How to Generate Self-Confidence without Faking Anything
We all know self-confidence helps you get more of what you want. But how do you get confident if you haven't yet gotten what you want?
There's a better way than "fake it till you make it," pretending to be something you're not, or blowing yourself up like a blowfish...
The best way is to generate confidence inside of you, by you and for you.
This is something I help my clients do so they can become bolder, braver, and better paid.
This episode is a replay of a webinar where I shared five simple steps anyone can master to generate self-confidence.
If you'd like to watch and not just listen to the replay, come to www.jamieleecoach.com or email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com.
Full Episode Transcript
Hello! Welcome to Episode 55 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.
How are you?
I believe that negotiation skills are leadership skills.
I believe that we are all born to lead, influence, and thrive.
In order to lead, in order to negotiate, in order to influence, confidence is key. And often we look outside of ourselves to generate that confidence for us and it never feels enough. It never feels adequate.
And I think that’s because real confidence comes from within us, not from outside of us.
This is a replay of a webinar that I gave earlier this week, so the sound quality is not super clear but if you are interested in seeing the entire webinar slides and everything, come to jamieleecoach.com and click on Join the Webinar when you land on the home page. There is a button there.
So, without further ado, please enjoy this replay of How to Generate Self-Confidence in Five Steps Without Faking Anything.
Thank you and talk to you soon!
Hello! Welcome to the webinar!
We will get started in literally one minute. I have a lot of amazing content ready for you, so I intend to get started right on time.
Alright, excellent, I love the people who showed up right on time! You’re amazing! Punctuality is an awesome trait, so I really salute you for showing up to the webinar right on time. Love it!
Okay, and I see some of my clients here as well. Great to have you!
So, I have prepared a slide presentation because I know some people like to read as well as listen. Some people are reading-oriented, listening-oriented, visual-oriented, aural-oriented.
So, welcome to the reprisal of this webinar, How to Generate Self-Confidence in Five Steps Without Faking Anything.
My name is Jamie Lee, I work as a coach. You can email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com. You can come on over to my site: jamieleecoach.com
I am a coach, I am a speaker, I am a martial artist.
And maybe there’s a lesson right here on this introduction because I think you can generate a lot of self-confidence simply by the way you speak about yourself.
How do you introduce yourself?
What language, what identity do you choose for you?
And for me, I really feel at heart I am a coach, I am really born to be a coach. I love this vocation and I also have worked as a professional speaker for a little bit longer than I have worked as a coach. And that was supported by the fact that I have been my first and foremost client as a coach. I coach myself constantly, all the time.
I am also a martial artist. This is something that is new in my life. This is about a year ago, I’ll tell you a little bit about that, and that has also helped to generate a lot of self-confidence.
As a coach, my mission is to help high performers like you become bolder, braver, and better paid through powerful mindset shifts.
I started out by helping women negotiate for what they want in the workplace and I have found that the most important thing is how we think, how we feel, and how we act, which is how I define mindset. It’s what we think, how we feel, how we act and how we think on purpose, how we feel on purpose, and how we act on purpose.
In other words, the intentional mindset that we bring to our negotiation, to our workplace, to our lives can generate results and if you think, feel, and act on purpose, you can create the results that you want.
So, as I mentioned, this is a reprisal of a webinar that I gave last week, so I just want to give a public announcement before we dive into the content because last week I was telling people about my Mastermind group and I said it’s going to launch - well, the second iteration- will launch in February and I’ve gotten feedback that more people would like to start in March. So, the date has changed, and you can come to jamieleecoach.com/mastermind to learn more about this group coaching opportunity.
Well, it’s more than just group coaching because you get the opportunity to do self-study, you get the opportunity to work with me privately, and to work within a group of ambitious, like-minded women. So, the first group call with start in March, March 19th, as you can see the dates are listed here.
What you see on this page is a picture from a really wonderful workshop that I get to give again! I’m really excited to reprise this workshop in March. I hosted a speakers’ workshop for global feminists. In this picture are feminists from all over the world: Canada, Poland, Peru, Africa, Congo, Syria. And these women come from places where there are conflict, where there is war, where there is poverty, where there is persecution of women. And yet they still choose to take a stand. They still choose to speak up, use their voice to elevate the status of women all around the world. They come to the UN and they address the UN, here in New York City, and they talk about what we can do as world citizens to uplift women around the world and to make the world a more equal place.
I think the work that I do is so important because I empower women to use their voices and I believe in the work that I do because women can change the world. I really believe that. And I believe that as a woman of color, as a first-generation immigrant, as somebody who is a minority in this country, I really feel that the work I do is important, not just because it generates a living for me, but because it has the power to change the world.
You have the power to change the world.
So, I have a lot to say, obviously.
