempted to skip meal prep 'cause you just want
to lounge on the couch, you mealprep anyway.
When you're tempted to hit snooze on the alarm clock in the
morning, you wake up and get outof bed.
When you are tempted to not go on the morning rock or morning
walk or morning workout or whatever it may be, you choose
the thing that is hard instead. Like it's the literal action
(03:04):
step of choose hard. Like if we take choose hard away
from the term and we take put itinto like a verb, like an action
that you do on a day-to-day basis to reach your goals and
become the best version of you. It's, it's self-control, right?
Controlling your environment, controlling yourself,
controlling your actions, your thoughts, your words,
everything. It's super, super important.
Go back and listen to that if you haven't.
(03:24):
Episode 2 of the series was self-discipline, the science of
self-discipline. And this is where we get more
into what replaces motivation, what trait we start to possess,
the skill we start to have when we use more self-control.
The more we use self-control, the less self-control we need to
use because discipline kind of takes over.
We become a more disciplined person, which doesn't need to
(03:47):
rely on things like motivation in order to take action and move
forward. And this is the amazing part
about using self-control to develop the skill and trait and
characteristic of self-discipline because that
discipline is what's going to carry you in life.
Really. I mean, just think of the
easiest way to look at this is how many things throughout your
life and your journey towards being a better human being a
(04:09):
better husband or wife, being a better parent, being a Better
Business owner, being a better employee, being a better coach,
being a better client, just reaching your goals.
How many times are you going to run into something where you
don't feel like doing it, but you do it anyway?
That is self-discipline and the only way for you to reach the
pinnacle of whatever you're chasing, whether we're just
(04:30):
talking about being the best parent or sibling or employee or
whatever, or we're talking abouta literal goal you're trying to
chase. When you get to that point where
you just don't feel like doing it, that's where self-discipline
kicks in. And the more self-discipline you
have, the more likely it is you're going to take action
anyway, even though you don't feel like it.
And that's what's going to allowyou to win.
As you do these two things, self-control and
(04:52):
self-discipline, you take actionwhen you're tempted not to or
you have temptation and you are acting in favor of your goal.
Instead you developed self-discipline.
These two things combined lead you to get serious results and
those serious results start to create self belief.
But today I don't want to just talk about how those translate
(05:13):
into self belief. Although truthfully, if you just
do Part 1 and Part 2, that is the biggest part, Part 3 and
part 4, self belief, and then last one will be self respect.
They're actually two of my favorite things.
Not because you teach them, but rather because most of the times
what we're showing people is we're giving them the proof that
(05:36):
a person without self belief canhave self belief if they use
self-control to gain discipline and get results.
And eventually as you have thosetwo and you become somebody who
has a high level of self belief,it turns into self respect
because you earned the respect of yourself.
And so I really like these last two categories I'm going to
touch on, even though they're they're easier to touch on,
(05:56):
they're shorter and they're basically just a the fruits of
your labor with Part 1 and Part 2.
But I love them because of that because it gives hope and it
gives face. So if you're somebody who, you
know, you sit around, you kind of wonder like, why are some
people just so good at taking action, believing they can do
whatever it is almost like to anignorant degree, like they just
think, yes, I can do blank no matter what.
(06:18):
It's almost like they don't hesitate at all.
Yet you sit back sometimes and you second guess and you doubt
and you don't believe in yourself and you lack
confidence. Maybe you have insecurity or
maybe you just hesitate to take action on the things.
Deep down you know you need to take action on and you don't
know why you do that. Well, it's probably because
you're lacking self belief and there's some simple things that
(06:40):
comes down to and there's some strategic things that you can
put into your daily routine, weekly routine and just journey
as a whole. And that's what I'm going to
touch on today, as well as some of the science.
So I'm going to cover some research studies, really talk
about the the neurological underpinnings of what develops
and what rewires in your brain to create self belief.
(07:00):
Just like I did in Part 1 and Part 2 each one.
I'm going to start with that. Then I'm going to discuss
feedback because feedback from other people as well as feedback
from yourself is a huge piece ofdeveloping self belief.
That's like game tape if game tape, if you if you don't look
at the game tape, if you don't look and reflect and see what
you did to earn the result. Watch yourself replay in your
(07:24):
head, journal it out, reflect onyou actually following through
on what you said you would do. You're not going to develop as
much self belief because when you don't follow through, that
proves to yourself that see, youreally can't do it.
See you don't do what you said you would do.
See you don't follow through towards your goals and that
creates self doubt. It's still proof, but it's proof
(07:44):
in the negative manner and we don't want that.
OK, so we want to make sure thatwe're following through and I'm
going to go over that. Then we're going to talk about
some strategy. So to really avoid stress and
understanding what the positive and the negative triggers for
self belief and self doubt are, I'm going to kind of show you
what kind of strategies you needto put in place.
