Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 210: How A Lack Of Confidence Is Holding Back Your Love Life

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

We asked YOU this week how not having confidence affects your love life, and you answered! It's only when we really ask ourselves this question that we can see all the small ways that lack of self-esteem or negative self-talk can be causing us play it safe, self-sabotage, or just live with unnecessary anxiety. In this episode, Matthew, Stephen, Audrey and Jameson dive into the roots of confidence and what we can do to rewire ourselves for a more positive self-image in approaching our relationships. --- Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey --- ►► Stop Waiting and Start Creating the Happiness You Deserve NOW - Claim your spot on my Virtual Retreat, June 2 - 4, 2023 → MHVirtualRetreat.com

When we're worried that we'll never find a great relationship after a breakup, we forget that we're the one who got into that relationship. We're the asset. welcome everybody to the love life podcast with me matthew hussey we've got the whole jams crew here today we've got audrey stephen and jameson the rawsome foursome what's up everybody what rawsome foursome yeah it just going to skip over that? It was the first thing that came out of my mouth. I don't like that. The Hawesome Fawesome? Nope.

Also bad. No. The. We have jams. Just go with jams. Jams. Oh, I forget. We already solved this.

The jams are very much back in the jar. That is not going to be our new saying. We have some nice reviews on iTunes. This one's from Bombshell70 who says, I love this episode. I couldn't agree more. Thanks for posting it out there. But I don't know what episode she is referring to. So feel free to write into us Bombshell70 and let us know at podcast at MatthewHussey.com. Massive confidence from Bombshell, just to name herself that. So she must be a long-time listener.

Long-time listener. We have Murray33Sella, who says, Gracias. Thank you for your info. Te saludo desde Venezuela. Do you know what that means, Audrey? I need to see it written down.

Okay. But I think it means we have a fan in Venezuela. Are you saying that Matt's enunciation wasn't perfect Spanish? Well, also Audrey speaks French. Yeah. It's just confusing for me. It's not Matt. It's me.

It's always me. Never Matt. Wow. Me in Brew City says about episode 205. Awesome interview. Just bought her book. I'm 63. I'm panicking about retirement.

I don't know what to do. When I heard this, all the bells, lights lights and whistles started going off this is the perfect solution thanks that is of course the amy porterfield episode episode 205 max craft 430 says this show is helping with me with some major heartbreak thanks for this show and thanking the podcast community news with paul and sasha that turned me on to you i the podcast community news with paul and sasha that turned me on to you i don't know news with paul and sasha but thank you paul and sasha for helping spread the word about this podcast i did look it up and it's a podcast but i couldn't find the actual clip so thanks guys thanks guys uh lovely lady lydia says love this podcast it's

so lovely. The variety of topics, different perspectives and empathetic listening are very much appreciated. I'm getting back into dating after a recent breakup and couldn't be in better company. Thanks for all y'all do. Well, thank you, lovely Lady Lydia. And thank you all of you who are leaving reviews on the podcast on iTunes.

It really does mean a lot to us and it helps spread the word to other people who might benefit from it. Feel free if you'd like to leave us a review. We'll read more out in upcoming episodes. But for now, let's get to this show, which is all about confidence. And this is very timely because if you're looking to work on your confidence right now, we have a free coaching that is happening over the next 30 days on the 13th of April. We're all going to get on a call together and I am going to take you through five confidence boosting missions that we're all going to complete over the next 30 days, starting on the 14th of April, the day after the live. This is going to be a live community on Facebook where we track our missions together, where we have a real sense of community all the way through. And every time we have done this, we have had thousands of people joining from all over the world who are all improving their

confidence together. And it doesn't matter what you want to use it for, whether you want to use it to improve your love life and your ability to attract a partner, whether you want to apply it to your work, whether you want to apply it to your social life, or whether there are just risks that you're not taking in life right now that you know could make big goals happen, things you've always dreamed about, but you can't seem to get yourself to do it. This challenge can be applied to any goal in any area of your life. Because confidence is something that really holds us back. And that's going to be a big part of what today's episode is all about.

But the perfect partner, the perfect pairing to this episode is the 30-Day Confidence Challenge. And you can sign up at mhchallenge.com. And I will send you an email with all of the information from the link to the live event. It's an exclusive link. You'll be able to get it and join the live event through that link on the 13th of April and a link to the private community that are going to be going through this challenge together. Get on the bus now. Don't be one of those people that finds out about this or realizes that you didn't sign up and then you get halfway through the challenge and you already feel behind. Sign up now and we'll see you there. So let's talk about confidence. We put up a poll on Instagram,

a question asking what was the most impactful way a lack of confidence has held people back in their lives. And I think it was going to be fascinating to get the answers, but we're also going to talk about some of the content that we have developed over the years that could be relevant to some of these areas where people feel like a lack of confidence has held them back. But before I get into this, ask yourself this question right now as a listener, where has a lack of confidence held you back in your life, either over the course of your life or very recently? We're in 2023 now. We are three months into the year.

