People who believe that good things are gonna happen to them, they are usually right. You gotta see you. You gotta not underestimate yourself. Remember this, confidence bends reality.
It does. You have to believe you deserve to win. You are not what other people say you are. So stop letting that dictate your self confidence or fill you with self doubt. Demand high standards of yourself because you know you're better, because you know you're worth it, because you know you're great.
Welcome back to the show. So you're gonna see a change in the show between now and the end the year. You know, it's been no secret that I've had a few health issues the last couple years. Heck, I haven't even posted on social media in a few years, but we've been coming strong with three podcasts a week even during that time. Well, between now and the end of the year, I'm gonna scale it down a little bit, but give more value.
So what I'm gonna do is I've created a master class that's gonna come out on Tuesdays, and you'll still get your Saturday episodes. We're gonna take a pause on Thursdays. But every Tuesday, you're gonna get a masterclass from me that I've created to help you finish 2025 strong and go into 2026 and make it the best year of your life. I'm calling this masterclass
max out your mind, faith, focus, and fire,
mastering your internal world so you can navigate your external world. It's gonna come out every single Tuesday. I think you're gonna love it. Also, just wanted to let you know with that in mind, I'm not doing as much traveling. And so every year at the end of the year, I do an event in my home with just a handful of people, and it sells out very quickly. In fact, we've already sold out the first day. But here's what this is. It's a chance to come spend a day with me in my home, only 12 to 15 people just with me an entire day, and I'm gonna take you through all of my planning and strategies that I use to plan out my own life and my business. In addition to that, I'm gonna cover all my mental rehearsal techniques that I cover with just my one on one coaching clients in a one day event with me with just 12 to 15 other people. You can go to maxout2026.com
to check that out if you're selling clients. It's not cheap. If you can't afford it, please don't do it. You know, most all my content is free,
but once a year, do do something in my home with a very small group of people, and it's a life changing event. You'll never forget it. So if you're inclined to wanna come spend a day with me in my home, I invite you to join me. You just go to the website, maxout2026.com,
and get the details. Maxout2026.com.
God bless you. Enjoy the episode.
I wanna talk to you about perspective today, and I think one of the most critical components in life
to bring you more fulfillment
and more success, more bliss, more happiness, more of the things you want.
And that is to start to become aware of the lens through which you see the world, through how you experience your life. Most of us do this unconsciously,
and because we do it unconsciously, oftentimes we default to a mode that we really don't want. One of the critical things in life is to be able to see the world through the lens, through the filter, through the prism that serves us the most, serves our bliss, serves our success, serves our productivity,
our joy,
our peace.
And in the power of one more in my book, I write about two lenses. I'm gonna give you two more today. But the two lenses I write about in the books, I say there's two types of people. One type of person views the world through history and memory,
and they basically walk through life kind of living in the past. When they reference something new, it's usually connected to something of the old. And by the way, people do this on positive and negative things. Some people live through past successes.
Some continue to live through history and memory and the past of failures, setbacks,
things that have gone wrong, traumas.
But the bottom line is most of their filter is the rearview mirror of their life. The second type of person, which is more rare, they see things through
dreams and imagination.
They're in the present, but they're looking forward. They've got they use their imagination. They use their dreams. They don't spend a lot of time in the rearview mirror. They're looking more through the windshield of life than looking forward. And I find those to be the people that create, that innovate, that are more happy, that grow, that expand.
But there are couple other filters
that I wanna talk to you about this week, and there's really two lenses that I wanna go through with you. And one type of person scans for God and favor, protection,
safety, increase, light, love. They see all these things. When they scan the world, when they experience the world, they see more God. They see more favor. They see more protection.
They feel more safety. They feel more increase and light and love.
The other types of people scan for things they're afraid of. They see the negative. They filter into their lens evil, loneliness,
darkness,
despair.
And these two people are in the exact same world, yet they experience two totally different lives.
And really, the life you experience is seen through the lens that you feed yourself.
And so which of those lenses? Are you history and memory, or are you imagination and dreams? Are you someone who sees light, love, favor, protection, increase, growth, beauty, or do you scan and see a lot of things you're afraid of? The negative, the people taking advantage of, the evil, the loneliness in your life. These two lenses will feed you the life that you see. And it's really important because if you're not aware you're doing it, you can begin to think your reality is the only truth.
When in fact, the same people going through the same type of life are having a totally different life experience than you simply because of the lens.
And most of us do it unconsciously, but we can become conscious of this lens and start to scan for the things we want.
Listen to me. It's a mental act of ignorance
to scan for the things you're afraid of, for the negative,
for evil, for loneliness, for darkness, for despair,
for lack,
for what you don't have.
That's a mental act of ignorance. And after today, you will be doing it consciously because I pointed it out to you. And the reason that I pointed out to you is because I've done both, and I do both.
But I probably lived at least half my life as somebody who scanned
for,
you know, how lonely I was or how I was being taken advantage of or the past or trauma or
darkness. I'd be on an airplane, and I'd scan for the loudest, most obnoxious person rather than the kindest and most gentle and the person who's helping everybody put their bags away,
you know, and the most polite person. You know what I'm saying? Those are same exact fight, two totally different experiences.
What if you were one of those people who began to believe that good things are gonna happen to them?
Because the people who believe that good things are gonna happen to them, they're usually right.
And the people who believe that average and ordinary or negative things, or maybe just the same things are going to happen for them, they are also
usually
right.
The world reveals to us that which we're most certain of.
And if we're not cognizant of our lens,
because you do have one, and maybe it changes from time to time. Maybe a certain trigger triggers a different lens for you. When you're slighted by somebody in your personal life, your spouse or a boyfriend or girlfriend or they're passive aggressive with you or whatever it might be, or maybe you miss a sale,
It switches the lens and now you're scanning for all the other negative things.
But I'm telling you this lens is your life, and I think when you get to the end of your life, it's going to be revealed to you through a different lens.
And I think at the end, we want it to be revealed through the ones that we most hopefully wanna see through. So remember this, people who believe that good things are gonna happen to them, they are usually right. Not every time,
but far more of the time than if they believe things aren't gonna work out for them. What if you started to move through your life like you think it's rigged in your favor?
You always say, hey, the system is rigged.
Okay. Well, rigged for somebody
and that somebody doesn't necessarily have to be
different than you.
And I'm not suggesting that there aren't lots of people in life where
they didn't start on third base.
They weren't even in the stadium.
They were born on the wrong side of the tracks, or maybe they had the wrong skin color, or their parents weren't even married, or they grew up incredibly poor
and that there are disadvantages
to that life
because there are.
But if you're scanning for proof of that all of your life,
you'll prove it to be true.
But if you begin to scan like, well, however, there are certain things that are scanned in my favor and I'm favored because God's gonna give you the life that he most wants to give you,
but your lens is going to process it. A lot of times in life,
your expectations
are the most important thing. If you expect things to go well, if you have an expectation that you're gonna get a hit when you're up to the plate or make the putt when you're putting or close the sale or get the date or have a good time or that people are gonna think you're interesting and funny. Most of the time, your expectations are accurate in life more times than not. Remember this, confidence
bends reality.
It does.
When you walk into a room confident that something's gonna work out in your favor,
or you walk into your day,
it begins to bend reality. And the truth of the matter is reality is reality, but what it does is it begins to change your filter,
and that filter is your life experience. What if you started to walk like you just got the best news of your life? What if you talk like, man,
the universe is listening to me. In my case, God is listening to me. He's hearing my prayers.
You have to remember that this is important stuff, and if we don't start to be conscious of it,
we're going to continue to produce the same life because we're seeing life through the same lens
and the same filter. And so you can have 10 people treat you great, but if you believe you're a victim to something, that eleventh person is all you're going to see and experience and feel. If you believe you're not gonna close sales,
you're not gonna close the majority of the sales. What if you started to walk through your life like it was rigged in your favor? You go, Well, it isn't though. What if you worked so hard that you made it so?
People just like you with the same disadvantages,
hardships, the same setbacks. Look, I grew up on welfare. I had a drug addict and alcoholic father. I could easily see the world through, Man, I didn't even get a good hand when I was born.
