ep 129 How To Using Priming Effect to Build Confidence
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Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Coffee Corner. Today is your episode 129. And I know I said this number last time, but it was a mistake. Today is your real 129. So anyway, I want to talk about a concept called priming. Priming effect. I first learned this from the book Become Bulletproof. I finally finished the book.

And then later on learned that in another book and did a little bit of research on YouTube video. And I really want to talk about how we can use priming to help us shape our behaviors and thinking and of course help us build confidence. I know a lot of, there are a lot of videos out there talking about how to become confident but

what is confidence and where does that come from, right? So I do want to use this. And of course, with my own experience, I want to say that there's a possibility that you can become confident. Look at me. So first of all, when people talk about priming concept or priming effect, mostly it's more about the negative meaning. For example, if people give you information before you even know that information, particularly for you, people can ask you like,

Hey, do you think there's something wrong about Emily?

is there something wrong about Emily? And in your thought you might start to think that is there anything wrong with Emily? But you didn't what you didn't really think about is why there's something wrong with Emily and you are already using wrong this word to describe Emily and associated wrong this word with Emily. So you assume Emily there's something wrong with Emily and you start to dig and really try to

find some spices behind that, maybe Emily is wrong. So that's when you are primed. The people are telling you that Emily is wrong and you are going to do the job to find out what's wrong with her. And a lot of time back to, let's say, when you were little, right? So you were born with a certain personality, but then later on you can become a little bit more introverted or a little bit more extroverted. So people change.

Why do we change? I think that's because how you grew up. For example, your parents apparently played a major role in shaping your personalities and behaviors and the way you think about things. And when you were a little bit older and then you have friends and you have other people, your teachers, and those people played a major role or partly major role in your life shaping yourself.

How do they shape you? How does that work? It's the way they feed you information. They constantly give you information or feedback on your behavior, on your speaking, on your thoughts. So let's say while you're telling them that the sky is purple and maybe your teacher says, no, the sky is not purple. What's wrong with you? Sky is of course not purple. Sky is blue.

without realizing that maybe you were talking about the sky with the sunset and then the sunset the whole color palette there was purple but they kept telling you you're wrong and then you start to doubt yourself like maybe I am wrong about the sky color and that's how you find out if there's something wrong about me when it comes to colors and then in the future you will never be confident in colors because you know every time you say something in about the color and people are going to tell you you're wrong about the color

Another thing is very perfect example to talk about is our speaking, especially for our second language learners. When you learn a language and you tend to focus on being perfect rather than being fluent, because that's what people have been telling you. You have to be perfect. You cannot make a mistake. And you've been learning English or any other languages for test purposes. And for test purposes, of course, you want to be perfect. You want to get 100%.

Then if you make a mistake and people are going to tell you why do you make mistake, you know, these are simple things and you should not make mistake. And when you start to talk and now of course you have accent, you make grammar mistakes, they only focus on your mistakes or accent. They don't focus on how well you articulate. So later on as this builds up and then you're going to realize that maybe I should not talk because my speaking is really bad.

And if you notice that every time you give a presentation, your first words, or you do an interview, your first words, your first sentence will always be, my English is not really good. But is your English really not good? Or are you being told that your English is not really good?

Again, that's a process of priming because people keep priming you saying that you are not good enough. And a lot of examples on that will be you're not good enough, you're not tall enough, or you're too tall, your skin color, your hair, your body shape, and your voice and everything, right? That people keep telling you things. And if you're not strong enough, you keep getting those pieces of information and you start to become part of the information. And that's how you have been shaped.

because of people's comments, because of your environment, because of your surroundings. And you tend to see that people from bigger cities, they are more open-minded, they are more international, or they look more stylish. People from relatively smaller cities or smaller villages or less developed villages tend to be a little bit narrow-minded when they are looking at things or thinking about things that they have a certain way to think about it.

but that's how they've been told, that's how they've been taught, and that's how they grew up. Like that's how everybody does it in their life and you learn from it so you become part of it. It's very difficult for a few people, probably top few people that realize that they need to be the cycle breaker, they need to break this cycle, they need to go to a different direction to learn more, to be more open-minded.

then they have to get rid of this small group and go to another leading group and get another priming information so they can become part of that group. And sometimes people say, well, I want to be stylish. I want to look very chic. And then people will tell you that a