And this is based on research. And then we'll go over an action
(08:05):
plan. Like what do you actually need
to do on a day-to-day basis to make all this stuff in the
research come to fruition and work?
OK, so the first thing we're going to talk about is self
affirmation. Boost your brain value and the
signals that create behaviour change essentially.
So we're going to look at a research study by Sherman ET al
(08:25):
from 2016. And the research study was
called self affirmation activates brain systems
associated with self related valuation.
So really what this was is like the goal was to understand how
self affirmation practices. So like reflecting on your core
values specifically, there's a lot of ways to do self
affirmations and I'm going to talk about the best ways to do
(08:47):
those later on. And just a shameless plug,
that's why I have self affirmations in our journals.
So if you want a journal, choosedash hard dot shop.
You can go to the link in the description, but we have prompts
in these journals and it says, for example, I am blank, I will
blank. We talked about this in the
discipline podcast too, where I talk about if then statements,
(09:10):
if blank, then I will blank. Those are affirmations.
You're declaring statements. They're IM statements.
These are extremely powerful fordeveloping all the traits that
we were talking about in the series.
But this specific study looked at self affirmations that were
reflecting on actual core valuesand how they changed the brain
activity related to self worth, self value, how they influenced
(09:31):
positive or negative behaviour outcomes, so on and so forth.
So I'm going to read, you know, what they did in this study and
what the findings were and then I'll kind of breakdown my
takeaways from it. So the first thing is the
method, you know, what did they actually do?
And the participants were in a FM RI scanner, which wrote about
personal core values. So they wrote about their own
(09:52):
personal core values. These are the affirmations or
neutral daily activities. So go in this F MRI scanner and
write about your personal core values or just write about your
daily activities, which might sound weird, but it's also
really cool because if you thinkabout journaling, that's kind of
what it is. Even our journal, like I'm being
honest, there's affirmations, there's core values, there's
(10:14):
things in there that are really important and valuable in, in
personal identity driven, I would say core value driven.
And then there's like, what are your top three tasks today?
What do you, what's your agenda?You know, still valuable, still
good journaling. You got to get it out.
But like that's not going to have as big of an impact on
yourself belief, right? And this is what they're
guessing essentially #2 the partof the method brain activity was
(10:38):
measured in self related and reward regions.
So medial prefrontal cortex, ventral stratum and this is all
during reflection. So they're just looking at
different parts of the brain, what's activating and measuring
the activation in these self related and reward centers of
the brain while they were doing these different affirmations and
reflections. And then the last part of the
(10:59):
method is that the participants also took part in a physical
activity program to see if affirmation predicted follow
through. So this is really cool because
it's fitness specific and that'spart of the reason why I chose
this study because I'm a fitnesscoach, I own a fitness company,
I own a fitness app. Like we want people to use
fitness as the catalyst and the gateway towards improving all
(11:20):
areas of their life. And so this is very relative to
what we do as well as you as thelistener, 'cause I'm assuming
that's probably why you're listening to this podcast is not
just for the mindset gains, but also for the physical gains as
well. So the findings were that the
self affirmed participants, so the people that were actually
focusing on writing self affirmations and core values in
their journals showed increased brain activity in the areas tied
(11:44):
to self evaluation and emotionalregulation.
This increased activation predicted greater success in
adopting physical activity behavior afterwards.
So basically reflecting on your values inside of a journal and
and writing it, it boosts the way your brain values you and
the neural shift helps you follow through on your goals,
especially physical goals. So what they found here is that
(12:08):
journaling your core values and self affirmations created more
brain activity in the areas of the brain that lead to self
belief, self efficacy and followthrough, right?
Even emotional regulation, whichis really good because if we
think of what emotions we need to regulate when we're trying to
(12:31):
achieve greater levels of self belief, it's probably the the
competing energy and nature and dominance of self doubt and self
belief. When self doubt creeps in, when
negativity creeps in, how do we remain positive, optimistic, and
say to ourselves, we can and we will accomplish this versus
letting the little voice in our head try to talk us away from
(12:52):
it, try to slow us down, try to pull us back, try to tell us
that we're not going to accomplish it.
There's no reason to believe that.
That's self doubt. You have the little Angel,
little devil on your shoulders, just like the old cartoons,
right? Looney Tunes and the old Tweety
Bird devil. Tweety bird Angel.
Well, when we actually reflect on our core values on a regular
basis, we are going to boost ourbrain activity in the regions
(13:16):
that are most important for increasing our self value, self
worth, self belief and emotionalregulation.
And they showed a positive shiftin improvement on follow through
with their physical goals. Unbelievable.
So literally this is this is like a funny sales pitch, but
I'm going to do it because it's,it's literally true.
