Hi, guys. Mark Dawes here once again.
Again, a bit of a disclaimer, this is a bit of an ‘in your face’ video so if you don’t want to hear any emotive language or you don’t want to hear me with my rant then switch the damn thing off now. Don’t watch this through and then complain. You’ve got a choice, you know you can watch it or not watch it. I’ve given you the disclaimer now the choice is in your hands.
But on this video I want to talk to you about this thing called confidence because a lot of the time I hear people on courses or who email me or I talked to and they say “well I’d love to do that but I haven’t got the confidence to do it” or “I’m not confident enough to do this” or “I’m not confident enough to do that” or “someone took my confidence away”. I think this is linked to how we’re educated. I think this is linked to how we’re brought up because if you think about some of the things that your parents told you, and I’m not blaming your parents they were probably well-meaning with this stuff, but they really did burden you with some shite.
For example, they’ll say things like “don’t show off, don’t be big-headed, don’t blow your own trumpet” and that was all linked to the fact if you did that sort of stuff people wouldn’t like you. So a natural progression from there is to actually not do that stuff because you want people to like you. You know human beings like people to like them so you don’t blow your own trumpet, you don’t show off, you don’t become big-headed, and the net result of that is you don’t feel confident in actually speaking up about certain things because it’s linked to that fact that you might be showing off. I think, anyway. But the fact of the matter is you have to blow your own trumpet or it’s going at least go and by a fricken musical instrument because if you want to succeed in life, no one else is going to blow your trumpet for you. You have to do this stuff.
Now confidence, being confident about stuff, is just getting up and doing stuff. I’ll give you an example. I met with a couple today, a boyfriend and girlfriend. The girlfriend has got an idea for a business, it’s a cracking idea, it’s simple, and it’s absolutely brilliant but she said: “Well I’m not confident at pitching”. I said, “How do you know?” She said, “I’ve never pitched”. I said, “so you don’t know your confident about something you don’t know”. So what I actually did was I went to the hotel where we had this meeting, I went in the office and I asked to speak to one of the managers and the events manager said: “How can I help you?” I said “will you come to meet, I’ve got a young woman here,” I said “she needs to practice a pitch. Would you mind if she practices a pitch on you?”
She said, “not at all because I’d like to help”. So I sat the manager down, I introduced her, I said “it’s the events manager”, I said “all right, do your pitch”, and her pitch was pitch-perfect. It was absolutely brilliant. Her boyfriend that was sat with her was beaming and I was smiling and at the end of that the woman, the events manager from the hotel, actually said “you know what? I think we can use your services”. So she got a gig out of this stuff as well. I said to her afterwards “how do you feel?” She said, “I feel great”. Because she just went and did this stuff.
So there’s the key. You know, don’t start telling yourself a story about you’re not confident with this, you’re not confident with that, and by the way, no one can take your confidence away. You have to give that shit away. You have to actually give it away and then blame someone else for it. So confidence is linked very much to doing stuff and doing stuff is linked to your belief system. So start believing you can do stuff because that’s the key. Because whether you believe you can or whether you believe you cannot, you’re absolutely right. So you might as well believe you can and live in that delusion and then go out and do some stuff.
You’ll fall on your face and you’ll fall on your ass but you get up and you do it again. But get this, the only way you will become confident at doing something is to go and do it. Okay? So just get after, get off your butt, and go and do this stuff. If you say “by the way, I haven’t got time to practice” then listen to the next video. I’m going to talk to you about time on that one. But that’s all I wanted to say to you. Don’t let anyone take your confidence away simply because they cannot do it. You have to willingly make that decision yourself and then say “I don’t have it” and tell yourself a story and then blame someone else.
Confidence is linked to action and that’s linked to a belief system and that’s all you need. So just get out there and do this shit and the more you do it, the more confident you’ll become. Trust me. That’s what I do for a living.
Speak to you soon.