The School of Greatness - 756 Believe in Yourself with Aubrey Marcus

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

YOU HAVE TO HAVE FAITH THAT YOU'LL FIND A WAY. Do you allow doubt to trickle in? Maybe I won’t make it. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m not the person for the job. Your self-belief has to be airtight if you want to go all the way. It has to be unwavering. Once you believe in yourself authentically, you will get others on board who believe in you, too. You have the power to create a movement. That’s why, for this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Aubrey Marcus where explains how champions use self-belief as a tool to win. Aubrey Marcus is the founder and CEO of Onnit, a lifestyle brand based on the holistic health philosophy Total Human Optimization. He regularly provides commentary to outlets like Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Doctors, and The Joe Rogan Experience. He has been featured on the cover of Men’s Health, is the author of the life-coaching course Go For Your Win, and author of the book Own The Day, Own Your Life from HarperCollins. Having self-belief doesn’t mean you’re cocky. It means that you’ve put in the work and you have the mindset to know you will accomplish what you set out to do. Learn why a strong belief in yourself is a key to success in any field in Episode 756. In This Episode You Will Learn: How champions use belief in themselves as a weapon (2:00) The way Conor McGregor uses self-belief to win fights (2:30) How to get your belief in yourself to 100% (5:45) Why politicians don’t use self-belief effectively (7:00) The line between confidence and cockiness (8:00) Follow me on instagram: @lewishowes

This is 5-Minute Friday! Welcome everyone to this episode. I'm very excited. My friend Aubrey Marcus has graced us with his time to come on and share some of his wisdom. Now Aubrey is the CEO and founder of Onnit.com, which has been a sponsor of mine and a big supporter of mine as an athlete. But also they've sponsored the show, The School of Greatness, from the early days. And he has just been a great friend. We work out together. We hang out together.

I see him in Austin when I'm out there. He comes out to L.A. and we'll go hang out on the beach or just go out to dinner and get some sushi. And it's always great to connect with him. He's got a brilliant mind in business, but a great philosophical mind as well. And he hangs out with champions all day long. He's got a fitness company and he's constantly training and hanging out with champions. Champions utilize belief to their advantage and i think in the great champions belief becomes more than just something oh yeah i believe in myself it becomes a weapon and i think you know

no more can that be seen than with conor mcgregor oh my goodness really interesting it's really interesting with fighters because fighters is a one-on-one contest you know and it's direct competition there's not a lot of rules there's not a lot of things in place just the bare minimum it's not like five on five yeah and it's not like there's a ball that you're you're you're at war but we're actually just trying to get balls and nets across lines or something like that it's a lot more like just a direct physical primal confrontation and so i think one of the things that you're doing leading up to the fights because because you know who you're going to fight, which is incredibly terrifying. I've gotten in fights, but I've never known them.

I was like, I got to fight this guy in this amount of time. We're very adept at detecting other people's beliefs. We have great belief detectors because belief is such a powerful force in determining whether you'll be a success. Because belief is such a powerful force in determining whether you'll be a success. As a biological evolutionary advantage, those people who could detect other people's belief certainly would have an advantage. So I think we're better at that than we realize. So when you're squaring off with someone and you have someone like Conor McGregor, whose belief in himself is at flat 100. Yeah. It is at flat 100.

It's crazy. Like there's no wiggle room. So you're coming in and let's say you're pretty good your belief's at 98 5 you know you're like you have a little bit of doubt just like a little tiny little bit of doubt but that's usually better than than almost anybody you see so and then you're looking over at this guy connor and you're thinking okay where's your 98 where's that two percent you know where's that five percent where oh shit it's at a hundred it's at a hundred and then it starts to get you to question more and then your belief

number drops and then you're down to 95 man you still at 100 over there okay damn then your your number starts to go down a little lower to 90 and then then the fears start to creep in and then doubts about your performance start to creep in but connor uses that and he knows that and he uses it as a weapon and it's not only against other people he's so good at believing in himself he tells people exactly what he's going to do yeah that's why they call him mystic mac because they say oh against chad mendez he said within two rounds i'm going to knock his head clean off well obviously that was an exaggeration nobody knocks a head clean off out of a video game but basically he's going to knock him out with a punch to the head right and what happened chad got him down in some brutal positions

