Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. Really glad you joined in today. I have a great topic for you. It's five ways to build self-confidence. I, if you haven't already done so please like, and subscribe to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. Give it a review, give it a rating. Share some things, tell your friends that really helps it to grow organically.

So if you've become a fan. Please give me a review. It takes you about 15, 30 seconds. Won't take much time at all. This topic I'm super excited about discussing with you. I think it's gonna have some great practical information as I start off every episode, just a brief introduction. I'm Adam Gragg. I am a legacy coach and a mental health professional, a speaker, and now a podcaster for two years.

And my purpose in life is to help people find transformational clarity that inspires them to face their biggest fears so that they can live and leave the legacy that they desire, not the legacy someone else has for them. They can live that out today in their life today. So. Let's go ahead and start off the episode too.

The way I've started off many of my last previous episodes, some risks that I have recently taken while I just got back from going to London in Paris with my daughter had a great time. And those, it was kind of scary, but had a great time. I joined a mastermind group. So a group of other fellow business owners, people I don't know.

And I gonna meet with them once a month and real excited about that. And actually what I did too, is I asked a gal. Who I had met on a dating app who lives about 1300 miles away, asked her to thought it was going really well, good connection and everything. And I still think it is a good connection, but I asked her to, to zoom with me just to see if we could connect more further and answer was I'd love to do so, but I just started seeing somebody locally.

And my response to that, of course, you know, I was disappointed, but my response to that was great. I'm glad things are going so well. And, um, thanks for being so upfront, you know, just because it takes courage to be upfront like that. So, but that was a risk I took. I'm glad I took it. And I'm gonna share about another dating risk I took that didn't go so well further along on this episode, but. Confidence is something we have some power over. There are very few things that we have control over in life. I would say we have 99% of stuff. We don't have control over even a lot of aspects of our health.+

As I shared, I have a healthy, good friend, healthy everything, at least as far as we knew who had a major stroke. And he is struggling and it's, it's been a, it's gonna be a long, a long road, but we do have control over our actions and our thinking, our actions and our perspective. So confidence too, is something where you build it by doing things that often seem counterintuitive. And the commitments that I'm gonna challenge you to make are probably some gonna seem fairly basic.

Some are gonna be counterintuitive. They're gonna seem like they could be things that could actually give you less confidence, but actually if you do them consistently, they're gonna give you more confidence over time. And again, I've shared this before easy now. Hard later, hard now, easy later delay gratification is your friend.

And if you're willing to put in the work and you're willing to trust your instincts, and you're willing to trust the advice of people who are further down the road than you, it's gonna pay off for you, but it might not seem like it's something that's gonna work right now. So again, just to review too, as well, our nervous system, when we're in sympathetic state, we are in fight or flight mode.

Blood goes to our extremities, our muscles amygdalas, where it centers. It is not the place we want to be. Except for short periods of time cortisol increases, we wanna be in parasympathetic state. Parasympathetic state is where relaxed we get to rest and digest. Confidence is foundationally based and it's gonna lead to living from a parasympathetic state, from a relaxed state, from a way you can function and be creative and CR I mean, we just are not creative when we're stressed out.

When we are insecure, we are not creative. We lose that capacity because when we are in parasympathetic state, we activate the prefrontal cortex. We can solve problems. The blood flow goes to our external [00:05:00] organs. We can digest. You know, I see, like I said before, people just drop weight when they learn to manage stress well in their life and, and confidence centers around really a big lie.

And then that lie being that our value comes from our performance. Plus the opinions of others. Uh, that's the big lie. And later in the episode, I'm gonna share the big truth, which is gonna help you greatly in growing your self-confidence. And again, as I've said before, I like to take things and come from the perspective that you could describe what we're discussing today to a six year old.

And they're gonna be able to understand what we're talking about. I also share with you things that I struggle with myself, I struggle with self-confidence myself. I struggle with every topic I've discussed myself first commitment of the five, five things you can do to work on your self-confidence.

First one is, is to take risks. And I've, I've shared this before I share my, the risks I take as well. But to take some risks. And I just actually, right before I started recording this podcast, I had on a dating app. I met a gal and her name is Eva. And anyway, I was gonna ask her to go get coffee, this coming weekend.

And then I go and I log into the dating app and she has like, Ended the conversation with me and I'm like, what happened? Cuz it just, the conversation basically started two days ago and there was some fun banter and asked her, you know, what she liked about my profile. And she said, well, Adam and Eva sounds good.

