On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 3 Ways to Build Inner Confidence & Learn to Trust Yourself Instead of Comparing Yourself to Others

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

How do we build our inner confidence? And how can we stop pretending that we’re okay even if we aren’t? In a world where we're constantly comparing ourselves to others, Jay reminds us of the importance of embracing our unique qualities and building inner confidence. We'll dive into the dangers of comparing our relationships to others and how it can affect our self-esteem. And find out why nurturing inner confidence is key for personal growth and happiness.  Jay also shares practical tips for boosting confidence, like embracing our quirks, celebrating our strengths, and shifting from seeking validation from others to validating ourselves.  In this episode, you’ll learn: How to build self confidence How to boost your own strengths How to focus more on self-validation Together, let's learn the actionable ways and and empowering wisdom to help you embrace your uniqueness and cultivate unshakable confidence from the inside out. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 02:45 Getting Lost in Comparison to Other People’s Relationships 05:13 Why We Need to Build on Our Inner Confidence 08:35 Confidence is the Belief That You Matter 12:47 #1: Being Okay with Liking Things That Others Don’t 17:19 #2: Start Noticing Your Own Strengths  18:20 #3: Giving Self-Validation Versus Needing External Validation 24:05 Your Hero is Your Future Self See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast podcast on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care. Hey, I'm woman of drama executive producer of the new podcast day. My abuelita first each week, the incredible Vico Ortiz and fabulous abuelita Liliana Montenegro will play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics. Right, Vico?

You know it. Listen to Dave my Auelita first! Thursdays on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, don't do anything I wouldn't do. Just do it better. Besitos! Let's be honest, life is stressful. It's work, it's relationships and the state of the world. But there's a way to bring that stress level down. Calm. It's the number

one app for mental wellness with tons of content to manage anxiety, promote concentration and help you unwind. There's music, meditation and more. Calm makes it easy to de-stress. You can literally do a one minute breathing exercise. Personally, I love the soundscapes, nothing like a little rain on leaves to help soothe my nervous system. I've actually been working with calm for a couple of years now and I'd love for you to check out my series on reducing overwhelm. Eight short practices, quick relief. Right now, listeners of OnPurpose get 40% off

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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one mental health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Whether you walk in your dog, whether you're cooking, whether you're driving, thank you so much for showing up again for yourself, investing in yourself, building yourself. I deeply, deeply appreciate you being a listener, supporter, well-wisher of On Purpose and know that we are constantly working to make this a better and better experience for you.

Thank you for all your reviews that share so much feedback with us. So, so grateful. Now, a couple of days ago, it was Valentine's Day, and I've done so many episodes at this point on love and relationships. Of course, I wrote Eight Rules of Love, which if you haven't read it already, will help you find, keep, and even let go of love. And one thing I was thinking about was just how so many

of us are disenfranchised with these big holiday kind of feels, right? Like this idea of this is the day where you get to show love. This is the day where you honor this person. And we realize, well, it's a lifetime job. It's an everyday job. It's an everyday job. It's an everyday honor and privilege to be able to be in love and have someone we love.

And at the same time, some of us have gone through a breakup just before Valentine's Day. Some of us are single right now and not even sure whether we're gonna find the right person or someone who gives us that feeling. And what's really interesting to me is so often how much we get lost in comparison because we're looking at what are other people doing

for Valentine's Day, you know, what's everyone got going on and what that can often do is it can make us feel insecure, it can make us feel inferior, it can make us feel like we've got something wrong with us. I think there's so many ways to meet people these days, but we all feel disenfranchised, disillusioned, struggling to find that one person that we really want. No matter the amount of options that we have, I think a lot of us sit there and go,

what's wrong with me? Right, think about this for a second. When you've gone through a breakup, how many times did the thought cross your mind? Maybe something's wrong with me. Maybe I need to fix something. Maybe if I did this, they would have stayed. Maybe if I didn't do this, they would have stayed.

And we get lost in that spiral. Now let's think about it if you're single. And you see everyone around you in happy relationships. They've found their person, they've found their one, and you're thinking, again, well, what am I doing wrong? Is there something I could do better? Maybe if I looked better, Maybe if I achieved more.

