The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – It Really Is Simple: A Holistic Approach To Self-Confidence: A Practical Guide by Alexandra Dotcheva

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

It Really Is Simple: A Holistic Approach To Self-Confidence: A Practical Guide by Alexandra Dotcheva Holisticselfconfidence.com Oftentimes, poorly defined priorities can get in the way of our self-esteem, lower our self-confidence, and impact our decision-making for years or even decades. Based entirely on the author’s experience with overcoming a twenty-year-long history of self-doubt and fear of failure, It Really Is Simple: A Holistic Approach to Self-Confidence will show you ways to put your life in order by learning about the five essential aspects or pillars of life, to which you may not have given the needed attention. This practical guide includes insights on how to approach our lives holistically by elevating the components that determine who we are and who we want to become. The book explains: How to Assess Your Current Life Situation and Create Concrete Goals How to Teach Your Mind to Embrace Challenges How to Develop an Action Plan in All Areas That Are Crucial to Your Success The Importance of Keeping Yourself in Excellent Health at All Times and Understanding the Healthcare System How to Adopt a Healthy Diet and Exercise Regimen Without Compromises How to Keep Your Body Free of Toxins How to Integrate Spirituality Into Your Daily Activities How to Become a Role Model in Your Career by Adopting a Strong Work Ethic and a Mindset of Helping Others How to Attain Full Control Over Your Finances How to Expand Your Financial Base Once You Have Attained Control Over Your Money Habits How to Determine What Types of People Have a Place in Your Life Mind-Training Techniques for Lasting Success There will never be a perfect time to get started. Start today and let your mind embrace the change you have been contemplating!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we certainly appreciate you guys being here. Thanks for tuning in. As always, be sure to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Get them involved in it. Have them join the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. We love you. We put our arms around you. You listen to the show as a giant hug every day.

But it's also a good hug. It's nothing weird. Anyway, guys, we certainly appreciate you guys. If you get a chance, go give us five stars over there on iTunes. You go into the iTunes section of reviews and give us some five stars. Give us a great recommendation. Help the show along so we can keep bringing you more. I'm not doing another show until somebody does a review.

No, I'm just kidding. We're not doing that. Anyway, guys, we certainly appreciate those that do and those that listen and those that share the show. We appreciate all of you. So thank you for tuning in. Today we have an amazing author on the show. She's going to be talking about her book. In the meantime, go also check us out on YouTube.com,

the big LinkedIn group, our LinkedIn newsletter, all those great places. And of course, my new courses in the consulting site, ChrisVossLeadershipInstitute.com. She's the author of one of the newest books that has come out. We'll be talking about her and some of her coaching and some of the other work that she does. It really is simple, a holistic approach to

self-confidence by Alexandra Docheva. She's going to be on the show talking to us about her amazing book that you want to take and get because self-confidence is always good to have. And of course, holistic, you know, beats, I don't know, storing lots of cocaine. I don't know. Don't do that, folks. Don't do that. It's bad. Talk to, I'm trying to think of a movie star that I can pull that joke on. Anyway, guys, she has a holistic approach to self-confidence. And so we'll be talking to her today about her book.

I can hear her laughing in the back, which kind of got me there. Born and raised into a musician's family in Bulgaria. She came to the United States in 2000 after earning a bachelor's degree in music from the National Academy of Music. And so she earned a Doctor of Music Awards in Violin Performance from Louisiana State. Louisiana State University in 2007. It's clearly Monday,

and Chris Voss is getting the brain and voice going. Alexandra, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. Such a pleasure. Thank you. And thank you for coming as well. Give us your dot com so people can look you up on the interwebs and find out more about you. Of course. The website is www.holisticselfconfidence.com. There you go. And so what motivated you to write this book? Is it your first book? What motivated you? It is my first book? What motivated you?

It is my first book and hopefully my only book, because if I don't get the point across with the first book, I did a very poor job. But the book was motivated because I personally struggled with lack of self-esteem and self-confidence for well over two decades until I got sick of myself and decided to revert all this mindset. But I was a violinist indeed for 26 years of my life. When I realized that I wasn't meant to be a violinist, especially when the financial crisis hit in 2008, I decided to put myself to nursing school. I had no science base, only arts. And my parents were horrified. My friends were like, oh, really? Are you sure you want to do that? Well, I've said it's a great profession. It's a demanded profession. And I will finally get a better perspective of real life, how real people live and suffering and truly get my feet on the ground in a very different way from the artistic perspective of a violinist and playing in orchestras and concerts, completely different way of communication. And once I became a nurse, that was in 2011.