I work as a speaker, a professional speaker, I often give workshops, keynotes, seminars and webinars just like this one and I still have more to say, so I also host a weekly podcast. You can find it on the Anchor platform, or on iTunes, Android, there’s ten different platforms where you can find Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I have 54 episodes, many of them around the issue of speaking up, communicating, setting boundaries, for example, how to negotiate, how to lead in your life so that you can thrive. I really do believe that we are all born with the capacity to thrive, not just survive, in our lives.
As I mentioned, I’m also a martial artist. I started a year ago. I’m still a white belt, as you can see in this Instagram photo, but this year I really doubled down on my commitment to making growth as a martial artist a priority in my life and I’ve been training quite a lot and it has really generated a lot of self-confidence for me.
I practice the art of Aikido which is a modern Japanese martial art that is focused around peace and protecting both the attacker and the defender. It’s about redirecting the flow of energy rather than putting people down and hurting people.
I do this practice every Monday night where I practice freestyle Aikido with my eyes closed and I have simultaneous attacks from my classmates, my fellow martial artists. And as you can imagine, 80% of the martial artists in my dojo are men. And I’m petite. I’m Asian. And most of them are about twice my size.
Regardless, because I commit to the art of this Aikido, I have learned how to flip them, throw them, evade them, even though they’re coming at me with strikes, punches. And I want to say, the number one thing in my practice that has really helped to generate the most self-confidence is every time I fall, I get back up again. Getting back up again over and over and over again not just does wonders for my core but does wonders for my self-confidence because it just reminds me again that I have the capacity to get up and learn, to grow, and try again and again and again.
We’ll talk a bit more about that in-depth.
So, if you are listening to this webinar, you might think, “Well, that’s nice, Jamie. That’s great. Must be easy for you. I bet self-confidence comes really easy for you.”
I can see how people can think that about me because it’s so easy to compare other people’s shiny outsides with your shabby inside. I used to do that too, all the time and think, “Oh! That must be nice for that other person, doing these great, amazing things, being a public speaker and coach and doing martial arts.”
The truth of the matter is I have struggled with self-confidence for most of my life. I struggle with anxiety every day. And there was a time in my life I was so lacking in confidence, I did not know how to speak up in the workplace.
About eleven years ago, I worked in finance, in a male-dominated industry. I was the only woman at the trading desk at a hedge fund and I remember just feeling so down on myself, feeling so frustrating, so lacking in self-esteem, I looked at my life partner and I said, “You know, I’ve really gotta learn how to communicate! I really can’t get through to my boss, to my coworkers. I feel like I’m hitting my head against the wall.”
I also found out I was making $50,000 in a $100,000 job. So there was a point in my life when I didn’t know how to negotiate, I didn’t know how to communicate, I didn’t know how to lead. I just felt like I was being affected by external circumstances and I felt stuck and lacking in self-confidence.
So what turned that around for me is that I made a conscious effort to growing the skills that I realized I needed in order for me to thrive and those skills were negotiating, leading, communicating. And now what I do is I teach other people how to do that because I’ve found out that this is such a powerful skill. You can learn it, you can grow it, and it will change your life.
And when you hear that, you might say, “Yeah, that’s easier said than done, Jamie.”
Absolutely! You’re right! It is easier said than done!
Talk is cheap.
For me, the moment my life really changed was when I started to study these concepts of negotiation, communication, and leadership and I decided that not only did I want to become so adept at it that I can teach it and coach other people to do it, I want to walk the talk that I give.
I want to be a living, walking example of what is possible when you apply those concepts, apply those skills, and really commit to growing as an individual.
So doing it has made the biggest impact, rather than talking about it. And today, we’re talking about it. This is easy. Listening about it is easy. Applying these concepts and seeing the impact in your life? That is going to generate change, power, and transformation.
So, don’t just listen to me. Try them out yourself.
And also, you might be wondering, “But, you know what? Studies say men have it easier. There’s so many books and articles that say men are confident, women are not.”
So, I want to take a pause there because I just want to highlight that this is a matter of perspective. It’s a matter of choice because there are other studies and there are other books that say men don’t have it easier. It’s actually tougher on men now. Women have it easier. It depends on who you ask. Some people will say men have it easier, some people will say women have it easier. So, what this shows us is that it’s a matter of perspective. When it’s a matter of perspective, it means that it’s a matter of choice.
So what’s the choice that you are making?
I used to think that the world is so unfair. I used to think it’s so unfair, men are privileged, women are not. It’s terrible. Something has to change in the world before something can change for me, inside of me.
And when I thought this way, when I believed this way, I felt very resentful, I felt powerless, I felt it was unfair, I felt frustrated, and I noticed that there wasn’t a lot of forward progress in my life. And notice when I held onto these thoughts, it’s unfair, that not a lot changed for me, inside of me.
