How Confidence and Power Reinforce Each Other

00:30

00:30

How Confidence and Power Reinforce Each Other

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

In this video, I explore the relationship between confidence and power and how the two can begin to reinforce one another over time. I go over how confidence changes the way we look at the future, shifting attention toward possibility and reward rather than becoming overly focused on fear and loss. I also discuss how taking action and accumulating experiences can gradually build self-belief. From there, I explore how confidence can begin to expand into a greater sense of power and control in the external world — influencing leadership, decision making, and the way you show up in work and social situations. I also share practical examples from my own experiences in work, social life, and dating to show how small actions can create momentum and lead to an upward spiral of confidence and influence.

Confidence Personal Growth Leadership Action Self Control Social Skills Confidence Building

Meet your Teacher

Austin, TX, USA

Meet your Teacher

Austin, TX, USA

Transcript

Hey, What's going on? This is Ish, And in today's talk, I'll be going over how confidence and power work hand in hand. So I'll talk to you first about how confidence works, And then I'll talk to you about power. And to get started, Let's go over confidence. Confidence is our ability to look into the future to see a goal and then starting action steps towards it. Now it is conferences based on in action taking. So that's the first part. Then the second part is to have the belief that things will work out for you. So you believe that when you take this action, You will achieve a positive or favorable result. In any decision that we take in life, We don't really know how things will pan out. We can have an estimate, But we're not really sure at the end of the day. So. . . When we think of making any kind of decision, Whether it's applying for a job or asking someone on a date, For example, It can go two ways. The first is we can look at how things could go favorably. So for example, If I apply for a job, Then I may get it. Or we can look at how there'll be a loss involved. So if I apply for this job, Maybe I won't get the job and I get rejected and that Really hurts. Or for example. . . If I'm going to ask this person out. The positive outcome of that will be they say yes. The negative result is they may reject us and we feel really embarrassed and that may hurt our reputation, So we think. The loss portion of that. So we have two mechanisms in our brain. One that is seeking the rewards over action. And the second is to avoid loss. So you want to avoid pain. And what feeling confident does is that it changes this focus from a avoiding loss mindset to a seeking reward mindset. So we look at the upsides of any decision that we take in life. And actually, Just as a little pointer, One problem with overconfidence is that when people are feeling very overconfident in themselves, And they have this very high level of self-belief, They become risk blind. So they always look at the upsides of the decisions, But fail to account for any kind of risk at all. So that's not good either. We don't want to be on the extreme other side of this. But when you think about confidence and taking action, If you continue to take action in the world towards a certain goal, And when you take a lot of action, You will receive some kind of success and some kind of payoff from your action. It may be a very small result at first. And this success actually makes you more confident. So you see that your action taking is paying off. So as a result, This further fuels your confidence, And you become more reward focused, And you focus on what you could gain next, So that you're focusing on the next step. And this gives you increased self-belief. So you believe in yourself, You're more confident, You are more prone to take action now, And this will further fuel more actions and more results favorably in your way. Now your self-belief also starts to increase because you start to prove to yourself that you can achieve the things that you set out to if you just keep taking action. So you gain in your positivity. Your self-belief, And your action-taking skills. And it's like a muscle that you have to continuously work out. Now with this increased sense of self-belief, You also gain in your area of control, And that's something that confidence brings to you. Because you are again focusing on being proactive and you are the cause of the different things in your life and how results pan out rather than being at the effect of things. So you're becoming proactive as opposed to being reactive. And this sense of increased control because you again are seeing what you can do and you are actively working on things that you can do and you're blocking out things that are outside of your sense of control, You will then increase in the next thing I'm going to talk about, Which is your power. So your sense of power increases. And power can be defined a lot of different ways. But essentially it is your ability to influence the world and also yourself. And your appetite to want that as well comes with power. So let's see how this works. So when we start with the self. When we are proving to ourselves that we can do the things that we set out to do. We start to take action in spite of uncertainty and in spite of loss that may happen that we discussed earlier. You take action anyways, You start to get some successes, Your self-belief starts to increase, You feel more positive about the future as opposed to negative or pessimistic. This starts to increase your level of control, Which we've talked about. And now this has a spillover effect where you now want to influence the world all around you or your surroundings, And you want to make an impact. So what this may look like is that you'll want to be in charge more in a group, You want to be the leader, You want to make plans, Say in your friend group. At work, You want more responsibility and more influence on other people's work as well. Just because your self-belief has gotten so much higher that you think that your way can be beneficial for others. This is actually a very positive trait in leadership. It can also be a negative trait too, Don't get me wrong, Because. . . If you become. . . Overly narcissistic in this and you believe that you're right and other people are wrong, And you don't take any feedback, This is also not good. So again, The other extreme of this. But there are some benefits that come from this increased level of self-belief, Of confidence, Of power. Because as you start to take more action and start to influence the world more, You'll also see more positive results from that. And it becomes a feedback loop where you become more empowered to take on more risks, More challenges, More positions where you can influence others. And this sense of power starts to increase. So you can start to see how confidence and power work hand to hand. So now I'll talk to you about. Some practical examples of how this loop has worked in my own life and you can now start to see how this can also work for you by again starting at the first step of taking a lot of action, Growing your confidence, Which will eventually spill over to wanting more power, Which again influences others positively. And with this increased level of