How To Be Powerfully Confident In Any Situation

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

How to be confident in any situation, and specifically how to be confident with power. That’s the discussion today on the podcast. Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. Talking about confidence, and self-esteem, I have done numerous workshops and seminars on this topic. And every time I think I just got it right. I discover one more element, one more element. There is so much literature on this so much so many experts and so much data is still we are, finding elements still discovering elements, what makes people confident? I’m not saying today’s podcast episode is the answer. This is one of the answers along the way. And there will be more podcast episodes from me and from other people talking about this. So let’s get into this.

How to become powerful, let’s talk about that and how to be powerfully confident in any situation. There are three elements is based on my understanding, and my working with people, there are three things that you need to do to be powerful and confident in any situation. The first and the foremost is knowledge. Foundation, the base for any level of confidence, now spoke about how to acquire knowledge, there are so many again, so many ways to acquire knowledge. But the foremost thing is learning. That has to be ongoing continuous learning happening on your site for whatever goal that you’re trying to accomplish in life. And we talked about it multiple times in the podcast. But there is also another element to it, which is experience. So learning to gain experience. So that means you’re learning and you’re applying, and you’re doing it frequently, repetition and frequency so that you are committing mistakes, you are making modifications along the way, and gaining the necessary experience.

Now learning a couple of experiences over a long period of time does one other thing, which is it builds self-awareness, you start to discover your strengths, you start to discover your weaknesses, every time there’s a weakness, you go spend time trying to overcome the weakness. And every time you find strength, you go back and even work harder to strengthen the strength. Now, there is a specific kind of learning we’re talking about here, which is constantly pushing the comfort zone, constantly pushing the comfort zone in as a part of this learning experience. So this is the first element, which is the knowledge element. There’s also one other question I want to address here, which is I get why people do not learn or choose not to learn, at a certain point in their lifetime, see life, as fundamentally teaching a lesson. We don’t capture that lesson, we don’t acknowledge that life is teaching us a lesson. I meet people who tell me they don’t want to read anymore, they don’t want to study anymore. They wish somebody could have done this for them, they’re old or they’re not finding themselves in aid, they lack motivation, whatever they give all kinds of reasoning, why they don’t want to do something, this is not a good position to be in where you effectively have given up on things, not a good position to be in, it’s okay not to pursue, but then shouldn’t be giving up on things. So, how are those who are constantly learning differently than people who are choosing not to learn? Well turns out that in order to acquire a lot of knowledge and constantly keep yourself in a learning mode, and creating that experience mode, there has to be a high curiosity approach to life. So, fundamentally, you have to become curious all the time. So, high curiosity, living the secret to getting knowledge and also as a result of that you become self-aware. Now, when you become self-aware, you also understand who you are. So, who do you mean by setting identity? So big one. So when you are self-aware, you can establish your identity you can identify yourself by saying okay, this is who I am, this is what I do. These are my values, these are my beliefs, this is how I approach this how I play my game, you set that footing. So the first part is knowledge. Now let’s talk about the second part of this, which is the state of mind.

Every time you are put in, in a situation where you have to perform and you need to have an outcome sometimes You see, players who are playing, let’s say, Olympics or some games, and the competing, there’s a competition going on, sometimes the best place, they lose the form, they don’t perform to the level. And everybody’s expecting of them big outcomes, and they don’t turn out that it’s not the skill, not the talent, not the experience, it’s already there. It’s a lack of performance on that day at that moment. So somebody recently said, Oh, you went to Everest, so you can always go, this is a small mountain, you can climb and get on top of this. My answer to them was, No, it’s not about smaller, big, it’s me on that given day in that given moment. So many things have to come together for an outcome. So what kind of a mind that you need to have, so that you feel powerful, and you feel confident in any situation?

The first and foremost is that you need to approach everything and anything with a positive outcome, there is no negative outcome, and there is no place for any negative outcome in the mind. Because you have already addressed the negative results as a part of your preparation. So as a part of a knowledge acquisition phase, you have already looked into we made all the mistakes, and you addressed everything. So as you’re stepping into the performance, you are only expecting the best outcome. And as you are performing, the mindset is I have no excuses. If something goes wrong, it’s okay. I have no excuses. At the same time, there are also no expectations, expectations. And then, as a part of your preserving the state of mind, you also have to look into the limiting beliefs that you have, what are some things that you tell yourself that are not true, have no meaning at all, but you keep on telling yourself, I don’t have this, I don’t have that, I wish, if I was in this situation, I would have done it better. Whatever your limiting beliefs are, you got to be addressing them. So limiting beliefs go away. The outcome is always positive. Excuses are none. And expectations are also none. So you give your best performance, and you walk away from the outcome. So we have knowledge in place, and we have the state of mind. And a third thing is now go apply yourself. You perform as if nobody’s watching you, you perform as if there is no tomorrow, you perform as if today is the last day and this is the last act, you perform. So knowledge, state of mind, and performance.

