contractions kill confidence. What I mean by that is the words can't, won't, shouldn't don't. And perhaps you can think of others but those are the four that come to mind to me right now. Those contractions will kill confidence every single day, you have to eradicate the contractions out of your vocabulary. Hi, I'm Jason Ramsden, and I believe we can all work on leading a more positive and intentional life.
And this show details my journey by sharing my learning stories and conversations with guests. If you want to lead a more intentional life, focus on being the best view possible, please subscribe today. Now, let's get into today's episode. Hello, my positivity posse. And welcome back to another episode of positivity on fire. Today, we're going to be taking a look at self confidence because Well, the truth is, I'm feeling a little lack of confidence myself these days and thought perhaps
you might be as well. So let's dig into some tips to help build self confidence. And I'll share a little bit of my processing along the way. The route of true competence grows from our ability to be in unconditional friendship with ourselves. Pema Trojan started with a quote, because I feel like this is an important one to remember, the root of true
competence. It comes from this unconditional friendship with ourselves and, and you you know probably as well as I know that we get into these spots with ourselves where we'd don't treat ourselves like we would somebody that we care about somebody that we love, we tend to treat ourselves like somebody that we may not like so much. And I think it's a good reminder for us, that confident people, and I may appear to be a confident person, putting myself out into the universe in lots of
different ways. Very public, I had somebody say to me recently, as someone who is super public, you're out there in lots of different spaces, you're still pretty private. And it's the truth is, the competent people still suffer from bouts of self confidence issues. And I'm one of those folks. And that's what I'm feeling today. So let's dive into this a little bit. The funny thing about confidence is it's not something that we come by naturally, as human beings, we are built to learn from our
negative experiences. This goes back 1000s of years when cave people were walking the earth, we had to learn from our negative experiences is how we were built to survive. So many different inputs were coming at us we had to learn, like what worked and what didn't work. And so naturally, confidence is not something that comes to us.
Think about this for a moment have if you've ever had a performance review, or have been critiqued on anything, you've gone through school in life, what do you focus on, you don't focus on the 99% of good things that are said about you, or about the tasks that you didn't know, he focused on the 1% of bad things said it's the bad things, for whatever reason that we focus on. It's the bad things it's feeding into that that natural negativity that we we
learn from. And the truth is, we want to move forward with being more competent people and, and I'm working on this myself as well, I said at the beginning of the show, it takes small changes, it's not this one big change that's going to take you from having a lack of self confidence to having an overarching approach to confidence. Now, you've got to do things slowly, you've got to, you've got to take small steps to build into your life, things are going to help you be more
self confident. And we'll dive into that here in a moment. I just want you to remember that we are all on a journey. My friends, every single one of us is on a journey. So I want you to remember you you can't compare yourself to what you see on social what you see elsewhere. In the world, what you're seeing is a finished product in the moment. It's not to say that those people are finished products, or they have this self confidence. They seem that way. No, you're seeing a
production. All right. And when you compare somebody else's show the onstage presence, to your backstage messiness, it's never going to work out well for you. And that's what impedes our self confidence is also this comparison game of looking at other people and saying, Oh my gosh, look how well put together, look at all the things that they're doing. Take a look at what's going on in their life. And I just can't compare.
Because you're comparing yourself like what you know, and your muddiness of your life to that front of stage comparison, so don't do it. I know it's hard we all we all do it and I'll share a story of that here in a little bit as we go through these tips, but remember Small changes, not big changes. When you do the small changes, you'll see big returns, it just takes time. Today, I have eight tips for you called from a variety of different sources, but eight tips to help you become a more
self competent person. And I'm going to be taking this advice myself. So we're on this journey together, right? It's not me telling you how to how to take this journey and do it for yourself. I'm on this journey as well. So I appreciate you being here. But tip number one, take a look at what you've already achieved. And yes, we all have achieved something in our lives.
Again, don't compare yourself to others in this situation, look at your own life, what have you achieved, you've done some great things, you just may not realize it. So what you're going to do here is you're going to make a list. And if you are at home, and you can stop this podcast and do it right now pull out a piece of paper, pull out a pencil or a pen, and make the list of your achievements, I guarantee you, you've done some great things in your life, make
the list. And then what you're going to do is set that aside in a place where you know that you can find the list. All right, make it readily accessible to you. If you want to put it on an app on your phone, that's great, too. What you're going to do is you're going to use that list. So when you are fighting a bout of self confidence issues, pull out the list, use it use the list as a guide to say to yourself, you know what, I have done great things. My life is
progress, not perfection. But I have done some amazing things in my life. And I can continue to do that. If I just get out of this lack of self confidence at this moment. So use the list, put it someplace where you can find it. Number two, I said this earlier, stop comparing yourself to others. I know we all do it, we all do it. But as soon as you start to compare yourself to others, you lessen yourself, you lessen the way that you feel about yourself, you have envy
that creeps in. And as we all know, envy is one of the deadly seven deadly sins. So you want to extract that from your life. And I know it's not easy. Let me let me tell you, I have spent the last year going through maybe July would have had would have been a year where I was putting myself out there on Tick tock, I was putting stories. I was sharing quotes. I was trying to get people to buy into my my mantra of kindness always wins and impact one or impact 1 million, there's no difference.