We didn't have any damn money.
Nobody in my family was ever financially successful,
so I'm not going to be. Or I can go, I'm gonna be first. I'm gonna change this family curse of this addiction stuff. And so that confidence began to bend reality. So the same people would have entered my life probably either way, but I filtered for the ones who could support what I was seeing as opposed to filtering for the ones that would support the negative things I was seeing. There's going to be enough people, enough circumstances,
enough situations in your life to deliver either reality to you.
But your reticular activating system is going to scan to prove you right. And so starting to wrestle this, I'm gonna be someone who operates out of imagination and dreams. I'm gonna operate as somebody who walks through life like it's rigged in my favor. My confidence will bend reality. I'm gonna get the world to conspire to my dreams. God made me in his image and likeness. He holds me in the palm of his hand, and he will never leave me nor forsake me. I'm not alone even when I filter through life and feel alone. I think when we get to the end of your life, all those moments you felt lonely, all those moments you felt alone, I think God's gonna whisper to you and go, I was with you the whole time. You were never alone. You were never alone. What if you never felt that way again?
What if you gave yourself the gift of saying, there's a loving God who's got my back, who made me in his image and likeness,
whose DNA runs through me?
Man, this is rigged in my favor.
I woke up today with another breath.
Maybe you woke up today and you don't have a disease that millions of other people have. Maybe today no one that you love passed away,
and so many other people woke up today and lost a loved one. Maybe you woke up today with food in your refrigerator and water, and two thirds of the world doesn't have it. So what if you started to walk like you just got the best news of your life?
Talk like the world is listening. Remember this, energy is magnetic.
The energy you put out is like a magnet. It draws to you that which you're putting out. That's what you see.
You know, here's the truth about you.
You've come a whole lot further than you realize,
and you've overcome a lot more than you give yourself credit for, haven't you? Just for a second,
right as you sit there today,
think about how far you've come. Now I know some of you are listening to this or watching this today, and it's not an up time in your life, it's a down time.
But just stay with me for a second.
Look how far you've come even to have this down time.
The way you grew up, the situations you've had, the people who have hurt you, taken advantage of you, abandoned you, lied to you, talked bad about you,
the opportunities you should have been given
but you weren't,
maybe because you weren't born on third base,
maybe because you weren't even born in the stadium,
Maybe people have always overlooked you,
always underestimated you.
Man, you've come pretty darn far, haven't you?
And you've overcome a lot more than you give yourself credit for.
In fact, those of you that had the most disadvantages,
the most negative things happen,
you've overcome a lot more.
Now if you could overcome all that, this next 10 yards isn't so much a big deal.
Oftentimes,
people ask me, what's it like to have been so blessed and have had, you know,
a measure of success, hundreds of millions of dollars, beautiful homes, influence, great friends, beautiful family.
Overall, until the last year or two, good health.
I'm very grateful for all of that. But every once in while, go, man, I've overcome a lot.
I've overcome a lot.
And thank God I had this filter and scan for the world most of the time that found the light, that found the person who could help me not hurt me.
If you keep drawing people into your life that are hurting you,
that's a you issue.
You're filtering for them.
You are finding them, and you are bringing them into your life. If most of the people in your life are just kind of a neutral charge, they're not so great, they don't lift me up, and they're not so bad. That's what you're scanning for. That's your lens.
But when you have a lot of people around you who love you, who believe in you, who support you, who do even more than support you. They go to work on helping you make your dreams come true. They go to work on trying to help you be happier and more at peace and more faithful. You're scanning for that. If you look at the current conditions of your life, it's what you've been filtering in.
It's a hard thing to accept.
I just started to accept that in my late twenties,
that I'm responsible for my life.
In some way, I've actually created this because I filtered through my lens
these people into my world, these circumstances into my world. And if I don't change this lens,
they're gonna show up in a different body with a different name, but it'll be the same person. They'll show up in a different situation,
a different business, a different product, but I'm gonna get the same business results.
Gotta change that lens. You are so much more than you think you are,
my precious friend.
You've done so much more than you realize.
You've helped so many more people that you don't even know about.
What a thing that is.
You know, you've helped more people than you realize. You're not not me. I've not really accomplished anything.
You'd be surprised how someone's quietly watched you, and your kindness has been an example to them to be more kind.
Or they've watched how you treat your spouse or your significant other, and just for that day, they went home and were a little bit more gentle and generous and kind with theirs.
Simple things like manners and holding a door open and saying thank you for somebody
helps humanity.
Never mind the big things you've done, things people will never know about, things you probably don't even realize you've done because you filter them out.
You take it for granted because it's just everybody's as kind as you. Everybody's as giving as you. No. They're not.
Everybody has beautiful
intentions like you do.
Everybody's rooting for their friends to succeed like you do.
You know, just
your rooting and supporting and believing in your friends makes you very rare,
That you don't have this filter that believes that if they win, you're losing.
You'd be surprised how many people quietly root against one another,
pretending to support one another.
So you're so much more than you think you are. You've done so much more than you realize. You've come so much further
and helped more people than you realize.
What a beautiful thing. Now I know as I say that, some of you are, but you don't know about this mistake. You don't know about this thing I'm ashamed of.
God does.
He knew it before you were gonna do it. You're human.
You've made some mistakes.
Okay?
Made some bad decisions.
So have I. Join the club.
Join the club. Now,
does that mean what you're gonna do is filter for that the rest of your life and repeat it over and over again and live those same emotions?
Or can you believe you can grow and expand? Can you believe you can move from here to the next place just like you have in the past?
You've already proven you can move from certain circumstances to other ones.
You've already proven you can grow and change.
Maybe you've changed in a way you're not proud of.
What that does prove is you can change.
You can change again.
What you focus on
and if you can somehow begin to look at light and gratitude,
you can begin to look at that. What you focus on expands.
You're gonna get more of it. I'm serious. If you can begin to find things that you're grateful for in your life,
okay,
it will expand.
It begins to expand. That lens starts to look for it.
Focus equals expansion.
What you focus on will be expanding. Let me ask you a powerful question. Just stay with me. Like, I don't know what to be grateful for right now.
Who or what do you take for granted? Let's do the who. Is there anybody in your life that you take a little bit for granted? Maybe you take for granted that I don't know. I'm making this up that you
your mom's still alive, and you can talk to her anytime you want if she is.
Maybe you take for granted how much the little things your significant other does for you.
Maybe you take for granted that your girlfriends or boyfriends, your friends that love and support you in their quiet way.
Maybe you take for granted
the fact that there are people around you fighting battles you know nothing about,
and they're doing it with grace.
They're doing it
with strength.
Maybe you take for granted that there's someone that you love and care about that's hanging on by a thread right now, but they're hanging on, and that's admirable.
What do you take for granted? That was the who. Now what do you take for granted?
You know, I've had real big health issues the last couple years.
Well, for about fifty years of my life, I took my health really for granted. I woke up every day, and my chest didn't have any pains. I woke up every day. There was no cancer in my body.
I woke up every day, and my back wasn't hurting me or my jaw.
I had high energy.
I just took that for granted.
I've had a beautiful family, but they were there every day. I have some really good friends.
I've had some good financial success.
I make an impact in my life. I do work that I enjoy.
I took a lot of that for granted.
So when you begin to go, I don't know what to be grateful for, flip it. What am I taking for granted?
What am I taking for granted? You know that right now, you could probably walk to your refrigerator and there's some food in it?
The more you begin to ask yourself, who or what am I taking for granted? Your mind flips into
the antithesis of that, and it changes the lens,
and you begin to be grateful.
Maybe today, if you're married and you just walk in a room,
just before you say anything, just take a look at your spouse
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your children or your parents
or your siblings or a friend. Just take them in for a second.
Just see their soul.
Don't see all the bad things you know about them, all the things they've done that you don't like. Just see their soul for a second.
Just see their soul.
How precious they are. Thank god they're still here. Right?
Thank god.
They've also come a long way. They're also overcoming things.
They also may not be aware of their filter or their lens, which causes them to behave in a way that doesn't serve them.
