SUMMARY

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of The Brendon Show. Please note that this episode, like all TBS episodes, features Brendon speaking extemporaneously–he is unscripted and unedited. Filmed in one take, The Brendon Show has become one of the most viewed unscripted, direct-to-camera self-help series in the history of YouTube. It has also been the #1 Podcast in all of iTunes and is regularly in the top podcasts in Self-Help and Health categories around the globe. Subscribe to the free motivational podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.)

When you don’t have a connection with yourself or others, confidence goes down. This has been a hard one for a lot of people this year because you’ve been—many of you—Denise and I have been very serious about quarantine, because we both have elder parents, we want to see them, we want to go be around them, so we’ve been really hard about the quarantine stuff, we’ve been very, very, very, very, not out there. Mostly ’cause I’ve been working for you guys, but also because we’ve just been like, “Oh, it’s so important to just have a positive connection, a healthy connection, that we prioritize that for ourselves and for our family.”

And yet, that’s been hard, because we haven’t seen our friends as much as we see our friends. We haven’t traveled, I haven’t been out there at seminars with you guys jumping and clapping and giving you those big hugs. So it’s been like, “Oh, I miss you all!” And that lack of connection can lead to less motivation, it can lead to less confidence.

So you want to feel more confident in life? Reconnect with yourself and others.

1. Lock in Your Morning Routine

With yourself, that’s your morning routine, lock in that morning routine.

The more you feel connected to self, the more confident you are, but you need the time to connect to yourself away from the email, the social media, the obligations for the kids, the family, the husbands, the spouses, the team, everything else.

You need that moment where you’re like, out and connecting with yourself with your thoughts, you need time to think and to feel again. So turn off the TV, go for a walk, put down the phone, do the meditation, get away from the social thing 10 minutes earlier so you can sit in the car and just think before you go home. You need more space to be thinking and connecting with self. Why is it everyone who ever had some type of midlife crisis had to go away? They had to go away so they could connect with themselves. Why do you go to a spa? To change up your environment and lock in and feel your mind, your thoughts, your body once more. So build that in your life. Self-connection.

2. Environment Shapes Your Confidence

Second part, the most important part, we know the environment dramatically shapes your confidence. The connection you have with the people around you. This means be around positive people, contribute around positive people, learn from positive people. It means, create great relationships in your life. Create great relationships in your life.

3. Start Sharing Your True Thoughts

But let me share something with you that’s so critical to your confidence, to your congruence, to your clarity. I want you all to improve this one, simple action, simple daily, weekly, real-life action. You must start sharing your real thoughts, feelings, desires and goals with the people around you. You have to do it more often. Now, here’s the thing, this happens every time.

“Oh, Brendon, you don’t understand my spouse. He’s such a jerk, if I share what I really want, oh, he’s like that, ta-da.” “Oh, you don’t understand Brendon, this person’s so,”—no, no, no. Why do you think they need to understand or praise you for you to share it? Stop sharing it with the expectation that they’re going to accept it, cheer you on, approve—no, no, no. You’re going to share it ’cause it’s your truth. You all follow?

Here’s why you lack confidence in life. When you won’t share your truth because you’re worried what everyone else thinks.

That’s what high schoolers do. You don’t do that anymore. You’re too damn old. Now, you share your truth with other people and realize most of ’em won’t get it, won’t understand why it’s important, won’t support you, won’t care, or at least won’t get in your way and say anything at all. But the less you speak your truth to other people, the more superficial your connections are with them. See, people often say, “Well Brendon, people don’t know me.” Well, who’s fault is that? Is it their fault they don’t know you? Or have you actually provided consistent enough intel, congruently enough over and over, they’re like, “I know that person.” People in my life, they know me, they’re like, “That’s Brendon.” ‘Cause I say it, I speak it, I walk it, it’s my truth, so that it’s easier to connect with me ’cause they understand me. And I think that’s what’s important for you too.

You have to speak your truth more often. Do the people around you really know what you want in life? Do they really know? And if they don’t get it, that’s okay. Share it anyway. “But Brendon, they’ll discourage me.” No, they won’t. They’ll say words that you could interpret and mean and feel are discouraging, but you don’t have to accept their discouragement, right? We learned that from the Buddha, we learned that from the Dalai Lama, that when someone goes, “Well, how do you deal with angry people?”

“I don’t accept their gift.”

See, people are coming up, they’re trying to hand you a big pile of anger. You don’t have to accept it. They’re trying to hand you a big pile of judgment and labels. “Here’s a whole bag of labels for ya.” You can grab it and go, “Oh, cool, I don’t like these labels.” Or you hand it back and you’re just like, you don’t have to take it. This is the ultimate challenge, I believe, of our times, is genuine and authentic connection.