And having said that, a lot of people think that self-confidence is created at the effect of external circumstances, that self-confidence is created because of the body you have, because of what other people do for you, because of the money you have, because of the success you create outside of you.
So, let’s examine that.
By the way, I looked up the word “self-confidence” on Google.com and this was the sample sentence that was being used just to demonstrate the use of the word self-confidence:
“I feel terribly tired and completely lacking in self-confidence.”
So what this example sentence shows us is that a lot of people think, even Google.com thinks that self-confidence is at the effect of the body. And I want to question that.
If you feel terribly tired, if your body is tired, does that really mean that you can’t generate self-confidence? If you feel terribly tired, does that mean that you will be completely lacking in self-confidence? I want to question that thought.
Here was the second sample sentence:
“She took care to build up his self-confidence by involving him in the planning.”
Now if we have some feminists in this group, in this audience, I think we should all question this. Why is she building up his self-confidence? Why isn’t she building up her own self-confidence? Why does he need her to build up his self-confidence, right? Is she his mother? I mean, it’s just weird. But this was the sentence that I found on Google.com as an example of the usage of the word self-confidence and it shows that a lot of people think that self-confidence is at the effect of other people.
My father, my own dear father told me that he doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence because he didn’t have the right upbringing. Even though my grandmother was this really successful, self-made business woman, he felt that nobody was there for him, therefore he doesn’t have the self-confidence and therefore he doesn’t have the success.
So, this kind of thinking is rampant, like everybody, a lot of people, 99% of the world probably thinks this way.
And also, a lot of people feel that confidence comes at the effect of what you have, of your bank account. This is something that one of my clients told me: “If I had $100,000, then I’d feel confident to quit my job and go for my dreams. Money is security and I need that security so that I can feel confident to quit my job and go for my dreams,”
And I want to question that. Why can’t you create the security in yourself before you have the money, right? And if you could generate that self-confidence before you had the money, imagine, you’d be more empowered, more ready, more confident to create money. And when you’re more confident, you create more money, right? Instead of waiting for the money to give you confidence, what if you created the confidence first and then created the money. I think your results would just be exponentially better.
But, you know, a lot of people feel that success comes when you have position, authority, success. But is that true? This is a fascinating TED Talk that I highly recommend. If you Google “Know Your Inner Saboteurs,” a TEDX talk given by executive coach Shirzad Chamine and what he did was he interviewed 100 CEOs and he asked them to share the one secret they never tell anyone, one secret that is really true inside of them.
And this is what they said: My air of confidence is fake. I don’t love myself very much. I am self-destructive and I don’t know why.
And remember, the CEOs in our world right now, 80% of them are men, so even though some people have the perspective that men have it easier, men are more confident, if we look at the actual data, things that real CEOs, again, most of them men, are saying, it seems contrary to our perspective that men have it easier.
My air of confidence is fake.
I don’t love myself very much.
I am self-destructive and I don’t know why.
So, this begs the question, if success and achievement, if position, big salary, big titles like CEO, if they don’t make you confident, then what does?
To summarize, I want to highlight that when you think that confidence is at the effect of external circumstances like position, title, money, other people, your body, this generates a sense of powerlessness, right? You’re giving power to other people to create confidence for you. You’re giving power to money to give you that sense of confidence. And when you feel powerless, you feel like a victim of the circumstance. And when you feel like a victim of the circumstance, you feel resentful. And when you’re resentful, unhappy, you feel insecure, you lack self-confidence.
So, what’s the solution?
Here’s the solution I want to suggest: Instead of waiting for external circumstances, what if you caused the effect? What if you generated that self-confidence from within you? And this, if you are the cause, you cause the effect of self-confidence and the results you have because of self-confidence, you generate immense power. You put yourself in the position of being the creator, you are in creation mode rather than survival mode, rather than stress mode, right? And when you are in creation mode and you generate that power, you have confidence, you generate that confidence.
So, what is self-confidence? Self-confidence, as I see it, is simply a state of mind. It’s a mindset. Remember, mindset is how you think, how you feel, and how you act. So, self-confidence is how you think of yourself. Self-confidence is how you feel trust for you to do the things that you said you will do. And self-confidence is how you act to follow through on your own commitments to yourself.
It’s all about the relationship that you have with yourself. How you think of yourself, how you feel about yourself, and how you act to follow through on commitments to yourself.
So, that said, as I promised, here are the five simple steps that anyone can do. Simple, not easy. It does require effort. It does require focus. It does require action. It does require risk.
So, what are the five steps?
Number one: Believe in your future self. Believe in you. Believe in your future self.