So focus equals expansion.
Who are you taking for granted? What are you taking for granted?
And when you begin to understand that, the little things become the big things, and that focus equals expansion.
And now you're starting to change your lens. You know the thing about you? You're probably being underestimated right now. In fact, you've probably always been underestimated.
But here's the hook, I have too. No one would have picked me in high school to become successful or anybody anyone would listen to. There was nothing exceptional about anything about me, my grades, my abilities, my personality,
my background,
my track record.
So I've always been underestimated,
and probably you have too. Maybe you are right now. But here's the hook. You can't underestimate
yourself. That's a killer.
And too many of you have walked through your whole life underestimating
you because you're waiting for someone else
to see you a particular way. And if they see you, then you'll believe in you. Well, you'll be waiting a long time because that lens rarely comes back.
You gotta see you. You gotta not underestimate yourself. You gotta believe. That confidence bends reality,
but the lack of confidence bends it in an equivalent way the other direction. You gotta start to walk through your damn life
like something great's about to happen, like you expect it. By and large, we get what we expect in our lives.
Ask yourself. Stop listening. I know you're going, woah. This is okay. I got it. Okay. This is great stuff. Now stop. What have you really expected the last year of your life? What have your expectations
been?
Expectations financially,
expectations in your emotions,
in your faith, in your relationships,
in the way other people respond to you because you're getting what you expect.
And when you begin to shift those expectations,
reality begins to bend over time to some extent. You know how we know that? You're already proving it. It may take a while, but your life will eventually come back to the filter and the lens that you see it through. Be the one they never saw coming.
Train in your life like you're a big underdog, but start to think like you're world class.
All my life, I've known I was supposed to be somebody.
And all my life, I knew I didn't have the talent. I didn't have the size. I didn't have the strength. I didn't have the intellect. I didn't have any of those things that people might think you need to have. But I know this, there's never been a test design nor will there ever will be that can measure the heart of a champion. You cut open anybody who's done anything great in their life, one might be six foot four, one might be five foot four, one might be black, one might be white, One might be straight, one might be gay. One might be a Christian, one might be a Muslim. But when you cut them open, they're identical and they train like an underdog,
but they got the heart of a champion.
Be patient in your life, but never wait. You have to have patience, but you gotta be in a hurry. Be intense in your work, but calm in your mind. Be disciplined and be structured, but be willing to innovate. You got all this stuff.
You could be the one they never saw coming. You can train like an underdog. You got the heart of a champion. Remember this. Focus on your energy. Energy is influence. Vibrational frequency is real. When you're vibrating at the highest possible frequency,
you begin to draw things into your life, circumstances,
places, things, people, emotions that were always there but they were outside your energy's influence. They were outside your lens. You weren't seeing them, hearing them, feeling them. By the way, the highest level of vibration is truth.
And so when you actually begin to see your truth
as opposed to this lie
that everything's stacked against you,
that you're average and ordinary, that people don't like you much, that there's nothing to be grateful for, that nothing ever goes your way, that's a lie. And so what happens is it reduces your vibrational frequency.
You believe it because it's in your lens. But when you switch the lens to truth, which is that you are favored, you were born to do something awesome with your life. The world is gonna conspire to make your dreams come true over time. God did make you in his image and likeness. He did die for your sins.
You are saved
if you accept that and live forever.
That vibrational frequency is real. The higher the frequency, the more you draw things into your life. Highest possible frequency, truth.
So you have to ask yourself, is my lens, is my filter giving me truth
or sort of a lie and a bias that I've been carrying for a long time?
That lens is essentially your life bias,
your mind virus,
and it's gonna keep giving to you that which you filter for. You gotta become the type of person who runs towards the fire. There's two types of people.
The ones that run towards the fire. These are our heroes. These are our first responders. These are our soldiers. These are the moms when they've got an injured child on a playground. These are the moms and dads
who run into the fire of hard work every single day to win for their family. They're the people on 911 who ran into the building. You gotta be that type of person in your life metaphorically.
You run towards the pressure. You don't hide from it. You run towards the difficult things. You don't cower from it. There are only two types of people. Which one are you? You run towards the stuff or you hide from it? You're someone who's favored,
who's in the light, who's protected, who's safe, who's strong,
who could tap into supernatural power from God anytime you need to,
or you hide and you cower and you shrink and you limit and you stop expanding. In fact, you start shrinking. Pressure is a privilege.
Pressure means this, something's gonna break,
either you or the obstacle. Being a dad, there's some pressure. Being a mom, there's some pressure. Building a business, there's some pressure. Hitting that putt to win a tournament, there's some pressure. Giving that speech, there's some pressure. Doing something new, there's some pressure. Walking into a thing that you're uncomfortable doing, whether that's public speaking or something socially or heights or whatever it is, something's gonna break.
Either the obstacle or you, and you're the person who doesn't break. You start walking like that. It may take me a little bit longer, but I'm in a hurry. I got patience,
but I'm a little bit faster than I used to be. You live for this stuff.
Most people fear the grind. You crave it. Most people wait for the right moment. You create it. You ain't waiting around for the right time. You ain't waiting around for someone to give you permission. You're not waiting around to make opportunity. You're gonna get your own seat at the table. There's no seat there. You're picking one up. I'll just move my chair over.
You crave this stuff. You wanna live a great life. All your life, you've known you're supposed to.
You don't fit in.
You're special. I gotta tell you something about it. I've never been one of the boys. I mean, I don't like having a cigar with the guys or playing golf, but I've never fit in. I don't wanna fit in. I don't wanna in fact, in college, my teammates called me not Eddie Mylett, Eddie myself
because I was alone so often. I'm not one of the guys. I don't wanna be in groupthink. I don't wanna think like everybody else. I wanna think like me. I want my filter, my lens. Back in the days, most of those guys probably thought I was pretty crazy. Well, they don't think I'm crazy anymore.
And I love all those guys, but most of their lives are almost all identical
because they were one of the guys or one of the girls.
Most of their lives are all the same.
I was born to have my life. You were born to have your life, not theirs.
You don't need to fit in. You're special. You're different. You don't need to be accepted. You don't need to be understood.
You already know this. You're gonna do anything great in your life. Most people aren't gonna understand you. You gotta become comfortable being misunderstood,
being a little controversial,
little criticism. Alright. Whatever. That just means I'm making other people comfortable. Pardon my progress.
Sorry my progress, my expansion
makes you uncomfortable.
Sorry the light I'm living in is shining a light on your small life,
and I know that makes you uncomfortable.
But I'm not one of the guys, and I don't need your approval. And you're not one of the girls, and you don't need theirs either. You're a competitor.
You're constantly increasing your purpose. You're a grower.
You're in a bigger hurry than most.
You are,
but you have the discipline to wait for what you want.
C. S. Lewis once said this, it's so good.
Life with God is not immunity from difficulties,
but peace within difficulties.
I'm not telling you once you change this, problems aren't gonna come your way. What I'm telling you is your perspective about what it means
will change,
and meaning drives reality in life.
Let me ask you a question about meaning.
Ain't this good today, by the way?
It's the holy spirit. Thank you, God. If you came up to me in three years and you said to me, hey, Ed,
I just had the best three years of my life.
What would you be telling me three years from now?
You're going to arrive somewhere three years from now.
The only question is where? Do you even have a plan to get there? Do you know where you're going?
Have you enrolled your partner, which I hope is God in your life, to help you get there? What would you tell me, Ed? The last three years, you're not gonna believe it. Here's what happened in my life. I did this. I started that. We helped these. What is it? What would you be telling me?
And by the way,
what if you begin to move as if you expected it to happen?
I
know that's not easy, but what if you actually moved as if you expected
those things over the next three years to happen?
And I could tell you this. I don't know what it is that that thing is, but I know it will be connected to something that has meaning to you, that has a purpose, that makes you feel like you're making a difference, that's almost like a mission or a crusade or a cause in your life, I guarantee you, one of the things on that list will not just be money
or a car or a house or an island,
although it will be some of those things for many of you. Somewhere on that list, the one that will stand out almost more than any will be some difference you made in life.