I've been a practicing nurse ever since, seen a lot of patients, many sick people, got to get a great taste of the corruption of the healthcare system and how they really use the chronic sick people as commodities, as profits, as asset base. They're growing most profitable business in the United States, the healthcare business, and first cause of personal bankruptcy. So that really started bothering me very early on. And I went to home care nursing. So I have the opportunity to work with patients one-on-one instead of having five call lights ringing at me at a hospital every day and not being able to adequately address the needs of any of these patients. And in 2014, I also went into real estate investing.

So I own three real estate rental businesses right now because I realized nursing was great and it still is great, but I saw how many of my colleagues were sicker than the patients they were treating and educating. And I also saw many of them were flat broke, regardless of the fact that the majority had better salaries than mine because they had acquired seniority on the job. So this evokes many questions. Something is not right here.

People clearly, when they have a secure job, sort of, that's not everything. That doesn't mean they're financially educated. That doesn't mean they are following their own example based on what they know about health and how to live healthy. And that's where things started connecting for me. And I created a coaching program because I'm mostly approached by people who aspire to invest and become self-made rich people like I am right now. So I came to the States in 2000 with nothing. Okay, on a student visa. I earned my doctoral in 2007. Then in 2008, the crisis. So now I'm completely financially independent. I can stop working at any time I want,

but I continue because I love being useful to people. And I do a great deal of education on health with my patients. So the questions are also from the patients and from my investment mentees. So eventually the book system came out because I figured why not tell people how I did all that, right? I'm a health freak, fitness maniac. I have 12 years of martial arts experience, which was a huge contributor to my building self-confidence. But also all these goals and purposes I created in my life, not believing initially that I could accomplish. And once I told myself, you have to solve these problems to grow personally and stop

being this wimp that you were for 20 something years, self-imposed, low self-esteem because nothing was ever enough and very unsatisfied with my achievements as a violinist. And this all changed my life. And the book now has been changing people's lives, thankfully, because they say, I've been reading for like third time right now and I'm applying all these concepts gradually one by one. It's changing things in my life. So that's the most rewarding thing ever. Nice. So it sounds like you've done a really lot of interesting things with your life. Give us an overview of what the book is about and what's inside. So the book is about really elevating the most important aspects of life to the optimal level and keeping them there as independently as possible. So we're talking health, we're talking spirituality, career, finances, and

relationships. So these five perspectives, if you compromise any of them for the sake of the other, you won't be holistically self-confident because you know there is something deeply wrong in an aspect because you over-prioritize something else in your life. And I can give you a very simple example. There are people who aspire towards wealth and they build great, great real estate empires. I know such people because I've consulted them and then their health is in the ditch because they neglected it for years. It wasn't important. And now they have three chronic conditions that are damaging multiple organs because most chronic conditions do that and lead to more than one other chronic condition. And the other problem is, Chris, doctors don't really educate their patients

on the pathophysiology of these diseases, even though they've been killing Americans left and right. And it's not that doctors don't want to educate the patients. It's just most doctors have up to 300 patients. And they have no time to do the education. And when people don't understand what a disease, how it's caused in the first place, and then what it does to your body and how it impacts your quality of life,

your relationships and your bank account, because all these doctor's appointments, you're wasting the time to go to wait, to then go to other tests, and time is your most valuable asset. Once you lose it, it doesn't come back, right? Everything else can come back, even your health, if you step up your plate and decide to reverse the chronic conditions, because most of these are very reversible. So these very wealthy people wealthy people very sick people we try to really now shift the attention to you also have to prioritize your health just as diligently as you have in your investments your finances because it's all connected okay and by the same token people who are very healthy and they they do everything but myself people

think they're healthy but actually when i see their diets, I say, oh my gosh, you're only healthy because you're young. That won't last with what you're eating and what you think is healthy and advertised on TV. So we work on that too. And then they say, well, how do I expand financially? So we connect the dots between the health and finances. I said, if you don't have the money from multiple streams of income, you will not