(13:38):
If you want to lose weight, follow through on tracking your
macros, walking more often, going to the gym, doing whatever
you got to do to lose weight. You can literally improve
yourself belief and and follow through to accomplish those
goals, your physical goals of fat loss.
(13:59):
You can improve that and you canimprove the likelihood of you
accomplishing that fitness goal by writing in our journal,
literally by writing affirmations about who you are,
what you will be, how you will act right in in setting core
values, which is cool because guess what?
My company on the back end, the team, we prioritize our core
(14:21):
values above all else. It's a, it's a very frequent
discussion. It's what unifies our team.
It's one of the most important backbones of our company and in
our unit, our team, our squad, how we operate, how we act, It's
the most important aspect of thecontent we put out everything.
Our brand core values are at thecentre of it.
We also teach our clients how tocreate their own core values.
(14:45):
We encourage our clients to figure out their own personal
identity. That's why we go so much deeper
than training in nutrition, right?
And it's why our clients get such good results.
It's because we don't just stop at macros and Rep counts like
most companies do. This is so important for the
coaches out there listening. You need to understand how to do
this yourself so that you can show up this way for your
(15:05):
clients. This is how clients get better
results. This is why if you go, this is
technically a fitness and healthpodcast, and you'll see there's
a whole podcast on personal identity and standards.
There's a whole podcast on how to create your core values.
This is why this is a perfect study that shows you will be
better at following through on your fitness activity goals if
(15:28):
you focus on what your core values are and you journal them.
That's literally what it's talking about.
It's wild. So I love this guy.
So really cool study, study #2 because I got to keep moving
even though I really love that study.
I could probably keep going on it.
Study number 2 is about the neural circuitry in your brain
and, and self efficacy essentially.
And so how your feedback and these feedback loops from the
(15:48):
actions you take and the people you talk to and stuff like that
change yourself belief and shapes yourself belief.
And so the source is Kozinski ETal 2022.
And the study was called a Corte.
I'm going to Butch this word. Just going to be honest.
A corticostriatal pathway mediating self efficacy
(16:10):
enhancement, some of the the neurological connections in the
brain, the wires, the nervous system, like there is some crazy
words to pronounce. Thank God most of the testing I
had to do in school for this stuff and certifications, it's
all like multiple choice, true or false.
I don't have to speak it out. Anyway, the goal of this study
was to identify how positive social feedback alters self
(16:33):
efficacy beliefs and which brainnetworks support this change.
So essentially what they're trying to do is see how feedback
from others in your life externally can shape yourself
belief. So now we're, we're, we're
turning the, the table a little bit at first, we're like, OK,
let's journal and reflect on ourown core values, our own
(16:54):
affirmations, what we're tellingourselves.
Now let's turn talk to other people.
There's a reason why I wanted tofocus on the study too.
So the method is pretty simple. Participants gave a public
speech in an MRI scanner, which is hilarious if you think about
it. But in an MRI scanner, they're
giving a speech. They received either positive or
neutral fake feedback. Researchers measured brain
(17:18):
response and changes in participants belief in their
future performance. So essentially they gave a
speech, They had connections to their brain MRI.
They're scanning their brain while giving a speech and then
they got feedback. Did they do good or was it
neutral? Like not good, just normal,
right? Not bad.
We're not giving bad feedback here.
And the findings were that positive feedback strengthened
(17:40):
the connection between ventral striatum, the reward center, and
self processing brain regions. So parts of the brain that
actually help with self processing, adapting to the
feedback and changing, processing, analyzing, shifting,
changing, articulating. And participants also updated
their self efficacy more after positive feedback, while those
(18:01):
with higher anxiety slash depression updated less.
So if we got positive feedback, we improve our self efficacy.
Our self efficacy is our capability of accomplishing the
task at hand. And so that is a direct
measurement through action taking to tell us whether or not
(18:22):
we have more self belief. If you have self efficacy, it is
self belief in action. It is self belief that I can
speak this into this podcast. This is very specific self
belief. The self efficacy is just I, I
believe I can do this right? The accumulation of self
efficacy through multiple actions turns into a personality
trait and a skill and a level ofconfidence which we would call
(18:44):
self belief. OK, so the take away is pretty
simple here. Your brain uses positive
feedback to boost your belief inyourself.
Surround yourself with affirmingpeople who help build that
circuit. So more than anything, it's
like, OK, what, what do we need to do in order to boost our self
belief when it comes to our environment and our social life?
Well, we need to be around positive people.
We need to be around a circle that is uplifting and inspiring.
(19:07):
So This is why they, they constantly say like, you know,
be the dumbest in the room. Well, it might not be be the
dumbest in the room because you also are somewhat isolated in
that sense. And what I mean by that is you
should put yourself into rooms where you're the dumbest in the
room for a certain category. So if I have a group of friends,
in my friends, I have one that is by far the best business guy.
(19:28):
I have one that is by far the best fitness guy.