And I saw all these other creators out there all these other people putting content out there, having their followers grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. And I can tell you, and I know you're listening, hey, there's a grown man saying he was on tik tok, and he was envious of other people. It's the truth, we all get there we all if you're a content creator in any way, you're going to do it. And we're going to do it in other areas of our lives. But for me, I wondered what was
wrong with me. I wondered, what was wrong with me as a person that people didn't gravitate towards me. I know what you're thinking, old guy on a social media app. But there are people in the same age range, who have a lot more followers. And what I came to realize is that they were really sharing stories. They weren't trying to portray this perfectly put together a package of confidence. They were sharing their stories, and that
gravitated people to them. But I couldn't help fall into the trap of being envious of what these other people had going on. And I worked through it, I worked through it because I realized I wasn't at a point in my life where I was going to be able to share stories in that way. I was comparing somebody's readiness somebody in front of stage to my own back of stage. And it was messy. And it still is messy. But I let it go. I let it go.
Because I realized that I was impacting the lives of people I still am through this podcast through other social media means I am impacting people's lives. And that's what matters most wasn't the count of people wasn't the number of people following me. And I hate that word following but say supporting me in my journey. That doesn't matter. Alright, so again, stop comparing yourself to other people. Number three on the list, face your fears, you
got to face them. And for me, as somebody who's trying to move people forward in their lives, I've got to face the fear of being vulnerable. I'm really good at being vulnerable. Why wants a really good who's really going to be vulnerable, but I'm better at being vulnerable one on one with people than I am in a public space. And that's
difficult. I've got to face that fear if I want to continue to push forward with With this effort of mine to impact one or impact 1 million, I've got to face that fear and you have to do it as well. Confidence only builds, when you face your fears head on, if you let your fears constantly when you think of fear in your life, as that elementary school bully, if you will, if you let the bully win over and over again, you will
not move forward. So you're going to have to turn face the fear, face the bully head on and say, All right, let's go. So an example, as I started my public speaking journey, many moons ago, I had this fear of being in front of people, because it was vulnerable for me. And what I found was that, as I did it, over, and over and over again, to the point where I ended up giving over 30 different presentations over the course of my career, that it got easier.
It wasn't easy, okay? When you have something that is fearful for you, it doesn't always become easy, but when you face it head on, it can become easier. So yes, I still got nervous when I got on stage, I still got nervous, preparing for being onstage. But as soon as I got into the flow of being onstage, as soon as I connected with the audience, as soon as I had feedback, and conversation, the fear lessened, and it actually dissipated him and left. But it took some time to
face the fears. And you're going to have to do the same thing. Whatever your journey is, whatever issue you're facing is you have to turn around, you have to turn and face that fear head on, it's the only way you're going to have confidence building your life. Number four, set goals, confident people set goals, you have to set goals, and you have to take those goals and chunk them down into small
steps to help get you there. So right now I'm in the middle of a health journey, I've been on a health journey off and on many, many times in my life, I feel like at the age of 53, I have to get this in order, right? This we're talking about the rest of my life. So I've set a goal to lose X amount of weight, I've set a goal of eating healthier, tracking what I'm eating to make sure I understand how different foods affect me daily, weekly,
monthly, whatever it may be. But I set a goal, I didn't say oh, I need to lose 50 pounds. And oh, by the way, that is my ultimate goal. Now I said okay, I have to lose, I want to lose not have to, you should always say want and not have, I want to lose 10 pounds by x eight. And then once I achieve that goal, five pounds by the next date. Again, setting the next goal setting the next goal. So my timeline, even though it might be extended to get to the full 50 pounds of
weight loss. I've set intermediary goals along the way, including tracking my food, exercising, I've set goals for all of that, but tiny, not as big. Hey, I'm gonna run a marathon and I'm gonna do it by next week. That's just not the way goals work. So make sure you set some goals for yourself, it will help build your confidence. Number five, practice some positive self talk. Let me tell you, contractions kill confidence. I'm going to say that again. contractions kill
confidence. What I mean by that is the words can't, won't, shouldn't don't. And perhaps you can think of others but those are the four that come to mind to me right now. Those contractions will kill confidence every single day, you have to eradicate the contractions out of your vocabulary. Once you do that, you're no longer saying I can't I won't, I shouldn't. Don't do that. Remove those contractions.