have as many choices as you would. And now you have this job that's long hours. Yes, you're doing the fitness the best you can. You get up at four o'clock in the morning, go to the fitness till six o'clock. Great. Then you work 12 hours and you were a zombie by the time you come home because you are depending on a job with long hours and you have no other streams of income that are unrelated to a job. And that can also deteriorate your health and your relationships because you're constantly busy. So everything is just so amalgamated and some people connect the dots faster than others, but there is a lot of neglect of one or more aspects of life in favor of something else

that they pursue, perceive as their main problem right now. And everything else falls into the darkness. And I see bad precedents and consequences from that basically awesome so there's a lot of different stuff that's in your book let's talk about some of it you know i think i i would think that most people go through cathartic situations in their life where they're they've been on a journey for a time for 10 or 20 years 20 years like you were and then they, hey, this doesn't fit me anymore. Or maybe I didn't like this to begin with. Or maybe I was forced into it.

You said you were a violinist for a lot of, a lot, much of your life. Did you feel, was it something you got into because of maybe your parents pushed you to? Or what was it that made you embrace that? And then what made you finally realize that maybe this isn't isn't well fitted for you yeah well it was the parents because they were both my mother is a music critic she's the mostly now music critic in bulgaria to the present day and my dad was a double bass player so yes it was their idea they thought it would be a good profession for me because it opened the doors to travel, tours, and meeting amazing people.

But I was not very patient with my practice, even though I was practicing multiple hours a day from a very young age, Chris. By teenage, I was doing between seven and nine hours a day while in practice. Wow. Well, that was helping later with nursing school because I replaced the practice with reading the textbooks before I even started the classes because I had no science base. But with the violin, you you see it teaches you discipline and I aspired very much towards being a great violinist without the necessary patience to work on the details during my seven to nine hours of practice

and my dad was on me for this all the time and eventually nobody listens to their parents when they're growing up right but it's manifested in this great sense of guilt that creeped into, it resulted into a really bad stage fright for many years. And that's where my heart completely, completely tanked. And when I was in my 20s, things were more responsible. I was already auditioning for orchestras here in the United States. And the auditions were incredibly competitive. You were playing against 40 to 500 people in a quarter

because depending how prestigious the orchestra is, and mind you, you pay your travel, you pay your hotel, you pay your rental car, everything. And you come back home after playing 10 minutes behind the screen. Thank you very much for coming. And you start all over again. So at some point i realized i really wasn't competitive enough but the fear was that i knew nothing else but music for 26 years so

the book is also really geared towards people in midlife crisis and also immigrants because we come here with the notion that we're not coming going back to our countries there is a reason we left or to come to a better place but when your initial plan doesn't work which mine was i got the doctoral degree i wanted to either teach at a university or concertize none of these seemed applicable to me anymore once i figured you know i can do more with my life than besides earning a doctoral degree in violin that's where i really hit rock bottom and most personally because it felt like I had wasted so much of my productive life. I was 32, which seemed a lot at the time.

I'm 46 now. So from perspective to this, like 32 was nothing. But at the time, that was a hard realization, all the hours spent. So anytime you feel that you have invested a lot of time with something, please understand you can do much more. And that's what the book is really about. Midlife crisis people, which could be anywhere from early 30s to mid 50s,

or immigrants who come with some idea that if it doesn't work for a decade or so, you still can change. You still can learn a lot because the reason you came here, first of all, you're a very hard worker most of the time. You're determined to succeed in a society that doesn't tolerate procrastination, laziness, complaints, and all that. You already have succeeded quite a bit, even though you may not know it.

But there's so much more to learn and accomplish. If only you switch the mindset and say, I will do this now because I will regret 20 or 30 years from now. Yeah, it's the people that sometimes put off making those changes. I think they just end up more unhappy, don't they? Yes. Yes, they do because they try to please others. They try not to offend other people. And they basically live by other people's opinions.

You can't do this forever. Yeah. Because you're a product and not your own responsible entity. And maybe sometimes that contributes to people's disease or sickness because they, since they're so unhappy and they're miserable on the inside and they hold it in, they,

you know, it festers, I guess. The anxiety can lower your immune system. The low self-esteem can lower your immune system. But also when you have low self-esteem, you really have no motivation to care for yourself. You're like the last person you want to care about, and you kind of leave yourself behind,

and you give up on yourself. Absolutely, the saddest thing in my life, Chris, is that my father was one of those people who went into clinical depression. I know this now. I didn't know it at the time, but he was in depression for more than 20 years. He had a very negative outlook on life. He let his health deteriorate quite a bit, even though he was taking his medications religiously.