I have one that is by far the best husband and Family Guy.
I have one that is by far the best builder and Carpenter.
Like they all have skills. So depending on what domain
we're in, we can all be the dumbest in the room, but in a
general room, we're all very smart because we bring a unique
(19:48):
capability. And, and what this means is we
should be around individuals whoare accomplishing things.
We should be around individuals who are striving for more.
These kind of people are the kind of people who are going to
boost your confidence by encouraging you to try harder,
encouraging you to take risks, encouraging you to push forward
and take action and challenge yourself, right?
(20:08):
We should be surrounding ourselves with people who want
to see us win. We should be around people who
know us well enough to know thatwe can do it and they believe in
us. So this is really important, but
it also means that we should be seeking feedback through
accountability measures. This is why a coach is very
valuable. You get feedback from a coach
(20:30):
and it boosts your confidence inaccomplishing the goal.
This is why posting on your Instagram story what you're
doing. I'm doing 100 days of rucks
everyday. I'm going on a 30 minute ruck.
I got a 30 LB rucksack walking through the woods in the morning
at 7:00 AM and I'm posting it everyday.
And for people who watch my Instagram story everyday some of
them might be like Yep I get it that's fine.
(20:52):
What this is for is me being accountable and when I'm
accountable it increases my follow through.
My follow through goes up. That means my consistency of
taking action goes up. That is a direct action that
leads to more self belief. And it's just another thing on
my resume that I can look back at game tape wise, like I said
(21:14):
earlier and go, well, I did that, so I can do anything
around today's, right? Maybe not anything rocking isn't
as hard as anything, but you getthe point, right?
So really good. We got to surround ourselves
with people who are affirming, who are encouraging, who are
empowering, who are striving forgreatness themselves, who are
really trying to push their limits and their potential.
(21:35):
And when we do that, we win and we have more self belief.
You are who you surround yourself with.
Very much so. OK, the third and final study
that I have here is about how our own belief shapes our brain.
And it's actually like talking about like modulating memory
encoding in our brain and, and how that relates to self
efficacy. So see if I can pronounce this
(21:58):
scientist's name, it was Cal Calposos Calposos.
I'll link all this in the description too.
So you can check out these studies if you want.
And Ericsson 2013 memory self efficacy beliefs modulate brain
activity when encoding future intentions.
So essentially what they want todo is determine well, here's
(22:18):
their actual definition to uncover whether people's
confidence in their memory, which is self efficacy, effects
how their brain processes and stores information.
So can we use memory and the reflection piece and really
going through some of these likeintention based tasks, right,
(22:40):
intention based actions, things that we're trying to remember to
do and stuff like that. Can we use that as a way to
boost our self belief essentially, which sounds weird,
but as you, as I go through thisstudy, you'll, you'll understand
why this is important. Here's the method.
Step one. Participants rated their general
memory self efficacy. Step 2.
(23:01):
While in an fMRI machine they encoded future intention tasks.
So for example is like remember to return the book right?
Like that I have or whatever to the library.
Step 3. Researchers compared brain
activity patterns between low versus high self efficacy
participants and what they foundwas that low self efficacy
individuals over activated the hippocampal regions, which is
(23:24):
like tactical memory effort, like really trying hard to
remember stuff, yet performed worse.
The high self efficacy individuals activated prefrontal
executive areas of the brain, prefrontal cortex and performed
better. This is like the decision making
brain and everything. And So what this shows us is
that belief shapes strategy. When you believe in your
abilities, your brain uses smarter routes to succeed.
(23:46):
So crazy enough, what this showsis is, and again, this is, this
is a good study to actually likego look up and look at the
context because when you read more about it, not just the the
especially not the method. The method is very like the way
the method is described can be confusing.
It took me a little bit to go through some of the study pieces
and like understand this, But what's essentially happening
(24:09):
here is very similar to there was a study a long time ago on
self-control and it was very similar.
And it was just the belief, the basically the belief as the
belief, as I'm trying to think of how to explain this, the
belief as a placebo essentially lead to better success rates.
(24:31):
So when people just generally said, yes, I think I have
self-control, I think I have self-discipline, they end up
actually displaying more self-control and
self-discipline. They talk themselves into it.
It's a complete placebo. This is kind of the same.
So when these people were asked these questions, and honestly,
some of them could probably like, you know, do you have a
(24:51):
high level of self efficacy? Do you have good memory?
Do you generally remember thingslike just ask a question?
People are going to be like, yeah, yeah, I think so.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure they're not like
getting enough time to like recall situations or the
researcher going, hey, like, well, what about this situation
back when you forgot this completely?
Like that doesn't happen here. These people are just saying,
yeah, I do. And the people that worried and
were like, no, I don't. They performed worse.