had him on the mat was bouncing elbows off his head his head was pinned to the canvas he's bleeding what's connor doing the whole time just talking to him he was just talking to him the whole time oh is that all you got chad i'm gonna get up i'm gonna knock your head off oh is that you know in his ear the whole time his belief never wavered so chad's doing the very best he possibly can crushing him ostensibly for all to see but connor's belief never wavered and then they pop up with like a minute left to go in that second round connor predicted he was going to knock him out in the second he's talking again and what happened the ko wow you know and even in in the interviews chad's like man that guy never stopped talking the whole fight so that

belief just wore him down wore him down wore him down until finally the skills you know caught up and were able to execute that and i think you know getting that belief to 100 that's going to be hard that's going to take a lot of hard work because you're not going to be able to believe. You know, people say, oh, yeah, what if I believe I can beat Mike Tyson? Well, you're never going to believe that because you haven't put in the work. Right. You're not that caliber of an athlete. You haven't got the results.

You haven't got the results. Close to him or whatever, yeah. So belief is a really good belief system is supported by evidence. And then there's that little bit of delta. There's that little bit of I'm a little bit crazy. I believe this no matter what. And a lot of that is that mental override, that ability to tell your mind, like, I'm not going to indulge any doubt. I'm going to do this. This is happening. This is the future. I am going to be a millionaire. I am going to have a bestselling book. I am going to start a company that's going to change the world. I'm going to do this. And just believing that, and it's a characteristic you see across the board from athletes to entrepreneurs. Their belief is the most unwavering. And people follow that belief.

If you have that belief and you want people to line up and join your team and be part of that cause, work on your belief. Do the small steps to get you that belief and then really you know really believe that he just doesn't waver he doesn't care what anyone thinks he believes in himself that he can make it happen yeah and he's building a movement around that belief and staying true to whatever it is that he believes so no doubt no doubt you know and politicians you know they're i don't have the highest respect for most politicians and i've noticed them playing games with belief. They all say now, at a certain point it shifted in the debates, everybody started saying, when I am president.

Really? Like if you ask them, when I am president is what they'll all say, right? Smart. But it doesn't read authentic for most of these guys because they've had someone coaching them to say that. And they don't really believe it. Like that's the, that's what people call the bullshit detector. You know,

it's like that thing's going off. There's gears flying off that one. Yeah. When Ben Carson is saying when you're president, when you have 3% poll ratings or whatever. Yeah, exactly. When I'm president,

really Jeff Bush, really, you know, like, I don't think so, buddy. Like you don't believe that. I don't believe that.

What kind of game are we playing here? Exactly. You know, so, you know, i don't think so buddy like you don't believe that i don't believe that what kind of game are we playing here exactly you know so you know you got to be careful there is that a little bit of that fake it till you make it but it's got to be genuine because people you know people will detect if you're just putting on airs and that's that's that line where it becomes cocky you know like hot like ronda rousey yeah cocky she was super cocky and talking trash yeah in a negative way. It's hiding some kind of insecurity. Then that insecurity was probably that, shit, my team may not be really that good. Or maybe she can beat me.

Or maybe she was a better striker. Maybe there are matchups that are different. The great thing is this gives an opportunity for her to learn. And I have immense faith in Ronda because she is a great champion, you know, but she'll figure it out. And she does have some good people on her team. Mike Dolce is on her team. Oh, there you go. So she's got some good pieces to that.

She's just got to, you know, sort out these other pieces and, you know, a great champion will adapt. And, you know, I think that's obviously there's a lot of other things that we could add on there. But another thing is great champions adapt. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like you put them in uncomfortable situations, they'll figure it out. And a lot of that is belief that, oh, this is a weird spot. I'm in like Conor McGregor. Oh, this is bad.

I have a, you know, partially torn knee and I'm on my back and this dude is bouncing elbows off my head and I have blood trickling on my face. Not optimal. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. It's all part of the plan. I think that's important. And you just adapt and you get up and then you figure out the way to do it. Belief leads and then you just have to have faith that you'll find a way.