power, Then you feel more confident to take on more responsibilities and so on. So I'll start with two different examples, The first one being my workplace, And then I'll talk to you about how I saw the cycle happen in my social and dating life as well. So let's talk about work. My early 20s, I've probably gotten fired from almost every single job I've ever had. I could not keep a job for the life of me. I would probably be described as unreliable, Didn't have much work ethic, I was not very competent in what I did, I was unconfident, And these are just direct feedback from my managers and coworkers. Basically did not do well at all. And what is interesting is that as I started to study these topics of confidence, I started to implement it in my life. So I started to take more action at my recent job, For example. So again, Confidence comes from that initial action taking. So what I did was I'd speak up in meetings. And at first when I did that, I was like, Oh my God, I'm scared to speak up. What if I'm gonna ask a dumb question, But I did it anyways. So again, You're pushing forward in spite of risk. So I started to become more assertive at work, Ask more questions, Get more clarification, Start to do more and start to get more visibility as a result of doing this because I'd be the only one in my my team that would ask questions in every single meeting. So the senior leadership would actually look into this and actually notice that I was the only person participating and I was visible and I was taking more action. So they started to see me more as a leader as I became more competent because I was asking these very hard and difficult questions. So they start to ascribe some of these. Qualities of, Let's just say, Quote unquote, A powerful person. So as a result within this, I started to take more action, Started to become. . . More confident in myself and my self-belief start to increase. As a result of this, Other people also. Saw me as a leader, And then I started to get more responsibilities, Where more of my colleagues started to ask me for questions and ask me for advice. And then my manager would actually say, Okay, There may be a spot in leadership for you in the future. So how interesting is that, That I was the person that got fired from almost every job for being the opposite. I was not confident, I was terrible at my work, Didn't want to work, I was not motivated, Didn't really see a future in any career, To now being a person that people count on for guidance, For example. So now let's go over my social dating life. So after a recent breakup, I noticed myself starting from square one again, Or I would even say square zero because it's going back. And During my relationship, I had neglected a lot of my friendships and my social life, So I had to work on that. And when I first started to make different events and started to invite people out, I think only two people came to those events and I was really struggling to get people out or to come to different things that I was doing. And I naturally just have a very intense or weird quirky off-the-wall personality. So that in a vacuum combined with people not really showing up to different things, I would say I was starting off pretty poorly as far as my social life. What I started to do is, I started to take more action, Again, Through confidence. So I started to go out more, Started to go to different groups, To hang out at social clubs, And started to reconnect with my friends, And just go out more. So I started taking more action. I just talked to everyone whenever I went out, And this increased my level of confidence, So it reduced any kind of social fear that I might have had, Or any kind of hesitation, And I just started talking to everyone at all. And the next event I'd invite someone to, I then got five people to come. So it started to increase in number. Then I continued to take action, Started to show up more, Made sure everyone had a great time. Then they started to tell their friends, And then more people started to show up to this event that I was inviting people to. Then the next couple of times had over 10 to 15 people come. So that was pretty exciting. So again, This started to increase my level of confidence and self-belief and the expectation that things will go well. Now, As a result of this, This further increased the level of power because then I wanted to take more charge and invite more people, Be the leader in a social group. So start to initiate the plans and then introduce other people to other people. And then this started to expand my network even more. So then eventually, Now 30 and 40 people will come to that same event, Or only one or two people would come originally. And this is where the upward spiral started to increase, Or this compounding interest, You could say, Started to expand more. Because then what I noticed was then I'd walk into that same event, Same thing I do all the time, But now I was seen as, This is kind of obnoxious, But like a celebrity, Someone said. Someone said to my other friend, Oh, She's like a celebrity, Because then I knew everyone, Like 30, 40 people in that specific venue. Now because of the halo effect, This is a principle in psychology where when you're surrounded by other people that like you, Other people will see this and ascribe more positive qualities to you. So now it is very interesting. I went from starting from square zero, No one wanted to hang out with me, No one wanted to date me, Then everyone wanted to hang out with me, Be my friend. I got more romantic opportunities and it just kept growing and growing at an exponential level. So this is very interesting. You've seen two examples now of workplace, Social and dating life. But I want you to think about now, How you can apply these principles in your life, Whatever you're doing. Are you starting a business that you are wanting to see grow and expand, But you don't feel comfortable? Well, Confidence will help you by taking these actions, Looking at the upsides and rewards, And you become more focused on successes. So you can see how confidence and power can work hand in hand. And one thing to keep in mind is that when you are starting this process of increasing your confidence in the world, And also with yourself as well. It will start off very slow. It'll even see very pathetic. I know, Like I mentioned, Those examples of the social life when I tried to do different events, Only two people came up. Sometimes no one even showed up at all. That was really embarrassing. Or when I was trying to improve in my workplace, For example, I'd start to speak up and I'd ask that dumb question and everyone was just like, What are you asking? And I was like, Oh. But it kept going. You have to keep going. Just start taking action, But just keep going at it. And with enough action taking and your brain starts to scan what works, What doesn't work, And then you will start to see more possibilities and opportunities. And as you capitalize on this, It'll start to grow and grow. So it is like the winner effect where as you start to increase in your successes and wins, It'll be easier and easier and momentum will start to take up and you don't have to put as much effort. But in the beginning, You may have to do it some initially, But just trust over time, It'll kind of take care of itself. So hope you find this helpful and let me know in the comments what action you will take today.