How I Became REALLY Confident

hey friends welcome back to the channel in this video we're talking about one of my favorite topics that i get asked about all the time which is confidence people dm me on instagram and twitter and stuff and say hey how are you so confident how are you so okay with putting yourself out there how did you become that way were you always like that and it's weird because when i was younger i was pretty shy and unconfident generally across the board especially when it came to things like public speaking and i never once thought that i'd be comfortable enough to do something like make make youtube videos all that kind of jazz but for me this whole confidence thing was very much a skill that i knew i wanted to improve and i took active steps to try and get better at being confident to the point where i think i am now reasonably okay at being confident so in this video i'm going to share the nine or so tips that i've learned over the last 15 years of like actively trying to become more confident let's go for it all right so tip number one is to appreciate the value of confidence and i realized this fairly early on in my secondary school days when i was a a we teenager trying to learn how to code and play world of warcraft and that kind of stuff and i recognized that i at the time wasn't a particularly confident person and i knew in the back of my mind that this was going to hold me back in life i saw other kids in my in my class who were more confident who were able to sort of be comfortable in social situations who are able to have banter with teachers and i kind of looked at them i was like damn you know i would love to have that kind of skill because i saw that it would just make my life a lot better if i were more confident if i could make friends easier or if i could i don't know i wasn't really thinking about business opportunities and stuff i was thinking if i could pitch my web design services to people and make money if i was more confident that would mean i have more money and i can buy more gadgets and it was this thing of realizing that the more confident you are the more confident we can become the more opportunities are going to come our way so that's tip number one for actually going on this path towards becoming more confident tip number two that i found helpful was to recognize that confidence is in some ways domain specific but in other ways it's domain general so like domain specific confidence is like when i was 13 14 i was very confident when i was playing playstation with my friends we'd play ratchet and clank i was pretty good at it i'd be flaming them you know i had a lot of confidence i was pretty confident in math class because i knew that i knew what was going on and i knew i could you know get the questions right in in a math test but when it came to more social domains like giving a presentation in class or talking to new people and stuff i was less confident about that and over time i kind of recognized that the confident the the feeling of confidence i had from doing something i was good at i actually could just sort of apply that to whatever domain i wanted to and just try my best to feel that feeling even though i wasn't feeling the feeling if that makes sense and so these days for me is pretty good because i can turn on my youtube persona if i need to and so if i'm in a situation where i'm feeling particularly unconfident i'll just flip that switch in my head and think okay let's pretend i'm doing a youtube video and then i will kind of sort of embody a little bit more of that confidence and charisma that hopefully theoretically fingers crossed comes across on camera tip number three that i found helpful was a mindset shift uh and you know there's this cliche that when it comes to confidence you want to fake it until you make it this is actually like genuinely really good advice i'd heard this advice for ages and i didn't find it particularly helpful but the thing like i i read this quote in a book i can't remember which book it was but it basically said there is no difference to the observer between real confidence and fake confidence like for the most part when we're speaking to someone we cannot tell whether they are actually confident or whether they are just pretending to be confident real confidence and fake confidence looks pretty much identical yes caveat there are some issues if someone has a lot of bravado you can kind of tell oh this person is clearly faking it but in general 99.9 of the people that we meet we cannot tell the difference between real confidence and fake confidence and therefore recognizing that we can apply it to ourselves and so when i'm in situations where i'm not feeling confident i kind of tell myself okay there's no difference between me pretending or acting as if i am confident and actually being confident therefore i will choose to act as if i'm being confident i will fake it until i make it i kind of realized that like fake it till you make it kind of imp implies that you're pretending up until the point that you're not pretending anymore already i think in a lot of situations we're all pretending more than more than we're letting on even when it comes to making a youtube video or giving a presentation or public speaking and stuff even though i consider myself quite good at that stuff i still am pretending to a degree i am playing a part i'm acting a persona this is not my real life persona that i would be with friends with friends i'm a lot more low-key and kind of talk like this and that's not very engaging when it comes to public speaking so yeah this mindset shift to fake it till you make it is genuinely really helpful but that plus the thing of there is no difference between real confidence and fake confidence all right so tip number four is to take baby steps now the thing about confidence is that usually when we think like oh i'm not very confident like you know these days with my part-time youtuber academy around half the students we have uh who want to want to start making youtube videos are uncomfortable with the idea of putting themselves out there on the internet talking to a camera in this kind of way and that makes perfect sense it is a very weird thing to do it takes a lot of practice to get to a point where you're comfortable talking to a camera and just loving the sound of your own voice and the thing that we tell the students who are struggling is to take really