(25:12):
And what this shows is actually kind of on the other side of
self belief. Those who believed in themselves
more ended up using a different part of their brain to execute a
task because that part of the brain was actually a better part
of the brain to use for that task.
Which is crazy. So your brain will shift where
(25:33):
it is sending its energy, it's focus, it'll use and activate
different parts of the brain based on if you have a higher
level of self belief or a lower level of self belief before
making the decision. And what this means is that you
need to talk yourself into having self belief.
Like literally you just need to journal it.
(25:54):
You need to reflect on it. You need to be around
encouraging people. The two studies before are the
big take home points and you need to do small action steps,
which I'm going to talk about ina minute because one of the big
things we tell our clients constantly is like, do little
things, commit to small, little habits that you know are so
easy. But it's the point of I'm going
to write this down. I'm going to tell somebody I'm
going to do it and then I'm going to do it.
And it's really small. I'm going to take out the trash.
(26:14):
I'm going to write journal. I'm going to take out my trash
today. Tell my wife, hey, honey, I'm
going to take out the trash. Then you actually go do it.
An hour later you remember to doit.
It's a small easy task. Even if you set reminders we
talked about in the self-discipline, you can
actually kind of cheat the system and automate
self-discipline by just actuallyhaving reminders and plans and
strategies. You don't need to like grit
(26:35):
through it. You can just set up automated
systems to take action more and then you have more discipline
and they study this. It's really cool.
But like when you do those little things, you can build
more self belief. And then if you just reassure
yourself that you can do things and you plan on having self
belief, you are going to use your brain more effectively and
efficiently, which is so wild. So when somebody doesn't have
(26:56):
self belief, this is the sad part.
When somebody has less self belief and more self doubt, the
moves they make, the actions they take, the way they operate
is actually hurting them and creating more self doubt as time
goes on because they are making the wrong decisions in the wrong
way. They are even using the wrong
(27:17):
parts of their brain subconsciously because the brain
is going to be sending signals and wiring in a very, very
subconscious manner. It's just automatic.
Something happens, you react, you do this right, it's a very
quick moving thing. But if you don't start creating
self belief by using these simple strategies I'm talking
about, your brain is going to automatically use worse signals,
(27:42):
worst parts of the brain, it's going to, it's not going to work
as effectively. You, you're not going to operate
as well. So this is like, well, shoot,
you know, how do I get self belief before I have it?
Well, This is why I'm going to give you some strategies.
And this is also why you got to do the small things.
You got to like start tiny and do these little steps to build
the self belief. Once you have self belief,
everything you do in the future that requires more belief,
(28:04):
you're going to use your brain more effectively and
efficiently. That's what this study is
showing. And it's just so wild.
OK, so, so really what we've gone over here is there's
different parts of your brain, the reward centre, the emotional
regulation and decision making centre, like these are the main
parts of your brain that are going to be active and firing.
(28:24):
These are the parts of brain that we need to shift between.
We want to rewire and there's certain things that we can do to
do that. And we also have proof that
simple actions like journaling, affirmations and simple things
like getting positive feedback and changing our social
environment, those two things can boost self belief and allow
us to take better action. And not just like figuratively
(28:45):
saying like, yeah, if you have more confidence, you're more
likely to dive in. Even if you fail, you're less
likely to worry about it becauseyou have more belief and
confidence, right? Confidence people don't worry
about failure as much, which is true.
But also people with more confidence make better decisions
in the heat of the moment because their brain is working
and operating differently, whichis what this third study showed.
And now what I would like to answer really is the first thing
(29:06):
being, can you translate self belief to other areas?
And this is this one was a really important thing for me to
figure out and and try to answerin this podcast because I want
it to be, you know, known that, hey, if you are a phenomenal
mother who is extremely on point, discipline, controlled
and responsible, does that applyto fitness in your fat loss
(29:26):
journey or your business? Or is it completely separate
domains and you got to start from scratch?
This is a really important question to answer.
Then I want to give you some practical strategies of like,
here's your checklist. Do this everyday, do this as
often as you can and you will literally guarantee to gain more
self belief. OK, so first does self belief
transfer across different contexts and domains?
(29:48):
And So what I could find is a couple things.
One of them is called Banduras theory.
And this is that it's it's related to research showing
around mastery. And so banduras theory and
related research show mastery experiences.
So this is like success in one area.
This is that mother who is just crushing it on all fronts can
(30:10):
generalize boosting confidence for future challenges in other
domains. So does self belief transfer?
Yes, self belief does if you accomplish something in one
world, this is going to build a universal level of confidence
because you did one hard thing you've succeeded at one
difficult task. You've gone 1 long journey.
(30:32):
You've endured and been resilient for one specific thing
and you did it. And so that means whatever this
other world, even if it's in a completely different domain of
my life or a different journey for a different accomplishment
and reward, I'm going to be morelikely to approach it with
confidence because I gained confidence in this realm over
here. But point #2 not so positive
(30:56):
self efficacy, which is self belief.