Now you do this over a long period of time across multiple different events, there are two things that are going to happen as a result of this one you feel more in tune. And you feel more confident about your knowledge about your state of mind and about the way you apply yourself. So the power is derived. So in other words, you don’t go out seeking power that is within you. So you become self-reliance. So if I have to further chunk this down into three, so let’s say a lot go with the world’s knowledge, state of the mind, and application, I’ll take those three things out, I can say this first is self-aware, build self-awareness, remove self-doubt, and then become self-reliant. Three things that lead to extreme self-confidence. So at the core of all this, if you listen to this, and if you’re with me up to this point, at the very core of all this is knowledge. So information, knowledge, wisdom, experience, all these elements fundamentally create the base for any level of confidence. If you remove that, then there is not much to this equation. So imagine going and trying to play a game, you are excited about the game. You have seen other people play, but you’re playing the game without preparation, without any strategy without any skills. You’re passionate about it and you can do it. But then the elements are not in play. But maybe the state of the mind is good. You have no doubts about yourself, you want to win, so you’re in the game to win, but then because you lack strategies, and you lack skills because preparation is not there, you’re going to encounter some level of difficulty in getting to the outcome.
The key is not to seek power. The key is to prepare, preparation will automatically instill the power and you do it over a long period of time.

You start to see that you are becoming powerful at this. And that’s the secret to stand And in front of any challenge that comes your way, the longer your life, the longer the challenges. It’s a matter of time before you hit challenges. There isn’t anybody who had a long life, or even a short life doesn’t matter, there is an element of challenge everywhere. The other day I was just making a point risk is everywhere. On the radio, show risk is everywhere. And also made on the radio show, I made a comment I said, Life is hard. But living a low life is hard. You want to play it big, small life is hard. That’s the right word, small life. You don’t want to have a small life. You got to have a big life. And everything here on this podcast and all everything that I’m doing here are to address this or to live a large life a big life. And that’s where all these discussions are going.

That’s all for now. I hope this is helpful. If it is, then you know what to do. Thank you for listening. Thank you for staying with me. And tomorrow. We’re talking about the difference between logic and emotions. I figured this out already. And which one wins and why. And in order for you to really win the game of life, you need to master your emotions. And I’m going to drive the point on tomorrow’s podcast. When I prepare like this, when tomorrow’s podcast is already known to be a day in advance, life is amazing. I’m not worried about anything. Because I can I know I can just turn the microphone on. And I can just perform so amazing. Okay, that’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.

The Power of Single Tasking

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Welcome back. Happy Friday morning to you today on the podcast, I am taking up the topic of multitasking and single-tasking. Recently, just a few days ago, there was a question about multitasking. And in the past on this podcast, I have spoken extensively about multitasking and the drawbacks of multitasking primarily highlighting why multitasking is a myth. And today, I want to focus on the differences. And my idea is to motivate you to go into single-tasking, which I have been doing. For a long time here, I’ve been telling you to create your to-do list plan your day before the day before in the night, or the Monday before. And then make sure that you have time blocks and then make sure that you have we are working you’re To-Do Lists through these time blocks based on a priority based on availability based on context and all that I’ve gone through multiple times on the podcast here. So let’s get into this. Let’s talk about why multitasking is not good. There is nothing called multitasking because, at any point in time, you are only working on one task. It looks as if you are doing too many things at the same time, but you are not.

