I’m giving a business seminar.
It’s a 3-hour training. And 10 minutes into it, I’m starting off with my opener.
I talk about 2 worlds that people live in:
- The low confidence world where people miss opportunities, aren’t sharing their message, and don’t speak in public
- The higher confidence world where you create your life, share your message, speak your truth and make a bigger impact.
And I tell them:
“Look, the only difference between these 2 worlds is you’ve got to switch and make some changes. Have some internal transformations and give yourself permission to share your message in a bigger way.
The only obstacle that’s going to come up for you while you undergo these internal transformations is yourself.
You have to look at is as a battle of you versus yourself.”
Allow me to explain.
Transformation Is An Internal Process
Your worst enemy is yourself.
When it comes to shifting over from the low confidence world to high confidence world, there is no external opponent.
There’s nobody else that’s holding you back from speaking your message on stages and on video besides you.
It’s an internal job.
Rather than external factors like the way you were brought up, or the fact that you make yourself vulnerable to the judgments of other people by sharing your message, it’s literally your own fears and insecurities that are coming up.
And that’s not surprising given that society primes us from a very young age that it’s dangerous to share and speak our truth.
A lot of my clients have had these horrible experiences when they were in school, where they were forced to read in front of the class and felt really embarrassed. So now they’re self-conscious and have a lot of hesitation around speaking in public again.
It’s until a person takes ownership, instead of blaming other people, that they look inside themselves and go,
“Okay, how am I stopping myself from sharing my message? Because deep down I know that there’s something that I’m really passionate about sharing. It can be my product, my service, helping other people, but I’m allowing myself and my fears to stop me from doing that.”
that they can start evolving past their limiting beliefs.
Thinking about anything outside the frame of this battle of you versus you is counterproductive.
What Other People Think Of You Is None Of Your Business
I’ve mentioned this example before – as I’m explaining his concept of you VS you during the 3-hour seminar, this woman in the back row, probably in her late fifties, stands up and walks out.
Keep in mind that this is 10 minutes into a three-hour seminar.
Just stood up and walked out.
I didn’t react to it. I just kept doing my training.
We take a break halfway through and a bunch of people come up to me and say,
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry. That’s so rude. I can’t believe she’d walk out.“
I say,
“I’m not bothered by it all. I’m actually … it didn’t resonate with her, and that’s okay.”
The reason why I was able to say this in such a calm manner is because I know there’s a couple of reasons why she might have walked away.It could’ve been a family emergency. It could’ve been that she wasn’t feeling well, and needed to head home.
Or, it could also be that she just wasn’t ready to take responsibility and go, “Oh, this is me versus me” and wanted to blame other people.
Either way, it’s okay because here’s the thing – I’m speaking my truth.
And when I work together with my clients, that’s all we look at – we get you on camera. We bring you face to face with yourself and your inner critic. And then we actually do the work that’s needed so you can speak your truth and share your message with confidence on camera and on stages.
It’s only once you go within yourself and you accept and embrace that there’s nobody stopping you from achieving your potential in terms of sharing your message except yourself, that you can start shifting into your higher confident self.
The Importance Of Polarization
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that a lot of my messaging is about polarizing.
Like I want to turn some people off so that I’m able to attract the people that resonate with me.
For me, that’s the people that are looking, going on like,
“Yeah, this is about personal development. This is about inner transformation. This is about unlocking the potential inside of me and breaking those chains and those fears that have been holding me back.”
If someone’s not into that and they just want the tactics, techniques, and the right words to say on stage, I’ll just tell it to them straight,
“Look, I’m not your person. Because while words are important, it’s never really about the tactics. From my experience stepping up onto bigger stages and training people for TEDx with crowds of 2,000, 3,000, 6,000 people – when you start to speak on bigger stages, it’s the inner resistance and fears that get to you. Not the tactics.”
It’s never about the techniques and tactics. It’s always about the vulnerability, the fear of rejection and the fear of success – (the fear of success is a big one!)
- What if I actually achieve my power and my full potential?
- How is my family going to react?
- How are my friends going to react?
- Am I going to be able to sustain it constantly?
These are the fears that come up, so it has nothing to do with the tactics.
3 Things That Will Help You Fully Step Into Your Power
The tactics are good to get you to the dance, but to fully step up and to share and to step in that power, it’s about 3 things:
1) Coming face to face with yourself
This is where you take full ownership of who you are – not just the good parts of who you are that you like about yourself, but also addressing anything that’s holding you back and literally robbing you of your dreams.
2) Breaking self-limiting beliefs
This is about being able to break those chains to speak with confidence and really make an impact in this world.
3) Being kind to yourself
In order to move forward and achieve any of your goals, you have to be kind to yourself.
Because as you go on that journey to look within, that’s going to be the biggest piece to help you move forward.
We can beat ourselves up – that’s our natural instinct – overexerting, beating ourselves up, and thinking everything we did wrong.
Don’t do that. Instead, be kind to yourself.
Just say to yourself:
“What is it that I’m doing well? And what do I have to refine?“
It’s that simple.
Two questions:
- What am I doing well?
- What do I need to refine moving forward?
When you do that, it becomes a lot easier to go within, analyze that one-on-one battle you’re having with yourself, and break free from any self-limiting beliefs so that you’re able to achieve your dreams, speak your truth, and make a major impact in the world.
With that, I wish you the best of luck with your inner journey.
If you have any questions, comment below. I’d love to answer them in video form.
Lucas Mattiello
Level Up Living
P.S. If you’ve decided you want to live to your true potential and you’d like the fast path to get there, here are 3 ways I can help you speak with confidence:
- Grab a free copy of my ‘6 Steps To Speak With Confidence’ guide
It’s the 6-step process I use to take clients from anxious on stage to rock-solid confidence — Click Here - Join the ‘Art Of Confident Speaking’ and connect with leaders who are improving too
It’s our new Facebook community where smart leaders learn to level up their insight, impact and influence — Click Here - Join my 3-day ‘Speak With Confidence Program’ and become a Case Study
It’s the fastest way to become a confident communicator… If you’d like to work with me and a small group of highly motivated leaders like yourself — Click Here
[…] You know you’re there. You want to achieve your goals and you want to know what your conversion rate is. But the problem with this is it creates this adversarial approach where it becomes you versus the audience. […]