We all tend to start one way or another. We start a new year with a sense of anticipation, a sense of what we want to get out of the year. It's frightening how quickly a year goes. Q1 is already over and we're going into the second quarter of the year with a sense that a quarter of the year has already disappeared. Where do you feel you've held yourself back this year already? What do you feel is not where it should be? What risks have you not taken? Maybe certain risks you said you would take back on January 1st. Things you said you would do more of. Ways you said you'd get out of your shell, out of your comfort zone and do more, live more, experience more people people talk to more strangers apply for a position that you didn't

apply for before try to learn a new skill where did you say you were going to level up this year that if you're honest with yourself you haven't taken action how has a lack of confidence held you back i want you to think about your answer in your mind right now and i also want you to hear that you're in great company because we had hundreds and hundreds of comments from people who are all in the same boat so audrey share with us some of the answers that we got i have a question before i do that okay i want to ask you i want to turn this around onto you this is an ambush i didn't know this was coming um neither did i i yeah what what for you what is one of the most impactful ways a lack of confidence has held you back in your life

or you feel maybe is holding you back in life right now maybe we could ask chat gpt to answer as matthew and then we get the real answer i steven stop giving people ideas about how to use us on chat gpt uh i i you know what here's what first comes to mind. I have had a tendency over the years to grab at lots of different opportunities that come my way. And I know that while I've said no to a lot of things, and I'm proud of what I've said no to, I'm as proud of what I've said no to as what I've said yes to, I still have found myself, and this is not, I can't speak in past tense about this because i'm still working on this but i've found myself taking on more things than i can handle

when they come my way all of them are good all of them are exciting all of them represent real potential and real opportunity but i think that if I'm honest with myself, deep down, the reason why I'm doing it is not simply because I'm this hyper ambitious person who loves getting as much as possible out of life and wants to do all the things which is true but i think there's underlying that is this sense of fear about needing to strike while the iron is hot needing to do this thing now because it may go away or i'm you know this may be just a moment and I need to do it all right now while I'm in this moment it's a kind of almost a bit of a scarcity mindset about it that you know I've had an abundant mindset in lots of ways in my career which is you know part of the reason

why it is what it is but the thing that makes me say yes too often and then get me overloaded and overwhelmed is fear-based. It's this feeling that it might go away. And, you know, we, I had a realization recently, a mastermind that we went to in Napa with lots of amazing people. If you look at our Instagram, which is at the Matthew Hussey, if you don't follow me on Instagram, there are pictures from this mastermind. And we had all sorts of amazing people there. You know, we had Lewis Howes and Lisa Bilyeu, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, Jay Shetty, Ed Milet, Tom billiou it was like a an amazing group of people brendan bichard dean graciosi and there was a comment in the room that was very similar to that um

it it was you know this idea of feeling the need to strike while the iron's hot and and i remember someone in the room saying the iron is always hot because of who you are the iron is hot because you're this wonderful charismatic great to be around person with great ideas and a huge amount of value to give so the iron's not going to go cold like you're the iron the iron is hot and it's going to stay hot and when i heard that it really resonated with me because i have had that insecurity. And I think that a more confident position to take would be to say, I don't need to rush. There's time. I have a long career ahead of me.

Not everything has to happen this year or the next year or even in the next five years. And I can actually have the confidence to breathe into my life more and enjoy the road more and know that those opportunities will still be on the table when the time frees up for them. So I think one of the greatest ways that a lack of confidence has affected me

and disguised itself as just pure ambition has been that i've overloaded myself to a degree that has made me suffer an awful lot over the years with incredible amounts of stress incredible amounts of overwhelm, which at times have affected my health, quite literally really affected my health, have made me incredibly unhappy, have at times really made me not enjoy the work because there's just too much of it. And if you have too much of something, even if you like it, you just can't enjoy it. And have probably made me not a great person to be around for a lot of people who love me very much, but weren't experiencing the best side of me because I was really stressed and didn't have much capacity to be playful or to be loving or to just be in the moment.

Well, thanks for sharing. I think it's so interesting and we'll dive into what other people have said, but I think it's very interesting the way, and I know that wasn't necessarily said directly to you, but being given permission to be, to, to sort of have confidence in yourself, um, often has to come from somebody else. It also often has to come from somebody else's authority of saying like, you are great. You know, you don't need to worry about about that you don't need to strike while the iron is hot you can do it you know you've got time and the goal really i think is to try and be able to give that to ourselves right rather than having to hear it from someone else i agree i think that we sometimes disconnect from the truth which is that we are the asset.