small baby steps so filming a video with lights camera microphone and everything is quite intimidating but for example if you took out your phone and you sent a whatsapp video to a friend that's not particularly intimidating if you post an instagram story that feels a lot less intimidating for some people if you just kind of record a video and dm it to someone that's quite easy to do so that's a very small baby step then the next step beyond that is to film a video with your phone and to upload it to youtube on your youtube channel but make it unlisted so no one's going to see it other than you and your friends then you send the link out to some friends and you're like okay that wasn't too bad i upload it as unlisted and then the final step is to get your phone out film a video and just hit the publish button because you realize that well i mean i've already done the whatsapp video i've done the unlisted it's actually not that hard now to press publish and basically everyone in my in my course all of my students who have done that have found oh yeah you know the the fear about this thing publishing a youtube video was so much in my head and now that i've done it i've realized it actually wasn't too bad and then they're on well on their path to becoming decent part-time youtubers it's a similar thing with neil strauss's book rules of the game for example which is a book that's sort of like an action plan to help guys who are uncomfortable talking to girls become more comfortable with talking to girls also i've heard and in that book there's this whole 30-day plan where on day one you're literally just gonna go up to someone and ask them for the time it doesn't have to be a girl just like anyone just ask for the time and you just do this like five times day two you go up to random people in the street and you ask for directions to the nearest coffee shop that kind of stuff those are the baby steps that build up the confidence muscle of talking to strangers and then over time theoretically you can get to a point where you're comfortable going up to anyone on the street and just having a bit of a casual chat with them this is something i aspire to at some point in my life tip number five is another mindset shift the thing with confidence is that like yes there are some practical things that we can do but broadly it is about kind of hacking our brains into thinking about confidence in a different way and one alternative way of thinking about confidence is that confidence is not something that you build and confidence is not something that you acquire confidence is something that you can just have this kind of sounds a bit weird but i like i've i've been into close-up magic for the last 10 years or so and so i've attended a lot of lectures and performances by other magicians who well whose job it is to go around parties and tables and stage and stuff doing magic tricks that takes a hell of a lot of confidence and yeah one way to build that confidence is to do the baby steps and build the confidence very very slowly over time but the other way of doing it which a few magicians talk about is just reorienting the concept of confidence in our mind and just recognizing that you can just be confident you can just choose to be confident and just play the part of someone who is confident that leads us to tip number six which is to appreciate the spotlight effect now the spotlight effect i've talked about a few times on this channel is this idea that we all walk around life thinking that there is a spotlight trained on us and that anytime we make a mistake or a faux pas or we stumble over our words do we do anything silly load the people around us are watching us and judging us and for people who really have the spotlight effect that leads to a feeling of unconfidence because confidence generally comes from a sense of comfort within ourselves a sense of being okay with taking risks and maybe even looking like a fool but if we walk around life thinking that everyone around us is judging us that's gonna be really really bad for our confidence now when it comes to the spotlight effect there's sort of two things to keep in mind number one is to recognize that broadly no one really cares everyone is walking around with their own spotlight train on them and everyone is worrying about what everyone else is thinking therefore very few people are actually looking at us and analyzing our actions and being like oh ha ha that person is not very confident that's point number one and point number two is that if you are the sort of person who goes around judging people stop doing that it's a total waste of time like you know most people are not doing that and if you're walking around being like oh what's he wearing oh what's what's what are those shoes that she's wearing or oh that guy's hair looks a bit weird you're very very unlikely to be a confident person because you are literally doing the thing that you're scared of and you're not recognizing that like 95 of people don't think in those ways so walking around life with a judgmental attitude towards other people is just a terrible terrible terrible way to live so please stop doing that and i guarantee you will naturally become more confident as you realize that broadly no one actually cares about you therefore you don't really need to care or judge what other people are doing tip number seven is one that i tell myself all the time which is that everyone is friendly but you have to go first and usually when i'm in any kind of social situation i tell myself i need to make the first move if i'm at work and there's like a new doctor that i'm working with i tell myself that okay i need to make the first move and say hello or like ask a question or like do a bit of banter or talk about their love life or anything like that and in like 99.9 percent of cases i get a positive response because generally people are friendly it's just that everyone is scared of going first and so if you can be the person to go first and just tell yourself i'm just going to go first if you can like take that baby step of putting yourself out there just a little bit it really results in a positive response from most people and for me the more i've done this the more i've realized damn you know i'm actually a pretty confident guy i just have to go i just have to take that first step of going first it's like a lot of things in life where getting started is the hard part but once