But he wouldn't change his lifestyle habits, even though I was trying everything I could to convince him otherwise. He just had given up on himself. And he was the most talented person in the family as far as musicianship, extremely knowledgeable, competence, erudition, everything. But if you decide that you're not worthy, nobody can help you. And I just really tried to reverse this mental pattern

that I voluntarily copied from my dad for many years because he was my role model and I just really loved him. And I still to the present day, just for different reasons now. Yeah. I mean, we all, we all, you know, life doesn't come with the owner's manual. That's one of the challenges. I don't know. Did you get one? I didn't get one. You know, there's no owner's manual. And so sadly we have to kind of fumble around with your life a little bit. And it's only until we've made, you know, some mistakes or two that we, you know, kind of learn how it is. One thing that was interesting about your book is one of

the things you talk about is how to assess your current life situation. And I never heard, you know, I hear a lot of self-help books like how to be more successful, but you know, I never heard an aspect of sitting down and going, I don't know if your life is really crap and maybe you should work on it. You know, it's a lot of people aren't good at looking at their current situation or if they are, they just get depressed instead of trying to figure out a way beyond that. Talk a little bit about that and what you teach in your book. Yes. And this is very understandable, Chris. I went through it. I can fully relate to the fear of sitting with yourself and being honest because you feel this horrible

void when you realize that you could have done much more with your life and you're at a certain point where you thought it was okay but now it's not okay sitting with yourself being honest with yourself is one of the hardest things if not the hardest because if there is anything that most people absolutely hate doing and i was in that number of people is think for themselves so they like to live by other people's opinions. They like to read the books. How can you improve your life? But what about your life right now?

What do you want to improve? And I found that for years, it was hard for me to reliably and seriously and honestly write goals on a piece of paper because I never thought I could accomplish them. They seemed ridiculous. They seemed absurd. And then I wrote these goals. I kind of started, okay, I ridiculous. They seemed absurd. And then I wrote

these goals. I kind of started, okay, I can probably work through that. And then I realized they didn't work because there were still goals that would please somebody else. They will be approved by somebody else. They weren't really my goals. And once I got understanding, then it became easier, but it's not a fun or a picnic process because you have to realize where you have been limited, how many of these limitations you allowed yourself to impose on yourself, and how many of those you allowed others to impose on yourself. And most of the time, the saddest realization and the hardest to overcome is that 90% of your self-limitations were imposed by you, yourself. This is why people don't like sitting with themselves, with their naked selves and analyzing their lives and do that.

In chapter one, I walk them through the process. Then there is another set of mind training exercises in the chapter 14 of the book to just close the whole frame once people understand the whole concepts of the five life aspects, where I teach one-on-one with my mentees. But the first thing I tell people who approach me for coaching, I tell them, why don't you get the book first? Because that's how I started learning before I bought a real estate

investment class from a self-made millionaire who started from scratch at one point. I first read six of his books, and I tell them, I only have one book. It's kind of thick. It's just one book, and it's a very inexpensive way to learn. If you have questions after that, reach out to me. I'll coach you. You know, you'll pay me, but try the book first because there is so much practical advice there that people can start doing and they have been already. And that'll improve your life tremendously just by that. And then if you want

to dig into details, I'll be more than happy to help. There you go. So you do coaching as well and work with people. That's always going to have people sometimes like that one-on-one interpersonal embrace. I've kind of said the same thing sometimes where like, I remember we did trainings and we provided different courses and books and a lot of people were just like, Hey, can I just you because i just i don't know books are awesome but you know you also get into diet and exercise regimen how to keep your body free of toxins i've learned you know over the years too that a lot of my mental health uh comes down to what i'm eating and putting in my body i used to drink like 10 to 15 mountain dews a day I used to eat just out all the time, extraordinarily horrible fast food. And since then, I've learned a lot about veganism. I've

lost up to 75 pounds twice now, and I think we're heading to 100 here. And yeah, I've just gotten better and better. And it seems like I just know, I just get better, better fasting. I get better, better intermittent fasting. So talk to us about how diet is important, not only to your health, but your mindset and keeping your body free of toxins. Maybe some examples of what you talk about in the book. Right. So I will start by saying that I have been for the last five and a half years, pretty

uncompromising. Yeah, uncompromising whole foods organic. I was a half vegetarian since 2000, and then I eliminated in 2017 every animal product from my diet. I am a fitness freak, and yes, I detox every day. So diet is a great thing. You first of all need to learn what foods don't cause disease and only eat those foods.