Exactly. That, you know, no one, when we're worried that we'll never find a great relationship after a breakup, we forget that we're the one who got into that relationship. We're the asset. Someone chose us because we have something that makes us choosable. We get scared that we lose a job and that means we're never going to find another job, but we're the person who got the job. And you can look back on the history of your life and say, how many things came to me because I did that? Because there was something desirable about me, because I hustled, because I worked my ass

off, because I have a skillset, because I have value to give. And if you connect with that, then you're really connecting with this idea that you are the asset. You are the golden goose laying the eggs. So you don't need to freak out about, well, my golden egg got taken. You're the one laying them. You can lay another one. And that, that, that's something I've had to let sink in with myself over time is that I didn't, you know, success is always, there's always an element of luck in there, but I've reliably been able to

produce results because of who I am and the effort that I put in. I don't need to freak out that that all of a sudden is going to dry up because as long as I'm still breathing I can still do more of that love it well now we've got Matt all vulnerable um and you know you really truly are in good company now because you've shared your side of things um we had an overwhelming amount of comments um and a lot of kind of repeated themes I guess um I'm gonna start things off with somebody who said that um one of the things that where confidence has held her back is thinking that her appearance is the reason why she can't seem to succeed when dating and this is interesting for many reasons but I think I kind of want to speak to that and speak to people who don't necessarily feel like their looks is their asset and the thing that they the sword they get to to wield in order to get

attention and get validation from people and I want to speak about that really because I think that's that's definitely a very common thing that kept coming up yeah I'd love to hear from you guys first what do you think about that I think with looks it's it's probably more common than ever for people to feel like their looks hold them back somehow because the standards just get higher and higher and the feeling of wanting to be chosen from a big pool gets harder and harder because of dating apps, Instagram, all those things we know about. You feel like there are these kind of perfect physical specimens out there that, you know, are walking amongst us. And most people feel like on some level, whether it's height, whether it's your face shape, your bone structure, your weight, your

shape, whatever it is, everyone has a thing where you think, oh, if I had that thing, if I fixed that part of me, if I could have that, then I'd be okay. I do sort of think that game never ever ends. I think with looks, looks matter in that you have to address them to the extent that you feel really good in your own skin. Like you are making the best of what you have. And there is a kind of confidence that comes with that. Dressing better makes you feel more confident. You go on a date after having being all sweaty and in slobby clothes after a workout, you're going to feel like you're not your best. You're going to feel less attractive. If you go after having a haircut, a shower, looking good, wearing the right clothes that fit you, you are going to feel a lot better. And so

it's there. It matters. It's a thing. But I i do think i think people don't realize how many of us have something like that where they think oh i hope they don't notice that part i hope they don't that isn't an issue for them or my height or whatever i think everyone does have one of those i don't i think you like fix them as much as you can it's a it's a contradictory thing it's a paradox you fix them as much as you can and then you have to forget about them completely it's like do whatever you can with your looks and then just put it out like it's not it's not important i never look in the mirror again and it is kind of like holding those two together because having loads of stock in your looks is also dangerous because you're always going to you're going to get older.

Stuff's going to change. Circumstances change. And you go, oh, my God, I don't have my golden. My silver bullet was my looks. And now I don't have that. And you're going to have to have something else, something else that keeps people's interest, thatels them that oh my god you're so unique because of all these ways you're exciting these ways you're sexy these ways you're interesting those are the those are the long game things that matter but but yeah it's it's hard it's hard when you feel like this there's something where you feel like I can't compete on that level. I'm not going to be able to be that person. Well, what's funny, it feels like looks are the things that you have the least control over. And the way it affects your confidence, it's like, well, this is out of my control.

Of course, I'm going to be not confident about that. But even as you describe that, Steve, and you just think about how looks are inevitably going to go away, the one thing that's in your control and is actually always in your control your whole life is your acceptance of it, of where you're positioned, where you're at. Like you, if you have a spectrum of acceptance and you can just accept it now, like you can just save yourself so much. There's so many problems down the line. When I was was growing up like so insecure about being pale like summertime is coming oh my god i'm gonna take my shirt off i'm gonna be pale and then as you get older you just like accept it more and more and more i'm just like why didn't i just

accept it back then just would have been fine it's still gonna be there it ain't gonna change but you have that acceptance spectrum available to you if you just let yourself accept it yeah that's interesting it's like when you see the dude there are there are guys who have okay bodies and are really insecure about them and you'll see guys who like have a belly around the pool and they're really chill and charismatic and everyone's laughing around them and loving it and you're like how is that guy how are they doing it they don't i thought if i had a six-pack everyone i would be mr charisma and that guy doesn't have a six-pack but he's got everyone around him who everyone wants to party with him and you do realize there's something else

going on it's not just like if i'm ripped then everyone comes running and everyone wants to be my friend and everyone thinks i'm sexy and charming. Can I just say when you said the guy with the belly around the pole, Audrey looked directly at me. Why did you do that? I don't know. Why did you laugh? Why did you laugh to yourself when Steve said the guy with the belly around the pole? Well, recently you had a bit of a belly and you used to talk about it all the time. You don't anymore actually he's been

going to the gym every single morning why do you think that is um could i we we literally went to see the pigs in hawaii not hawaii where were we the bahamas we went to see the pigs and uh audrey was taking a picture and she said oh i'm so excited to get a picture of these two pigs. It was me and a pig. No, I didn't say that. What did you yell yesterday, Audrey? Matt was, you were going upstairs and you yelled something downstairs. What did you say? Matt was eating.