So first of all, switching between tasks is expensive. And now there is data, an average US employee spends about five hours a week switching between applications. That’s the last time now it’s expensive, clearly expensive, there’s a cost associated with it. But then there are also errors that happen as a result of moving between tasks. And every task inherently has some momentum to it. So there’s also a warmup time. So every time you do something and you stop, that means you lost a warmup time, you didn’t accomplish maybe something but you lost a lot more time than warmup time. That means when you come back to the task, again, there is some level of warmup that has to happen. That means you have to see what you did and what you didn’t do. So errors could happen. At the same time, you have lost momentum, you have to build the momentum back to finish the remainder of the task. Expensive. Now there is data, which is saying that when the brain switches between tasks, it also loses active attention. The brain rewires itself, and the reverse itself with no active attention. So people who are conscious are constantly moving between tasks, they can’t rest. And naturally, multitasking is less efficient, and high stress for those reasons. That’s multitasking. Now if you’re not multitasking, what are you doing? That means you are by default single-tasking. So what is single-tasking? And how do you master single-tasking? The entire self-improvement world is all about single task mastery, everything, all the books you read, and even this podcast also multiple times.

So what am I doing right now? As I’m doing this podcast, I wake up in the morning, the first thing I have to do is to record the podcast episode for the day. And what am I doing? I’m single-tasking, I’m terminal with my soul with the mind with my thinking, with my awareness. Consciously, unconsciously, I’m completely focused on this thing, which is this podcast, recording this podcast, and getting it out. single task completely focused. So I woke up this morning, I have chosen my task and I’m doing it in the time block that I signed for myself, which is to get this podcast done in the next 15 minutes. Okay, and what did I do I shut down all the potential interventions, things that would otherwise teach me all that has been removed, and my phone is switched off. The speaker, on my laptop, is turned off. And I’m speaking into the microphone, and I’m recording this right. All interruptions are stopped. Now, is it possible that I may still get an interruption? Is it possible that I could be interrupted? Is it possible that something critical may happen in the next three minutes before this podcast is done? And I need to go give my attention to Yes. Has it happened? Yes, it has.

So what do I do? Well, I stopped this podcast here. I make a note and then I will come back kind of listen to the entire podcast one more time. And if it sounds good, then I kind of add To the end of the podcast, to kind of do what is called Edit Mode recording, I will append whatever I have to say towards the end, wherever I stopped. So I leave a note to my mental self saying I need to add something to it. And I come back and do it. But in the past, I have completely redone the podcast, I have never, I don’t like these edits, I don’t like going back and inserting my voice in middle or towards the end. Sometimes I might, I might have not said a word properly. And that simple word that only a single word I need to insert, I let it go. I don’t want to just insert a word that doesn’t sound right. I don’t feel good about myself. I know I operate with a lot of deficiencies, and I’m okay with it. And I tell you to be okay with it. Just to prove just give permission to yourself to move on in life. Things nobody’s perfect. And we all mess things up, knowingly or unknowingly, it’s okay. So this is how you single task, you pick the topic or the thing that you want to do from your to-do list, you know the time block where you are going to do this. So in that time, block whatever the number of tasks you want to do, get them in, focus on the first task in the time block, and shut everything off completely. And give everything for your full attention with full focus with the full intention and allow interruptions but if you allow interruptions that make sure that you have noted, you know, where you stopped and where you had to pick it up. And then the last thing I didn’t mention is single-tasking allows you to give yourself a break, you feel good, you accomplished something. And then you take a break, I take a break. After I’m done with this recording. I’m going in it’s now almost seven minutes, almost. I put an intro in the beginning. So maybe eight minutes depending upon where yours you’re listening to it. But it’s okay. It’s fine. And we’ll list this and be done. So this is how single-tasking is done.

Now, before I wrap this up, I’ll tell you, I suggest that you get this book The Power of Less by Leo Babauta wrote the book The Power of Less is the fine art of limiting yourself to the essential in business and in life. Incredible subheading powerful heading. And this book is where I picked up the distinction between multitasking and single-tasking. Of course, I have read this multiple times before also, but I want to highlight this book today. I just see over the last few episodes, at least starting in the month of May 1 of May. I have been highlighting a book that has an author who has impacted my thinking, my work, and my understanding of a topic. So bought off less. Leo Babauta gets the book, read it specifically, let me tell you, pages 28 and 29, and 30. Those three pages specifically talk about multitasking and single-tasking, the differences, the benefits, the drawbacks, and all that.

Okay, my time is up like that. Okay, I want to stop here. Hopefully, this is helpful. I hope this is helpful. Before you know it. I’ll be back here again as early as tomorrow, and I’ll catch you on Saturday morning. Take care. Bye now.

