How to Be Confident Without Faking It

I meet many people on my journey today who say something like:

“I could always manage my anxiety and how I showed up in the world for most of my life…and then ________ happened.” 

Life hits them and beats them down. They feel defeated. Feeling like they have to start from point A, from the beginning of the drawing board, without a clue, again.

“Figuring it out” every day, is sort of like stitching yourself together, while the plane is falling down through the clouds and while more stuff is breaking.

A lot of the times you start to realize you actually were never truly confident. 

You were just making it up and trying to figure out how to get by in each moment. 

You found a crutch, a source of escape, validation from others, something you could lean in to give you those feelings that you are confident, especially in front of other people and social scenarios.

I’ve read so many articles about how to be confident, and like most things on the internet, many of them are filled with emptiness. Giving people short-term, shallow, shortcuts, that don’t produce long term results.

Let’s change that and dive into 5 ways to be confident without faking it.

1. Understand the Root Cause.

Nobody is confident 100% of the time. We are all human. 

However, if you are chronically unable to show up as you, no matter what you do, without intense nerves or pain, you could be avoiding something, you don’t know you are avoiding.

Many times throughout our lives, this numbing never-ending continous feeling of failure that seems to arise on most days, seems random. But, often times you can trace it to the very first time you felt like that in your life. 

It’s now considered cool to not be impacted by your past, and not so cool to talk about your history. In our society it’s taboo to talk about being bullied, or facing racism, or abuse, or sharing an intimate aspect of our lives that really impacted us, even if it was when you were a kid 25 years ago. 

You must go back and understand your past. Not for other people, but for yourself. 

Two quotes I heard that changed my life:

Someone never forgot something, because they never understood it.

Someone can’t move forward because they haven’t truly processed and understood where they have been and what they have been through..

The problem?

Our memories of the past aren’t neatly aligned and in chronological order in a filing cabinet. 

Our memories of the past are more like that crazy party in College. There’s one guy on top of the house, drunk yelling. There’s another person sitting shy in the corner. A group of people doing stuff in the basement. And then all of a sudden you remember you have an assignment due tomorrow you never did….and you wake up the next day passed out, asking yourself, what happened? 

Our memories are triggered from our brain when we arrive to an interconnected point, which could be another memory, a meaning, a person, a smell, a location, etc. 

The solution? Dedicate time. You may not have time to think of your past in between your 15 minute work breaks, but maybe you have a few hours on the weekend. Sit down with yourself and book an appointment and start digging! 

Most people don’t do this because this process is painful, especially if you haven’t done it before and may be worth working with a professional to help like a therapist.

I talk about this subject more in my book and how to do it - Screw Being Shy.

2. Create & Tap into Your World Daily

If you talk to a confident person, you’ll know one thing.

They have a world in their minds, and they live from that world.

Believe it or not, we all have a world in our minds. But, the question becomes does that world view actually serve you or not? 

Our brains in our noggins, are fully entrapped by darkness surrounded in our skull. Our brain sits alone in our heads then receives information from our senses, other organs, memories, cognitive biases, to create our world view.

Based on the connections formed in our world view at the beginning of our lives, psychology says this will more than likely determine the quality of your life. 

For example:

You grow up with parents who didn’t show you too much love. Not because of you, but because of who they were. You are fighting for your parents love and approval as a child consciously or unconsciously. All of a sudden, you’re playing football or soccer, and you’ve never seen your Dad happier. You come home, and it seems like your parents have never loved you more and more. 

While this may seem like a silly example. More often then not, this child in the example grows up to connect the love of their parents, with the sweat, blood, and tears of practicing and playing soccer. 

This child becomes an adult, and starts brutally sacrificing themselves, putting in the work, competing, trying to “win”, hustling for hours all night….

Why? To make more money? No. To improve their career? No.

To receive that feeling of love and confidence, which started when you were younger. Unless you address this, you will be bound to these connections.

So what do I do about it?

1. Meditate daily. Meditation has been shown to rewire our brains emotional connections.
2. Develop and get clearer on your world view.
3. Revisit past memories with a different perspective.

Go introspective, pick up a journal, design & architect your life the way you want it.

One way to do this, is to reset yourself emotionally. Writing down and feeling what you are grateful for every single day, will help give you the emotional independence to feel happy by yourself. 

Personally for me, my formula is, wake up, drink water, go for a walk outside without my phone, come back, stretch, meditate and then write down my world view.

Almost every time I can do this successfully, I feel so motivated, I feel very confident, I feel like I can do whatever because I have a higher destiny to follow. 

This is the foundation of real confidence.

And yet, most never do this because it seems too confusing or like it won’t work for them.

3. Meet People Who Share Your World View

Your identity is created through psycho-social feedback loops.

Sure, you could sit by yourself all day meditating and journaling.

But, the reality is if you want any long-term change…

You must begin to see the new you, in a new world around you, in others.

Instead of trying to talk to people who never really liked you, understand the world is a big place. For all you know, your best friend is out there waiting for you as a stranger. 

Meet people through LinkedIn, events, companies, organizations that all align with your world view, interests, and higher destiny or mission you are on! 

The more you meet people like you, the more confident you will become in what you are doing is not terribly weird or strange, there’s millions of people out there like you.

4. Tap Into Higher Energy & Power Your Neurotransmitters

Imagine I give you all the thoughts and emotions you need to be confident forever. 

What would happen?

You would probably feel confident for most of the day…

But then inevitably feel low energy, tired, and therefore unmotivated and not very confident later in the day. 

Not because of our thoughts or who we are as a person, but the fact that we are trapped in a breath and blood pumping, defacating, meat bags of flesh with fast thinking ancestral brains. 

We often forget that our experience of how we think about ourselves, is inherently a biological experience. 

When you experience a particular thought or emotion that gives you anxiety, there’s a physiological response from your body. Increased heart rate, throat clenches, legs start tapping, hand shaking etc.

Now, imagine doing that for 10 years. 

This will create the ultimate feedback loop, that will automize, and habituate this feeling for the rest of your life unless consciously addressed. You could have the best thoughts and emotions in the world.

But if your body and brain’s biochemistry and neurotransmitters are dysfunctional due to a disrupted gut microbiome, poor nutrition, poor sleep cycles, poor movement, chronic stress, addiction, too much alcohol, etc. 

You won’t be able to be confident on a regular basis, because your brain lacks the basic resources to do so. I break down this complicated subject in my book - Screw Being Shy.

5. Objective Lens of Reality v.s. Your Brains Lens of Reality

Each day I’m grateful I had my rock bottom moment in 2015. Where I became overweight, depressed, anxious, and was even sucidal. 

Why?

Because it taught me that my brain is a heavily flawed biochemical machine. 

Based on my world view as a kid, my mind was telling me to end my life, and I am a terrible person, who has no talent or skills, and shouldn’t be alive. It showed in front of my face, that the thoughts and emotions I’m getting in this moment, could be wrong. 

And more importantly, those thoughts and emotions are not me. 

Those are produced by an ancient organ that’s been long alive before I was born, and inherited this neurological machine that helps make life possible. And depending on how well or poorly I take care of this machine, will reflect my quality of reality.

What I’m talking about is having a sense of meta-seperation between your mind and brain. Realizing that the mind is an infinitely producing thought machine. Realizing the brain is a heavily flawed organ that has one priority, and that’s survival, not keeping you happy.

This is crucial, because even the most confident people in the world, don’t have brains that tell them they are confident and amazing 24/7. But, they understand it’s a trick from your brain.

Choose your world view lens, over accepting the default automatic brain that wants to keep us down. How? By training your mind to do so each and every morning. If that sounds like a a lot of work, it is, but realize it’s a lot more work to live with a mind that doesn’t help.

6. Avoid Band-Aid Fixes

Alcohol is fine to celebrate.

Alcohol used as a crutch or short term solution is a bad idea. 

Whether it’s alcohol, or only talking about your successes..you must avoid the short term fix. Because if it’s an unhealthy band-aid, it makes life much harder later on…

The key is to not focus on removing your bad habit, but to focus on adding new habits that can help you have a sense of confidence and energy without the drink. 

Anything that gives you a false sense of self artifically also takes away your power to be your real sense of self later on by yourself without the need for anything.

7. Anything You Start Doing for the First Time Will Seem Fake

If you have spent decades of your life doing the same thing again and again.

Imagine what will happen if you decided to change your behavior? 

It feel unnatural and your body will tell you to stop.

This is how you know it’s working! 

Anything you do for the first time, that’s good for you, that you should be doing, will seem fake, unnatural, not for you…

Eventually, if you can be consistent enough for years, that feeling will go away and you will feel more and more confident in your abilities and daily actions & habits.

Conclusion

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Over the last several years I’ve devoted my life to helping introverted, shy, socially anxious creators, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and professionals move these mental health obstacles out of their life so they can get busy being their real selves in front of anyone.

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