Go read magazines, go look at pictures, do vision boards for yourself so you can learn more styles and you can get in or absorb more information about how to style yourself or what colors work for you. And that's another way about priming. So anyway, back to what I really want to talk about is how you can build your confidence using priming. This method is you need someone or you need yourself first.

to keep telling yourself that you are awesome. But of course, you're not going to look at the mirror and tell yourself you're the most beautiful woman in the world and then the second day you'll become the most beautiful and confident woman in the world. You have to do something, step by step, right? And the little things just achieve that. So for example, if you want to lose weight or you want to build strength,

You start with plank or push-up. Now, of course, you're not going to be perfect at any of those exercises. And then what you can do is start from, let's say today, I want to do a plank for 30 seconds. If I can last 25 seconds, I'm going to give myself a pat on the back and say, you did a really good job. You know what? I thought I was going to last only 10 seconds, but I actually lasted 25 seconds.

So you're giving yourself positive feedback to grow into the next motivation that I want to do a little bit more. Maybe today I did 25 seconds and tomorrow I'm going to set a goal for 30 seconds, but I'm expecting myself to achieve the same goal like what I did yesterday.

And then surprisingly, you lost this 30 seconds and you tell yourself, wow, you know, I didn't expect that. So again, another good job. And I'll keep doing that, keep doing that. Until one day you realize that you can do a really good full plank or a pushup.

and that's when you start to grow confidence. Same thing about speaking. I posted a couple of videos when I was doing training at university and presenting at a conference, international conference. I could tell myself I was trying to be confident in those two occasions, but I sounded very pretentious and I sounded very fake because I was trying to be part of that world.

I cringed when I watched those two videos. Anyway, so, but because I did that conference, it wasn't perfect, my pretentious voice or accent or the way I presented things, I could have done better, but I didn't. So the goal, just the mission or just the act of I've achieved that goal,

has led me to my confidence now that I actually can do it without thinking about whether good or not. So we're more focused on good or not instead of focusing on whether you can do it or not.

Because everybody is focusing on whether it's good or not, you forget that achieving it is more important than the result. If you started, you should give yourself a pat and say that good job, you started. If you can start it and last for five minutes, that's again another good job. You should praise yourself. And more and more, you start to last a little bit longer and then you get better.

The conference I did, the training I did, it took me a very long time to achieve that fluency. Yet now, look back, I don't think they were perfect. But back then, I think it was really good and everybody liked it. Again, back to how other people's opinions and feedback will have an impact on your confidence.

People said it was well explained. It was very informative. I don't know if it's true or not, but what I received from them was very positive. So of course it gave me a lot of confidence and then that confidence motivated me to do more. And then again, once you do more and more, your speaking is getting better and better. Practice makes perfect.

But most people stopped before you even get to next step because people will tell you, oh my god, listen to your accent or look at your performance there. I can't believe you did that. You could have done this. I mean, you need constructive feedback, of course. But when you only focus on the negative comments, you are ignoring what you have achieved. Then your personality, your brain will tell yourself that you're not good enough.

And you are always focusing on the bad and you will have less motivation to move forward and you will have less motivation to practice more, to do more, and then you lose a chance to be advanced. So that's how that works. And again, that's priming because people keep feeding you information will shape how you think and what you believe and how you feel.

Moving forward, thinking about how you can really use it, I use a small practical example to show you, but again back to how you can actually improve your speaking using this concept. Start to record yourself, even just a minute. I always tell my students that you need to just start recording.

Right. That's the most difficult step. Once you started, you feel a lot better. And I encourage my students to do presentations a lot. And they said, oh, you know, we're at low levels. We don't have the skills and ability to actually really present without looking at notes. I said, well, you have never tried. How would you know that?

Then they said that my grammar is not good, my speaking is not, my accent is not good, and I can't use complicated words or sentence structures to express my ideas. So what I said that as a second language learner, you're not looking at your age, you're looking at how long you have been learning English.

Thinking about my son, he's almost two and a half. So for him, learning this language, English or Chinese, he has only two and a half years experience. So for you, how long have you really learned this language? And that will be years of experience you have in this language, right? For my students, most of them have less than two years of learning experience in this language. Now, of course, you're not going to be

But as a teacher, I want to be kind of that teacher that I motivate them. I encourage them to do more. I said, don't worry about mistakes because that's my job.

All you need to do is to open your mouth and talk and let me know what you think. If I understand you, then you're fine. So by doing so, I could tell they started to build confidence and they wanted to do more. They're more engaged and more active in my class. And every time we have presentations, I remember first day when I was trying to get them to talk.