Maybe if I did better at work. Maybe if my body looked this way, my face looked this way. Maybe then, maybe then, maybe then. And I'm not saying that all these things don't make us feel better or don't lead to attracting certain people at least or whatever it may be. We recognize that even when people end up in relationships, sometimes we sabotage a great relationship

because we're thinking, I don't deserve this person. Right, you get someone who quote unquote is out of your league. What does that even mean? Right, all of these terms that have been built around comparing the way people look, how much money people make. And so even people in relationships can often end up feeling like they don't deserve that person, that they're out the person's league, that the person's out of their league, that the person's not doing well enough career-wise, that they're not doing well enough career-wise.

And what I've realized from all of this pressure, all of this conversation that goes on inside our mind is that we haven't learned how to build inner confidence. We focus so much on external and outer confidence that we don't really know the pathway to inner confidence. And I think when we think about the word confidence, we think about people with swag. People who walk into a room and they have that energy. People who walk into that room and they own the space.

People who walk into a room and they're able to command the space, command their words. And I want to share with you probably one of my favorite definitions in the dictionary and it's of confidence. One of the definitions of confidence is a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities. Let me say that again. that again. Confidence is a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities. Confidence is a feeling of self-assurance. It's something you give yourself by appreciating your own abilities and qualities. I want you to make a list right now as awkward as it is. Get a pen and paper out, open up your notes app,

and genuinely make a list of, in one list, your abilities, and in one list, your qualities. Your ability could be something like, I'm really great at cooking, I'm really great at cooking. I'm really great at math. I'm really great at solving problems. I'm really great at analytics, at data, presentations, at social media, at podcasting, whatever it may be. And then make a list of your qualities,

kindness, compassionate, loving, hardworking, ethical, authentic. Make a list. Make a list. Make a list as awkward as it is. And this is the challenge, right? We find it awkward. Not only let alone to appreciate our abilities, we find it awkward just to lay them out.

Just to be honest about them, just to be conscious about them. And so first I want you to write a list of your abilities, write a list of your qualities. And then I want you to practice some self appreciation. I want you to say, I appreciate that I have X ability. I appreciate my ability to X. I appreciate that I am X. Right? What is it? I want you to practice

that for each line. I appreciate that I'm kind. I appreciate that I'm compassionate. I appreciate because what's really interesting is what we appreciate. Appreciate. Right? What we appreciate in our life will elevate our life, will continue to grow in our life. Yet what we don't recognize will start to wither, will start to wash away, will start to become less and less and less. Right, if you notice there's something in your life,

it grows. If you don't notice something in your life, it grows. If you don't notice something in your life, it dies. And I want us to focus on what we wanna grow in our lives. Confidence is the belief that I matter, my work matters, and my relationships matter. What's really interesting is that we don't recognize that we matter inherently. The Vedas talk about how there's 8,400,000 species of life. We're rare. The human form of life is rare. It's unique. It's powerful. You matter from the moment you're conceived

You matter from before the moment you're born but it's so interesting how society has made us believe that we don't matter and We lose the understanding that We have the ability to influence and impact our own life. I'm not saying circumstances don't matter. I'm not saying environment doesn't matter. Of course it does.

But at the same time, choice matters. The same time decisions matter. The same time pivots matter. The same time making shifts matter. And I think the way we get lost in this world of developing confidence is we forget that confidence is about how you feel about yourself. Outer confidence is how you appear to the world

and inner confidence is what you go to sleep with and wake up with. What is that thought that you go to sleep with about yourself? What is that thought you wake up with about yourself? That is what inner confidence is. And we all know that that's the most intimate, most personal experience of a thought that we have.

And it doesn't matter how many people told you you looked amazing, that you did amazing. We all know at whatever level that is, it doesn't fill our cup. It makes us feel great, don't get me wrong, I love it when someone compliments an outfit, I love it when someone says to me that they appreciated something in my external confidence, in my outer confidence, but I know that it means so much more when they notice my inner confidence and when I notice my inner confidence. I was talking to a friend about this recently. I was saying just how important it is

for me to value myself. And I'll explain what I mean by this. The truth is that you have done hard things. You, right now, you who's listening, have done uncomfortable, difficult things. And no matter how much you tell your friends, no matter how much you who's listening, have done uncomfortable, difficult things. And no matter how much you tell your friends, no matter how much you tell your family, no matter how much you tell anyone,

and you should tell them, the only person who can really understand what you've been through is you. You are the only person who can truly comprehend and the source, you and the source, the divine, the universe, those are the only aspects of you that can truly comprehend and understand what you've been through,

to empathize, to be compassionate towards. So when we even want it for someone else, it will actually always be incomplete. It will always be limited, it will always be imperfect. And today, so much of our confidence is based on what others see as important. And so you could have done the most difficult thing, but because other people don't see it as important

or difficult, you lose value for it. We lose value for things people don't value. But that might be the most valuable part of us, right? We lose value for things people don't value but that might be the most valuable part of us right we lose value for things people don't value not realizing that could be the most valuable part of us like I'll give you an example you may value honesty but if someone doesn't value honesty we start to disconnect with our own values when we were at school it was the shoes the cool kids wore, the new lunch box. Today it's social media.