Bridging The Being-Doing Gap

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Welcome back, happy Thursday morning to you. Today on the podcast. Again, I’m talking about an incredible book, an amazing author. And above all, a man of amazing talents, his values, his principles, his leadership, and his contribution to entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and beyond. He’s amazing. I’m going to talk about him just in a second. But before I go any further, let me ask you this question, and you help me answer this, which is, do you know anyone who is doing something that they are not really good at, but they’re doing it for some reason that you cannot explain why. And whatever they are doing is completely opposite to whatever skills, talents, and the best gifts they have within them. Their passions are somewhere, their skills are somewhere their talents are somewhere, and their whole line of accomplishment is completely somewhere else. But they’re doing exactly the opposite of that. Do you know anyone, I meet a lot of people like this. And they’re doing things that I don’t understand why they are doing. And over the years, through numerous consultations, and numerous interactions here’s what I found out. I think, maybe, because of ignorance, people do things because of ignorance. Maybe they’re in the wrong job doing the wrong business because of greed. Maybe because of their ego. Or maybe it’s for some other reasons, maybe it’s because of social pressures.

Now, this problem has been addressed numerous times, by numerous, multiple authors, multiple philosophers, and many people have addressed this. And one of the core points is, that you need to be authentic to the work that you do. This point has been driven by many. And there is a lot of literature on this. So if you are not authentic to what you’re doing, that means you are somehow incubating a level of unhappiness within you. And that means you’re doing the work that you’re doing without being self-actualized. So when you’re not self-actualized, no amount of money, no, no number of titles, no. Symbolic rewards, material gains, none of those things will make you will ever make you happy so. So there is some degree of self-actualization involved in all this question is why do people do what they do? Despite knowing that that’s not their A-game, that’s not their best game. So many, many years ago, I came across an incredible story, I want to share the story here first before I talk about this incredible book and this amazing author. So there was this individual who was looking for something and was searching for something on a piece of land. And there was another individual who was walking on the bridge. He was crossing the bridge, he saw this man looking for something on the ground, below the bridge. And this, this, this man keeps on crossing the bridge multiple times over the next few hours. And then finally can’t stop himself. He can’t contain himself. And he says, he yells, he shouts at this man, the below the bridge. He says, hey, you know, I’ve been walking around multiple times over this bridge over the last few hours. And I see you’re searching for something. What is that you’re searching for? And this man, right from below the bridge. He says, Oh, I lost my wedding ring. And I’m looking for it. And then this man from the bridge, he says, Do you know where you lost it? Because this is such a big place. And the man says, Yes, I know where I lost it. It’s on the other side of the bridge. That’s where I lost it. And this man on the bridge is like, really? You lost on the other side of the bridge, but you’re looking on this site? The opposite side? Yeah. So why? Because there is light here. You got to the point.

See, that’s all how many of us are. We don’t know what we are searching for and what we are doing. Do you mean? No, it’s not the right thing to do. And then we are in this loop. It’s very hard to get out of this loop. Okay. The stop here for a second. In I think this was 2013 2014 2015. I’m not sure about the timeline. I will speak. I was invited to speak at getting Pro. Get Pro is an organization where all techies come together to exchange ideas. And it’s a networking idea exchange and educational event. The event happens once a year. But there’s a yearly conference they do. So I was invited to speak at the GitFlow conference. So I was speaking there. And as a part of that conference, there were multiple keynote speakers. And one of the keynote speakers was Dr. Prasad Kaipa. And so the first time I met him was there the first time I was introduced, even though I heard about him before. And I made sure that, I listened to the present his keys, closing keynote presentation, he was the last keynote for the event. And at the end of the keynote, I asked him, I said, Would it be okay for you to come in as a guest on my radio show. So I invited him to my radio show. And I’ll tell you, he’s, he’s already free his philosophy, his values, I mean, absolutely incredible at the event, but also on my radio show. Now, when he came to the show, he got his book with him, he said, Srini, this is a gift for you. So nice of him, so generous of him. And you know, every time somebody gives me a book, I don’t take books for free. And I kept saying that multiple times. When you take a book from someone, there’s a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with it, they are handing it over there, you know, who knows how many years, and how many tears have gone into writing a book. And they give it out. And maybe this, they see something, you know, whoever they’re giving it out. So Dr. Cooper, you know, gave this to me. And I, at that moment, I took it as a tremendous amount of responsibility. Just like you leave your baby with someone, that’s how I see it. And I’m given the responsibility to babysit the baby, so-called the book. And, you know, every time that the responsibility is not like they’re asking anything in return, it’s just that, that every time you see them, you feel like, oh, they gave me their book, and I didn’t read the book, guilt, guilt, I never wanted to be in a situation like that.