Yeah, we all remember that. We won't say it out loud, but we all remember. Oh, you do not want to play that game. You do not want to play that game. You know, recently, Aniqueik who works with us too she we said to her um she said you're looking you're looking good like because i've been going to the gym and she goes you were you know you were looking a bit you know like a sort of christmas pudding for you know like and i was like what do you mean she goes you know for a, and I was like, what do you mean? She goes, you know, for a little while, I was like, how long is a little while? She goes,

you know, about like, it was like a good 10 or 11 months. I was like, that's not even a Christmas pudding. Yeah. That's just pudding at that point. That's just pudding. I, it was really, and then I was like, well, why don't you tell? Yeah. I like it when people tell you after you fixed it as well yeah yeah i wasn't getting those comments then uh but but anyway i we we digress i when we become anxious about our looks and if you think about it insecurity can can quickly morph into an anxiety right the angst the anxious thought is i'm never going to find anyone because I'm not attractive enough physically. And that anxiety can be a kind of constant over the course of our lives. And it's always looking for a new thing to attach itself to. And it's worth paying attention to the new things that it likes to find to attach itself to, because there will have been something in your life that you used to worry about physically,

that you've stopped worrying about at some stage. And it's not because that thing went away, it's because your anxiety just latched onto a new thing. And said, that thing doesn't matter anymore. But this one, this is the reason you're never going to find love. And I can literally track through my life different things, different parts of my body, my face, my hair, my height, all different things that that anxiety latched itself onto at different times. I remember, never told this story, I remember being in London with my dad one

day and I remember seeing a doctor and I can't remember why I was seeing the doctor. The reason I was seeing the doctor was something like legitimate, but my dad was with me and he knew that I had been, it's funny you say the pale thing, Jameson, because he knew that one of the insecurities I'd brought to my dad when I was little was that I was really veiny like that my if you looked at my stomach and my chest I had like like just you could see veins I was translucent and I remember being at the doctors and my dad knew that I wanted to ask the doctor if there was like something I could do and because I was insecure because I thought I don't look good with the shirt off because of all my veins and my dad sort of gave me a nudge and said like go on you know you can ask him and I said to the doctor why I have

these veins you know and the doctor said well pull up your shirt and pulled up my shirt and there was like all these blue veins everywhere and he was like I was like is there is there like a way to you know do something about them and he was like well you know it's perfectly normal and as you get older you know that will change and you know they they'll still show in some places but you might find the ones that show now don't show as much and and I was like okay and I remember leaving that situation and it didn't show I did it's not like I went away feeling super secure about it but I've never like since then I don't know what year I stopped thinking about the veins on my body, but it has

never featured in my life since. But that same thing that went to the veins went to something else when something else was available. And it's always looked for something else when something else is available. And as we get older, it looks for a new thing again. And suddenly a new mole will appear somewhere or a new thing will get added to your face that you never saw coming or your body or whatever. And that will latch on to that. So it's worth noting that I think, Stephen, your advice is really good. I think that idea that you should do your best with what you have and then move on, stop looking in the mirror after that. I think the advice to find role models is really good advice. Find people who have fit your profile and they're doing just fine.

They, you know, they found love or they're happy or they're not focused on it or they're confident or they're, you know, super attractive in spite of that. And, or with that, we would be a better way of saying it, you know, that find those people because role models really help rob us of our excuses. And then lastly, I would just add number three, know that the anxious thinking around looks, even if you solved one thing, would start looking for something else. And that's, you know, I mean, that's the story of anyone who goes too far with cosmetic treatments, isn't it? That you think by fixing this one thing, you're going to suddenly have arrived somewhere and never need to fix anything else again.

And then you look for something else and something else and something else, because that's what that anxiety does to us. But what if you feel like even though you become more accepting of yourself and you do the best you can, as you say, and then you don't look in the mirror, you still don't get any attention? Because I know that's a lot of people. We get a lot of people reaching out to us saying that that's their experience of dating i'm a i'm a big believer in firstly the role models thing still comes in really handy there because you may be getting less attention than other people but there's someone who is in the same boat as you and they figured it out. They either figured out how to be happy and not let that stuff get to them. They figured out how to accept themselves. They figured out how to find love. They figured out how to go and really connect with people. And those people are, it's really worth, like, those are your people. Get curious about people like that because you have a lot to learn from someone like that. That's, I can tell you now, if I found myself in a wheelchair tomorrow, I would immediately seek out people who had conquered that. I would immediately seek out who has, you know, in this time when I am now going to naturally reflexively tell myself I am so limited.

