Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Today on this podcast episode, I’m sharing a recent conversation I had with a longtime listener of my radio show, and also somebody who attended a seminar I did in 2011, a long time ago. Interesting conversation I had with him and I am kind of giving a gist of the conversation on today’s podcast. So he reached out to me about three weeks ago, telling me about a situation he’s having with his son, who is a teenager. And there are some issues with communication, there are some issues as a family, they are not able to kind of get their message across. And the son is doing good in school. But then overall, the confidence is low. And for the last three, four years, they have been struggling with this about six months ago. They made an attempt to consult with the therapist at school, and then eventually, through the primary care physician, a referral to some other therapists in the insurance network. And somehow, they’re not able to get hold of a good therapist or a therapist, because therapists are not available. And that has kind of lowered the confidence of the entire family. I got on a phone call with him. For about an hour we spoke. And in that one hour, I gave three guidelines.
The first guideline was, how we build confidence, or where does confidence come from. The second one was, things that we do that lower our self confidence. And the third thing was, what do confident people do. And the approach I took on that call was, not only that the kid is suffering. The kid is suffering, because the parents are suffering,. It’s a circular relationship. Parents are struggling. So collectively, as a family, in the social context, together, all of them, their confidence level is low. I also told this individual to listen to today’s podcast, and make sure that he plays this recording to his son.
Compassion.
Let’s get into the three guidelines. See, there are three things. Number one is compassion. Every time you raise your compassion for yourself, you raise your confidence. Every time you raise compassion for people around you, you raise their confidence. Raising compassion involves that you raise your understanding of the problem. So let’s say you feel low, you invest time to understand what’s happening with you. And that is why I have been on this podcast, and also my radio shows talking about self exploration.
Understand.
You raise your confidence by understanding yourself. And as a part of that self exploration process, and there are many ways to self explore yourself. So compassion comes from understanding. Whether you understand yourself, you understand others, in fact, you understand others better if you understand yourself.
Respect.
And then the third part is respect. So you when you combine compassion, understanding and respect, you raise your confidence, you also raise other people’s confidence. So these are the three things I do as a coach and as a therapist is I have compassion. I tried to probe and develop understanding of the people who are trying to reach out to me, and, obviously respect. So with these three things, I instill self confidence in them. You are having issues with your self confidence. So you become compassionate with yourself. You understand yourself and you respect yourself is it’s hard to respect ourselves. You see, it’s hard. So that’s what self confidence is made of. Those are the three things.
Now let’s talk about things that lower self confidence. When you put other people on the pedestal, in a way you are lowering your self confidence. When you put people ahead on the top, you deserve, but you put others on the top, and you kind of paint yourself to the far end of the corner of the room. I did a whole podcast on this long time ago. It’s funny, you know, I do podcast episodes, I come back and redo them in a different way. Okay, so you put people on the top and you put yourself behind, lowers your self confidence. Humility is good but improper humility is bad. It destroys self confidence. Guilt, you carry guilt within you, diminishes your self confidence. You act but you don’t live because of your circumstances because of other people you act. You’re living because somebody else is expecting you to live as per the rules that they have defined. So you don’t feel living, thought this life lowers your self confidence. If you’re constantly finding fault in other people, raising your mindset as using that as a power to raise your mindset, so you’re kind of a cynic. And you’re living in that cynicism, then that lowers your confidence. If you have wrong self talk going, when you’re alone with yourself, you tell things to yourself, that are diminishing your overall existence, in a way. Your mindset, then, that self talk has to go away, diminishes your overall confidence. If you have unrealistic expectations of yourself or others, diminishes your self confidence. There are some external stimulants that you allow to come into your life. Things that you have no control on, but you have allowed them to come into your life diminishes your self confidence. And you are angry and you’ll lead life from an anger frame diminishes your confidence. To these are things that diminish and there are many more things. But these are things that I could kind of think these are things for sure, I discussed on the call.
Confident people believe in their abilities.
Now let’s talk about what do confident people do. The first and the foremost thing is confident people believe in their abilities. You got to start believing in your abilities. Whatever abilities you have, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to compare this with somebody else and say somebody has better and more than me, in that kind of comparison, that kind of a contrast will destroy you. So you got to believe in what you have.
Confident people solve problems.
And in this context, as a father and a son, as a parent and a child, you got to put that belief in durability. And you do that through proper communication. Confident people solve problems. That is a problem solving mindset they have. And once you have a problem solving mindset, what I’ve seen personally, is people who solve problems or has or haven’t mindset to solve problems or approach to solve problems, they worry less. Because they’re busy solving problems, then comes dealing with fears. You got to face your fears head on and you work towards eliminating those fears.
Confident people also do something else.
Then confident people also do something else, which is they calculate risk and applied themselves to situations appropriately. Not that they don’t take risks, they do take risks, but they understand risk. And the last thing, confident people love and respect themselves. And because they love and respect themselves. A majority of them end up loving and respecting others.
That’s it. This is the gist of the discussion I had with this gentleman. So if you have a situation right now, and you heard this podcast, we are already in about nine minutes into this. And you’re running through a challenge with your child with your kid or somebody or with your own self. I want you to listen to this. And I also want you to make sure that your child also listens to this. Now if you’re approaching a therapist, let’s say then I want you to look at all the different things that I listed here that lowers somebody’s self confidence and kind of explained to the therapist that yeah, you know, I have anger in me or I have guilt in me. I have negative self talk going on or I have unrealistic expectations of myself and others around me. So you start giving these things to the therapist and let them help you now, so you cut down the time with a therapist, and you guide the therapist to guide you back with their assessment of you. So you kind of helping them to help you. So that’s what I want you to do.
Okay, so I would stop here now, this has gone very deep and very long. If you like today’s podcast episode, then do me a favor, write a review, give us a rating, share it with your friends and family. And come back again tomorrow. And we’re going to take this conversation deep. Thank you.