Some purpose, some crusade, some mission you're on that became accomplished.
That's what it'll be. Hey, guys. It's Ed. I rarely do this. As you know, 99.9%
of my content is free. But once a year, I do something where I gather a very small group of people in my house. I've done it for two years in a row now, and I'm gonna do it again this year. If you go to maxout2026.com,
I'm gonna do an experience in my home where I'm gonna take you through how to make 2026 the best year of your life, all of the tactics and strategies that I used to plan and organize my own life in detail. Same time, all of the mental rehearsal and visualization techniques that people pay me hundreds and millions of dollars a year to teach them, I will be teaching that day as well. And the other years I've done it, I've had groups of about 25 or 30. I've decided this year I wanna shrink the size of the group so that I can get more one on one time with each of these. I wanna keep the groups to 12 or 15. It's a chance to spend the day with me in my home, lunch, one on one time, and group time. And it's not cheap, so if it's something you can't afford, please don't get yourself in any financial trouble or debt doing so. But if it's something you can afford to do, go to maxout2026.com,
and I'm looking forward to having you in my home with me very soon for an amazing day, a life changing day. God bless you. And one thing to know about the fact that you doubt yourself is, one, I struggle with it as well. One of the reasons I've had to go learn to build all these tools for myself is because in my life, my baseball career, my academic career, my business career, my speaking career,
I've been riddled with self doubt. That creeps up all the time in our lives. Am I enough? Am I good enough? Do I deserve this? Is this something that's part of my destiny? Should I be doing this? And if you're a religious person,
I believe the adversary if you believe in the adversary, I believe the adversary's greatest tool that he could use against you to get you to lose in your life is to get you discouraged and doubting.
These are two of the most chaotic things that the adversary can do to us, or that we do to ourselves in our own minds, is to get ourselves doubting, to get ourselves discouraged
because you can't win when you doubt, and you can't win when you're discouraged.
What I found out though about self doubt is that you don't overcome it, you build something bigger than it, which means you build your self confidence,
and the greater and greater your self confidence get, it minimizes the impact self doubt has on us. Now why is that so important? It's important because you have to understand one thing about the doubts and the negative thoughts you have about yourself.
As hard as this is to accept,
these are not your thoughts.
You weren't born doubting. You weren't born discouraged.
You weren't born thinking negative things about yourself.
Those were thoughts that were placed in you and given to you by an external source at some time in your life. It could even be our parents.
Don't do that. Be quiet. Sit down. Be a good boy. Be a good girl. Maybe it was criticism you received as a a little one that you may not even remember to this day. It could have been a school teacher. It could have been ridiculed at school from other children. But when you were young in your formative years, these negative thoughts about yourself were planted in you by an external source. That's so powerful to understand because these things you think you believe about yourself that have become really true to you, you don't even really believe they were not your original thoughts.
But the power of belief is so incredible in our lives. It's so insidious, because when we have a belief about something, even if it was given to us by somebody else,
our mind goes to work on proving to us that this belief is true. A belief is almost like this table right here, just the top once we get it. And what our mind tries to do is it tries to build legs under the table to reinforce that belief. So if somebody told you you weren't enough, or you weren't smart enough, or pretty enough, or fast enough, or strong enough, or you don't come from the right place, or you're not in the right culture, the right race, the right religion, the right height, the right IQ
as a young person, or you were put down, and these beliefs were given to you, what happens is your mind tries to prove beliefs true, so it finds references.
So once you think it, your mind finds an example of your life where you weren't enough, another one where you weren't enough, you weren't smart enough, you weren't pretty enough, you weren't handsome enough, you weren't strong enough, and it finds these references, and it builds like a leg,
and multiple legs on your table, and pretty soon you can't move it, and it's stuck in there as a firm belief. That's why we have to guard our beliefs
so preciously,
because our mind goes to work on finding these legs, these references,
which are real experiences in our life, to prove to us that that belief is true. And so although you may believe it to be true about you, these doubts and negative thoughts you have, these were not your original thoughts. That's a powerful thing to understand because you weren't born this way. You weren't born doubting. You were born perfect. You were born believing you were gonna do something great. You were born happy.
You were born believing you were gonna do something special with your life. As a baby, I promise you, you had no negative self talk. You had no negative self doubt. These are external sources.
So important to know because those thoughts aren't really who you are. They're somebody else's thoughts they gave you because of how they felt about themselves. And so today, we're gonna talk about how to build self confidence
and how to eliminate self doubt. So how do we build this self confidence?
The process of building self confidence is actually very easy,
believe it or not. Self confidence is self trust. Self confidence is building a reputation with yourself
that you keep your word to you, that you keep the promises you make to you. When I meet somebody who has a ton of self confidence,
I don't look at that as somebody with a big ego.
There's a difference. Somebody with self confidence has a reputation with themselves that I do the things I say I'm going to do.
That's where self confidence comes from. When I meet someone who's not self confident,
I know this is someone who has consistently made promises to themselves they've not kept. They've started a diet and done it for a while, but not kept it. They've made a commitment and goals to go make a certain amount of money in business, and they started down the road, but then they didn't deliver on it long term. To get up at a certain time in the morning, and then they don't do it. And so they have a process and a habit in their life more often than not, of not keeping the promises they don't make to other people. They don't keep the promises they make to themselves.
And so the cool thing is
self confidence is an internal game. You do not need external
accolades,
external admiration
in order to build self confidence. You don't need any of those external forces. It's all done internally. You control this, and you control this by beginning today to keep the promises you make to yourself, and you have to stack the deck in your favor. Stack the game so you win. It's not good enough just to keep the promises you make to yourself. You must acknowledge it when you do it to you to give yourself credit to create confidence momentum
is what I call it. So whether that's setting the deck where you're gonna get up a little bit earlier, you're gonna make a certain amount of phone calls you're business, a certain amount of appointments, you're gonna eat a certain amount of calories in your fitness. You're gonna spend a certain amount of time with your children or your parents,
and you begin to do these things you say you're going to do. You say simple things like, I'm gonna lay out my clothes the night before I go to bed every night, before before I go to sleep, so when I wake up, that decision's made for me. And believe it or not, the fact that you just do something that simple
that you then deliver on begins to build confidence. You say, I'm gonna stretch in the morning when I get up, and you do it all of a sudden. I'm not gonna check my phone for thirty minutes. All these habits I teach. When you just begin to do the things you tell yourself you're going to do,
you begin to build self confidence, which is this reputation with yourself. So ask yourself a question right now.
What is one thing right now, one promise I can make to myself that I'm going to begin to keep starting this minute
and begin to do it? It could be how often I'm gonna pick up a book and read it. But you begin to stack things you commit to do, and then you deliver on them, and you acknowledge them to yourself. You're in the process of building self confidence. Why is that so important? Of all the athletes I coach, when my athletes are performing at their peak level,
they're at their highest self confidence level. In fact, I love when I watch some of the athletes I coach get interviewed, and they kind of do this aw shucks humble routine
in their post game interviews. Yeah, you know, just part of the team, you know, I got a lot. Could have done a lot better today,
but inside I know these people are incredibly self confident people. Any of you athletes listening to this, you know this, the great athletes you know, have incredible amounts of self confidence. You have to believe in you when it's a battle, when you're a hitter against a pitcher, or when you're a quarterback against a defense, or you're a defenseman in the NHL against their best offensive player, or you're a golfer and you have to make a nine foot putt to win a tournament. Right? You better have self confidence. In fact, the separator,
more often than not at the highest level in sports,
is not they're a better shooter, or a better putter, or throw the ball a little bit faster because everybody throws hard in the major leagues nowadays, it seems. Right? That separators their self confidence.
It's true in being a parent. It's true in being a business person. It's true in every area of our life. The separator at the top levels is self confidence. So now you have that first thing that you're gonna commit to that you're gonna deliver on. Now what I would ask you to do that now that you've done that is if you really wanna build self confidence, can you begin to extend that list of five, eight, and 10 things that you are going to begin to do, that you commit to you, that you're gonna do every single day to begin to stock that self confidence. That's gonna change it. Now let's go back to the self doubt for a second. Self doubt is the inverse of that. I don't trust me.
