it's no secret that we spend a lot of time and effort trying to appear confident on the surface when we're around other people because we kind of have no choice people are extremely judgmental whether they're aware of it or not sizing people up is an evolutionary mechanism when we appear confident and self-assured people subconsciously place us higher on their social hierarchy this is why it matters how you dress the strength behind your voice and your posture when you enter a room all of these things contribute tremendously to how people end up treating you but the
weird thing is so many of us feel a huge disconnect between the person that we're trying to appear in the world as and who we actually are as a person because no matter how meticulously we groom ourselves or how obsessively we keep up with the latest trends or how quippy and clever our matter of speech is the whole thing ends up feeling like a giant facade like we're just putting this show on we're not actually confident we're slapping makeup on a pig and this is a problem because the more you strain to act like a
confident person in the real world people don't really buy it they can tell that it's forced fake smiles are really easy to spot i think the reason why so many of us don't feel confident and rock solid is because we're forgetting a concept that is fundamental to the way our psychology works and that is that while we are indeed very efficient at judging other people and sizing them up our brain uses the exact same mechanism to judge ourselves we are a fly on the wall of our own lives constantly judging the things we say the
thoughts we entertain and the habits we indulge in and this constant observation happens without our conscious knowledge because it's subconscious knowledge and this subconscious of ours is always watching us taking notes comparing our lifestyle to our value system and the longer time goes on the more evidence our subconscious gathers to form an opinion about ourselves just like it would with other people so the more and more time we live in contradiction to our value system the lower our opinion will be of ourselves so if we happen to have a very low opinion of ourselves we'd
have very low self-esteem low self-confidence low self-efficacy then there's a very good chance that your subconscious has observed you live your life in a way that is contradictory to your fundamental value system and this is kind of what affirmation culture gets wrong you know it sounds all well and good and helpful to look yourself in the mirror and say you are powerful and you are strong you are good-looking you attract wealth you attract women you attract men you attract everyone but the truth is your subconscious is harder to fool if you look yourself in the
mirror and say one thing and then behave the opposite way your subconscious isn't fooled it watched you do that it'll say wow this guy never does what he says he's going to do i'm going to use this information to develop a self-doubt complex that will leak into every area of his life and his interactions with others especially women and that's the insidious thing about our subconscious it influences our mood our mindset and our overall mental state far more than we probably realize and that's because our subconscious accounts for over 90 of our overall mental function
so how we conduct ourselves in its presence is everything so needless to say the key to confidence in life the key to feeling self-assured is not to double down and care more about what other people think of you it's to take more seriously this relationship that you have with your own subconscious and to realize that you can form a partnership and a friendship with your subconscious and i know that sounds super woo-woo and spiritual and you're like what the [ __ ] is this guy talking about but if you like the idea of forming a
better relationship with your own subconscious then a great way to do that is to develop that relationship like you would any other relationship by spending time to get to know the other person you need to spend time to get to know yourself to uncover what your fundamental value system is so that you can better live in accordance to that so take some time to ask yourself some key questions you know take out a pen and paper and ask yourself what kind of person do i want to be in this world how can i live my
life in a way that i would be proud of what kind of habits does my ideal self have and if i was my ideal self how would i interact with the people around me how would i spend my time when nobody is around does my ideal self make mistakes sometimes if so how does my ideal self respond to the mistakes i make would i learn from them and encourage myself to do better your answers to these types of questions will help you uncover truths that you hold about yourself and the standards that you're trying to
uphold yourself to because whether you're aware of these ideals consciously or not they're there in your subconscious and your subconscious is constantly comparing your behavior to these ideals so it's super important to take some time to try to figure out what constitutes a good and honorable person according to you and chances are there's a lot of truth to these underlying beliefs and sometimes these beliefs are a little skewed and they need correcting and you need to form healthier values and healthier expectations of yourself so a great way to do this is to go through this
whole process of writing this stuff down and diving deep by yourself and then taking that information to a friend or a third party preferably a therapist or a mental health professional and try to figure out whether or not this value system is actually useful for you you know are you holding yourself to unrealistic expectations or are these healthy and good ideals to have because either way there's no getting around the fact that if you want to develop a better opinion about yourself your behaviors and your values need to match and in order for that to
happen either your behaviors need to change or your values need to change as you go through this process you'll probably realize that you are on your own side more than you probably realize and when your conscious mind and your subconscious mind is on the same page you'll find that there's a certain uniformity to your character you don't say one thing and then do another you don't act one way in public and then act another way in private you'll be a more consistent human being with a more authentic identity you will feel like yourself you'll feel
like you're more you and that's a really intangible thing to try to relay to you but it is a very real feeling and that feeling is what confidence feels like it's to be unapologetically you in the presence of others while you're alone it just doesn't really matter you're you no matter the circumstances and i really hope that this video gives you some ideas as to how you can get there in your life i just want to give a big thank you to audible for sponsoring this video the audiobook that i'm currently listening to is the
comfort crisis by michael easter and holy smokes this guy's legit if you ever feel like you're super lazy and you're just like you know complacent in life you're too comfortable you're stuck in a rut read this book it'll kick you out of that rut for those of you who don't know audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs to productivity and self-improvement whatever you're into it's probably on audible every single month they send you one credit which you can spend on any audiobook of your choice regardless
of price and you get to keep that audiobook forever that's one of my favorite things about audible is that if you cancel your subscription at any point for any reason you still keep your entire library of audiobooks including the audiobooks that you got for free using their credit system so it's kind of a no-brainer you can start listening right now with a free 30-day trial just click my link in the description below head on over to audible.com better ideas or text better ideas to 500-500 and the price for a subscription is actually lower than usual
right now so now is the time to listen to the comfort crisis by michael easter using my link in the description below or text better ideas to 500-500 if you liked this video make sure that you actually hit the like button because when you hit the like button the algorithm blesses me and it shoves my bald head into other people's home pages helping them out which also helps me out so it's a win-win for everybody involved and if you're lurking here and this is the thousandth time that you've seen my face consider subscribing other than
that though check out the second channel just posted a video on there uh we're gonna be posting weekly again it's just a good time over there you can ask me questions on the subreddit or in the comments below of that other than that thank you so much for watching and we'll catch you in the next video [Music]