But again, like I said, I'm a bunch of times throughout the
podcast is very specific to the thing you are doing.
Self efficacy is domain specific.
Confidence in your fitness routine doesn't automatically
make your belief in your career greater unless you transfer the
underlying experience structure.Success under challenge,
(31:19):
feedback, reflection, tenacity, endurance, resilience.
So this is where it's gets kind of murky and difficult.
And so to summarize this, there is what's called Banduras theory
and it is very true because thisis based on the research of
mastery and people who have experienced levels of mastery
and different things. If you create success in one
area, that will generally increase your confidence and
(31:42):
self belief as a human being no matter what.
Like you are going to be more successful across the board if
you just consistently challenge yourself.
Like This is why choosing hard is good, not just doing hard
things, because doing hard things sometimes can be putting
up with hard things that you have to to face.
Choosing hard things is I'm making a conscious decision to
step into challenge and conquer it.
And that creates belief, right? So we have that.
(32:04):
Now, the other part of this is that self efficacy is very
domain specific. And that means that not all that
confidence from being successfulin this other area is going to
apply over here. If you're a great business
person, it doesn't mean that you're going to be a great
fitness person, right? And vice versa.
So generally it does work. I believe that if you are a very
(32:25):
fit individual and you lost a bunch of weight in your lean,
you probably are a more disciplined, resilient,
experienced, organized. Did I say resilient?
Resilient. I mean, a person who gets in
great shape is a more disciplined, resilient,
organized, gritty, energetic, positive, optimistic person.
(32:46):
And there's researchers for all those, but it's mainly because
the actions they had to take to get there forced them to be
organized with their training and their meals.
It forced them to be disciplinedto work out when they didn't
want to. It forced them to be resilient
when they didn't get the result they wanted or they fell off the
diet and they had to bounce back, right?
These things apply across the board, but it doesn't guarantee
success across the board. That's the big thing here.
(33:08):
Now, what they did find is that if you prioritize focusing on
the underlying aspects of what accomplished the goal, you can
apply it otherwise. And that's why I, I pointed out
being organized, disciplined, resilient, so on and so forth.
But as humans, we need understanding.
We need reasons why. And So what you have to do with
(33:28):
this is you have to actually define these things.
This is something we try to do in our discussion with clients
and I encourage everybody to do in their journal, in their
meditation or just writing it down or talking it out.
You should be looking at the hard things you do in whatever
you're chasing and you should really ask yourself, what else
do I get out of this? OK, I'm, I just lost 40 lbs and
(33:51):
it took me 6 months. I'm clearly a patient person.
Now you're creating an affirmation of being a patient
person that's going to translateeverywhere else and help you be
patient in areas that you're notso patient.
I'm clearly organized because I set up my meals, my training.
I had to dictate my schedule to fit all this in and do the work.
And I actually organized the timeline to periodize how long I
(34:12):
can be in a deficit to lose thisweight.
OK, I'm an organized person now.I have an affirmation.
I comply elsewhere. There were so many days that I
didn't feel like eating my meal,the healthy meal that I had
planned. There were so many days where I
didn't feel like waking up earlyto go on a walk and get my steps
in. There were so many workouts that
I really just didn't feel like doing.
I did anyway. OK, Clearly I'm a disciplined
person because that's discipline.
(34:34):
OK, cool. Now I have an affirmation I can
apply elsewhere. So what I'm getting at is if you
look at the underpinnings of what created your success, you
can journal, reflect on those and those will apply elsewhere.
So does self belief translate across all domains?
Not necessarily. Your overall confidence will
grow across the board yes, But the only way to translate that
(34:55):
self belief from one area to another is if you actually
reflect and define what skills and traits that are non specific
to the thing you accomplished you took from it so that you can
logically apply and explain why that will help you elsewhere.
You know, working out when you don't feel like it builds
discipline. But the act of doing an upper
(35:18):
body day and performing a horizontal press under load like
a bench press, that skill doesn't do shit for you.
OK you built muscle because you bench press, but the bench press
doesn't apply to your success inmarriage right?
Like it's making hard decisions,having hard conversations, being
organized, like those kind of things, you know, So that's
(35:38):
really, really important. Now to wrap this up, just like
practical strategies of, of whatyou should be doing.
And you kind of probably alreadytook them all away because I, I,
I kind of alluded to them all throughout this podcast.
But the first one is we have to have reflection, specifically
value based reflection, like core value based reflection.
So this is going to boost the neural circuits in our brain and
the and rewire our brain to increase self worth and self
(35:59):
belief and just our overall confidence as a person.
But what you should be doing is starting each day with an
affirmation. Again, get the journal.
If you don't have the journal, choose dash hard dot shop.