I don't think I'm good enough. These are thoughts placed from the outside inside your mind. The minute you acknowledge that, that's not my thought, that's someone else's. That's not You begin to eliminate I call it like scratching the CD. When I begin to have negative self talk, negative thoughts, I literally picture and I'm old, by the way, but I picture an old record player or a DVD, and I just scratch it. I scratch it. That thought gets scratched. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good looking enough. I'm not fast enough, strong enough. I'm not prepared enough. I once they enter that's not my thought. That's something someone gave me when I was a kid, and I scratch it. And I literally say to myself, scratch it. Scratch it. Scratch it. And over time, it's like a it's like a DVD or a CD or a record player. Over time, that thought can't be played again in your recorder when you scratch it enough times. So I literally picture scratching, and I say, scratch it. I experience self doubt. I experience negative thoughts, and I scratch them. I scratch them. I scratch them. And over time, it almost becomes funny.
It's that thought's impact on me
starts to be minimized minimized over time. Every time I scratch it, I picture scratching it like a DVD or a record or a CD, and I say it to myself. Scratch it. Scratch it. Scratch it. And what it does is it acknowledges the thought. It loses its power over me. The first time, it's still got some impact on me. The second time, it might. But the fourth, fifth, seventh time, all of a sudden, that thought just doesn't have the impact on me anymore because I acknowledge it's not mine. I've scratched it, and over time, my mind just doesn't wanna play that song anymore, doesn't wanna play that movie anymore.
And so that's how I begin to eliminate those thoughts in my mind. I build up my self confidence, and I scratch my self doubt.
There's also this misconception
from people that you are certain things. Meaning, some people have this misconception that I am what I possess.
In other words, I am my possessions, and so they link their self confidence
to their possessions.
And so they're constantly trying to acquire more and more possessions,
thinking that's where they get their self confidence from. That's how they're defined as a person. I am my possessions.
Couldn't be further from the truth. It's a hollow way to try to gain self confidence
by possessing things. Nothing wrong with going for material possessions.
I have all kinds of them, but I don't link my confidence
to those possessions,
nor am I deluded into thinking if I could just possess more things, then I'll feel better about myself. So this is a mistake. There's a flawed thought. Number one flawed thought, I am my possessions. Second flawed thought, I am my accomplishments.
In other words, my self confidence is only linked to what I'll accomplish.
So because I haven't accomplished certain things, I know that certain title, that certain award, that certain recognition.
I don't believe in myself. I'm riddled with self doubt. I'm defined by my accomplishments.
The difficult thing about that is now all your life, you're gonna have to accomplish more and more and more in order to feel self confident and eliminate self doubt. You are not your accomplishments. You are not your possessions.
You are you. You are perfect. You are beautiful. You were born to do something great with your life. If you're a person of faith like me, you believe God made you in his image and likeness and wants you to do something great with your life, not that you are your possessions, not that you are your accomplishments,
and this is the the social media insidious influence it has in our lives. People think, I don't feel good about myself. I've got this self doubt. The gateway to me feeling more self confidence is if I could possess more things or if I could accomplish more things. Yes. Having nice things will make you feel better about yourself. Yes. Accomplishing things certainly
is a reinforcement for self confidence,
but it's not the pathway to getting it. The pathway to getting it is doing something great with your life where you keep the promises you make to yourself and acknowledge
this self doubt, this self thought, this negative talk isn't even mine. It was given to me when it was impossible for me to defend myself as a child, and maybe it even happened in adolescence, and probably some of those instances have happened for you as an adult. And these ones as an adult are like that thing I said earlier. Oh, it's another time I reinforced the table.
I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not prepared enough. I'm not the right race. I'm not the right gender.
I don't come from the right kind of family. I don't have the right education.
And we find these references as adults to reinforce these self doubting beliefs we were given by somebody else as a child. Flawed belief is that you are your possessions. You are your accomplishments.
Third flawed belief,
I am what other people say I am.
Wrong.
You are not what other people say you are, good or bad. I see too many people that if someone says something negative about them, they believe that's who they are. This is the flawed third belief. I am my possessions. Am my accomplishments.
And you know what? Or I am what other people say I am. Let me be clear with you. You are not what other people tell you you are. They it wasn't true when you were 18 old, five years old, or 55 years old. You are not what other people say you are. So stop letting that dictate your self confidence
or fill you with self doubt.
And for the record, you are also not the good things people tell you you are all the time. Don't live for likes.
Don't live for comments on your social media.
Don't don't do things in your life just to solicit
someone saying something great about you. It's a cheap, shallow,
hollow way to try to gain self esteem and self confidence.
It's fleeting, it's short term, and it's needy.
In fact, the fact that it is a necessity for you to get liked, to get people to say good things, to get comments
on your social media, or to do so in your presence,
indicates a lack of self esteem and self confidence,
because we know self confidence is an internal game where we keep the promises we make to ourselves.
The fourth type of flawed thinking is I am what I look like.
In other words, if I don't look a certain way,
like what the magazine says I should, or social media says I should, if I don't look like these people, I shouldn't have self confidence,
and that's ridiculous. I can tell you straightforwardly,
you're beautiful as you are, especially the ladies listening to this or watching this. The world is constantly trying to get you to believe you're not enough. You don't look right. You should lose this weight. You should gain this. This should be smaller. That should be bigger. Whatever it might be, they're constantly messaging women, you're not enough. You're not enough. You're not enough. You are what you look like, and this is true for men as well. Let me tell you straightforward that you are not what you look like. You are your soul. You are your spirit. You are your gifts.
You are the contributions you make. You are your intentions.
You are perfect as you are. That doesn't mean we don't wanna look better. It doesn't mean we don't wanna get into shape, but we wanna do that to feel better about ourselves,
not for the accolades from other people. We wanna do that to feel healthier and stronger and be the ultimate version of ourselves,
but by no means does that mean you're not perfect as you are. By no means does it mean you are defined by what you look like. You are not defined by what you look like. You are defined by the content of your character, the way you treat other people, and the difference you make in the world. So the four flawed thoughts that I see most right now is, I am my possessions. No. You're not. I am my accomplishments.
No. You're not. I am what other people tell me I am and say I am, good or bad. No. You are not. And fourth, you are not what you look like. These are flawed beliefs that lead right to self doubt and away from self confidence.
So the things we need to do to change our self confidence is a, keep the promises we make to ourself, and b, very important, we must begin to give ourselves credit
for those things when we deliver on them. I want you to remember this as well. There's a power to the way we use the two b's, our brain and our body.
See, self confidence can also be a state, a physical state. Very difficult when you're moving your body, sitting up straight, breathing deeply. Right? You're in that physical strong state of being. Right? Right after a workout, during a workout is when we feel our most confident because our body's at a peak state. One way to generate self confidence is to move your body into a strong state of being. Move your body. Literally,
movement creates confidence. If you think about some of the peak times of your life, whether that be the fun time you may be having with your partner physically, intimately, or laughter,
or peak performance running. Right? Or your great accomplishments. Yes. There's a commonality to the way our body is moving at that time. If you think about the times when you're the least confident. It's usually when you wake up in the morning, isn't it? It's the most down, the fearful, the most anxiety,
or before you go to bed at night. These are two times most people experience the most amount of self doubt, is right before bed and right when they wake up. Isn't that interesting? One of the reasons is because of how we're moving. We're laying down. We're hunched over. Our breathing is shallow. There's no physical movement whatsoever.
This creates a state of self doubt right before we sleep, right when we wake up, or if you're just kinda depressed or sick, self doubt starts to kick in, doesn't it? Right? If you ever had an injury and you couldn't move like you'd like to, that stagnation
of the body begins to create self doubt and strips us of our self confidence.
So moving our body is a gateway to self confidence,
and then our brain as well. We have to take control of our thoughts. We have to scratch the negative ones when they come in and replace them with great ones. Now I don't believe self talk works all the time, but I believe saying I am strong. I am good. I intend. I'm a good man. My intentions are pure. I'm a good person. I make a difference in the world. I'm kind. I'm gentle. I'm generous. I'm strong. I'm faithful.