Number two: Commit to taking action.
Number three: Allow yourself to fail when you take that action.
Number four: Think greater than you feel.
Number: five: Do it all over again, again and again and again. Repeat.
So, what do I mean by believing in your future self? To believe is to simply think on repeat. That’s it. Whatever you believe, it feels like your truth. It feels like your reality because you have thought the thought on repeat over and over and over again. So, if you want to believe in your future self, simply think about your future self on repeat, on purpose, over and over and over again. It becomes a habit of the mind. You create a new habit of your new mind.
And just think about what the future is. I love this quote by Dan Sullivan: “The future is your property. The future belongs to you. At any given moment, when we think about the future, the future only exists as a concept in your mind.” And that means you can do whatever you want with your concept of the future.It does not have to look like yesterday, it does not like to look like your present.
You can build your property any way you want. I live in this really great New York City apartment where the shape of the living room is a triangle, not a rectangle. That’s why I have so many windows behind me, it’s a big triangle. So, it doesn’t have to look like every other apartment, right?
So your future is your property. You can make it be whatever you want. The only limitation is your imagination and that goes for whenever you think about the future because whenever you think about the future, the future simply exists as a concept in your mind. When I think about that, it really blows my mind, it’s really fun to think about the future.
So who is your future self?
Your future self is who you will become to live a life of no regrets.
Your future self is who you will come to live a life of no regrets.
So, having said that, this is a question that I want to pose to you and I really want you to think about it, and not just think about it but maybe journal about it. Write it out. What do you think? How would you answer this question: Who would you need to become to say you lived a life of no regrets at the end of your life?
The art of coaching is all about supporting you to live the life that you most want to live. And in order for you to do that, first we need to think about, imagine our future. Who would you need to become to say you lived a life of no regrets at the end of your life?
And for me, I answer this question by saying I would have taken 100% responsibility for everything that I have created in my life. I do not want to be a victim. I do not want to be in the position of blaming people at the end of my life because I didn’t do something, I didn’t generate a specific result. That, for me, is my definition of living a life of no regrets - taking 100% responsibility.
And for you, you may have a different response to that. Maybe for you, you would need to become the person who takes care of your family. You need to become the person who is the breadwinner. You need to become a better student, a better professional, a better architect, a better engineer, a better friend. For you, it’s a very individual and personal answer. No one’s life is like anyone’s life.
So, who would you need to become to say you lived a life of no regrets? Think about it. Journal about it.
And in order for you to believe in your future self, I think this requires for you to have an intentional relationship with your future self.
So, in this picture, what’s happening is that on the left is your current self and on the right is your future self which I’d imagine would be a greater version of you. Don’t we all want to grow and become a better version of ourselves?
So when the current self looks at the future self, what does she see? How do you see your future self? And this can be a really powerful exercise, something that I take all of my clients through. How do you see your future self? Is she more confident? Is she more accomplished? Is she standing tall? Is she bolder? Is she braver? Is she better paid? What kind of life is she living?
Get really vivid with your imagination.
And at the same time, you have a relationship with your future self. So how does your future self see you, you right now? And when I ask my future self, “Well, how do you see the current Jamie?”, the future self of Jamie says, “She’s doing great! Keep going! What you’re worrying about is not such a big deal. It’s all gonna work out. Don’t worry so much. It’s gonna go great. Keep going, you’re doing good.” There’s only words of encouragement, support, and love when I ask my future self, “How do you see me now,” right?
So this could be a really powerful exercise. You can do it yourself. Just ask yourself, “Who is my future self?” and get really vivid with your imagination. And also, from the perspective of your future self, see what that future you would say to you now.
And from there, number two: Commit to taking action. If you ask your future self, “What do I need to do to become a better version of me?” she may have an answer for you. Or you may know right now what you need to do in order to become that better version of you. So commit to taking action towards that future self because commitment generates immense power.
And for you, that commitment may look like, I am going to reach out to one person a day to grow my professional network. I am going to practice asking for what I want to build my negotiation skills. I’m going to commit to joining Toastmasters, which is something that I did three years ago because I am committed to growing my skills as a speaker.
Action creates results, so commit to taking action.
So, what is one ambitious goal that you want to achieve so you can be more of who you want to be? Write this goal down and make this goal specific and time-bound so it’s real.
Once we do that, we are going to experience the negative emotions, the ugly emotions, right? Fear, doubt, shame. And a lot of us don’t know how to deal with these negative emotions and interpret these emotions as a sign that we need to stop, as a sign that we can’t honor our commitment, honor our commitment and take action, that we can’t do the things, which is not true.