And I said, yeah, this answered the question to her as well. And she had some things on her profile that I really liked. Like one was I'm willing to call people on their crap and that I'm confident. And then I believe in my, you know, I'm, I'm fiercely independent and, and chemistry and banter and sense of humor is really important to me.

So I took those things to heart and eventually I just was having a good conversation with her. Cause I'm trying to, in my mind thinking, well, what, what happened that offended her or whatever, cuz why did she do that? And then I said, one thing yesterday, it was just a joke. And I said, yeah, it's great that I can travel now because my parole ended.

And, and, uh, I thought it was super funny and I asked her if she thought it was funny and she said, well, I actually just rolled my eyes. And anyway, she ended the conversation and she could have at least said, Hey, you know, that kind of sense of humor is not my style, but it was a risk that I took and it's not a huge deal, but I learned some things about myself.

I learned some things about her, honestly, you know, I want to date people who have a good sense of humor and who can see the lighter, brighter side of life, but. Taking risk on a consistent basis will build your self confidence. It hurts initially, like right now I'm kind of reeling a little bit, but I know later I'll be fine.

And so some things I did, even in London, I met up with an old high school buddy who lives in Switzerland and he had reached out to me. Through Facebook and hadn't talked to him in 20 years and we had coffee and had just a great time. His name's mark. And I really enjoyed the time I was energized. It was fun.

It was so great to see him. It was like old times and he wasn't like a super close friend, but he was a good friend. And so what risk can you take? I mean, old friends and reaching out to old friends. I've mentioned the book, the five regrets of the dying before in the past, and there's gonna be a link in the show notes to that, to that book.

One of the biggest regrets of dying people is they didn't stay in. Enough contact with their friends from the past. Don't let that be. You take risks in your life. You know, my mom, she had this thing where if someone had hiccups growing up, She would know they had hiccups and she'd hide somewhere around a corner and then she would scare you.

And what it would do is it would shock your system into starting to breathe regularly. Again. I mean, if your kids ever forget the hiccups just scare 'em, I'm serious. It works every time. And that's kind of a risk, I guess, but it's not really the risk I'm talking about here. It. Is emotional risk to take where you could be rejected.

And it means reaching out to people, reaching out to businesses, making those sales calls, reaching out to people that you want to date or ending relationships, being honest with people being upfront with people. So, first thing is. Take risks and take them daily famous quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, do one thing every day.

That scares you. Second commitment action. You can take to build yourself. Confidence is work on your communication skills. You know, I got back from Paris cuz we went to London in Paris and flew back from Paris. Me and my daughter, I got back from Paris and I sensed cuz I called my parents. I hadn't really talked to them while I was over there and I sensed some tension with my mom.

And so my mom tells me. yeah. Um, your aunt, cuz I played this prank on my family over Easter. You can actually see it on the YouTube channel and we'll link to the prank actually. And I thought it was really funny prank, but I pranked my family. And so my mom said, yeah, they're they don't want you over at the house at holidays anymore.

They, they wanna do [00:10:00] holidays at other people's homes. And I, and I listened to my mom. And because of what happened. Okay. And, and I listened to my mom and I thought, okay, I'm gonna call my aunt. And so, and she's like, no, no, don't, don't call your aunt, which is her sister. Don't call your aunt. You know? And so, but I got off the phone and I said, you know, I wanna clarify this.

And one of the ways we can be good communicators is we can not be defensive. We can calm ourselves and breathe. And then we get curious where we ask some questions. So I called up my aunt and I said, aunt Mary, Beth. This is what my mom said. You know, what actually was said. And I wasn't questioning that my mom was accurate in her, but then my aunt clarified and said, no, that's not what we said at all.

It wasn't that and clarified the situation with me. But I had to ask that question to get there. and are we curious in our relationships? Are we curious with our kids? It's a great, very important communication skill. And again, the result of a conversation is often gonna be the result of how it starts. So I started that conversation softly, and I started it with some rapport, like our trip to Europe and everything.

And then I said, you know, aunt Mary, Beth, I'm kind. um, something my mom shared with me is bothersome and I'd like to get some clarity, is that okay? And I could be meeting, reading this the wrong way and she could have represented it the wrong way, but I, but you know, is that okay? And she said, yes. And then we had the conversation and ended up being a very positive conversation, actually.