Beginning to repeat these thoughts to myself, and these words
do generate self confidence. I keep the promises I make to myself. I'm a man of my word.
Begin to talk to yourself and think these thoughts. When you combine your brain and your body, you scratch the self doubt. You lose those four stupid beliefs. I am my accomplishments. I am my possessions. I am what other people say I am, or I am what I look like. These are completely flawed beliefs. We scratch those. We scratch them. We understand the process of stacking self confidence in our life. We know we are the content of our character.
And lastly,
give yourself some credit. Will you please? And I'm gonna tell you where to give yourself credit,
and that is in the area of your intentions.
A lot of my confidence comes from the fact that I keep the promises I make to myself.
I know my self doubt are thoughts that were given to me when I couldn't even defend myself as a young little boy.
I know that I'm not my accomplishments. I know I'm not my possessions. I know I'm not what I look like, and I know I'm not what other people say I am. I understand
the process of building self confidence.
I scratch the negative thoughts in my life, but I can tell you this. The last place I get my confidence from is my faith and my intentions.
See, I know I intend to do good. Not enough of you are giving yourself credit for your inherent goodness,
and I mean this.
You're special in that regard. You're perfect in that regard. Just ask yourself, what are your intentions?
As an individual, as a man or a woman, do you intend to do good in the world? Do you intend to wanna help people? Do you intend to be a light in people's lives? Do you intend to make a difference?
Do you want to live a good life where you've helped change the world and change other people's lives?
Have you ever just asked yourself that?
Do you? Because if the answer to that is, you know, I don't spend enough time thinking about how good my intentions are. I don't wanna hurt people.
I don't wanna do bad things. I don't wanna take advantage of others.
I really intend to do good. You know what? You need to give yourself more credit for the power of your intentions.
There's a power in life of giving our self credit just for the intentions we have.
Just ask yourself that. There's two types of people in life.
There's the people who intend to do harm,
to take advantage of people,
to cheat, to cut corners,
to cause hurt to others for what they think will be their own gain.
Then there's people who wanna be a light.
They wanna make a difference. They wanna help. They wanna contribute.
They wanna be somebody.
They wanna honor their god.
They wanna make a difference in the world, and their intentions are good.
Too often in life, people with great intentions don't give themselves credit for how beautiful and wonderful those intentions are. And so today, just take this inventory
of all the things that are wonderful about your intentions,
and then just take an inventory of your faith. As a person of faith, I know that I'm favored.
I know that God wants me to do good in the world. I know that I was made in his image and likeness.
There's a power to that. There's a comfort to that. There's a confidence
that comes from that. Kind of a swagger. See, people aren't smirking at me anymore. I'm smirking at them.
See, I know I'm not what I look like. I know I'm not my possessions. I know I'm not my accomplishments. I'm not what other people say I am. I understand the keys of keeping the promises I make to myself. I understand scratching those limiting beliefs.
I know I intend to do good. I don't always do good. I make mistakes all the time.
I'm not a deity. I'm not a god. I'm a man, but I intend to do good.
And my guess is, so do you. Start to give yourself a little credit just for your intentions.
Know you're perfect as you are, and then begin to take these massive action steps. The final piece of the puzzle is this,
is that you have to believe you deserve to win, and sometimes it's not just that we think we're good, but that we've done so much. We must be worthy of winning. See, there's this adage in life. Good people in life won't take more from the table of life than they think they're worthy of and they deserve.
See, in business sometimes,
short term, we've all seen this, someone with bad intentions can get ahead short term, but you always reap what you sow. Karma is always a real thing, and eventually, the people that take shortcuts, that cheat, that hurt other people, that have ill intent,
the world, the universe, God sort of finds a way eventually to get them where they're supposed to be.
But good people will never take more than they think they're worth, which is why the mandatory
requirement for good people to win is they believe they deserve it. They believe they're worth winning. And sometimes it's not just who we are that we need to believe in, but what we've done in this sense.
That sometimes you've got to outwork everybody,
and you've gotta be willing to do the things nobody else is willing to do, so you begin to convince yourself, man, I'm doing all the things everybody else is unwilling to do, so I deserve to get the results other people aren't going to get. I'm doing the things other people aren't willing to do. I'm paying a price that's so much greater than other people,
that I'm worth it, that I deserve to get results they don't deserve to get because I've been willing to do the things they've been unwilling to do. So the last piece is often self confidence can just frankly come from outworking
everybody
and convincing ourself,
man, I've been doing the things nobody else is willing to do. I deserve to get the results nobody else deserves to get. And that's a shift in building self confidence. If being hard on yourself worked, it would have already worked by now. Right? And one of the things I think we have to ask ourselves is is what I'm doing working?
You know, how's this working out for me? And so far, not so good when you're really difficult on yourself. You would never talk to other people the way that you
speak to yourself.
You teach other people how to treat you with what you're willing to accept, with what you're willing to tolerate,
and you teach yourself how to treat you.
And for many of us, since some age we were at, and I you know, we could draw a line for almost all of us. Some of us have happened much later in life. Some of us have started to happen in childhood.
We started treating ourselves poorly.
And if we treat ourselves poorly,
how are we ever gonna ask other people to treat us well?
And by the way, whatever your belief systems are, you all know that I'm a Christian, but I also believe in inspiration.
I believe in vibrational frequency.
If you're not treating yourself well, how do you expect the universe to treat you well? How do you expect to have good things come your way when you don't even treat yourself well?
You know,
it's probably the number one mistake that I see people make that's their invisible enemy
is themselves.
So they go into things like I do it when I speak on stage. And ironically, sometimes we're the most difficult on ourselves and the things we're actually the most anointed and best at. If you were to ask me, what's the area of my life that I am probably the most hard on myself, the most abusive to myself?
I would tell you that it's my public speaking
that when I get off the stage I I think maybe three times in my life has someone asked me,
how did you do? And I said, very well or great.
But probably 15,000
or 30,000 times, depending how many times I've spoken on stage, I've said not so good. I should've done this. I could've done that. Okay.
Or terrible.
And then I spend a bunch of time lamenting the things I said that I shouldn't have or things I forgot to say or things that didn't go well.
You know, the other area that I'm very difficult on myself, I step back and look at it, is in parenting.
Yet kind of if I step way away from it, I'm a pretty good parent.
So it's ironic that sometimes we beat ourselves up
in the number one place we're the best at. Here's what I figured out. As a person of faith, I believe in the adversary or you can call it the devil, whatever you wanna be. You and if you don't believe in any of that, it could just be negative and positive.
And I can tell you that I believe the adversary or the devil attacks us in our thoughts,
and we'll begin to listen to our thoughts. We're really doing the work of the bad guy,
the dude downstairs,
or if you don't believe any of that, negative vibrational frequency.
It attacks us in our thoughts. But when God's working on us, he speaks to our hearts.
He speaks to our spirits.
And I've learned
to stop listening
to my thoughts because that's where I'm attacked. That's where you get attacked is in your thoughts. But if you can get quiet
and listen to your heart,
that's God speaking to you. Remember this. God talks to our hearts. The devil talks to our
minds.
If you don't believe any of that, highest vibrational frequency is in the heart,
heart center. Lowest vibrational frequency is actually in the mind.
And the thing that vibrates at the lowest possible frequency is a lie.
And so when you tell yourself a lie about yourself,
you are now reducing your vibrational frequency. Not only is it not true, not only does it beat you up, not only does it program your reticular activating system to find more bad things about you or have you make more mistakes,
but you're reducing your vibrational frequency because it's not true,
and it's a lie. And when we lie to ourselves, we reduce our frequency. Truth, on the other hand, vibrates at the highest possible frequency,
and that's why it comes from God. What I wanna challenge you to do this week is to begin to listen to your heart, that whisper, that quiet voice that you have to be still or quiet to hear
and drown out the noise, the vast majority of which that noise is being created
by you in your mind or the adversary
in your mind, and it's a lie. Here's the bottom line. It's not working out so good for you. And you need to begin to separate your behavior sometimes and your choices and or your performance
from who you really are.