So by the time I made a promise to myself, by the time I see him the next time, I should have read this book. And that’s the case everywhere. Anytime I have received a book from someone, an author or a speaker, I made sure that next time before I meet them the second time, or the following time, I should have read their book, which, so far, I haven’t yet missed on that commitment to myself. So from Smart to Wise, acting and leading with wisdom is the book. Now, this book is coded and, of course, Dr. Prasad carbide author, but also is CO written by NaVi Razoo. It’s an incredible book, I have read this book. And that is something that I want to share. In this book, something I found here in this book. Now, the point of the paper and resume making this book on specific on page 85 of this book, they say, there is a gap. We all understand, everybody knows there is a gap between who we are and what we do, there’s a gap. And the way to fill this gap is by becoming authentic to ourselves, that also a lot of people talk about, but they call this gap that gives a specific word, a specific the coined the term, the call the courage gap, there is a lack of courage somewhere that is why this is not happening. Interesting, right? It’s interesting that other people look at us, and they can precisely identify our uniqueness. But we are not able to identify our uniqueness, why because we choose to fit in, we are seeking approval, to know from whom may be from our own selves, the way we are conditioned from birth, who knows and, and the highlight this in the book in this chapter. They further say this, this is also is evident in leaders in corporations and leaders pay the least attention to the courage gap. And because of self-deception, and lack of self-awareness, when there is self-deception and lack of self-awareness, prevents the leaders from pursuing the deeper desires and deeper intentions. You see a leader is constrained at that level because they don’t know how to bridge the courage gap. And it’s amazing the way they mentioned this in the given example of John McCain, the CEO of Whole Foods, who started Whole Foods. And amazing, a small little story about John McCain. He started Whole Foods with $45,000 of his own money. And then just because he was enthusiastic, wanted to live a healthy life, and there wasn’t there were not that many options. So you see, found a gap in the marketplace. So he just can’t do he started doing this. And then he became successful from that point on. But there is a, there’s a backstory to this story, which is he was he dropped out of UT Austin. And he wanted to hitchhike to New York City. And his mother said, if you leave the door and go, that’s the end of it. And John McKay, at that moment, says that, if this is what is our relationship, okay, I’m better off leaving, he leaves. And John McCain kind of attributes his success, to the decision he made at that point in time when he discovered himself. You see, and again, that is there are some resources, Dr. Cooper talks about in the book, which I highly suggest that you, you get this book, buy the book, read the book. And there are so many, so many different frames and angles to leadership, this book is filled with wisdom, filled with wisdom, and this is the springboard for you to get to. And this has, you know, in my understanding, I raised my understanding, you know, reading this book, so get the book, that’s obviously the point of this podcast episode, but also, you cannot really bridge the gap unless you ask some deep questions. And the last few days I have been talking about that are, we all are self imprisoned unless we are self-discovered. And the self-discovery happens through our we only discover ourselves and we only can release ourselves from our own self-imprisonment.

That’s why it’s called self-imprisonment. And we do that by deep questioning. And that’s one way to bridge the gap. Obviously, you can’t take anything for granted. You can’t take anybody’s opinion for granted and their expectations for granted. We you do it yourself. I hope today’s podcast episode is helpful. Or just on a side note subsequent to that I read the book and then I met Dr. Copa again at the Thai conference. Over the years, we have exchanged text messages, I’m lucky to actually have come across such an incredible mind who explains such complex, you know, paradigms of thinking in such simple terms. So amazing. I hope look him up, follow his work. And I’ll promise you, you will bless me in your thoughts one day for just mentioning this, about him about his work about this book to you. So amazing. That’s all for now on this podcast. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. In the meantime, if you think this podcast episode is helpful, do me a favor, write a review, read this podcast and if you think anybody, a friend of yours, maybe a family member of yours will benefit from this podcast episode. By all means, please send it to them. It’s easy, simple. Copy the link and just text them and before you know it I’ll be here tomorrow with you till such time wherever you are. Be safe. Bye now.