So you work on your communication skills and I've shared it before, you know, 93% of communication skills. Is your body language and your tone and how you carry yourself. It's not the words you say, but that soft startup is the words you say oftentimes, and your body language, but it's gonna lead to the best outcome when you start the conversation or the conflict, softly validation is crucial.

And by validation, we invalidate so much by when someone says to us, you know, I'm stressed out about something. One of their responses is try to fix it. You know? Well, what are you stressed about? Here's what you can do this. And. That's invalidation. If someone comes to you and says, I'm really stressed about this thing, the best thing for you to do is to say something that's validating like, man, I can really tell that this has hit home pretty hard for you, or I can really tell that there's something, this is really bothering you and then they're gonna elaborate and go.

Yeah. You know, I, my boss and this, and they're gonna give you more information and then you can validate that. Man, this is, this is tough, you know, and then eventually they're gonna solve their own problem on their own. And then you can say things to them. Like it makes sense to me, you feel that way.

That's a validating comment. So you can work on your communication skills. Third thing you can do to build you self-confidence is to create a schedule and stick to it. So basically keeping promises to yourself. So what's your ideal schedule? Not perfect schedule, but your ideal schedule, you know, when would you get up?

When would you go to bed? When would you work out? When would you hang out with your friends? When would you play golf? When would you go to church? What's your ideal, realistic schedule? And then you make a non perfectionistic commitment to sticking to it. So if you tell yourself that, Hey, I'm gonna get out out of a bed at five 30 and go on a run tomorrow because I believe you should end your day every day with your three.

Top objectives for the following day. And you should look at those well should is kind of a strong word, but that you can, and that you have the option of listing your top three objectives for the next day. And you can think about those. So we didn't suggest you do it like right before you go to bed, because maybe you'll could keep you up.

But some seven o'clock eight o'clock kind of before your downtime, what are my three objective? And then you stick to it. So at the end of the day, you can show yourself, improve yourself that you can get these certain things done. That is keeping a schedule. If it's a workout schedule, if it's time with your kids, but you're making promises or commitments to yourself, and then you're actually following through with it.

So creating a schedule. And for me, a lot of times it's just getting outta bed. You know, if I tell myself that I'm gonna get outta bed at a certain time and I do it, I start off with one victory. I make my bed. I start off with some downtime, cuz usually that time I get outta bed, I'm gonna give myself an hour to start the morning and start my morning routine and not just jump right into things, especially work, but to have some time for myself and keeping that promise to myself is an Energizer to me.

And when I do it consistently over time, it's like, wow, I can, I can do other things too with confidence as well. Cause I'm starting it off. Right. It's. Essential as well that you remember that it does not have to be perfect. And so that whole perfectionistic mentality it's gotta be perfect. Will keep you from actually keeping your schedule, cuz you'll tell yourself you're a failure.

If you didn't get it done perfectly rather than saying, well, I got 80% of it done. I got 70% of it done and that's a success. And so that leads to the fourth thing. That you can do to work on your confidence and that's identifying [00:15:00] damaging mindsets. Cuz we have them consistently, like even right now, I'm struggling with the mindset of, you know, like what did I say?

How did I offend this person, Adam? You don't know how to talk to people, Adam. There's something broken in you. And I know these things are not true. And so I have to tell myself the truth, like, Hey, I was just having fun. And she said on her profile, she had a good sense of humor. I was testing that out. Um, maybe that wasn't the reason she ended the conversation, but I'm a good guy.

I'm a catch, you know, whatever. I have to tell myself the truth that I am an honest person. I follow through with commitments. I'm a faithful person. I do things. I try to do things in an ethical, honest way. I have to tell myself those things and then eventually it overpowers it. But what are the core limiting mindsets that you have cuz they really generally fall in three different categories for people.

You know, one is that, you know, I'm unlovable. Another one is that I'm helpless. And then the third one. I'm unworthy and unlovable and unworthy are kind of the same, but I think they're also kind of different. So unworthy of success, you know, and so variance of those can be like, Hey, people are not trustworthy.

You know, that means that's like an I'm helpless thought that people have, or I don't deserve good things in my life, you know, because of my past, I don't deserve good things in life because of what I've experienced or seen other people go through or trauma. I mean, that's a variant of I'm unworthy and really I'm unlovable as well.