Here's the truth. Not every singer nails every note every time they sing a song. It doesn't mean they can't sing. It doesn't mean they're not great. I promise you, take your favorite
musical artist of all time. I don't care who you're listening to right now. It doesn't matter. Right? I could promise you they have off nights. I could promise you some nights are better than others,
but I doubt that they beat themselves up to the point where they don't at least open up the opportunity for another great night in the future.
You're probably gonna have a bad call, a bad speech, a bad meeting,
a bad exchange with somebody that you love.
And if you beat yourself up about it, you've opened up the possibility of you doing it again,
not less. We think, well, if I beat myself up about this bad sales call I just had, I'm punishing me,
then I won't wanna do it again. Because when I was a little boy or little girl, I would get punished
when I behaved poorly.
And the truth of the matter is that's not how life works. It's not about punishment.
That doesn't mean we don't wanna course correct. So for example,
learn to say this.
That's not like me. One of the things I teach my professional golfers when they miss a putt, what do most golfers say do you think when they miss a putt? I suck.
Right? I'm terrible.
Effing dummy.
That's what you say when you miss a putt.
And what you're doing is reinforcing the fact that you're more likely to miss another one.
But when you separate yourself from your behavior and realize that's not who you are, it was a behavior. It was a motor movement. It was a a word you said. It was a moment of weakness. It's not who you are. So what I teach my golfers is they when they miss it is, that's not like me.
Gosh. That's not like me.
The greatest athletes in the world, when they make a mistake,
they correct it.
But that's not like me.
Because if you believe that's like you, you will act in accordance with who you believe you are.
And we don't wanna act in accordance if we believe we can't putt or I suck. So separate from the outcome who you are. That's not like me. If I have a bad that's not like me. Let's
get back to me. What is more me? And then I step into the positive me, the higher vibrational frequency, the true me. And so in any event, I wanna remind you to stop beating yourself up and to begin to become your own biggest fan, your own biggest cheerleader, your own biggest support. Heck. If you could just get to neutral
for most of us, that's an upgrade. It's not like you to have a bad sales call. It's not like you to miss a speech. It's not like you to
respond in anger. It's not like you to make a mistake with your kids. It's not like you to forget to call a friend back. That's not like you. I believe something very deeply that once you have rapport with somebody, so there's some sort of trust or rapport,
the more certain person always influences the less certain person
when there is some sort of rapport.
And so and by the way, my wife has proven this now for thirty years. Just about every single fight we've ever had, she ends up winning even when she's wrong because
she's more certain she's right than I am, that I'm right.
And the most certain person always influences the less certain person.
Why is that so important?
Because we when we're in a sales environment or we're coaching somebody or anything we're doing, speaking from stage, interacting
with anybody about trying to make a point, talking about our faith, our politics, whatever it is,
the more certain person always has influence over the less one. So the less certain person is what we spend most of our time doing is refining the PowerPoint, refining the presentation,
the words we're gonna say, exactly how we're gonna frame things, what it's gonna look like, and we don't spend all of the time we need to on increasing our own true certainty level. Now by the way, you can't transfer to somebody that which you truly aren't experiencing is not authentic. So you have to actually be certain.
And I don't think enough people
work on certainty of themselves
and their product or service. Both. There's two things that need to come across in an exchange with somebody. One is certainty about self. That's the hard one. That's the one that takes some digging. And that's why I always say link your certainty or your confidence to your intentions,
not just your abilities.
Because you're in you know about your intentions. You know that's to be true. When you connect with your intent,
you can come across much more certain. I'm certain I want to help. I'm certain I want to serve,
and that increases your certainty level. But the other thing not enough people do is increase their certainty about their product or service. They don't do enough third party reading. I am constantly reading.
I mean, all the time, articles that validate the different companies that I own products and services or our ideas or our concept or validating that the market's getting bigger or there's a need for us or that we're unique and different.
And I like to validate it with third party stuff, whether that's a book, an article, something online, a story I see. And I'm always feeding my certainty. One of the things I've realized about myself over the last, you know, I don't know, ten or fifteen years is this is sort of one of my superpowers. I when people ask you why you're successful, sometimes it's very difficult for successful people to answer that question if they're successful in an area. And by the way, I'm unsuccessful in many areas and successful in some. But the ones that I am, oftentimes even on my show when I ask people, they don't know why because they begin to do things habitually and reflexively.
It's become part of their pattern, so they they are almost oblivious to the fact that they do it like any other pattern.
And one of my patterns and habits
for a very long time is to just be ferocious with working on my certainty level about myself, about my product and service, and I do it over and over. And I'll share it with people that I work with. See? Look at see what so and so said. Look at this thing here. Look how much the competitors are doing it wrong. Look. And and I'm constantly increasing certainty because as you increase certainty,
you increase the propensity to perform.
And that's why it's so important as I discussed to not beat yourself up. People who beat themselves up, here's what they lack. Certainty.
They lack certainty. They've not worked
preemptively,
proactively
on their certainty level about themselves or their product or service.
And so this isn't something you can do during a presentation or during an exchange with a friend. It's done before. It's preemptive.
It's preparation.
Preparation is not just the words or the thoughts or the the concept.
Preparation is the belief.
You transfer belief to people. The more certain person influences the less certain person.
And so if that's really true,
then we have to work on that more than any other element
of our being in terms of persuasion with people is certainty,
and you have to actually believe it.
So this week, I wanna challenge you. What are you doing
externally outside
your business, outside your normal routine to increase your certainty about yourself
or your product service or company?
And it's gotta be a habit. It's gotta be daily in my opinion. If for at a minimum weekly, you're reading things, you're sharing things, you're feeding it feeding it. It's like this it's like this I was gonna say monster or beast, but it's really not. It's like this beautiful spirit you're feeding that you can transfer.
So, you know, sometimes it's a monster or beast where you're like, man, we got it. You know, you got that. But other times,
it's this beautiful spirit of just confidence.
I
was watching
politically,
I don't care where you lie politically, but two of the people that I really studied a lot of are Kennedy and Reagan.
Ironically, one from the left and one from the right. But I've studied these two as leaders.
And one of the things that both of them uniquely
had in common was
this really sly smirk under pressure. Literally,
they were both known, like, when the pressure increased, they didn't scowl more. They smirked and smiled more.
And it was like this reflexive habitual thing
that both of them did. Ain't that interesting?
Yet very different people,
but at different ages when they're president by a mile,
different parties, different philosophies
in some cases.
Yet under pressure, their staff and team and family both commented individually about both of them that they would smirk. You go back and look at Reagan in debates. You can go back and look at Kennedy in debates,
videos under pressure, big speeches they made. They had this thing.
And the reason that the people around them said that as the pressure increased,
their certainty level about their decision making increased
under pressure,
that they felt more and more certain
about the decisions that they were making. It's really, really
fascinating
study of leadership
and of human beings
that actually most people cower under pressure and shrink.
These two leaders knew to increase their certainty level under pressure, and they had done that work preemptively so that when the pressure hit, when the moment hit,
they were the best them
decisively
in those moments, processing information in those moments, persuading
their team and staff, persuading other world leaders. I mean, imagine the amount of persuasion that has to happen. And so it requires a gigantic level of certainty. And so no matter what you believe politically, most people think that both of those guys were pretty darn good presidents depending upon if they believe in the left or the right, depending on their party. The point is under pressure,
they got lighter and not heavier, and that's because they had worked on their certainty level. So I want you to change this. You know, ships don't sink because the water around them. Ships sink because of the water that gets in them. It's not what's going on around you.
It's what's going on within you.
There's an enemy within you, and it's you.
You have to remember this. You are not your thoughts. Your thoughts don't come from you. There's nothing wrong with having high standards. In fact, I recommend it. Having high standards for yourself is completely different than being hard on yourself. And because I talk about having high standards all the time, I think people conflate these two things and think, well, if I don't live up to my standards, then I have to beat myself up as if if I beat myself up somehow,
that's how I'm gonna change.
And where's this really stem from in our lives? This enemy within.
This enemy within comes from this notion that when we were little kids, when we did something bad, we got punished.