What if fear, doubt, shame, or any other negative emotion that comes up with you committing to taking actions towards an ambitious goal are there for you to get past them? What if they’re not a stop sign? What if they’re not a Do-Not-Proceed sign? What if they are a door, an entryway for you to get past and go to someplace really cool? Maybe you’re exiting the door and going on an adventure or maybe you’re going into the house and living the life of your dreams.
And also, what is failure, exactly? Because in order for us to commit and continue to take action, we need to allow ourselves to fail. That’s number three: allow ourselves to fail.
What is failure, exactly? How do you define failure?
And I have coached many clients and clients have answered this question many different ways. Predominantly, there have been three responses:
Failure is simply an omission of a necessary action or key step. You just didn’t do the thing. So, take for example, last week I gave this webinar and I forgot to hit record. So that was a failure on my part. I omitted the action of hitting record.
Some clients have told me that failure is simply when things are different than what you expected it to be. It’s simply a different result than your expectation. It’s just different. Sometimes people feel that’s a failure. That’s fine.
Also, my client told me this past weekend that for her failure is simply a learning opportunity and I think that is a really great way to look at failure. When you look at failure as a way to learn, as an opportunity to learn, you put yourself in the growth mindset as opposed to the fixed mindset. If you haven’t already, look up Carol Dweck growth mindset and when you think that failure is a way to learn and grow yourself, you’re more likely to generate self-confidence, willingness to take action and continue to develop your skills. But when you have a fixed mindset that it’s either/or, you either succeed or fail and failure is bad. There’s no learning opportunity, it’s just bad. When you have that fixed mindset, you’re less likely to continue to take action, continue to grow and actually grow.
And I think this really sums it up. “For me, the road to success is paved with failure.” This is a quote by my own coach, Brooke Castillo who is an extraordinarily successful woman. She has created $17 million as a life coach! Amazing!
“The road to success is paved with failure”. So are you willing to fail so that you can succeed? Are you willing to get on that road to success and allow yourself to make mistakes, omit necessary actions, and learn in the process? Because that is how you succeed.
And when you continue to allow yourself to fail, allow yourself to learn, then you can generate a lot of self-confidence from that commitment to continuing to grow yourself.
But I think a lot of people mistake the concept of failure with the fear of what other people will think, what other people will say about us. And this is a barrier that I often encounter when I coach negotiation clients. A lot of women have said that they are reluctant to negotiate, especially in the workplace, because they are afraid of being seen as greedy, aggressive, a witch with a ‘b’. So we create barriers for ourselves. We create barriers for developing and generating self-confidence when we let that fear of what other people will think, when we let that fear stop us from taking action. So we create barriers for ourselves when we let fear stop us from taking action and stop us from allowing ourselves to fail.
So, if you have experienced that fear, here’s a question I want to ask you. So what if you gave it your all, you gave it 100% to achieving your ambitious goal, to living a life of no regrets, to making yourself more like the future self that you want to be and you failed? You forgot to do something. It happens to the best of us, right? It didn’t go as you expected or you learned that oh, I had to something completely different. So what if you failed? And what do you think people will say?
And also, I want to highlight, this is a really powerful exercise, so if you are following along, if you have some pen and paper, write it down. What do you really think people will say if you gave it your all and you failed at achieving your ambitious goal?
So, for me, when I ask this question to myself, I can see either way. Some people would be like, “Oh, it’s not big deal, Jamie. You can try again. You’ve got what it takes! Don’t worry so much about it. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” It’s something that I’ve actually heard a lot of people tell me. And if you are an ambitious person who sets some ambitious goals for yourself, you might have also heard that. People are like, “Don’t be so hard on yourself! It’s alright! No big deal,” right? For people outside of you, they see that you can do it, it’s not a big deal.
The part of myself that can imagine the negative things, I call it the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee or the Primitive Brain because it’s always saying things like, “Who do you think you are? You’re gonna fail. You’re not gonna meet expectations. You’re gonna be a disappointment. Why do you even try?”
That voice is the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee and that voice is like, “Well people might say, ‘Told you so. This coaching thing is a hack. I told you you’re not gonna succeed.’” Okay, so I can imagine both sides.
So, if you can imagine both sides, write down what they would say and then ask yourself, “Who are these people? Who are these people exactly? What are they saying and who are they?” I want you to name ten. Really think about it. Who are ten people who are gonna say that it wasn’t worth it for you to go for your dreams. Who are they?
When I ask myself this question, I realize that I have generalized one or two people who said something that wasn’t quite as bad I think it’s gonna be and then I extrapolated it in my brain and then I created this story that they said these things.
I’ll be more specific. I recognize that when I was growing up, my sister used to be like, “Well, don’t do that! I’m gonna tell Mom! You said a bad word!” She said things like that, with the best intention, I’m sure. And then I blew it up in my mind over time that I can’t do the things that I want because then people will criticize me. And when I really try to think of ten people who say negative things about me, I can’t name them! There might have been one person who was having a bad day and said something that was tangential to what I was doing.