There's a link in the description of this podcast or
you just go to chooseourpodcast.com and you'll
be able to see the the shop menuyou click.
(36:21):
It'll take you there. But the point is, is that if you
can start each day with writing something about your core
values, writing a focus word forthe day, writing an I am
statement and I will statement who I am becoming statement.
Like journal about your core values, journal about who you're
going to be, journal about the traits you possess, journal
about self belief and how you are a person who has a lot of
self belief and confidence and you're going to attack the day
(36:42):
with that. It will literally rewire your
brain so that you show up that way #2 For practical strategies,
you need feedback loops in your life, but they need to be
strategic ones. Let's avoid negative feedback
loops that that point towards laziness, addiction,
contentment, like being just complacent and those kind of
(37:04):
things. We want to avoid those
negativity and, and just things that don't align with who you
want to be and what your goals are.
But what you should be doing is,is be seeking meaningful praise
from people around you that are encouraging you and empowering
you and challenging you and wanting you to win.
And you should be asking for honest feedback, but mostly
positive, like give me honest feedback so I can get better.
There's a good way to give constructive criticism that's
(37:26):
not negative and down right. But also like you have to have
these really honest and logical kind of progress checkmarks or
signals or signs or, or readingsthat tell you, you know, are you
on track? This is positive feedback.
It keeps you aligned. And some of the best ways to do
this are having a good tight circle of positive people.
(37:47):
Having a strong community aroundyou is one of the biggest ones.
And if you don't have a strong community, find one.
Having a coach or a mentor that you can check in with.
Because every single week you'regetting that positive feedback
and that is going to guarantee your success #3 We want to track
mastery in context, right? And what I mean by this is
pretty simple. Log your simple wins, like the
(38:09):
little things that you're great at, the little things you do,
the little things you win at that you don't think about that
you don't give yourself enough credit for that.
You don't look and go, I mastered that or I'm really
great at this. Start doing it.
Reward yourself, compliment yourself, give your like one of
the things in our journal as well and that this I literally
did not plan on trying to like market this journal during the
podcast, but it says I am grateful for it and there's 123.
(38:31):
So you have 3 spots to, to do a gratitude right.
What you're going to do with that if you need more of this is
write about yourself. I, I give this advice to a lot
of people. If people aren't rewarding their
self, they're not giving themself enough praise or
applaud or, or really commendingthemselves or acknowledging
(38:51):
their wins and, and what they'redoing.
Well, it's really helpful to write in a gratitude journal but
write. What are three things I'm
grateful for I'm grateful for meshowing up as my best version
Today I'm I'm yesterday I'm I'm grateful for how hard I work
when I'm in these scenarios. I'm grateful for choosing the
(39:11):
hard path when an easy one is present.
I'm grateful for being a strong leader in my household.
I'm grateful for doing the rightthing when I have an easy way
out. I'm grateful for investing in my
health, investing in my personaldevelopment.
Like whatever it is, and it can be specific to you, I'm grateful
for the fact that I, as hard as it was, kept my calm and
(39:32):
remained cool and responded in a, in a very logical and
respectful way during blank situation at work or at home
with my kid or whatever it is, right.
So we got a really log these small wins and it can be
anything from the gym progression to meals you
prepped, weight loss, like actual things that you're
accomplishing or just the way you're showing up.
(39:52):
OK, really, really important. And then try to look for
patterns. So if you're writing these
things, go back to what I said in the last study and go okay.
Or in the last section when I'm talking about transferring self
belief to other domains, you sayI'm grateful for my way that I
did this, or I'm grateful that Imeal prepped and I stuck to my
meals or whatever. Okay, cool.
Real quick before you move on tothe next thing you're grateful
(40:13):
for or the next win you're accomplishing and you're
applauding yourself for. What are the things that led to
that? What are the traits that were
required to accomplish that? What are the things within that
that can? Because remember, it's not meal
prep as a skill doesn't translate to other areas, but
being organized and choosing thehealthy option and making
(40:34):
positive choice, whatever it is like that is a general thing
that does apply to other areas. OK, So take that away and make
sure that you're you're really pointing that out as you're
writing these out. And then the last thing that
I'll leave you with for practical strategies is to just
really focus on practicing theseself asked for affirmations.
The ones that you know work the best for you before challenges.
(40:57):
And they can be very specific tothe challenge right before big
events, whether it's a work meeting or a competition or
whatever it may be. Like reflect on past wins and
what values you take away from that, just like I said in the
last one, and then really reflect on that and practice a
self affirmation, right? I'll give you a literal example
of this. So for me, before I podcast, I
(41:25):
by myself out loud pray and I say a prayer that when I'm on
this mic, when I'm on this podcast and say, Lord, please
give me the words that the people listening need to hear.