So I wanna share with you some mindsets of someone who's focused on inner confidence versus outer confidence to help give you a checklist of how to make that switch. So whenever you're expiring the external outer confidence mindset, I want you to bring it back to inner confidence. So listen to this, this is the first one.

Inner confidence means being okay with liking things that others don't. And external outer confidence is liking things that other people like, right? Only for the sake of what they said. So right now we're talking about Oscars movies. Are you someone who likes Oscars movies? Are you not?

Some of you may love Oscars movies. Some of you don't like them at all, but you're scared to say it. I remember going to an event, and it was with a bunch of indie filmmakers who really understand film way better than I do. And they were like, what was your favorite movie of the year?

And I was like Thor Ragnarok was amazing. And for them it was like, they were naming movies that I'd never even heard of before. And I remember the first time I did that, I felt kind of silly cause I was like, oh yeah, I'm a Marvel junkie. I love Marvel. And I love the messages in Marvel and everything else.

And they had a different taste. But I've realized that that is who I am. I've got that movie taste and that's okay. And actually I appreciate that because it is something that I enjoy. And at the same time, I don't want to become opposed to trying out new forms and new movies and TV shows that I don't know about. Right. I think what happens is we find what we like, then we put our walls up and barriers up and now we think that's how we protect what we like.

And actually, we're devaluing what we like by not opening up our visual library, our audio library. Right? I talk about this a lot. Like, I feel like growing up, I didn't have access to a wide audio library or a wide audio history or an audio geography. And that's been something I've really been trying to do as I've been growing older is listening to music from different genres, different places. I bought a record the other day, which was Brazilian jazz, which I've been loving. Right. And just allowing myself to be open to music genres and types that I didn't grow up with.

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Hola mi gente, this is Womber Valderrama, executive producer of the new podcast, Day My Abuelita First, part of I Heart Radio's My Cultura podcast network. Each week, host V-Core Tease and Abuelita Liliana Montenegro will play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics who are putting their trust in Abuelita to find them a date. Your job right now is to get on Abuelita's really good site!

Our Abuelita definitely knows best! On date my Abuelita first, 3 single contestants will buy for a date with one lucky main-dater except to get their heart, they have to win over Auelita Liliana first. Die Liliana! Yes, we are ready for love! Through speed dating rounds, hilarious games, and Liliana's intuition, one contestant will either be a step closer to getting that pan dulce, if you know what I mean, or a step closer to getting that chancleta!

Let's see if Cheesepas will fly or if these singles will be sent back to the dating apps Listen to date my Avalita first on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts The therapy for black girls podcast is the destination for all things mental health personal development and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here, we have the conversations that help black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives. Those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly, ourselves. We chat about things like what to do when a friendship ends, how to know when it's

time to break up with your therapist, and how to end the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Take good care. So we've got to be okay with liking things that others don't as opposed to trying to like things that they do. One of the biggest ones for most guys, and I'll call this out, is the amount of people that agree to be in love with the Godfather.

I'm gonna put it out there right now. I don't think I've ever watched any of them in full. And I know there's gonna be a lot of hate, and people are gonna be like, Jay, have you not watched it? But I know a lot of people who just say they've watched it in order to fit in, right? We say so many things to fit in.