Who here is in the same boat and is living more than I was living when I wasn't in a wheelchair. I would find, I would seek out people like that because I'd know those are my people. That's, these people have achieved a Jedi-like status with this thing that I need to understand and learn. And that, there's nothing about that that is a patronizing Pollyanna style response to everyone's beautiful on the inside. No, no, no, no. Some people get more attention than others. If you're a person who doesn't get a lot of attention for your looks, seek out role models who are in the same boat and yet getting a different result or experiencing a different quality of life or a different quality of emotions and then become obsessed with their mindset. Become obsessed with how they see their looks. Become obsessed with how they see their life, how they see their appeal, how they see their value. Very, very, very important. And you know what's funny about this it's really good advice to just play the

play the hand you're dealt you know everyone's dealt different cards it's just true and i'm glad that you brought it up audrey because i'm glad we can just say that yeah not everyone's got the same hand but you know the hands change not only as you get older but they change in different environments my hand was different going to the lake than going to a movie or going to a play or whatever, you know, it's like, where can you, where is your best hand being dealt? When can you actually like play your cards? And yeah, you might not be, the pool might not be your place to go, right? If you're like young and you're a woman and being judged constantly on looks because that's like the big thing then well then maybe you just go in a different environment and use your hands

at a different in different places and think of it as not your your dealt one hand like your whole life you're dealt one hand multiple times a day and what can you how can you can you play it this hour, this hour, in this 15 minute period, in this 10 minute period? That's really interesting. I love that. And I think, start thinking about what attention you value the most. Because I know, if you take, you know, we put content online. I know that there are certain very on the nose bumper sticker style quotes that I could put on Instagram that would get a ton of likes and they would be so

middle of the road, not interesting to me, lowest common denominator positivity. And they'd get a lot of likes. But that's not the attention I want. So I'd actually rather have less likes and post something I want to post because I value those likes more. And life is very much the same. There might be someone who's very attractive physically, who gets a ton of attention, but it doesn't mean it's all the right attention. It doesn't mean it's all the attention you want. It doesn't mean you need that much attention to be happy. It doesn't mean they can hold the attention. It also doesn't mean they can hold the attention. Yeah, that's for sure hold the attention yeah that's for sure ask yourself like what's the attention i want am i trying to win the looks contest or am i just trying to find someone in life who really really appreciates the

brand that is me who really appreciates the package that I come in with all of its nuance and all of its idiosyncrasies and everything that makes me uniquely me. Because if I'm looking for that person, I don't need attention from everyone. I just need to keep going until I find that person. And that's a really important thing. When we're 21 years old, we just want attention, right? But when we get to a certain point in our lives where we realize, no, no, no, I'm not looking for attention. I'm looking for love. Then you really don't need to worry that you don't get the same attention as somebody else. You don't even need to worry that you get one one hundredth of the attention of somebody else. You just need to worry about finding love. And finding love is a game to be patient about

so that you can actually find someone who loves you for who you are. As trite as that may sound as a conclusion, it is playing the long game to find someone who genuinely falls in love with the package that is you instead of playing the short game of i'm not getting attention how do i get more attention right now and don't worry that will not end up on instagram because matt is very picky about his find someone who loves you for who you know but it's true and it's it's it's true and i i will cap this point off by saying you once said to me love is not a popularity contest you just need to find one person and i think that's a very helpful thing to think about i like those odds exactly just need to find one that would be good on an instagram quote if you guys

want to just put that there love is not a popularity contest. Daphne said that one of the ways in which her lack of confidence holds her back is in the ways that she tells herself the authentic version of herself is not enough. That she's not worthy of love and therefore she makes up new versions of herself to protect herself from feeling rejected is there and is never her true self I think that's a such an interesting one it speaks to you know the kind of people who are more in the people pleasing tendency camp you know people who feel like they have to be a certain way in order to be deserving of love and are too afraid of actually showing who they truly are because they just don't know who that is or they don't think that's going to be enough. It's going to be accepted. I think that's a really, really powerful one. What do you guys think about that?

Steve, what do you think about this with regard to like that there's no such thing as the self in general like is i'm worried that this person is putting like maybe way too much um authority or importance on like authentic self like one true self am i overthinking that i see what do you think i think putting aside the philosophical question whether there's like who you really are deep on the inside i do think it's a long journey to go through a lot of a lot of unlearning like a lot of becoming more who you are is unlearning all these ways you've thought you have to be to be liked or please other people or being ashamed of your particular weirdness or interests. And I think happiness as well, as well as getting attraction, is a lot of shedding the false images of self.

And it's often like these weird characters you've made or people you've glommed onto as like, if I'm successful business person, if I'm confident alpha guy, if I'm whatever, intellectual so-and-so. And there's a lot of shedding you know i think david bowie even talked about being an artist is a process of learning to become more and more of who you actually are um and there's a lot of unlearning in that so i think there is a process of realizing all these layers masks we put up it's almost like you know you're on the wrong path if

you're feeling lots and lots of effort and resistance to this character you're creating if it's like taking a lot of work to hold that pose that's when you know you're on the wrong path it's like you know you're on the wrong career path if what the career you're in is requiring you to be something completely different than it's in your wheelhouse. Like it doesn't come naturally to you at all. It feels like grinding. It feels like really, really tedious work. That's probably the sign you're in the wrong career. And when you're in the right fit, everything just feels more natural and flows. But I don't have an easy answer for how you get there. I know for me, it's been a long, long process.