And I hear these from clients and I see 'em in myself and I see 'em in my friends. And, but the power is in knowing that you have influence over your perspective, you know, but I've said before, too, like negative thoughts, they're like Velcro, they stick in two seconds, positive thoughts. It's like Teflon.

It takes time. And so when I can identify and recognize that there's a negative thought in myself, one of the things I do is I tell myself three things that I really like about myself. I like certain traits, you know, I like that. I see the potential in other people. I like that I'm charismatic. You know, I like that.

I have a good sense of humor and I like to have fun. And so I tell myself those things and that starts to overpower. You may have to do it 10 times, 20 times, but you work on it consistently and you'll find that it starts to overpower these damaging core beliefs and they are seriously damaging. One of the ways that you might be motivated to work on these beliefs.

These core beliefs is to see how much damage they actually do. So I'll have clients give 'em a list of 30 common, negative damaging core beliefs, and then I'll have 'em mark off, which ones are are, uh, they, that resonate with. And then I'll have 'em mark off the ones that have done the most damage in their life in the past and today.

And it's really helpful. Cause then they start, can start working and going through a process of unraveling those. And it is some. But you can do the work it's, you know, but you have to believe that you're not helpless. And the language that you use is so incredibly essential. Cuz when I hear the words never and must and should.

And can't, I think cant's like a, a cuss word. You know, if I can't do math, you know, or I can't do well in drama or I can't learn the piano, you know, you rephrase that to saying to yourself and sometimes it's through people who care about you, that can do that. Well, Hey, you're getting better at math.

Totally different mindset. I'm improving at math. I'm improving it, drama. I'm working on it. I'm improving. And those are very different mindsets that you can work on. What I like to have people do is actually with a worksheet. You know, they answer some different questions on each of the mindsets that they have.

And I take people through the process of unpacking each and every one. Um, eventually I'm gonna have a mini course on this that you can purchase to help people unpack 'em as well. And so if you have enjoyed this podcast so far, please subscribe to the decide your legacy newsletter. And you're gonna get five days to overpowering anxiety.

It's an eight page workbook. It's some of my best stuff, the stuff on anxiety that I use with clients and that I use with myself. And that's a gift to you for signing up. So don't miss the opportunity again, go to decide your legacy.com, scroll down to the bottom and sign up for the newsletter. So the, the fifth thing.

That you of the five I've gone through four. The next one is to really have, have goals and, and to set goals. And I like to set yearly goals. I like to look long term as well, but you can start with a vision of where you want to be in a year in different parts of your life. And I think your goal should be balanced out throughout seven areas of your life.

So health and wellness, spiritual friends, and family, social and fun, intellectual business, financial, and you should have. Goals that are challenging. And so they're not. Easy. I like to look at smart C goals. So smart. That's an acronym. I'm many of you familiar with, you know, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and then time based.

So you have a timeframe for them. And the C is means they're challenging. [00:20:00] They're not something you've done before. They're gonna stretch you to go to a different level. And those are the right kind of goals to set. And so in my online course, I actually teach people how to do this as well. Tune up for life.

And I teach clients how to do this consistently, but for you right now, listening, just go with your gut. You know, what are three things you got six more months left in 2022, but I don't care when you listen to this. If you listen to this in 2024, what over the next six months are your top three priorities and have one in at least three different categories.

You know, you can do four, you can do seven, let's start with three. What are your priorities? You know, you wanna lose some. You wanna grow your business, you wanna improve your relationship with someone in your family. So you start to actually identify those goals and then. You start working towards them.

And that helps with confidence as you start reaching milestones towards that goal. Cause then you break it down. You say, okay, I wanna lose 10 pounds or I wanna lose 20 pounds. I have a client right now wants to lose 50 pounds and he wants to do it by September 10th. Cuz I've taken a bunch of clients, skydiving and tandem skydiving on September 10th.

So if you're out there and you want to go, um, I, I got a few slots remaining, but this guy needs to lose some weight cuz you can't weigh more than 230 pounds to do a tandem skydive. At this specific place where I air capital drop zone, where I, where I, where I've, uh, done skydiving stuff. So, um, he set that goal and then set some little milestones.

So it's like how much per month. And then he can see that, okay, I gotta lose this amount of weight. Per month and okay, I can do that 15 pounds. How much a week. Okay. Two, two pounds a week, whatever. And you break it down and then you get to physically cross it off a list. You know, I'm a huge fan of journaling and checklists and physically crossing something off.