And it's weird because we're trying to stand out. In our careers, we're trying to stand out in our careers, we're trying to stand out in our world and the people who built things that we love, they built them because they lived authentically to themselves. Now what's really going on? The reason why we want to fit in is not abnormal. It's because it gives us a sense of belonging. It gives us a sense of community. But when we try and find belonging on such superficial levels, it actually doesn't give us It's because it gives us a sense of belonging. It gives us a sense of community. But when we try and find belonging on such superficial levels,

it actually doesn't give us a strong sense of belonging. Belonging is on a value level, on a deep level, not on a likes and personality level. Now the second part of building inner confidence is noticing your own strengths versus outer confidence, which is waiting for others to notice your strengths. We started with this. I want you to start noticing your own strengths

and demonstrating them. I remember when I came back from the monastery, I was rejected by 40 companies before an interview. And that was hard on my ego because I was a straight A student. I got a first class honors degree and it just wasn't working out. And I remember at that time, I was just like, why can't someone see that I can do this? And I realized instead of trying to get people to see my talent,

I had to find ways to show my talent, I had to find ways to demonstrate my talent. I had to find ways of expressing who I was creatively without expecting someone to see it first. And I think a lot of us can wish and wait and hope for someone to notice us, but we have to notice our strengths first and showcase them. The third step, this is probably the biggest one because it's the hardest one, is giving self-validation versus needing external validation.

How many of us do things because we want someone else to say something to us? And how many of us do things because we're trying to say something to ourselves? Self-validation has been one of the greatest skills and mindsets that I've built up. It is a muscle that you can build. And the reason why it's so hard is because we're so wired to think. A lot of it comes from parenting. We did something good and our parents said,

that was great, well done. And we're like trying to chase that. Or we did something good and our parents didn't notice it. Now we want someone to notice it. So there's that need for external validation. We've been taught to believe that if someone says something good about us, then that almost makes us more valuable because we've seen that be rewarded in society. If more people notice you're great, then you generally do better. But what I've

realized is that the people who follow that path, it doesn't lead to satisfaction because when you're looking in that way, often people will never do that. It doesn't come back that way. And then you feel discouraged from actually doing the act in the process. Or you do it, you get the praise. And then after that, you're chasing the praise rather than chasing the creativity or the progress. I remember a long time ago when a group of people who ridiculed me were then celebrating me.

And in that moment, I was around 20 when it happened and I realized how fickle it was, how quick someone who could criticize me could celebrate me. And I said to myself, I don't wanna do this to be celebrated or be hurt by the criticism, right? I don't wanna do this so that I can experience

the celebration. I want to do this because I experience and love the process. And that's why validation also leads to this point of celebrating your own success, versus waiting for others to celebrate you. We may want our partners to throw us a party. We may be sad

that our work colleagues didn't throw us one. But are we celebrating ourselves in the way that we value? Are we throwing the party of our dreams? Because we are the only ones who know how to do that. I've really learned to develop this ability when I feel like I've achieved something, to close my eyes and really take it in. I found that the more I achieved, the more people around me became immune to my achievement. So in the beginning, there was doubt and confusion as to whether I'd ever achieve anything. Then after some time, there was a little bit of celebration.

And then after the celebration, it became so normal and the achievement was normalized whereby people went back to being disinterested. And so what's really interesting about that is either way you end up in a position in your life where people don't have the ability to celebrate you continuously because you either have made certain successes a habit, or they forget, or they get busy. And a lot of the times we think, oh, people don't recognize me,

and people don't celebrate me, and they don't recognize my value. And the truth is, it's coming from a deep-seated feeling of we don't recognize our own. We don't celebrate our own. We didn't take that moment. So one of my favorite things to do now when I have an achievement, even if I celebrate

it with my amazing team and my wife, is to take a moment alone. I'll sit alone in stillness and silence. I'll close my eyes and I'll just take a moment to honor myself, to honor myself for the challenges that I broke through, to honor myself for the skills that I developed, to honor myself for the risks that I took. Just taking a moment to truly honor yourself. I promise you, just try do that this week. Do it for small things. I think we often also, inner confidence is I value and I'm making progress. Outer confidence is I'm waiting for perfection. Right? Inner confidence is I'm trying to make progress. Outer confidences, I'm waiting for perfection.

Right, inner confidences, I'm trying to make progress. Outer confidences, I'm waiting for perfection. Inner confidences, choose your thoughts wisely. Whereas outer confidences, listen to everyone else. I was talking to a friend who felt the pressure to change his career because he told his friends he was about to change it. So he told his friends he was about to change it. So he told his friends he was going to change his career.

He didn't end up changing his career. So his friends were making fun of him. And then he was like, well, maybe I have to change my career just so that they don't make fun of me. And I was just like, the only person we're letting down in that situation is ourselves. And often what happens is if we spend too much time with Serbs and people, their noise becomes our voice. So inner confidence says, let me really decide what matters to me because guess what?

