Courage Comes First, Confidence Comes Later. | Ep. 341

If it's too hard to repeat, it's not disciplined.

It's your ego.

That is how you behave your weight into confidence.

Every time that you dodge the truth, you lose respect.

The fear will be the strongest before you have the breakthrough.

Discipline should feel hard.

If it's too hard to repeat, it's not disciplined.

It's your ego.

So I remember I went to it was called body pump.

Body pump was where you would do like 30 reps of one exercise

four times.

And I remember I went to body pumps three days in a row

and then I went home and I went to go upstairs to my room

and I collapsed trying to walk up the stairs.

And so what I realized is that if something feels too hard

or too punishing or it's too advanced too soon,

you're going to associate it with negativity

and you'll avoid it.

You're essentially punishing yourself.

And then when we punish ourselves,

that means we also avoid the thing

that could potentially lead to punishment.

So if every time I work out,

I hurt really bad after,

I'm going to eventually avoid working out

because I know what comes after working out

is feeling really bad and sore after.

And we want to make our tasks so achievable

that we feel good after we've done them.

And then what happens is if we do something,

we feel good after we do it.

Then we want to do it again

because we like doing things that feel good.

High performers,

they're not going to be sharper longer than somebody else.

They just know when they're not

and to delay the decision.

There's somebody that's probably before your time

if you're watching this video,

but his name is Brian Tracy and he popularized this idea.

And I remember it to the state

which is called Eat the Frog.

The premise is this,

if you had to eat a live frog every morning,

like fly the things like laughing in your mouth, right?

Everything else would be like,

dude, it's a breeze.

I ate a frog this morning.

That frog represents your hardest,

the highest leverage task.

Okay, the one that you would avoid,

but that would move your life forward the most

because we know eating frogs is powerful.

Identify something you've been avoiding.

Now we're going to plan to do it

first thing tomorrow morning.

We are going to execute it

before you check your email,

your Slack, your Instagram, your Facebook,

your WhatsApp, your signal.

I don't know what you use,

but before everything,

you're just going to do that.

And you're going to say,

I am not allowed to do anything else until it's done.

Do the hard thing first.

Reward yourself second.

Choosing to tolerate fear and discomfort

is how I've been able to transform everything that I have done.

Everything I've been terrified for.

From content creation to public speaking,

to running a giant company,

to buying multiple buildings,

here's the thing.

Fear is a mile wide and an inch deep fear.

Means your brain is working properly.

It's not wrong that you feel scared.

Your brain is wired for survival, not success.

It will continue to feel scared

until you do the thing.

The fear will be the strongest

before you have the breakthrough.

Say you're terrified of public speaking.

You're going to step on that stage.

This happens to me every time.

Mouth dry.

Then within 15 seconds,

my heart rate starts to go from like 190 to like 150.

And then within a minute,

I start to feel like I've spit my mouth again.

And then within two minutes,

I don't feel any of it.

It's not because I try to get rid of the fear.

It's because I didn't run away from the situation.

What I learned in doing all these things

is that my emotions follow my motion.

That is how you behave your way into confidence.

And you build up so much evidence

that it would be unreasonable not to be competent.

Speaking truthfully without emotionally vomiting.

A lot of people lose respect for themselves

because of what they say to other people.

And then they walk away thinking.

I shouldn't have said that.

This is when people speak from unmanaged discomfort.

Rather than speaking truthfully

in alignment with the results they want.

A question that I ask myself all the time

is what do I want to have happen from this conversation?

Like what's the action I want this person to take?

People go around in the workplace,

in their friendships, in their relationships,

emotionally vomiting because it feels good in the short term.

And it feels really bad in the long term

because you don't build that self-respect.

And so if you think about it,

self-respect is like fitness.

You just do it one rep at a time.

Every time you choose not to betray yourself.

And every time you betray yourself,

you lose self-respect.

It's just the thing.

People who really respect themselves,

they just leave situations

and people who don't respect them.

They don't complain about it.

And they certainly don't YouTube

Google search videos about it.

They just dip.

They ghost them and they leave.

So self-respect is built in systems

that make it easy for us to keep promises to ourselves.

Success does not discriminate.

Confidence does not discriminate.

It doesn't care where you've come from.

It doesn't care about your background.

It doesn't care about your experience.

All it cares about

is the fact that you put in the work to get it.

Here's the thing.

Your brain gathers evidence.

And evidence is what builds the identity

and confidence over time.

Our brains like to predict what's likely to happen.

If you've never done something before,

your brain says, I don't know what could happen.

So I'm going to make you scared.

And if you're scared,

you're going to avoid it,

which means that you won't die.

Right?

Because our brains are wired for survival not success.

And so it is crazy to think

that you would actually have confidence

when you haven't done the thing yet.

You will become confident once you've done the thing.

Because your brain does it.

It sees you didn't die.

And it says, it's okay. You can do it again.