Restaurant food obviously is not on the list of these foods because if there are any restaurants that would serve you organic foods, they will be ridiculously expensive. So in terms of household economy, in my humble opinion, I mean, if I don't buy the ingredients and prepare them myself, I don't watch it. If it's advertised on TV, I will absolutely never buy it or give it to somebody I love or hate.

Because if it has an advertising budget, you really stay away from that. That's a good point. Right. Now, the other thing with dieting without compromise when you're an organic vegan, I mean, there is no argument

with the vegan diet because it's just simply if you eat organic and whole food, that stuff, plants don't cause disease and we don't add oil at all okay both my boyfriend and i we cook very well we take turns or sometimes cook together so it's really not an issue time-wise at all because we are very good managers of our time but with that it also builds great self-discipline Chris and great integrity towards yourself and develops your self-esteem and self-respect when you know that you took such excellent care, sincerely, using research of nutritional science. That is, it has nothing to do with what the animal industry has been perpetuating on people for the last seven years, seven decades.

And the USDA is completely in bed with this industry. So you can't trust the government sources either. If you read any government source on food, please do exactly the opposite. It will be much healthier. Yeah. In the book, I really rip apart diabetes type 2 because this is one of my greatest discouragements and aggravating points. Diabetes type 2, a completely man-made and man-re and man reversible disease yet the most profitable diseases in the healthcare industry it's absurd it's absolutely absurd and that's just gets me going so bad so so dieting truly is um the it's the fuel you give to your body i mean think about how many people take great care of their vehicles, their cars. They give the best fuel.

What about your body? Isn't that more important than your car that you're driving? Oh, yeah. Right? So it's such a simple concept, yet amazingly staggering. A lot of people still don't get it. Yeah. Like when I went vegan, you know, I started eating broccoli every day and just eating stuff. You know, I'm not vegan now, but I will go hard vegan to lose weight.

And I think I'm mostly vegan now. I mean, I'm not vegan. You're either vegan or you're not vegan. Yeah, you know, I forget. Now I remember there's like 20 different variations of veganism. And, you know, I always love the people who are, what are they? They still eat fish meat but they're paleontologists no pescapillans yeah i'm always like you're not really vegan

you're still eating meat come on listen if it has a mother and the father okay so i'm somewhere in the veganese let's we'll just put it that way i'm somewhere on the spectrum so I'm still eating dairy and I'm still eating but I'm just staying away from meat as it were per se and you know it's interesting to me like people will come to me and they'll be like

you're eating broccoli how are you going to eat your protein and you're like you know the whole marketing behind protein and stuff is crazy yeah broccoli is full of protein that's one of the most protein rich plants and they never think of animals.

The animals they eat are plant-fed animals. Where do they get their protein from? People think that you have to buy something that says, oh, it also has some protein in it. Like, here's a giant slab of fat, and we added protein so that you'll get your protein when you eat your McDonald's burger. You're like, what? And, you know, but that's an example of the marketing that's used against us where, you know, I don't know, maybe broccoli just needs to get a better marketing PR division, you know, eat more broccoli or something like that. I don't know. But, you know, you're right. And the thing that I've learned is, you know, me with intermittent

fasting, my brain is sharper than it ever is when I'm intermittent fasting, like right now. It's super sharp. I'm motivated. I'm geared up. I have plenty of energy. One thing that's kind of interesting is, you know, and one of the other marketing things we're taught is to eat three times a day. You don't need to eat three times a day. You're eating for a winter that never comes, you know. It used to be we used to eat a lot of food and store a lot of food in our bodies because

during summer because during winter you know we couldn't grow stuff and forage in caveman days but we don't need to eat that way you know we it's 72 degrees all year long and so yeah and i've learned that just eating well eating healthy intermittent fasting not shoving food in my face and horrible food, horrible quote-unquote food, like donuts and different things that I don't need to be eating, high insulin spikes and sugar. My brain's a lot better off. You're not going to go from intermittent fasting into permanent fasting.