It was so difficult and nobody wanted to be the first one. And now everybody wants to be the first one. And they actually fight like I want to be the first one. Because now they have the confidence in their speaking and they want to show me that you're able to, I'm able to present this topic to you even though my English is only at this low level. But then thinking about a lot of people on social media talking about the skills they have learned and they are scared or intimidated to present something

And that's because everyone has their own opinion on your skills, saying that you are not to the par, you are not perfect enough to present how dare you put your videos out there. I mean, still people criticize my speaking, my grammar, my English, but I'm not scared of those critics because I'm strong enough to face the critics and build my skills upon that.

I know some of them are very useful and very constructive, but maybe a little bit harsh, but some of them are just nonsense. I can tell the difference between those two. And that's because I'm more experienced now. I can tell the difference. But in the past, I live in the negative comments. I think negative comments are me. So those comments have shaped me, have primed me to believe I'm incapable of

But that's how we lose confidence, right? So if you believe in yourself, especially when you put a video, put yourself out there in public and really present yourself to the world, you will eventually get positive feedback. Maybe only a couple of comments, maybe 10 or hundreds of comments about how well you've done. And that is priming in a positive way. And you learned that you are actually capable to do it and you want to do more.

Thinking about how I started this video. I wanted to do the conference I just posted. I wanted to do the conference and I started a seven day challenge I started to pick a topic and then share my ideas on each topic to do a self-reflection. I did it. It wasn't ideal. Now when I watch those videos I do really cringe a lot. It was really terrible. But I was thinking if I didn't start to

those kind of things in the very beginning a few years ago. With my English improved, my speaking improved to this point I'm very like I can freely express myself even though I still make a lot of mistakes. I put myself out there people like me people don't like me but I absorb the positive feedback and I start to build on that people like me and people think I explain things really well so I want to go to that direction.

And I started to think about more complicated ideas, more complicated things. And I tell myself, you go pick a thing and you start to work on that. You start to learn it and you start to do some research and you learn more knowledge. You prime yourself to a very higher level and you will get to up to the higher level. And that's how I got where I am now.

And again, I was watching a video today. I forgot. It's called Jefferson. Jefferson. I forgot his name, but he's like a communication guru or something. So basically we say that, who are you? You look people around you. You are those people. You're one of them. So I am so afraid to be one of my, not like, not like my students are not good, but like, you know, if you always teach,

then your language are limited to teaching language and then you will never be able to improve to the point that you can actually freely talk freely chat with anyone else about any kind of topic so I force myself keep going with this channel to do more because I want to keep up with the self that I really like and I want to be not the self I just stop moving stop improving because I'm very good or I'm very satisfied with myself at this stage

I'm so afraid. I still remember my elementary friend when she graduated and she started to teach elementary students. And then one time we met and then she told me that her English just stopped right here. Her English now is just grade six English because that's how long she has been doing.

English for this group of people and she becomes this group of people. I don't want to be like that. So I force myself to read more, to learn more, to discover more. So when I talk to people, I have things to talk about. And that's how I prime myself into a different world so I can become more confident in that different world. And when I go meet people, I'm not nervous about things anymore because I know that I just need to tell myself

it's gonna be okay and it is perfectly fine if I don't know it but that's why I need to learn and then that's a great opportunity to start a conversation and learn from other people. People like when you ask questions, people like when you learn from them because that makes them feel special and I want to make people feel special because when they feel special they're more willing to chat with me and that's my goal. Now as long as I can achieve my goal

Well, guess what? You can use many ways to do that in this part of the way I do things. And that has built my confidence. And I know I talked a lot. There's no logic about things in my English today. It's not really good. I blame Bob because I took Bob for a walk and then he didn't poop and it made me very, very mad. Anyway, coming back that I used to think about myself like, well, I think about myself 10 years ago.

even five years ago, I was not this confident and I was trying to be that kind of person that other people want me to be but I'm not the kind of person. That makes me so weak that I've lost myself and then the moment you find yourself

who is good at certain things and you have improved so much to the point that you want to move on to learn new things and that's when you start to build confidence and that's what I want to talk about about priming.

So again, if you are interested in this concept, please feel free to do some research on priming effect in psychology and I'm sure you can learn more than just what I talked about in this video. I hope you enjoyed this very short one and I'll see you next time. Stay tuned. Bye.