I played a lot of characters at school. I played sarcastic, cocky person. I used to be shy. So then I put on sarcastic, cocky person at school that got me some attention, but it was a pose. And then when I really like fell in love that those walls would come apart and that wasn't who I really was. And was a big act and I had to go through lots of like trying on different skins until I got to feeling comfortable today and being who I am what about you I think a huge part of why we play certain roles is that we think that who we are on the inside is very different from who other people are on the inside and that's because we for all the talk we have about vulnerability we don't actually hear a lot about who other people are on the inside inside we get these dressed up versions of everyone that we see online with a very manicured kind of vulnerability and we compare our real vulnerability to other people's staged vulnerability

and we feel like there's something different about us and that if we were to actually be honest about our thoughts our feelings the kinds of things that people may only say and this is a huge maybe maybe will only say in therapy. And even then, people can be with a therapist or a coach and go months or years without actually saying the true thought that's in their head, the really shameful thing that they're thinking about, the really guilty thought, the really scared thought, the real insecurity about why they think they'll never be loved. Even then they may not say it. do the greatest one of the greatest pressure valves about therapy at its best is when you can say something that you think makes you an alien and someone stares right back at you and says okay which is also true in art by the way

that's when when people start out trying to make art they often try and sound like what they think will please other people and they're scared to say the truthful shameful embarrassing honest thing right that is actually their naked self and then you when you finally do that people go oh yeah me too because that's what i felt that tends to be what makes real friends is that me too moment that's what makes real friends and it's the thing we're terrified of doing because we think we have we have spent our lives othering ourselves and thinking that everyone is different to how we really are and and so we hide who we really are and we play a role. And that role can confirm itself as good or attractive because it tends to attract

people. What we don't realize is it attracts a certain type or it attracts a certain person who's also in a place in their life where maybe they're struggling to truly be vulnerable or to truly reveal themselves and so you kind of you play a role and then you attract people at that frequency never knowing that by being by existing at that frequency there's this whole other world that you're missing out on. While at the same party as you're having a, not superficial conversation, perhaps, but a kind of a conversation where two people are playing roles. At the same party where you're doing that, there are two people that are having a really honest experience together. You just don't know it because you're not in that conversation. And meanwhile, you think the

conversation you're having is working because it's, see, it's working. Someone's having a conversation with me. Someone seems to like me right now, but is it the right person? Is it the person that a more evolved you or a more honest or authentic you is going to want to attract? Probably not. And the more you can just be, the more you, you kind of notice other people who are not comfortable being. And the more you real recognizes real, that phrase, you know, it's the more you start to see people who are also being just a very real version of themselves, a very authentic version of themselves and have let their drop, have put their weapons down and their roles, their personas. So we have to get to a point in life where we realize there's nothing alien about us. The thoughts we have are not our own thoughts. They are human thoughts. And we are not the only human on this earth.

So if we can start actually being more of that and communicating more of that, our real selves, then we will start to make real connections with real people who were never really even visible to us before. And the kinds of people we perhaps used to attract, you might actually find some of those find it more difficult to connect with you. Or you may find you find it more difficult to connect with them. But it's not going to make you less attractive. It's only going to make you more attractive to other people who have also reached that point in their lives. And those are the best. I mean, the best relationships come out of that. And they're also the highest frequency relationships because they're built on authenticity. Before we go any further, if you haven't done

this already, mhchallenge.com is the link for the 30-day confidence challenge that begins on the 13th of April with a live call with me. We mentioned it at the beginning of the episode, but if you haven't done it yet, before you forget, before you leave the site of this episode, open up a browser, type in mhchallenge.com. You can come back and finish listening afterwards, or you can keep listening to my voice as you do it. It'll take 60 seconds and you can join us for this free coaching that I'm going to be doing that starts on the 13th of April and runs for 30 days of the challenge. If confidence is important to you to build right now, and you know that a lack of confidence is holding you back from so many things you want in your life, including quite simply making the most of your beautiful life, come over and do this with us. It is a practical way to kickstart

your confidence in a way that's going to give you momentum for the rest of your year. mhchallenge.com is that link. Another comment which was written in, which I thought would resonate with people is from somebody called Denise and she said that her lack of confidence affects her when it comes to dating she says it doesn't affect her in the beginning but it does after a few date and the reason for that is that she has dated a few people in the past and they've lost interest so she now has it in her head that every time somebody gets to know her better they're going to reject her and she says those experiences have lowered her self-esteem and the rejection has made her confidence suffer I think that's super common and it is really difficult right when you have something traumatic or sad or you know hurtful happen and it kind of

confirms a fear you might have within yourself and then it happens again and then it happens again and before you know it you're like well I have all this evidence stacked against me to suggest that you know I should worry about this thing and I shouldn't be confident about myself because look at all these people that didn't want me. And, you know, we build a real dossier, right? On, on why that's true. So I think it's, yeah, I think it's really common. I think a lot of people suffer from this because they've got it backwards. They are looking to go into a relationship whereby that person's approval of them or acceptance of them or desire to stay with them is confirmation of their worth. And so when they go on dates and

someone decides that they don't want them, they don't want to continue, it creates, it's this feedback loop where it says, you're not worthy because I don't want you. And by the way, that's the most common thing in the world. I've had a heartbreak before where the first question I asked myself is, was I not enough? And that is very, very typical. That tends to be the first place our insecurity goes and our fear goes. It goes to the, our worst fear is I'm not enough and I'm not lovable. And so when someone rejects us,

that's exactly what we latch onto. This is confirmation that I'm not lovable and if I'm not lovable, I'll be alone. Instead of going out into the world saying, well, I just need to find someone who confirms that I am lovable I believe that we have to actually start the other way around And say What are the things that if I start doing them