It does something psychological. To you by seeing it in writing handwriting and then actually seeing it crossed off. I mean, it's more powerful than your iPhone checklist psychologically, and there's real evidence and there's science behind that. That is great as well. Typing is great as well, if you're not gonna do it, but consider writing it down.

Posting your goals and focusing on those things, and that will build confidence. You post your goals, you look at 'em every day, just like I challenge you and have to post the four things that you love about yourself. And to look at those things every day, just like I challenge you. To look at your life purpose statement every single morning, you know, mine, as I mentioned at the, at the beginning of the podcast, you have the option of identifying a life purpose statement and focusing on that every day, that's living in the middle, not all or nothing.

The language of living in the middle is I have choices. I can make decisions. I can decide to apply one of these confidence building actions, commitments. Today, I can decide to improve that relationship. I can decide. To have boundaries with people I can decide to encourage my friends. It's not success or failure.

Life is best lived in the middle, not in the edges. In fact, in that all or nothing, perfection, procrastination, success and failure. That's where mental illness lives. That's where mental health problems lie. It's rigidity, it's rigidity. You're what happens to something that's rigid. You know, you don't have rigid fishing poles, cuz they're gonna break.

You don't want rigidity in your life. And so that's what I have for you. Those are the. Actions commitments you can take. And I wanna go ahead and review 'em. So take risks, build risks into your life. You know, if you gotta go and lay down on the floor in a restaurant for 10 seconds, while someone films you, and that's a risk.

I mean, I learned that one from Tim Ferris. He challenged people to do that, just to get out of their comfort zone and see that you're gonna survive this. Now, whatever it might be calling that friend from 20 years ago and just checking in, I mean, Facebook and social media is extremely damaging to people and their focus and it gives them this all or nothing mentality.

But I will say one great thing about Facebook is connecting with old friends and I would encourage you to use it for that purpose, not to showcase and make yourself look perfect and all this, which a lot of people do. But to have fun with it, you know, humor and good and healthy interaction and connecting, but you stay away from these controversial things and the damaging aspects of social media.

So that's what I got for you today. Again, if you love this episode, please subscribe. You can, uh, take a picture of yourself, listening to it and post it on my Instagram.

It's Adam, it's just Adam Gragg it's my Instagram channel. Tell your friends like it. On Apple and Spotify, give it a review. That's how it grows. And it has been growing and it has been growing significantly. Thanks to you. You're the way it spreads. And the more likes and reviews it gets, the more it's gonna grow organically.

So I had somebody reach out to me recently that found it organically, sent me an email, said it was really helpful. And I'm like, uh, that is so exciting and cool. So the thing I want to end with here, and I end with all the time is. if you wanna make changes in your life, you know, 25% of it is getting some space and saying, oh my [00:25:00] gosh, I'm doing this.

It's admitting you have a problem. Admitting you have this issue that you have to work on. You have this negative limited mindset. Limiting damaging mindset, or you're not keeping a schedule or you're not taking risks in your life, or, you know, socially, you're interacting with people in a very defensive way.

You identify and say, Hey, I, I gotta work on that. But the 75%, the most important part is you actually have to take an action. You have to take action to move towards change. Trust is built. With evidence over time. If you take consistent action, you're gonna start trusting yourself and your confidence is gonna increase.

So what one action do you want to take based on what you learned today? What one action do you want to take? Commit to it? If you like me and you like what I've said and you like what I shared too, hire me to speak to your company. I do this frequently. I'll do a lunch and learn. I'll speak over zoom. I do it nationally.

I've done some internationally. I was in Italy actually. Um, doing some speaking in October, uh, September, October, and I love to speak to your team. And I talk about mental health. I usually the first thing, and the first topic is mental health, stress management. How to manage the stress in your life. We got a lot of stress.

People are worried about money. They're worried about the economy. You don't have to live there and we're not made to live there. We're not, we're made to live in a relaxed state and every once in a while get amped up. So hire me, reach out, please. And in closing, you decide your legacy. No one else. You decide your legacy, live the life today that you want to be remembered for when you're gone, how are you gonna live the life today that you wanna be remembered for?

When you're gone? You decide your legacy. No one else. Thanks for tuning in. And I will see you next time. Bye-bye.