Please give me the mindset that allows me to speak in a clear
and concise commutative way thatteaches or give me the wisdom I
(41:47):
need in order to provide lessonsto the people who need this
podcast to improve their life. I, I say these things before I
get on a podcast because I'm trying to speak them into
existence. I'm asking God to bless me with
that before I get on this mic sothat I can perform because it
matters to me. So this recording right now is a
very, very big deal to me. So I am going to practice prayer
(42:11):
or for somebody who's not religious or anything,
meditation and affirmation. So after that, I'm going to
think about other situations where I crushed the podcast or I
had a big guest on and I still killed it with the interview.
And they gave me compliments afterwards about how I was able
to really give them a good safe space to, to bring their their
(42:31):
personality out and ask the right questions.
And I affirm those things in my head or in the morning in my
journal. I will literally write those
affirmations. I am a fantastic podcaster who
has been told I have a great podcaster and a very good way of
bringing the best out in people and educating people on complex
topics in a simple manner. And I will crush the podcast
(42:53):
that I have on my schedule todayjust like I have done in the
past. Like that can be my IM and I
will statement in my journal because I know the big event for
me today might be a podcast interview.
And those are statements that I didn't make up.
People told me I have a great podcast and I'm a great
interviewer and I bring the bestout on them.
And then I'm able to take complex topics and simplify them
in a way that teaches people right?
(43:15):
Like those are feedback loops that I have created off of what
other people who are encouraging, positive,
challenging themselves, wanting to grow.
Those people told me these things.
So they're, they're worth listening to and they're they're
credible. Now I can use them as
affirmations and I can't say, Nah, that's not true endowed
(43:36):
myself because I didn't, I didn't say it.
This is not my words. And This is why it's really
powerful to use others feedback in order to build my own
confidence and self belief. OK, so focus on value based
reflection, be strategic with these feedback loops.
I want you to track where you'recrushing it, what wins you add,
really reflect and and honor yourself and award yourself and
(43:58):
just really just think about, applaud yourself with the stuff
you're doing well with. And then practice these
affirmations or meditation or prayers before you get into a
big event or something is important to you and you do
these things, you are going to consistently improve yourself.
Belief. And above all else, the thing
that is obvious that I didn't put in here is getting results.
(44:19):
I can't stress it enough. I've said it a little bit in
this podcast, but understand that as you develop self-control
by taking action and you start getting results, which motivates
you to be more disciplined on a consistent basis and then you
develop the skill of discipline,now you're getting great
results. Half of self belief is just
getting results because you haveproof.
So when you do the reflection, when you're looking for
(44:41):
strategic feedback loops from people, when you are trying to
track your wins, and then you'reusing these affirmations before
a big event or an important thing, you got to realize that
the reflection you are doing is reflecting on the fact that you
accomplished goals, you did the work.
Results are proof. The proof is what you reflect on
to show yourself that you can keep on getting results and have
(45:03):
self belief. The strategic feedback loops are
going to be automatic and subconscious.
It's going to be habitual because people are going to tell
you holy shit, you look amazing,you are crushing it, you're
doing so well. This is positive feedback from
people around me that is encouraging.
And it's only happening because I'm getting results and I'm
showing up right? And that feedback loop comes
(45:24):
back to me naturally. So you almost don't even have to
think about it. You just got to make sure you
don't have a negative circle or environment you're in.
And then tracking is easy because you got all these wins.
Track them, applaud yourself, honor yourself, be happy about
it, talk about it. And then you just got to
practice those affirmations and just remind yourself like look
(45:45):
at all this stuff I did. Create an affirmation, a prayer
or a meditation about how you are that person that can keep
doing it and then you'll win. You'll have a never ending
growth in surge in an increase of self belief.
If you do this and it's based onresearch, it's based on
experience and it works and it'sthe most important thing ever.
If you have more self belief, you will have an endless amount
(46:05):
of success in your life and fulfilment.
I promise you that. Now I'm going to wrap this
podcast up. This is Part 3 of the Self
Formation series. Next one is going to be self
respect and it's going to be good.
It's going to be a little bit more hardcore.
It's going to be a little more brutal.
It's going to be in your face because I think there's this
aspect of it. It's about earning.
Respect is earned, not given. That means you got to earn your
own respect too. So it's going to be a spicy one.
(46:27):
Stay tuned for that. Leave a five star rating and
review on Apple or Spotify or both.
If this podcast is delivering value for you.
I deliver these for free withoutany crazy advertising and
marketing and all that stuff. Just natural plugs.
I throw a brief ad in here that here and there just to promote
our products and stuff. But this is totally free
information. So do me a favor, share this
podcast with somebody that coulduse it.
(46:49):
Leave us a rating review if you enjoy it and help us grow the
show. Be a part of this movement to
create more people choosing hardand creating better lives for
themselves. I'll catch you next time.
(47:28):
Music.
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