you're doing it it's actually quite nice and and for most of us watching this once you're in a conversation with someone it's probably pretty reasonable but it's just getting into that conversation that feels a little bit like oh i don't know if i should push the boat out i don't know if i should like say hello to that person who's sitting on the plane next to me that kind of stuff it's just pushing through that starting point and recognizing that starting is hard but then continuing is easy everyone is friendly but you have to go first tip number nine for becoming more confident is to just practice confidence like anything is a skill like a skill it can be improved and the more we put ourselves into uncomfortable situations situations where we're stretching our comfort zone the more generally we're going to become confident because we realize we can thrive in those settings as well so for me there were kind of three things that i actively did to help improve my confidence number one was that when i was in school and recognized that i needed to become more confident any time we'd have a class or a lecture or a presentation or anything i would make it a point to ask a question at the end so throughout the whole thing i'd be like dreading like oh my god i need to ask a question what's that question going to be and then i put my hand up and i would ask a question and then over time it just became so normal to the point where i now have zero qualms about asking a question even in a lecture theater of like 400 medical students secondly confidence was part of the reason that i started dabbling in close-up magic being a magician is quite a scary thing you have to go to people and say hey you want to see a magic trick and you have to hope that you can perform and that you can be entertaining and that you can be confident and so i was doing shows at like hospices and restaurants and later at balls and parties at university and all of these were stretching my comfort zone a little bit and now i know that if i've got a deck of cards in my hand i'm pretty comfortable going up to a group of people and being like hey hi you know just kind of talking to them maybe showing a magic trick it still feels a little bit scary but the fact that i was putting myself into those uncomfortable situations really helped get my own confidence up and thirdly when i started university i made a point that all right you know ali i'm not going to be the shy and confident dude that i was in school i'm going to be a legend i'm going to be super charismatic and so i made it a point that anytime i'd sit next to someone in a lecture at university i would say hi i don't think we've met yet my name's ali and kind of offered to shake their hand and that worked really well i met loads of people that way of being that hi i don't think we've met yet my name is ali uh how's it going uh that kind of vibe it's sort of just realizing that it's actually quite easy to do that and everyone kind of wants to make friends and the more i did this the more i realized oh maybe i am a kind of a confident guy and maybe this thing of olly you're shy and unconfident was just a story that i was telling myself that might not necessarily be true anymore and finally tip number nine is above all recognizing that confidence is a skill and it's a skill that can and should be learnt and so if you want to improve your confidence like i did i think honestly there's loads of youtube videos these days like the channel charisma on command is really good youtube channel they've got a great book as well which is one of the first things that i read when it came to improving my own confidence but there was another book that i read which i still read like maybe once every two years or so which is a really really popular book on the subject and that's called how to win friends and influence people and so if you're interested in improving your own confidence i'd really recommend giving that a read or a listen to uh and if you want to listen to it you can do it on audible we're very kindly sponsoring this video as you guys probably know i freaking love audible i listen to audible all the time i listen to audible for like between one and three hours every single day and these days i listen to a mixture of fiction and non-fiction books so the fiction books that i love in audible are fantasy books like brandon sanderson's mistborn saga if you haven't checked it out you definitely should and in terms of non-fiction books how to win friends and influence people is genuinely really really good and it's a very inspiring listen anytime i listen to it i think oh yeah and i i feel this renewed sense of confidence yeah you know i can i can be a confident kind of person if you haven't tried audible by now you're seriously missing out head over to audible.com forward slash ali abdull and you will get a 30-day free trial with a free audiobook of your choice if you're interested in being more confident i'd recommend how to win friends and influence people or alternatively if you're interested in just like a fantastic fantastic fantasy series uh you will absolutely love the mistborn series by brandon sanderson another huge recommendation of mine on audible so head over to audible.com forward slash ali abdal or if you're in the u.s text aliadel to 500 500 and you will get your free 30-day trial of audible with a free audiobook and if you've gotten to the end of this video and you're interested in more tips on becoming confident you should check out this video over here which is my top 10 tips for aspiring youtubers a lot of that stuff is relevant even if you don't actually want to be a youtuber but a lot of the fear of starting youtube is around confidence so you'll find some really interesting tips there hopefully thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Ali Abdaal

Views: 419,136

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali abdal, how to become more confident, how to build confidence, be more confident, confidence tips, how to get more confident, confidence, how to be confident, how to be more confident, how to build self confidence, self confidence, how to build confidence fast, how to gain confidence, how to be more confident in yourself, self confidence tips, confidence advice, how to have confidence, confidence secrets, self-confidence, how to boost self confidence

Id: I5hTDOckpnU

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021