Yeah, and I've been doing 20-hour fast, 21-hour fast. I think it's my longest now, and I've been getting pretty good at it and breaking through insulin resistance and stuff. And my brain is sharp as a tack. One of the things that most people don't realize is when you do fast and you learn to have your body adapt to it, your body actually amplifies your brain and your senses because, you know, in caveman days, you would need that because you're like, I'm starving. I need to go find food. And so it amplifies everything so that you can hunt down food. Well, you don't really have to do that today and just go to the fridge. But man, it really makes a difference. Like I'm sharp as a tack when I'm, when I'm fasting and stuff. And people don't

realize a lot of that, you know, mental health, depression, feeling lethargic, not having energy. I got plenty and coffee helps too as well so there's that but with the fasting you're also detoxing your blood exactly applies your brain is what makes your memory better your acuity better and everything your alertness that's right so with plant-based food i want to say something about dairy and eggs because when i stopped meat in 2000 and i was eating dairy and eggs, I mean, these derivative products from the animals that are getting blasted with the drugs of the animal industry, the drugs that suppress your immune system,

including the hormones that are in these animals, they transfer into their derivative products. They don't magically go away. So your milk, your eggs, even the ones that are grown under the organic label, they grow them next to the non-organic animals. Can you really trust these companies? I don't think so. I mean, there was this amazing study in 1951.

It was done by two European scholars on the Norwegian heart rate death disease during World War II. Hitler took the livestock to feed his war machine. And Norwegians were deprived of the livestock for several years and then it was seen how the death related to heart disease down and that meat so then after hostilities ended norwegians were able to keep their livestock they started eating it again and gorging and the heart rate-related death rate went exactly where it was before Hitler started taking the animals away.

And that was meat grown much more organically and cleanly than today, than any organic claim today in our industry, right? And it was still not healthy for the cardiovascular system, but we never learned. Yeah, and now they do this industrial production of farming and meat. And, you know, it's amazing all the different toxins and stuff that go into it. Yeah, I've learned it's very simple to live through life. I mean, we've had some great authors on the show.

Dr. Frey, I think it is. Dr. I may not be remembering his name correctly, but, you know, he's written books on intermittent fasting. But yeah, just eating well has made a really difference in my mindset, my body, my life. If your body's happy with you, your life's happy with you. Last night, I still lost a pound, but I got into a bag of buttered popcorn. It's supposed to be one of the healthier buttered popcorn But, I mean, come on, it's a lot of carbs. And I got into a bag of it last night and shamefully ate the whole bag. And I felt really bloated, just ugh and awful and stuff. And it was really messing with me. And you just felt nothing but.

Yeah. And, you know, I was good the rest of the day. But, you know, we kind of went off on a thing. But, you know, we still lost a pound. You know, and you just have to stay on track. But that feeling of being bloated and feeling blech, it affects your brain, your health, and it kind of affected my mindset the rest of the day where I was just like, you know. And what's funny is we get in that mindset where we're like, oh, I feel horrible. And then we're like, well, eat more crap. Maybe

you'll get a, you know, we look for that insulin spike or that sugar or that thing. Let's move on to some of the other topics of your book. You do mind training for lasting success and how to determine what types of people have a place in your life. Let's talk about a couple of those things before we go out. So the mind training exercise is basically, I really encourage people to examine their fears. There are several types of fears. So we get into that in quite a bit of detail. I have in the book, but also with the students, trainees. Fears are great if used productively, but most people don't know the difference.

So anxiety can be turned into a driving force or it can be a debilitating force as we see the uncontrolled levels of anxiety and pill-taking anxiety-related medication here in the United States. But building habits of success, it's not just the fears. It's also your time management, a great, great skill to manage your time. Because like I said before, it is your most valuable asset. And I learned this from my own mentors years ago.

I never thought about it that way. It's most successful people really value, first and foremost, their time. So we learn time management, okay, as a success of building mindset. And there are several other components. But as far as the people that have place in your life, this is a big one because the people you choose to hang out with, they may be very well-intentioned. They may be super loving of you, but they can be very ignorant in many ways. So you can value their feelings towards you, but not necessarily take their opinions seriously all the time or to the letter

because loving people can influence you to make horrible health decisions. They can influence you to make horrible, very ignorant financial decisions because they themselves know just as little as you do. So if you're able to recognize that, and I'll give you an example. When I started getting into investing in 2012, 2013, learning about precious metals, commodities, real estate investing, paper assets, and business investing, I had friends who were very well-educated people and said, stay away from this because these people are going to take your hard earned money. You need to keep it in a savings account and save for retirement.