And somehow, over time, we've decided, I'm gonna punish myself,
and somehow that's gonna get me to reach my standards. Nothing could be further from the truth.
And so you have to stop doing this.
The ship is sinking because you're letting the water within you drown you literally in your thoughts. Remember this. Self talk leads to self thoughts. And by the way, vice versa.
Negative self thoughts lead to negative self talk. And human beings, you and I, are designed
to live consistently with the story we tell ourselves about us.
And so if you're telling yourself this story, you're gonna live congruent with it. You're gonna find more situations that are negative, more situations to let yourself down, more situations to beat yourself up. You're gonna get more and more of what you keep saying and thinking about yourself because that's how the mind works. That's how life works. Thoughts are like magnets.
We literally draw to ourself
exactly what we're thinking about. So if you're thinking something negative about yourself and I know many of you think, no. I know a lot of successful people that are very hard on themselves.
It's different.
They're hard on the behavior,
not on themselves.
So when you watch a great athlete and they miss a bunch of shots, they're thinking that's not like me.
That is not like me. They're not thinking I suck at shooting.
And so there's this fine line between living up to our standards
and talking to ourselves as if we're our own worst enemy.
And what's really sad about that is that you're gonna get to the end of your life, and you're gonna live with no peace because you've had to live with you,
your own enemy.
Can you imagine the person closest to you, the one person in your life who's gonna spend every second of your life is one of your great antagonists?
Or you may say, well, Ed, I'm not really antagonistic on myself or to myself.
Let me ask you this. Are you your own biggest fan? Are you praising yourself regularly, lifting yourself up regularly,
rooting for yourself regularly, believing in yourself regularly?
So maybe it's not. For some of you and for a lot of us, it literally is we're our own worst enemy.
Biggest enemy.
Right? And some of you listeners go, well, that doesn't really apply to me. Well, let me ask you this.
Do you talk to yourself like Jesus would or like your version of God would? Do you talk to yourself like you would hope someone would speak to your children if you have children? Do you talk to yourself like your best friend is you?
Do you?
Are you your own biggest fan, your own biggest supporter, your own biggest cheerleader?
The person who believes in you on earth the most is you? I'm talking about on earth is you. If you're a person of faith, do you truly believe that you were made in the image and likeness of God? Do you really believe that he's holding you in the palm of his hand?
And so you can't love yourself
conditionally.
Well, I'll love myself when the conditions are right. I'll believe in myself once I'm winning.
See, we have to have unconditional
love for ourselves, which means the conditions don't dictate how much I love me or how much I believe in me. Now I'm not saying self love is never to be honest with yourself where you're not living up to a standard
that you have.
That's different than thinking you are your behaviors.
There's a fine line. I could tell you that I know, you know, people that perform at a pretty high level. And although they are hard on the behavior, they're not hard on themselves. Meaning, they don't begin to believe
that they are
the way they're performing. They actually believe the inverse of that. They believe they're better than they're performing.
And so this internal belief causes them to be frustrated with the result, yes, or wanna work harder and change it or be honest with themselves about what needs to change. But there's a difference between not thinking you're good enough and then proving it and thinking you're better than what you're doing and wanting to live up to it.
And so what most of us do is we love ourselves
conditionally, which means we get very little of it because we have to be doing great in order to feel loved. We have to be doing great in order to believe in ourselves. So this becomes this tale that we end up chasing all of our lives.
And so we begin to think, it's the water around my boat. It's the haters. It's the circumstances. It's the market. It's my lack of opportunity. It's whatever it is. And it's not. It's the water within the boat. It's not the words being said and the thoughts about you outside of you. It's the words that are being said and the thoughts about you and or inside of you
that is holding you back in your life. Not only holding you back from the results you wanna get, but holding you back from the emotions you wanna experience.
Because your
closest ally, you, who's with you every second of every day,
doesn't even believe in you and love you the way that you're worthy of right now. Because you will do everything in your life to confirm
what you believe about yourself,
to make it true,
to live in congruency with the real thoughts, the real beliefs you have to be true about yourself. I say often that one of the most powerful forces in the world, if not beyond God,
is to live in congruency
with our identity, is to live in a way that's congruent with the identity that we hold for ourselves. And as you climb higher in your life,
and I know you intend to, just realize this. New levels, new devils.
The higher you climb, the more you have to have your own back. People think, well, if I could just have my back down here. No. All the way up because new levels, new devils.
And a lot of times that devil is within you. It begins to be your own thoughts. I'm higher than I've ever been. I don't know that I belong up here. I'm not sure I can get I never thought I'd get this far, so I can't get any further. I never thought I'd get this happy or this wealthy or this fit. Well, I start to doubt myself.
And the new levels could be new devils around you, but it could be new devils in your thoughts. And so what I'm saying to you here today,
my dear friend,
is that you have to love yourself unconditionally,
meaning regardless of the conditions.
Self love
or self talk
does not mean you accept everything about yourself. In fact, what it really means
is that you expect better from yourself because you believe so deeply in you.
And that fine line is misunderstood by about 99%
of the population. They see successful people
demanding high standards for themselves,
wanting to grow, wanting to get better, wanting to improve, and not realizing it comes from a place of deep self belief.
And what they do is they flip it and they begin to think, no. It comes from a place of self loathing
or not believing in oneself or being hypercritical
of oneself. Hypercritical of oneself doesn't work. I can tell you that, one of the things that I'm
one of the best at in the world according to other people and even in my own mind is speaking on stage, and it's the place I'm the most hard on myself,
the most self loathing, the most beating myself up, the most picking it apart. And so as a consequence, although I am really good at it, for many, many years, I didn't enjoy doing it.
And once I stopped doing that and I began to give myself the grace of believing I was great at it, I began to enjoy it more. And because I began to enjoy it more,
I shifted into a state of much higher inspiration, much higher vibrational frequency,
and I got better at that very thing that I thought I was great at. So that one area where you think you're great, where you're really hard on yourself,
if you begin to give yourself some grace, you'll even get better at it more you're in flow. And you can only be in flow when you're enjoying it, when you're at peace doing it. And so my message to you today, and I hope this really hits home for you, everything we've covered today, is you must begin to be your own biggest fan, your own biggest supporter. That's with what you think. That's with what you feel, and that's what you choose to say out loud and inside about yourself. And I would just say, my friend, you're worthy of it. Give yourself more grace,
a little bit more grace. Will you please give yourself a break?
You're not gonna get out of this alive.
You're not gonna get out of this alive. And what if the person closest to you was your own biggest enemy or at a minimum wasn't even your biggest supporter?
You're with you every single second of every single day.
A little grace,
a little patience,
a little gratitude,
a little love,
a little bit of support. In fact, a lot of all that
would change your life today. And I just wanna tell you as a friend who I may or may not have met you, you were born to do something great with your life.
You were born one of a kind. You're the only human being on earth today with your talents, gifts,
and experience all combined into one soul.
And I believe God wants to use you in other people's lives in an even bigger way than he already is. And the only way that that's going to happen
is that you accept you in your own life in a bigger and more loving and warmer way.
Demand high standards of yourself because you know you're better, because you know you're worth it, because you know you're great, because you know you were born to do something great with your life. When you were a little boy or a little girl, was there anybody who made you feel special? I pray for so many people that they at least had that one person. Maybe you did. It was your grandmother or grandfather or a mom or a dad or a coach or a pastor or a teacher.
Was there somebody in your life, an auntie and uncle that they would just look at you and you'd feel special? You just knew it. There's that one person made you feel a certain way.
If they exist or existed, just picture their precious face just for a second. Close your eyes just for a second.
For me, it was my grandfather papa.
I can just picture his face just how he would look at me and what he would say to me. I felt, I am special papa.
If you had that person in your life
and you picture their face, I bet that makes you emotional.
And the reason that it makes you emotional is they saw the real you.
They were right about you.
If they're alive, make them proud of you while they're still here. If they passed away,
honor them with the man or woman you become.
And if that person doesn't exist,
I apply for that position from a distance,
and I really recommend you step into that role starting right now as that person who looks at you that way. Alright. God bless you everybody.
Max out.