What we are experiencing in our times is phony, superficial, sound-bite connections and that’s why while the world is supposedly more connected, we are more divided than ever, because no one’s being truthful enough. We’re not having a worldwide conversation that is authentic and true and vulnerable and consistent and so we don’t feel connected. And with the lacking of these other elements, someone’s not being clear, someone’s not being congruent. Then all of a sudden, it’s hard to understand people. If someone is not clear, not congruent, and not trying to create a good connection, then we’re in trouble.

4. Raise Your Standards for Your Relationships

I want you all, as much as it’s going to hurt you this year, and I genuinely know it will, as much as it’s going to hurt you, I want you to raise your standards for your relationships. I absolutely know that asking more of your spouse will feel dangerous and crazy. Asking more of yourself as a leader feels unnerving. Trying to be a better connected father, mother, brother, grandparent, that feels tough, but you know what? When those connections are there, you’re more confident.

We know from sociology that kids who come out of a more connected family and I mean authentic connection, do better in school. We know from simple things of attachment theory of how much connection the parent has to the needs of the child, alters their adult life unconsciously. Consciously, we can change, we can shift, lots of us didn’t have ideal, perfect childhoods, so we can shift that thing as an adult mature-wise, but we carry along unconscious things too, from the degree in which we had connection as children, from the degree in which we had connection with young, formidable relationships we had. From the degree in which we had connections with friends early on.

Now I know, “So what Brendon?” So form tighter, stronger, real relationships this year. This is the year you reconnect with your friends, the ones you really like and you hang out with them more or Zoom with them more or FaceTime with them more or text with them more. This is the time you peel back the layers or the availability that you give to people who you know you don’t want that connection in your life.

Raise your hand if you know it’s true. Some people aren’t going to get it. Some people aren’t going to get it, they’re negative, they’re hurtful, they’re angry, they’re always that way. Let life be their educator, stop giving them so much time. For those who say, “But that’s my spouse or my parent or my partner or so-and-so.” Then, don’t let their energy penetrate yours. Don’t let them stop you from sharing your truth.

I remember early on, I had a neighbor and this, I got to spend a Thanksgiving with his family and this girl was sharing, she loved this musical instrument she played, she was always talking about it, and every time her brother would say this awful thing to her, she’d be talking about how she can do this thing at school recital, her brother says an awful thing. Every time she shared it, the brother said something negative and she still always shared it, because her sharing was not stuck to his positive affirmation.

I think it’s so hard for people to get that, but this is a game changer. Heighten the expectations of your relationships and people go, “You’re crazy.” I’m not saying necessarily your expectations, I’m saying the standards of how you show up in them. I want you to be more vulnerable, I want you to lead the way, I want you to make the requests, I want you to be more vulnerable and share the truth and if they don’t get it, that’s okay. But if you choke that stuff down, don’t speak that stuff, that is a log, the brain keeps score.

5. Your Brain Keeps Score

Oh, ’cause guess what? I want you to understand this. I know this is, I hope you get this, guys. Your brain keeps score every time you minimize yourself, write it down.

Your brain keeps score every time you minimize yourself in a relationship.

Minimize yourself in a relationship for 10 years? No wonder you don’t feel good even if you achieve so much at work or you’re a good parent, because the brain gives kind of similar scores. If you’re doing good in this area, but you minimize over here, that’s almost like a one-to-one, like, “Good job, but you suck over here.” It’s like the unfortunate thing that the brain—there’s not a ton of nuance sometimes.
Our labels, the way we grew up, good, bad, positive, negative, left, right. We’re so divisive in our spectrum without understanding that there’s more nuance there and that’s unfortunate.

So you have to understand when you minimize yourself, here’s what’s important. You minimize yourself five days in a row, you have a big win on a Friday, a big deal on Friday, you do great on Friday. Breakthrough, get the negotiation, achieve something great, and on Monday you show up not feeling good again. And you’re like, “I don’t understand, I just had a great Friday.” Well, the brain kept so many logs of the minimizations.

You have to be congruent again into the best of who you are and you’re going to have to do it day over day, week over week, month over month until it grows into an authentic and a beautiful and a strong and a sure and a consistent confidence.

So for those of you who hope to have unbounded confidence tomorrow, hey, maybe today there was an epiphany, it was such a shift, we’ll get there. Maybe it’s going to take a lot of time and that’s okay. Give yourself the grace but also know that confidence can be summoned by some of the things we’re talking about.