Was this very well-intentioned advice? Absolutely. Was it based on fear and their ignorance? Absolutely. So the second I realized this, I wasn't judgmental of them, but I just thought I won't listen to her now. Let me continue my own research and make up my mind and take the

responsibility for my mistakes financially and move on. And that was the best approach I ever had. So with relationships, you got to be very, very careful. And then there are some people that outright waste your time. You just go drink coffee with them for two hours. And all you guys do is discuss everybody and their mother with no contribution to each other's personal growth whatsoever with age you learn to value time

differently so i've stopped doing this very long time ago and i don't feel lonely on anything because i can never get bored with the things i do so you learn to not be socially desperate you connect with people who are mind driven for, who are success-driven like you are, like other people I talk with, people who really have their stuff together, right? You learn from them. They make you more ambitious. You see, oh, he has accomplished that. I haven't. Can I do better?

Can I do something similar with myself? That's what motivates you to keep going and stay in the game. And then you, in return, enrich their lives with your experience and willingness to share it. And that's a great way to have relationships with people. But otherwise, what most people care for are choices of people they hang out with. Who you surround yourself

with is who you become. There's a saying, and I've seen a lot of debate about it, but the closest five to six people you surround yourself are who you become. And I think that's largely true. I mean, they infect your thinking. The people you're around the most infect your thinking.

And you become like your parents mostly, whether you realize it or not, because you're around your parents for 20 years. And you tend to mirror them, whether you realize it or not, you tend to mirror them and their behaviors and their relationship behaviors between two people as a husband, wife, or spouse, significant other, et cetera, et cetera. You tend to mirror their relationship, how they handle relationships, and also their personalities. And so, yeah, the people we hang around with can really infect our minds, and wherever your mind goes is where the rest of you goes, I suppose. Yes, I agree 100%.

That's exactly the point. And it's harder with partners. I discussed four types of partners in the book, as far as your aspirations and mutual goals and respect for each other's goals. Very important in partnership because many times your partner can sabotage your efforts, but also your partner or relatives or loved ones, the ones that you're, like you said, the five or six people closest to you are also the easiest ones to use as excuses for your lack of motivation and organization and self-discipline.

So differentiating between these two factors, whether they're actively sabotaging your efforts or subconsciously with good intentions, or you are using them as the why as to why you haven't changed things that you know you should be changing. It's a very important distinction. Most definitely. Anything else you want to tease out upon your book? Of course, we can't give all the readers all the details. They've got to order up the book and read it. Anything more else you want to tease out upon your book? Of course, we can't give all the readers all the details. They've got to order up the book and read it. Anything more else you want to tease out about your book? Well, I really want to say that I encourage people to look into it because you will get a very nice system. It's a very uncomplicated principle that I use throughout the book that is applied to every life aspect. It works exactly the same way across the board.

You basically find where you are in each life aspect. You have to determine what's in the way, but I help you do that because it's sometimes some things are less obvious than others that are in your way. Then you create the goals and you act on the goals, but the system isn't complicated. And I said, it works.

If it works with your health, it's going to work in your investments, in your career, in your spirituality, in your relationships. And if you have these five components under great control at all times, and of course, things happen with life. We plan things, other things happen, but you're better able to handle the challenges and unexpected unplanned problems and solve them. And that only contributes to your self-confidence and self-esteem that much more. You will have a fantastic life. There you go. There you go. Makes all the difference in the world.

So give us your.com so that people can find you on the interwebs. Yes. Again, the website is www.holisticselfconfidence.com. I offer a paperback and ebook version. The ebook is purchasable worldwide. The paperback is viable in the United States. There you go. Be sure to order up the book, guys. Check it out wherever fine books are sold. Order off our website, preferably.

It really is simple. A holistic approach to self-confidence, a practical guide, and definitely improve your life. I think it's great that people go through. Well, I don't think it's great that they go through changes. I don't know, maybe you have to learn in life. So we go through these cathartic changes, and it's great that there are stories and helpful things like this to help people go through their cathartic moments or go through life changes where they're like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm happy. Let me go find where happiness is.

Anyway, guys, thank you very much for being on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Alexandra, thank you very much for being on the show. You're most welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It was really a pleasure. There you go. Thanks, Imanis, for tuning in. Be sure to go to youtube.com

for Chess Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com Fortress Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and all those places on the interwebs. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.