Now, here's the thing.

I wasn't like forever confident now.

Because just like a muscle that you work out

gets weak if you don't put it under pressure.

So does confidence.

Confidence is like a muscle.

So if you don't work out that muscle,

it's just going to get weaker and weaker over time.

We measure people by what they cost you,

not what they say.

Just because somebody talks up a big game

doesn't mean that they should be in your life.

If somebody makes it harder

to behave like the person I respect being,

they are too expensive to have in my life.

Like no matter how charming,

how connected, or how important they are.

People ask me all the time.

Layla, what do I do?

My boss, I know they don't respect me.

How do I manage them up?

You tell.

You leave.

Person's not going to change because of you.

People barely can get themselves to change.

And I know that you're probably thinking,

well, but this job, I can't get another job.

Or like, this is my business partner.

Like, I have to make it work.

Or I've been married for this, like, I understand.

But at the same time, there's a quote

that comes to mind every time I think of this,

which is like the definition of insanity

is doing the same thing over and over and over again,

expecting a different result.

The situation won't change unless you do.

And you don't change by wanting.

You don't change by wishing.

And you don't change by feeling.

You change by doing something different.

Someone can't disrespect you if you leave the situation.

And so allowing someone to continually disrespect us

is when you give away your own power.

Discipline means stopping a behavior immediately,

but that almost always fails.

So you don't need to be perfect right away.

You just need to take a step towards the next best alternative.

What you want to do is identify

a realistic better, not perfect alternative to your habit.

So instead of drinking vodka, maybe you drink a seltzer.

Instead of drinking a seltzer, maybe you have a craft beer.

Instead of a craft beer, maybe you're going to have

a non-alcoholic beer.

Maybe then seven non-alcoholic beer,

then you're going to have a diet coke.

And then after diet coke,

you're going to say I'm going to have a sparkling water.

And you see how it goes.

It's like you take tiny little steps.

You don't just make the big swing all at once.

And so small steps in the right direction

turn into big changes over time.

It's just that most people are so impatient with themselves.

They don't allow themselves to get there.

And they stay stuck in this cycle of going big change

and then back out, big change again, back out.

Stop seeking approval.

Every time that you wait for somebody else to say go,

you give them control over your future.

You want to have your own approval.

And approval from what I would call like

your future board of directors.

Who are the people you look up to?

With they approve of you doing this.

Most people are waiting for permission

from people who aren't even where they want to be.

And are even achieving their own goals,

let alone helping you achieve yours.

They ask their parents.

They ask their spouse.

They ask 12,000 people in social media.

And then they feel more confused

because you have contrary evidence.

And you feel more confused

because the thing is this,

asking for opinions does not create clarity.

Action creates clarity.

Most people give you advice based on their fears,

not on their knowledge.

And so they're giving you advice

based on what didn't work for them.

Didn't work for their dad, mom, spouse,

partner, brother, whatever it is.

And here's the thing.

Anyone who's successful,

anyone who makes money,

you know how they got there?

By conviction,

not consensus of everybody in their life.

I would even go so far to say this.

If everybody approves of your decision,

it's probably wrong.

Discipline isn't sexy.

It is boring.

And boring is what scales.

Boring is what works.

People say all the time.

I would love to see a day in your life, Leila.

And I'm like, well, that's boring.

Because my life is a series of systems

strung together every day.

I have a system for every aspect of my life.

But here's the thing.

Those systems, those are discipline.

And they're real.

Are they boring?

For sure.

They look boring from the outside.

But they get the results that I'm looking for in my life.

Doing simple things consistently

is what actually leads to massive success.

I have literally never had a time

where I have woken up on a single day

and thought I want to do every single thing today.

Because most days I wake up,

I at least don't want to do one thing.

I don't want to do the workout.

I don't want to talk to the person.

I don't want to have the hard conversation.

I don't want to do the interview.

But I also know that feelings are pleading.

And I want the long-term satisfaction

of knowing that I can stick with something,

knowing I have control over myself

and knowing that I've mastered something.

Discipline is not just going to bring you closer to your goals.

It's going to bring you closer to the person

that you want to be.

Stop avoiding hard conversations.

People won't say it out loud,

but they are counting every single time

that you avoid doing the hard thing.

Every time that you dodge the truth,

you lose your spot.

And so executive presence means being the one

who will say what others won't say.

I remember there's a quote from Mark Zuckerberg

that I actually really like.

And he said,

your job as a CEO is to be a truth teller.

You have to tell the truth even if nobody else will.

So what you want to do

is you want to replace avoidance with confrontation.

It's not that you just want to confront people

and loosely call people out, act like an asshole,

but you want to confront them with composure.

And what that means is you want to be honest.

Because when you're honest, that builds trust.

When you soften the truth,

when you avoid the truth,

you create confusion.

And when you name names,

you become the person to look for

when you want solutions.