So, anyway, long story short, what I do in my own brain is create a story, a fictional story, from an irrelevant past. And I often blow up a story that is not actually what people literally said.
So try it out for you. Who are these ten people who are gonna have an opinion if you go for your dreams and fail? And really name them. Is that exactly what they said? Be really truthful here.
Number four: Now that you have believed in your future self, now that you have committed to taking action, now that you have allowed yourself to fail, number four is the key step, which is to think greater than you feel.
Think greater about you than how you feel about you.
What do I mean by that?
This is a quote from this phenomenal book I highly, highly recommend. This book is literally changing my life inside out. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe DiSpenza. I love it so much, I bought a copy for everyone in the January Small Group Mastermind. It’s a book about the science of the human brain and how you can leverage meditation to change your brain. I love that! So powerful.
So, what does it mean to think greater than how you feel?
Well, first of all, you have to write down your thoughts. What is it that you think about you when you go to take that ambitious action towards your ambitious goal so that you can live a life of no regrets? What are all the negative thoughts? What are all the positive thoughts? All of them. Who do you think you are? You’re gonna fail. This isn’t gonna go well. I’m probably gonna give up. Or maybe you have some great thoughts. This is great. I’m excited! Write them down. Our mind is very fickle. Our minds are slippery. The act of writing down the thoughts will give you the opportunity to assume the position of authority as the watcher of your mind.
So you’re not just at the effect of your mind, you get to watch your mind. This is a very powerful act, actually.
And thoughts and feelings are very connected, interconnected. Thoughts cause emotions and so you want to become aware of your emotion. What is the feeling? And what is the connection between what you’re feeling and what you are thinking? Because there is always a connection. And the thing here is we have not been taught to become aware of our feelings. We have been taught to just think, think, think, think, use our analytical minds to survive and get by, make money, right? And more thoughts, more stressful thoughts, just create more stress.
We have not been taught how to become aware of our emotions inside of ourselves and how to deal with them, so I’m gonna talk about that in a little bit.
So, write down your thoughts, become aware of the feelings. What is the emotion? And then choose new thoughts on purpose. Allow yourself to become aware of the thoughts. Allow yourself to become aware of the feelings. And even if you feel a negative thought, you can choose to think a greater thought on purpose.
So, as I said, we’ve not been taught how to manage negative emotions like fear, doubt, and shame which will come up when we commit to taking action, when we commit to a really ambitious goal. They will come up. It’s just part of the process. So, how do we manage them?
Well, first of all, we’ve not been taught how to manage them, so most people take three steps when they feel uncomfortable emotions like fear, doubt, and shame.
Number one: We resist. If you’re not familiar with the symbol beneath the word ‘Resist,’ these are emojis, text emojis that were invented in Japan and in this emoji you can see that the mouth is like a squiggly line. You’re tensing like this, you’re trying to resist the emotion, just not allow yourself to feel the uncomfortable emotions. This is something that a lot of us do by habit, by default.
And some of us just react. And what’s happening here is this little text guy, text emoji guy is flipping a table. Might be a girl, might be woman, excuse me. Text emoji person is flipping a table because they’re reacting to negative emotion. Just blame and anger and attack.
Or you simply avoid. You just shut down the conversation. You walk away. You don’t deal with it at all. And this is a common reaction to how people deal with conflict as well, which is a whole other topic.
But what can happen is, when you resist, react, and avoid, you create this trap, this cycle of resisting, reacting, avoiding, resisting, reacting, avoiding. And it just becomes this cycle that perpetuates itself. You don’t evolve out of the negative emotion, you just make it greater unintentionally.
So, what is an emotion? Why do we create these negative cycles? Why is it so difficult to deal, why do people think that it’s so difficult to deal with? Well, simply, emotion is a vibration in the body. When you feel excitement, like when I feel excitement, I feel it in my chest, I feel like a lightness in my head. When I feel shame, I feel this heaviness in the pit of my stomach.
Emotion is a vibration that you can experience in the body. That’s it.
And as I mentioned earlier, it’s associated with a thought, which is simply a sentence in your mind. And so emotion, by itself, is completely harmless. Anger, when you feel the emotion of anger, you might feel tightness in your stomach and it’s completely harmless to just allow that emotion to be and to pass through the body. It is possible and it is something that I coach my clients to do. And it’s a very, very powerful thing because you can observe emotion with compassion, you can experience emotion without suffering, and you can generate new emotion. And remember, self-confidence is the feeling of trust that you will do what you said you will do, and you can generate that emotion inside of yourself.
And emotions are so powerful because there are only five things in the universe. WHAT?! That’s crazy! There are only five things in the Universe? I mean, everything in our world, in our lives, can be categorized into one of these five things. That’s it!
There are neutral circumstances. We talked about the body, we talked about money, we talked about other people, we talked about titles, position, these are all circumstances that are provable, that are neutral, that are factual. Circumstances are things that you can prove in the court of law. And how we interpret or what we think of those neutral circumstances are thoughts which are 100% optional.
Now, our brains are wired in such a way that think thoughts by default and that is because our brains are wired for efficiency and it’s just efficient for the brain to just have these knee-jerk reaction thoughts. And in the book that I mentioned to you earlier, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe DiSpenza talks about how 95% of our thoughts are unconscious. They come from our subconscious mind because it has been programmed by socialization, by habit, by our past.
So, what I’m saying is even though 95% of your thoughts will not feel like an option, they’ll just feel factual and believable, they are in fact optional because you can choose to use the human brain, the prefrontal cortex to generate new thoughts on purpose.
And that’s what I mean when I say think greater than you feel.
And the thoughts that you have generate feelings, generate emotions, and the emotions are so powerful according to MIT professor Jared Curhan, feelings rule negotiation. How you feel about yourself, how you feel about the counterpart, how you feel about the potential outcome, how you feel about the process. That’s what drives the success of a negotiation.
Why?
Because feelings drive behavior. Feelings drive your actions. And as I mentioned earlier, actions drive results. And the results that you get from a specific thought will always prove the originating thought.
So, let me give you an example of this model when I indulged in a default thought, in a thought that comes from the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee, as I mentioned, or the Primitive Brain. So, as I mentioned, three years ago, I lacked confidence as a speaker but I had this dream, I had the vision of becoming a professional speaker, workshop leader, and coach. So, I joined Toastmasters and I committed to delivering a prepared speech at least once a month for ten months. They had a program called The Competent Communicator and in The Competent Communicator, there are ten speeches. I said, I am going to deliver a speech at least once a month.So, I made the commitment.
And so the neutral circumstance was that I had scheduled myself to give a speech at New York Toastmasters and New York Toastmasters is a wonderful nonprofit that really does wonders, especially if you are looking to develop your self-confidence as a speaker, communicator, and leader.
But at one point, I had the default thought that I’m afraid to fail in front of people. I’m afraid what people will think. I’m afraid of messing up. And when I had this thought, when I thought this thought, I’m afraid to fail in front of people, I experienced the emotion of fear and also anxiety, fearful anxiety. And when I was coming from this fearful anxiety, I procrastinated. That was the action that I took from this fearful anxiety because I didn’t know how to deal, I didn’t know how to allow for this emotion. I was resisting it, I was avoiding it, and I was looking for distractions like looking for snacks in the kitchen or checking my email or going on social media.
And then I would worry rather than work on the speech. And then I fumbled through the speech. I didn’t really do my best because I had spent so much time procrastinating, looking for distractions, worrying rather than working on this speech.
And what was the result that I had created for myself from thinking that I’m afraid to fail in front of people is that I felt like a failure. And you see how the result, feeling like a failure, provided evidence for the thought that I’m afraid to fail in front of people.
So, how did I apply thinking greater than how I feel to myself?
Once I started coaching myself, I decided to approach the Toastmasters speech with a different mindset, with a different thought. So, same circumstance, Toastmasters speech, and I decided to think a new thought on purpose, even though I was still experiencing anxiety.
I am committed to learn by doing. I am committed to learn by failing. I am committed to allow myself to fail in front of 60 people who attend New York Toastmasters because that is how I will learn. That is how I will grow myself and I am committed to learn by doing because this is how I grow. I’m committed to learn by doing.
And when I told myself that I’m committed to this, I’m committed to doing this, I felt the emotion of commitment. And the emotion of commitment feels solid. It feels like strength inside my body and from that feeling of strength, I can allow the feeling of anxiety to pass through. I can let it be and not resist it, not react to it, not avoid it.
And when I allow the feeling of anxiety to pass through, then I can use the power of my human brain to plan, to prepare, and to practice ahead of time. And when I planned, prepared, and practiced ahead of time, I can ride the adrenaline when I’m standing in front of 60-some-odd people and follow through on my commitment.
So you see how the intentional thought created this new feeling that allowed me to process the negative feeling and follow through on taking action.
And of course there were times I did fail. I didn’t always give perfect speeches. I fumbled. I used a lot of space-filler words, ums and uhs, I still do. I have made mistakes in front of people but that’s okay. It was my commitment to keep showing up, keep following through because I really believed in the vision of my future self who is a professional speaker.
And now I’m doing that! I get paid thousands of dollars to attend leadership conferences, to show up to organizations and teach people the art of negotiating, the art of communicating, the art of leading.
And as a result, I have grown my self-confidence. You can do this too. You don’t need to be a coach, speaker, whatever. You can apply this new thinking on purpose to generate emotion on purpose so that you can generate self-confidence for you, by you.
And so, finally, the last step in the process is to do it over and over and over again. Repeat it, 1-4. Believe in your future self, commit to taking action, allow yourself to fail, continue to think greater than how you feel. And that takes courage.
I remember the last year I was in Toastmasters, I was VP of Membership and I committed to acting from courage rather than comfort. That was inspired by reading Brené Brown. Brené Brown talks about how you can rise about shame by choosing courage over comfort.
So how does courage look for you? What does it look like when you act from courage? When you act from the courage to dream, to believe in your future self, the courage to take action, the courage to feel discomfort because you can and it’s harmless, and the courage to do it over and over and over again.
This, I tell you, will change your life.
So, that wraps up the official content and if you like this material then I want to take this opportunity, the last five minutes that we have, to tell you a little bit more about Small Group Mastermind, which I said earlier will start in March 2019. I got feedback from people that March works better.
So, Small Group Mastermind. It is for eight women who want to lead, influence, and thrive. I’m looking for ambitious people who have strong values of service and excellence. And what you get is, in addition to one-on-one coaching, two one-on-one coaching sessions with me, you also get deep dives into future self, self-confidence, boundaries, emotional mastery, and more. And you’ll get to benefit from both private coaching as well as group accountability as well as the opportunity to study this material by yourself.
So, how does it work exactly? Come to this link: jamieleecoach.com/mastermind. But basically, as I said, you get private coaching, group coaching calls with deep dives on these specific topics and in between calls you will be held accountable to complete worksheets and take action towards your goals.
So if you really want this unique opportunity to be supported by me individually and by a group of like-minded, ambitious women, this is perfect for you because it’s a great deal. And these are the dates and the plan. I just wrapped up the January Mastermind and Sarah S. who was one of the seven women - the first group was seven women - she said that, “Working with Jamie in the Mastermind was extremely valuable.” She said with the group’s help, she developed and applied strategies for helping her regain control over her responses to life’s hurdles and in turn, this empowered her to better pursue the life that she wants.
I love this testimonial.
Here are the next steps: It’s only three payments of $210. You save about $1295 compared to my retail, one-on-one, private coaching rate of $350/hour. This is a great bargain.
If you are interested, email me. Let’s set up a time for us to talk. Let’s make sure this is a good fit for you or you can go to my site and apply at jamieleecoach.com/apply. If you apply, you will get the opportunity to have a free consultation, so there’s no risk, really.
So, does coaching actually work? Does it generate results? Will it generate results for you? So, if you got www.jamieleecoach.com/results, you can see all of the testimonials from my previous negotiation, leadership coaching clients, as well as workshop clients.
I want to tell you some of the success stories from the past year. I coached this amazing woman, Sarah, who was also in the January Mastermind and through coaching, she was able to flip a no to a yes with her dream job company. She was initially turned down but she didn’t give up. She didn’t give up believing in her future self. She didn’t give up generating her own self-confidence and so she was able to go back, get an informational interview, and then get an offer from her dream job. And in the process, she also negotiated a $10,000 salary increase. She is now maxing out her quarterly bonus and she’s still coaching with me and coached her through the performance review process.
I have another client who also hired me to coach her through a salary negotiation process and she’s still coaching with me now as a leadership client. And when she got the offer, she countered, she asked for what she really wanted which was a bigger role. She wanted to be in a capacity to lead technical conversations rather than just be a project manager and as a result she also got a $10,000 salary increase and she is on target to achieve her goal of attending grad school. She’s working towards that goal on purpose with a lot of thought work.
I have another client who I coached and as a result of our coaching, she grew her impact-focused side hustle. She created this wonderful business in addition to her day job that supports women with ADHD and as a result, she was interviewed by industry influencers and this was as a result of her generating her own self-confidence, not looking outside of herself, but generating it from within herself. And she’s also doing so well at her day job. I recently coached her through her performance review cycle and she’s been tapped by the founder of her organization to be a thought leader at her day job. So she’s also growing her entrepreneurial side hustle and excelling at her day job. You can do that. You can thrive.
Do you have any questions for me? We are out of time. I like to end my webinars on time because I want to honor and respect your time commitments as well. If you have any questions for me, feel free to email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com. This webinar was recorded, so if you were not able to attend it live, you will still be able to watch it and stream it.
Thank you very much for your time and attention. If you have any questions, email me. I am grateful for your time and focus. Thank you! Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day.