Practice positive self talk replace those words with i can i will i should will scratch I should because that's not even a good moniker there. And I do okay, I can I will I do? put a positive spin on how you speak to yourself. This is what Carol Dweck, if you read her talk about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. You've got to have a growth mindset. When you're talking about being positive with yourself, the only way that you're going to help get over the hump of having a
lack of confidence. Get out of the fixed mindset world. Remember contractions do kill confidence move on from that and set down some goals for talking positively to yourself. Maybe it is one affirmation a day. Just pick one let's not overdo it. Pick one affirmation a day where you can practice positive self talk. Number six, you've got to take care of your body. Alright folks, again, I've been on this
journey my entire life. I think I've lost the same 50 pounds and I found it again every single time lost the same 50 pounds. Many times. I've done it probably five times in my lifetime through a lot of
different methods. But through diet through exercise through meditation, I'm closing in on a year's worth of meditation, daily meditation, and then sleep, getting proper sleep, those four components will help take care of your body, if you don't take care of your body, your body will not take care of you. I know these are all things that you already know, I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know, until you start to take care of your body until you focus on what goes
into your body. Until you focus on getting some exercise, proper sleep, and I'm talking seven to eight hours a day, or a night shouldn't be sleeping during the day, am I right? Once you do that, once you focus on taking care of your body, your body, and then subsequently Your mind will take better care of you. So number six, take care of your
body, my friends. Number seven, surround yourself with positive people, I'm sure I'm sure you've heard that you are the average of your five friends, or you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So if you look around at your five folks that you spend the most time with, and you need to level up, you got to level up. Sometimes letting people go out of your lives is the only way to push forward in your own life, you got to leave the negative
friends behind. You have to I know that's a little directive. But I'm telling you right now, as soon as you level up, as soon as you surround yourself with positive people, the self confidence will grow. to as many of you know, I am a coach, I went through a six month program to build my skills and learn about coaching. And coming out of that program we developed. And by we I mean nine of us have developed a mastermind group and
we meet once a week. So I have a cohort of coaches that meets once a week where we trade chances to be on the hot seat or the opportunity seat to get unstuck from something that is holding us back from our entrepreneurial or coaching journeys. But what I have found is all of these people who are in this group with me, in this mastermind are super positive people, we are all headed in the same direction. And I can tell you, just by being with them once a week, my self confidence
is elevated. So again, surround yourself with positive people. Remember you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So you're going to have to take a look at that and switch it up. And I know that's a little bit directive. I'm very passionate about that particular point. And finally, number eight, be kind to yourself. Right, shocker here in a 2009 study in the Journal of
personality. self compassion leads to guess what higher levels of confidence specifically in challenging times, we need to have self compassion more than anything else on this list. If you are continually knocking yourself down, and you wouldn't do that, you wouldn't do that to a friend or family member, you're going to tell people in your lives what you tell yourself, that's just not not good manners. Alright, so let's be kind to yourself, as have good manners towards yourself.
The moment that you have just a little bit of self compassion for yourself, you will see that you will have self confidence it will start to grow. But the more time that you spend knocking yourself down, beating yourself up. Not being kind to yourself is the moment that you kill yourself confidence. This is an important one on the list too. It's number eight, but it's probably the most important. Next is surround yourself with positive people is Be kind to
yourself, my friends. And I will tell you, I am probably one of the worst people in the world of being kind to myself, I am in my head nonstop about the work that I do. The progress that I make. I am no better than you. I am you. We are all the same. We are all on the same journey. If you're a regular listener to this show, you're here for a reason. And you're here because you feel like we're on the same
path. And we are. I believe everyone who listens to this show does so because they want to be better people just like I want to be better a person. So to recap, today we talked about, look at what you've already achieved. Make a list. Pull that out from time to time. stop comparing yourself to others. It's a huge, huge no win game. Face your fears. To turn around, face your fears head on. set some goals. chunk those down, make them easily attainable.
Practice positive self talk remember contractions kill confidence. Take care of your body diet, exercise meditation sleep, when you take care of your body to take care of your mind. Surround yourself with positive people. Again you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And finally, be kind to yourself, my friends, be kind to
your self. And as we close out today's show, I just want you to know that this episode is important to me because I am to struggling with self confidence we all go through it. We all look at our lives and wonder how we can be better. These tips these eight topics are things that I will keep front and center on my desk to help me grow to help me build my self confidence. I hope they will be things that you do as well. I'd
love to hear how it's going. So reach out drop me an email at Jason at positivity on fire.com Let's connect let's continue to be on this journey together. And let me say this my friends If you liked today's episode, please give us a five star rating wherever you listen and please share this episode. Because word of mouth is the only way that this shows message
will grow. And finally, as I close every show, thank you for being here today, my friends your gift of time listening to this show does mean the world to me. And as always, be well be happy be you and until the next time may your quest for positivity begin today. For more on my positivity quest follow me at underscore j y Ramsden on
Instagram Tiktok in Twitter. If you liked today's episode, please give us a five star rating and review on your favorite podcast app or visit pod chaser comm and search for positivity on fire. Positivity on fire is a production of impact one media LLC All rights reserved.