I'm the one who has to live with the consequences. If you choose a job based on what other people think, they're not the ones who have to wake up and go to that job, you are. If you choose a partner based on what other people think, they're not the ones who have to wake up and go to that job. You are. If you choose a partner based on what other people think, they're not the person who has to wake up next to that partner. You are. If you choose a lifestyle because of what other people think, they're not the ones who have to live up to the consequences.

You are. You're the one who is living the challenges, the consequences, and the reality of your choices, not the people around you. And so if you're not going to be happy with the consequences, don't take that risk. Don't make that decision. Inner confidence is about comparing yourself to who you want to be

versus comparing yourself to others. There's a great speech, if you haven't heard it by Matthew McConaughey when he won the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club where he says that his hero is him 10 years from now. Someone he's chasing, somebody he's aspiring to be, and I love that idea because he's comparing himself to who he wants to be.

He knows what he can be in 10 years. Tell me if it's true or not. The person you are today is miles ahead of the person you were five years ago. The person you are today is miles ahead of the person you were 10 years ago, which means the person you're going to be in five years is incredible. Make that person your idol. Make that person you're chasing because as Matthew McConaughey says, you'll never reach them and you'll never be mad at them because they're you. Whereas if we're comparing ourselves to others, we'll always feel late. We'll always feel behind. We'll always feel slow. Right? We have to move at our pace.

We have to find our pace. We don't want to feel like we're moving slow. We're behind whatever else it may be. There's a challenge with trust here. Inner confidence is about trusting yourself. Outer confidence is about trusting everyone else. A lot of us crowd source our biggest decisions in life. Is he right for me? Do you think I should wear this? Do you think I should do this job? Again, it's always good to ask for help.

Always important to ask for help, and I'll talk about that in a second. But the challenge we have is we often don't trust our intuition. Rathi's been talking about this a lot to me recently. This idea that our body and mind and our heart and our spirit can really connect with us if we check in with them.

Right, your body does certain things to tell you that it's not well. Like if you have a stomach ache, you know it's because of something you ate. If your foot's hurting, it's because you sprained your ankle. Right, there's, your body's actually communicating with you. And we don't see it as that. We see it as like, oh God, I ate the wrong thing.

I'm in pain. But actually, your body's talking to you. And often, we don't trust that we actually have the ability to listen to our mind, our heart, our intuition, our body in order to be guided. Yet we listen to people outside of ourselves to make very personal, deep decisions. Inner confidence is about wanting to be better

versus wanting to be seen as better, which is outer confidence. Right, outer confidence is, I wanna be seen as better. Inner confidence is, I want to be better as better. Inner confidence is, I want to be better. How much are we trying to improve ourselves? How much are we trying to grow ourselves and let's shift into that

rather than we'll ever notice that I've grown? Even if they don't notice, I'm noticing, I'm experiencing, I'm the one living with this body and mind. Inner confidence means I ask for help. Versus outer confidence means I appear to never need support. This is a huge one. Giving yourself permission to reach out and ask for help. I remember when I first started coaching and teaching and guiding, I used to be scared of asking for help because I thought I had to be perfect. Not realizing that actually I would grow

more, learn more, be better if I would ask for help, if I was able to serve and support. And so I've realized that outer confidence blocks you from actually seeking out help. And the other thing is true too, inner confidence is you want to help others grow. Outer confidence is you keep others down to make yourself look bigger. So notice, the goal is to notice when you have these. We all have them, these mindsets. We want to become aware.

We want to amend and we want to take action on the new mindset. We want to slow down our action on the old mindset, increase it on the new mindset. Thank you so much for listening to today's workshop. I hope it's helped you. I hope you take away one thing from this session, and thank you so much for listening to On Purpose. I'll see you soon, and let's keep becoming happier, healthier, and more healed together. If you love this episode, you will also love my interview with Kendall Jenner on setting boundaries to increase happiness and healing your inner child. You could be reading something that someone is saying about you and being like that is so unfair because that's not who I am and that really gets to me sometimes but

then looking at myself in the mirror and being like but I know who I am why does anything else matter? Hi I'm Laura VanderKam I'm a a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And I'm Sarah Hart Unger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. On the Best of Both Worlds podcast each week, we share stories of how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out child care to mapping out long-term career goals, we want you to get the most out of life. Listen to Best of Both Worlds every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and I'm an architect of Cozy. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts.