Belief In Yourself Is Nonnegotiable | Ep 252
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If you don't have the ability to stick to the little things, how the fuck do you think you're gonna have belief in the big things? And I mean, I'm sorry for being passionate about this, but like, it's very frustrating because I have people come to me all the time. Like, I don't know why I don't believe I can build this business. And I'm like, I don't know. You can't even get out of bed on time. Of course you don't believe you can build this business. Go earn it. Go fucking earn it. Talk.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today I want to talk about a concept that many talk about, which is belief in yourself. So recently, I had a woman who was at my headquarters and she asked me a question. She said, I want to understand how do you have so much belief in yourself? And I do not think that I gave her the answer she wanted because the immediate response I had was, I don't. And she just kind of started laughing and she was like, wait, what are you talking about? And I was like, listen, it sounds great, right? Like,

Nod your head. Believe in yourself. Raise your hand. Do you want to believe in yourself? Great. Yeah, let's all believe in ourselves. Okay, so then if I come to you and I say, good, go believe in yourself. Suddenly it's like, wait, what? Oh my God, I don't, what do you mean? How do I believe in myself? I don't know. It's not working. What am I supposed to do? What do I say? Like the affirmations, it's not all happening, right?

And the reason for that is because here's the thing. Nobody actually believes like they nod, they wait, they cook or they drive. Belief is not an action. It's not something that you just do, but people treat it like it's an input. Like if you just decide to believe in yourself, suddenly all your problems are gonna go away. Suddenly you're gonna have the courage to do all these things. Suddenly you're gonna be able to build a business. And that's where they've got it wrong because everybody thinks that belief is an input, but belief is not a freaking input. Belief is an output.

Everybody has this wrong and I am really, really freaking bullish on this. Believing in yourself is ass backwards. Okay, think about it like this. Think about it like compound interest. If someone told you, hey, start compounding your interest right now, you'd be like, what the fuck? That's not how it works. Compounding isn't something you do. It's something that happens based on the right inputs.

Belief works the same way. Belief doesn't magically appear because you tell yourself to believe, cross your fingers and wish really freaking hard. It happens after you've done the freaking work. Okay, so instead of trying, like wasting time trying to force belief, you have to focus on things that actually make belief happen as an output. What I want to talk about is how does belief actually work?

Here's the simple version. Your situation influences what you do. What you do influences your situation. The results of those changes affect how you act the next time. That is learning. And learning isn't just about what works. It's also about what doesn't work, right? If something gives you a good result, you do more of it. If something gives you a bad result, you do less of it. But what happens if something gives you no result? That's where most people quit. Not because they're failing.

But because they're frustrated, why do people give up too soon? Okay, imagine playing a slot machine. I live in Vegas. It's like, okay, sometimes you win, which is like very seldom, and sometimes you get nothing. Now imagine that same slot machine, but every time you lose, it shocks you. That would probably change how much you played, right? That right there, having the shock or not having the shock is the difference between frustration and punishment.

Frustration happens when you don't get a result. Punishment happens when you actively get burned. And the longer that their delay between your actions and the outcome, the more frustrating it gets. That's why people quit things that could make them very successful.

because they don't see progress fast enough and they get tired of waiting. And here's what most people don't realize. Frustration temporarily lowers the value of the goal. And if you don't know how to push through frustration, you're going to keep switching to things that give you faster results, even if those results are smaller. And that's the trap. That's where people stay. And that's why people settle. This is why nobody ever gets belief in themselves. Frustration prevents you from building the belief.

because you don't have a high enough frustration tolerance. Now, here's the thing. What's the difference between average and exceptional?

Success in any area means dealing with a long period of, "This sucks, this isn't working, why the fuck am I even doing this?" And a lot longer than most people think because they see everyone's highlight reel, they don't see what they're actually doing behind the scenes and how freaking hard it is. Now, the people who win are the ones who stay in the game long enough for outsized returns to show up. And that's where discipline comes in. Discipline is a combination of strategy and tolerance. Discipline isn't like about grinding it out, okay? It's two different things.

Strategy, which is making good decisions before you need them. And tolerance, which is sticking to the plan even when it sucks. So when you have a solid strategy, you don't need as much tolerance. And when you build tolerance, you give yourself more space to execute a great strategy. But here's the catch. You need both of those things. And so if you're missing one, then you always remain in the struggle and frustration cycle.

So that being said, going back to belief, how do we actually build belief? Okay, so if belief isn't an input, how do we create it? We focus on the factors that make belief happen. Belief is often blocked by the fact that we cannot tolerate something long enough. In fact, it's that we can't tolerate frustration long enough to do the things required to earn belief. So

How can we focus on the things that make belief happen? There's really seven things. The first one is framing. The way that we talk about a task actually changes how we feel about it. If you tell yourself that something's too hard, belief goes down. If you tell yourself that it's too easy, belief goes up. But then when it actually is hard, frustration kicks in and then you quit. So what's the solution to framing a situation? This is the thing I tell my team all the time. Be freaking honest. Be honest about something.

It's like the best example I can give is that when I'm hiring somebody, right? When I'm hiring somebody and they're like, I just want to understand like, what's the shit? What's the highs? What's the lows? What's and I'm just like, all I can do is be honest with you. Here's how it actually is. And I really believe it's because my job, if I really think about what's my job to do in this business is to be a truth teller. Because I know that if expectations match reality, people can endure hard things.

And so oftentimes I will say, guess what? This will be hard, but I believe you can do it.

this is not the easiest job in the world. There might be some stuff you gotta clean up. There might be a lot of stuff you gotta build. It's not the easiest culture, all these things, but it's worth it because here's all the things you're gonna get on the other side. That, my friends, is framing. This is also something that people use in sales. In sales, where people go wrong is that oftentimes what they do is they tell people it's gonna be easy. So in the moment, people believe them and they say, oh, wow, you're right, it's gonna be easy. I'll buy the thing.

Then what happens when they get in and they realize it's not easy? Oh, it's not that easy to lose 50 pounds. Oh, it's not that easy to grow my business to a hundred million dollars. Oh, it's not that easy to have the love of my life because I've got to go on a thousand shitty dates.

And now they're like, oh, frustration cricks in and then they quit. So I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, you can think of a time where you have framed something poorly, whether it be as too hard or too easy, and it set you or somebody else up for failure because either they feel really excited and then they get frustrated or they feel really frustrated and they never start. And so what you want to do is you want expectations to match reality. And if you do that, you could help build real enduring belief.

Now, the second factor is focus. Okay. If you spend all your energy thinking about how hard something is, you put in less effort. I know that sounds crazy, but it's the truth. Because if you think about how hard something's going to be, you actually try less hard because you think, oh gosh, I don't know if I'm actually going to succeed at this. But if you focus on what you can control and what is easier to control and what you have influence over, you

you actually take more action. So I'll give you an example. When I was, I want to say I was 19 years old, 20 years old, and I was, you know, 100 pounds overweight. I tried so hard not to think about the fact every day that I had 99, 898, 97, 80, 60, 50, whatever more pounds to lose, because that felt so depressing. And

And it felt so hard to think like, am I seriously going to have to do this for that much longer? Because this fucking sucks. I'm fucking hungry. I'm tired. I'm in the gym. I still look like shit. Like how much longer do I have to do this? And so instead, I really tried to focus on that day. What can I eat today? What can I do to move today?

How can I treat myself today? What effort am I going to put in today? Can I just move the needle a little bit? And I didn't focus on the things I couldn't control, like what other people were eating, like what other people at the gym were doing, what people said about me, what people were judging me. I just focused on what can I do?

I will say the trick to this because I do think it's difficult. We all judge ourselves. We all feel judged by others. And we have a difficult time focusing when we feel like something's really hard. All I can tell you is break it down to days, not weeks, or break it down to weeks, not months, or break it down to months, not years.

The smaller that you can break the task down into what you have to do that day or even hour by hour, the easier it is. The same thing I do with company planning. Like, I'm not like, oh my God, you know what? This is where I need to be in three years and I'm not staring at that three-year goal every day because I've taken that goal and I've broken it down into what I need to do year by year, month by month, week by week, day by day. And then...

All I need to focus on is what I can do today to get to that goal.

And that helps me not dread the future and not worry about what's going to happen. Instead, I'm just focused on the things I can do. Now, the third thing is emotion. Our mood does affect our belief. When you feel frustrated, when you feel anxious, when you feel defeated, your belief in yourself actually tanks. Even if you objectively have the skills to succeed. And so trying to like change your mindset is not going to fix this shit.

What will fix it is fixing the root cause of those emotions. Is that your habits? Is that your environment? Is that your expectations? And oftentimes, I think what people do is they also take action based on a temporary emotion.

There's a couple things I'll say about this. One, I try really hard not to make decisions when I'm emotional. If I'm not feeling content, if I'm feeling frustrated, angry, depressed, sad, I'm like, okay, do not make a decision. Do not say something you can't take back. Do not do something you can't reverse. Do not make a decision about something that's going to change the course. Just make

commit to trying to get through this emotion. And so instead, I try to figure out why am I feeling this way? Do I have an unrealistic expectation of myself?

Am I not keeping up with the habits that keep me in a good emotional state? Am I putting myself in an environment with people who are fucking shitty? I know it sounds ridiculous, but like these are things that we all do without even thinking because when it comes to the environment, I even have to stop myself because I find myself at times surrounding myself with people who I realize like I don't actually, I would prefer, I would prefer to be alone than be around you. I know that sounds harsh, but if I find myself

because of whatever social pressure or the need to please people saying yes to things that actually don't make me excited, don't energize me, don't light me up, then I find myself in a bad emotional state because I'm like, damn, I would have rather just been alone because at least I like being with myself. Right. I would say the second piece of that is when I'm not feeling like myself and I'm feeling in an emotional state and I'm that my belief in myself has tanked.

I audit my habits. I'm like, am I doing things that build belief in myself? Like, what are the things that we do that build belief in ourselves? And for me, it's like, if I'm not eating right, if I'm not exercising, if I'm not positively reinforcing my partner, if I'm not pouring into my team, if I'm not taking care of myself, like my belief in myself tanks. Because it's like the little promises that we make to ourselves about the person we want to be

If we're not keeping those on a daily basis, why don't we believe in ourselves? Because we can't believe ourselves because guess what? We don't do what we say we're going to fucking do. You're like, why can't I believe in myself to start this business? I'm like, I don't know. You can't even control what you put in your mouth. You can't even control if you hit the gym. Of course you can't control if you were going to build a business. Of course you don't have belief in that. If you don't have the ability to stick to the little things, how the fuck do you think you're going to have belief in the big things?

And I mean, I'm sorry if I'm being passionate about this, but like, it's very frustrating because I have people come to me all the time. Like, I don't know why I don't believe I can build this business. And I'm like, I don't know. You can't even get out of bed on time. Of course you don't believe you can build this business. Go earn it.

Go fucking earn it. Tough. Now, if you do stick to the habits, if you do monitor your environment, the last piece and the piece that I know I get trapped in all the time is your expectations. Some of us have unrealistic expectations of ourselves and that actually tanks our belief. Some of us have...

perfectionist expectations. That is me all the way, which is like, I expect that if I try something new, I should be perfect the first time. Now, here's the thing. For me, not being perfect the first time won't stop me from trying again, but it does create this cycle where I want to beat myself up and be mad at myself. And then I just like go into the cycle again. And so I have to stop myself and say like, okay, let's just do a shitty first draft.

Trying something new, shitty first draft. Never done this before, shitty first draft. Like new territory, shitty first draft. And that's all I can do is just like try to get out of shitty first draft. The fourth thing is models. Okay, this one is really valuable. If you see people like you winning and doing the thing that you wanna believe that you do, your belief goes up. But if you only compare yourself to perfect people that you think have it all figured out, you just feel worse.

What you want to do is you want to find people who have struggled the same way that you have struggled and watch how they figured it out. Listen to how they figured it out. Watch their stuff. Consume them. That is so much more valuable than watching somebody to like get inspired. It's like be inspired. It's like, you know, it's funny. I have friends in the fitness industry and they're like, I don't know why I don't have more clients. I'm like, I don't know. You only post pictures.

of you looking like a Greek goddess now when 10 years ago you were a fat slob. Post those pictures 'cause I don't relate to you either, right? This is so unrelatable. This is one reason why when I started making content I said I really wanted to share all the things I've been through because I believe in my core

that if I don't share my struggles, if I don't share what I struggle with, if I don't share the human parts of me, you who listen to me are less likely to take action. And I fucking don't want that for myself. I don't wanna be one of those people who just makes content and nobody takes action on that shit. I hate that. And I thought about the content that I take action from, and it's always when I can relate to the person.

When someone feels like a robot, when they feel like a celebrity, when they feel like this shell of a human, it's so much harder to take action because I don't feel inspired. I actually just feel like I want to beat myself up because why am I not able to be like that, right? And maybe there are some people who truly figured it out and they figured out not to suffer or have pain in life, but I just really don't think that's true. You want to be careful to find models that

that share the same struggles as you because if you find people who share the same struggle, it's easy to figure out the way out of those struggles. And I know for me, this has been a crucial part of my journey in the people I look up to, the people that I have found as models, they are always people who I relate to their pain, I relate to their struggle. And because of that, I believe in the solutions that they propose. And you're so much more likely to believe in a solution if you believe and you relate to the pain.

Now that brings me to the fifth one, which is comparisons. Nothing kills belief faster than comparing yourself to the wrong people. If you are constantly measuring yourself against someone who is 10 years, 15 years, 30 years ahead of you, you are setting yourself up to feel like shit. You have to focus. If you're going to compare yourself, compare yourself to somebody who's got the same stakes, who's got the same struggles, who's at the same point in their career, their life, their business.

It's like when somebody comes to me and they're like, I just want what you've got. And I'm like, cool, 10 more years. Or if they're like, I just want the marriage you've got. Cool, we've been doing it 10 years. You didn't see the first three. It was fucking hard. Do not compare yourself to me. It's not going to help you. And so this is something that I'm very careful with myself because there's many people who

who I look up to, but I do not compare myself to them. Because if I compare myself to them, I make bad decisions because I try to speed up a process that shouldn't be sped up. Who are you comparing yourself to? It's like if I right now were to look at like the world's fittest chick and be like, why do I not look like her? Okay, well, I haven't been training consistently like her and eating like her for 10 years.

So until I've put in 10 years of training and diet like this woman, I don't get the opportunity to compare myself to her. And that is what robs so many people of belief is like, they're like, I don't believe in myself because I'm not there yet. And they're like pointing to somebody. This happens in business all the time. People are like, I just don't get it. Like, why am I not like this person yet? I'm like, dude, that person's been doing it for 30 fucking years. 30 years. And you're comparing yourself. You've been doing it for two. What the fuck are we talking about?

Now, comparison and models aside, what is the sixth thing for belief? Past success builds belief. Experience is number six. Here's the thing. Most people forget about how much progress they've made. It's like every day, it's almost like Groundhog Day. It's like you're starting over again. It's like you might have done really great yesterday, but then you forget again today. And that is why I think tracking your wins is so important.

Because even if they're small, they are proof objective data that you can figure it out and you can do it. I'll give you an example, which is recently I was like, I need to lose five pounds, right? It's always five because I've never, I never have more than five pounds to lose, but I was like, I need to lose five pounds.

And so what I know is I need to track my weight. In the first couple of weeks, I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, but I'm tracking my weight. And then I see, oh, you know what? It has gone down. Oh, wait, over the last two months, oh my gosh, I am making progress. And then when I feel like, you know, I don't know if I can lose the last two pounds, I go back and I look and I look at my little graph on my MyFitnessPal and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can lose five pounds because look how much weight I've already lost.

And it's like those little wins and tracking them helps me so much because at the end of the day, it's very difficult to remember the progress we've made because our brains want to focus on the negative. They want to focus on the threats. They want to focus on the things that prevent us from succeeding. They don't want to focus on the things that are going to drive us forward and make us feel good because those aren't threats and therefore it's not important.

And so you have to track these things like it's not I don't do it because I like doing it. I don't fucking like tracking data. I don't like tracking wins. I don't like I don't like doing any of it, but I do like it in the moment when I don't have belief in myself and I go and I fucking look at the data and I look at the evidence and I remind myself of it. Past success builds belief because we can accumulate experience with small wins. And then the last piece is domain transfer.

The reality is this, you have skills that made you successful in other areas of life. Like if you suck at building a business right now, but you have built an amazing family, there are skills from building a family that translate into building a business.

Same goes for like getting in shape. If you've gotten an amazing shape, there are skills that you acquire in getting in shape that absolutely transfer over to building a business. And the same goes both ways. And so you already have skills that have made you successful in your life. Now you want to find ways to apply those skills to the thing you're struggling with. The thing is, is that you're probably way more capable than you realize. You're just not making the connections.

So a question I like to ask people all the time is, you know, when somebody's gotten really fit, now they're getting into business. I say, tell me all the lessons that you learned from fitness and how they've helped you in business. And then when I know people that are building a business that are trying to get in shape, I say, tell me all the lessons that you've learned building a business that you think could help you build your body. Because sometimes we just need to ask ourselves better questions. Sometimes when we're trying to do something new, it's the discipline of taking the time to make ourselves look at the positive, to make ourselves look at what we're good at, to tell ourselves, you know,

You know what? I have done some good shit. And to recognize those moments, because the thing is this, at the end of the day, these things I went over, they are not magic. And at the end of the day, believing in yourself isn't magic. It's not something that you just decide to have and then you get it fall on your lap. It's not these affirmations you say in the mirror. It's something that happens when you take the right actions over time. And it occurs as a result of those actions.

Don't waste energy trying to believe in yourself. Spend your time and energy doing the things that create belief and watch what happens next.