And building them within myself Are going to make me really proud of the person that I am. Because a lot of, when we're like, oh, I just am terrified that anyone who gets to know me doesn't, isn't going to want me. It's almost starting from a place of not being proud of who we are. And then hoping that if we date, no one will notice that we're not someone to be proud of and that we'll slip through the net and they'll stay with us. But if instead we approach life like someone, like it's our job to make ourselves proud, proud? What would make me a person that I am proud of? Now, this is different from self-acceptance. Self-acceptance doesn't require us to be proud of ourselves.

Self-acceptance just requires that we make peace with who we are today. That's not the same as liking yourself. That's not even the same as loving yourself. Self-acceptance can be a foundation for love, but self-acceptance doesn't actually require that you love yourself. If I have an injury, I can accept I have an injury. It doesn't mean I have to love my injury, right? But we accept it. We make peace with it. If we've done lots of bad things in our life, or we've got a lot of regrets, or we've got a lot of things we wish we'd done differently, there's parts of our personality that we don't like, you can still accept all of that. You can still go, I'm going to make peace with exactly what my starting point is today. Self-esteem is different from self-acceptance.

Self-esteem is, am I doing the things that build my esteem in my own eyes? Am I doing things that make me a person that I am proud of? And that could be as it could be something like doing a difficult thing in our lives, whether that difficult thing is a workout or that difficult thing is eating well, or that difficult thing is treating someone well in our life, in our family, in a friendship, or whether it's saying no to something that feels exciting, but ultimately isn't good for us or a person that, you know, wants to go to bed with us tonight. And we're like, you know what, this isn't what I'm looking for. Even though I kind of would like to, this is not representative of what I'm actually looking for. Doing the difficult thing of saying no is something that builds

self-esteem. It says, I'm, oh wow, I'm proud of myself because I'm, I'm doing the thing that's right. Or I'm doing the thing that's beautiful. I'm doing the thing that's right or I'm doing the thing that's beautiful. I'm doing the thing that's generous. I'm doing the thing that's good or kind or difficult. And when we do those things, we begin to, we start to actually become a person that we're proud of, regardless of whatever we have that we think makes us not, you know, we may have had things in the past that we think make us not desirable. Oh, I'm, I can be neurotic. You know, I can get jealous. I don't, I, you know, I'm carrying too much weight. I'm, we have these things that we think are going to make us unlovable. But the more we get proud

of ourselves, the more we go into a situation a bit more, no longer squinting, waiting for someone to reject us. You know, I have, I have lots of things that I'm still working on in my life. And some of these things might make me not easy to be around at times. Or might make me more insecure in my relationship than I might like. Or might make me more anxious than I might like. I may have those things, but if I really feel good about my best today, this week, this year, in the last five years, if I'm really proud of the work that I've done on myself, those things don't make me, they don't make me feel like I'm going to get found out. Instead, I just go, yeah, those are still things I'm working on, but I'm so, God, I'm proud. I'm really proud of where I've got to in my life.

And when you feel proud of yourself like that, you want to find someone who, you want to be around people who, who celebrate everything you've done. And if someone comes along and says, you know, if someone came along and tried to denigrate, it's like if someone came along and denigrated my work in my videos and said, oh, this guy, who the fuck is he? I don't care about him, blah, blah, blah. Like this guy's an idiot. What does he think he knows? It doesn't actually really doesn't get through because I'm so proud of the work that we do for people. I'm so proud of our message. I'm so proud of how many reps it has taken to get here and I know I'm not a qualified psychologist I don't have that piece of paper I know that I'm not 60 years old and have been in a marriage for 30 of those years

I know that there are people who know things that I don't about the brain. Neuroscientists who have more studies. I know that. And I'm not trying to be that. But I'm really, really proud of the knowledge that I do have. I'm really proud of where I am. And that is like the great antidote to fearing rejection. Because then when I go on TV or radio show or podcast, I'm no longer really trying to be anything that can help me slip through the net and hope that someone doesn't notice that I'm shouldn't be here. And then when they, then when they make a bad comment, I go, Oh my God, they've found me out. I'm not lovable. I'm not good at what I do. I don't feel that. I just feel really, I feel sturdy in the things that I'm

proud of about myself. And the rest is just part of my life. It's just part of what I'm working on over time. So that person who says, I'm worried because I've been rejected a bunch of times and it's made me think that anytime someone gets to know me, I'm not good enough. That's because you've got it backwards right now. You're going into the next situation squinting because you're not starting proud of yourself. And you're hoping that the next person is going to confirm a value for you that you don't feel you have. And that that's going to make you really proud of yourself as a person and then really connect to those things and then when someone doesn't appreciate you it will actually make them less attractive to you I want to add as well that sometimes we have we all have blind spots about how we behave with other people and a failed relationships or a failed date can actually be an opportunity to

learn more about yourself and the things you can improve on. We can all improve on so much right and I think it's that combination of as you say believing in what you're selling and believing in yourself but also having enough of your core confidence where you that you go oh it's not an attack on my sense of self if they didn't want me it's an opportunity for me to be better maybe I was to x on that date maybe I was to y Maybe I was too Y. Maybe I could have done better here. I could have created more mystique. I could have not texted him five times in that date without that reply. There may be things that I did or overshared or whatever that did put someone off. But it doesn't mean I'm unlovable. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It doesn't mean

nobody will ever love me. It just means I need to get a little bit better in these areas you know if I look back to how I was in relationships or dating when I was in my early or mid-20s I was just a completely different person to when you and I met I was like a completely night and day type of person because I hadn't learned those things about myself I hadn't refined the characters and the ways you know I hadn't believed in myself in the way that I came to believe in myself later and so it's almost instead of looking at you know yet another person who has rejected me it's about going okay maybe some of what happened here is on me and in my behavior what can I do next time that will be different and will give me a better result? I 100% agree with that.

And that goes hand in hand with not overjudging. You know, we all do things. I had someone ghost me recently that I wanted to get onto the podcast. I was going to say, who are you messaging? Who's ghosting you? And, you know, I really admire this person. I think they're great at what they do. I would love to have them as a guest.

And it all seemed to be going well. And then I just didn't hear from them. You know, it just completely fell off the radar. And I have, it was a really lovely moment because I realized I've gotten to a point in my life where when that happens, I don't, I'm still critical of myself in the constructive sense. I still might look at a situation and go, oh, is there something I said that scared them off? Or is there something I said that maybe I could have put is there something I said that maybe

I could have put differently? Did I not give them enough context for something? You know, I still ask myself those questions, but I don't ask themselves from the point of view of beating myself up. I just go, oh, that's, you know, there's so many more people I'm going to be reaching out to in the next 10 years of my life. This is good information. I can tweak that for next time. And dating is no different from that, by the way. But outside of that little moment of self-analysis, I then just go, I'm just, there's a flow to life. And I don't spend any time waiting in a place. It's like a water. It's like a river where the water is running. And when the water hits a rock, it doesn't stop and obsess over the rock. It just goes around it. It just breaks and goes around it. You have to be that way. I have had

so many situations where someone who ignored me three years ago or five years ago suddenly sees me at a dinner that we were both invited to and starts talking to me and realizes, oh my God, I was so wrong to ignore you back then. But that's okay because they didn't know me back then or they didn't have context or I was a different person. I'm a much more interesting person now or I'm a much more, you know, I'm driven by different values now. So I just go, oh yeah, that's life. That's life. You keep flowing and don't stop and obsess over something too much. Instead, just go, oh, this isn't a moment for me in this person. Like that, maybe there will be in the future when we meet in a different place in our lives. Maybe there won't be. Maybe I'll fix some things because of this and I'll meet someone else

and that will be the right thing. But just keep flowing where you actually find reward for your energy. And know that the world is big enough that you can actually keep doing that over and over again. I just know that there's always going to be another thing. There's always, every mistake I make, there's always going to be another opportunity. There's always going to be another person who gives me a fresh chance or an old person who gives me a second chance or a third chance or a new chance to prove myself. So I don't need to obsess over those things. Just keep getting better. Just keep growing.

Just keep learning. Just keep adding to yourself. Just keep improving. Make it shocking the next time that person engages with you, how much you've grown or shifted or changed or improved in that time. And if you do that, instead of obsessing over the rejections of the past, or is the next person going to reject me too? Then you're just getting yourself into this groove in life where nothing happens. Instead of the flow of where things happen, which is, oh, that person, that person ghosted me.

Okay. That's like, that's a dead end right now. That's a, that's kind of like a, that's just a dead end. There's no energy there anymore. I don't want to try and resuscitate something where there's no energy. There's no energy there anymore. That's okay. Keep flowing. Maybe that energy will come back around to meet me further downstream, but that's, I'm just, for now, I'm just going to keep going. And if you have, that is such a winning mindset. If you have that in your life and you commit to improving along the way and keep making yourself proud in new ways and keep doing good work personally or professionally, you will, it is an, I just believe it's an inevitability that someone will meet you at some point in your life and go, wow. If you want to come join us for the 30-day confidence challenge, which why wouldn't you? It's a way of investing in yourself, just as we've been talking about at the end of this episode. Go to mhchallenge.com and sign up. It's free. It starts with a kickoff call on the 13th of April.

I'm going to give you five missions to complete over 30 days and you won't be doing it alone. You'll be doing it with a group of people all over the world who are also completing those missions and sharing notes and encouraging each other along the way in a massive peer group for improving confidence. Go to mhchallenge.com to sign up now for free. And I'll send you all of the information so that you can access it on the 13th of April. I'll see you there. Thank you to Audrey Jamison and Steven for this episode. I appreciate you guys. And thank you to all of you for listening to the Love Life podcast. We look forward to speaking to you in the next one we'll see you soon you