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The Easy Path Project Live Stream #10
What If Everything You Believe About Your Self-Worth Is Wrong?
Hello and welcome to the Easy Path Project live stream. Tonight we’re talking about what if everything you believe about your self-worth is wrong.
A lot of the problems that most people have in general with themselves, especially in the context of personal development, stem from thinking there’s an issue you can address. For instance, if you think you’re deficient in some aspect of confidence and you want to build your confidence, you might think you’ve got to do something to build it. But what you’ll find is that regardless of what you do, if you don’t address the underlying root issues of your problem, you’re going to have a lot of difficulty overcoming it.
It’s probably easier overall to start removing the crap that’s making you think or feel that way. That’s what we’re going to talk about tonight.
Over the last few nights I’ve been talking about basic introspection – the things you have to do to know where you stand, why you stand, what you stand for, how to evaluate them, and how to use this evaluation to develop a plan to start solving it.
Instead of telling you tonight about how great things are going to be once you start digging into the things that might be causing some of your underlying issues, we’re actually going to go down a list of possible reasons why you might feel like you’re not good enough.
It’s a really crummy place to be, but it’s also a really great place to grow from. As you start to grow, you’ll see that the way you perceived yourself in the past is really not correct. Once that realization takes hold in your mind, you’ll understand that you’ve been holding yourself back. It’s not that you haven’t been enough to deal with the situations you’re putting yourself into – it’s that you are actively working against yourself.
Understanding Self-Doubt
Self-doubt often stems from past experiences where we felt judged or inadequate. Many things we’re dealing with as younger adults or even older adults are things that happened to us when we were young, and for whatever reason, long beyond their expiration date, we’re still hanging onto them.
Some of these things might have been appropriate at the time or maybe they weren’t, but you don’t have to keep hanging onto them. They might have been good for that time or they might not have been good, or they might have been incorrect. Some of the internal dialogue you have might be conveying incorrect information or outdated information.
We’re going to discuss how to dislodge these crappy things that are stuck to you like barnacles and let you start to get a little bit more free. Let you feel good, put your shoulders back, relax – that’s where we want to be.
Social Conditioning and Value
Social conditioning can discourage us from acknowledging our own value. A lot of times, the things going around us – we react to them. There’s the possibility that they may be wrong or misguided, or that we might be wrong or misguided. There are a whole bunch of aspects to it.
Think of society trying to tell you, “Hey, this is how you got to be because these are the things we have established that you need to deal with.” Maybe not. Maybe I can be polite and play along to a point, but otherwise, no thanks. I’m going to march to my own drummer.
The Growth Mindset
One of the really fun things we’re going to get to at the tail end of this discussion is that your growth mindset allows abilities to improve rather than remain fixed. These things we talk about tonight and some of the things we uncover – it’s not going to be a situation where you’re doomed to suffer this forever. If you’ve got a growth mindset, you’re going to be able to overcome, adapt, improve, and advance.
For the last two weeks I’ve been talking about the theory behind the Easy Path Project, and tonight we’re taking the first step down the road. This is where you start thinking – seriously, that’s all this takes. You ruminate, indulge a little mental fantasy, and start to think about these things. Think about how easy it’s going to be once you’ve identified these things.
Any of these things we talk about tonight – there’s probably somebody on the internet who is either talking about how to fix it right now or has fixed it and will tell you how they fixed it. All of these things are just tests to see what you’re made of. If you’ve got the idea that you’re going to be a superior man, then these are little baby steps tests. You’ll start building up a trail of success starting from the easiest point and just go from there.
This does get to be a lot of fun once you allow yourself to quit carrying all that crap that is unpleasant at best and unnecessary. Just stop it.
20 Questions to Challenge Your Self-Worth Beliefs
Let’s go through these questions as a thought experiment. If any of these sound like situations you’re having to deal with, think about how you can start working on eradicating those issues and improving as a person.
1. Past Experiences
Have you been in situations where you felt judged or inadequate before?
Just the nature of children and how their brains work – they take these situations where a child by their very nature needs to be corrected sometimes or pushed in certain directions. If you’re not gently pushed in that direction, sometimes it could be a little harsh, and you can maybe take the wrong lesson away or it’ll stick more persistently than you had hoped.
Start thinking about what those things are that you considered to be traumas. One of the little mind things I do on a daily basis is step back and look at things in front of me so I can understand the totality. Once you’re able to step back and say, “Okay, I felt bad because this happened or I feel like I have diminished self-worth because of this other thing that happened,” you’re not feeling it inside you – you’re seeing it. Once it’s one step removed, it’s going to be easier to deal with because it’s not you. It’s something that’s on you, and once you decide to get it off you, that’s when things start to improve.
On Forgiveness
One of the things that’s going to be a common theme with the Easy Path Project is forgiveness. As a child, you’re thinking about your parents being whatever age they are, thinking they’re adults, somehow elevated above you, that they know everything. But once you get to a certain age, you think, “My parents were still just children or just slightly past being children and they had me.” I don’t believe they received a handbook on the knowledge of the universe to raise me properly.
You’ve got kids who were raised probably incorrectly, then they have kids and raise those kids sort of incorrectly, and it just goes on and on. Sometimes your parents – they’re still learning and they still make mistakes, just like every person makes mistakes. Even if they were kind of shitty to you, if you can find it in your heart to start forgiving, don’t hang onto those past hurts or anger. That stuff is all gone and it really doesn’t matter.
You might have had situations in the past where you were embarrassed – maybe you were supposed to give a speech on President’s Day and you messed up and someone laughed at you. That kind of crap stings, but you’re probably the only one that still remembers that. Once you drop that, it’s gone.
Don’t let past experiences dictate today because they don’t exist except in your memories, so they’re really not real.
2. Comparisons
Do you immediately assess others’ strengths and assume you fall short?
If you walk into a room and see somebody and say, “Well that guy is better than me,” that’s a self-esteem and self-worth issue. If all you can do is see him, what is it that makes you think that? Why do you have such low self-esteem that you just instantly consider yourself inferior?
Once you start feeling better about yourself, once you start developing your confidence and authenticity, it’ll help you stand up as a person. Once you feel good about yourself – put your shoulders back, your head up, your nose up a little bit even – just start to feel what it’s like to feel good about yourself. Then understand that you don’t compare unfavorably to other people.
3. Self-Perception
Are you overly critical of yourself without seeing your true value?
You’re misperceiving the situation if you think it was a bad day because one, two, or three things went bad out of a million. It’s the same thing if you have a problem with being an introvert – you put excessive value on being an introvert and it overshadows all the other good things about you. That’s wrong.
Once you get an even understanding of how you compare to others, you don’t necessarily have to be critical of yourself in the sense of beating yourself up. You can recognize that you have an issue and need to deal with it, but don’t let that thing overwhelm your understanding that overall, you’re a pretty cool cat who just needs to sand off the rough edges.
4. Fear of Rejection
Does the worry of not fitting in make you doubt yourself?
I don’t have a fear of rejection. I don’t worry about how I fit in or don’t fit in. I’m Michael. Sometimes I have trouble holding my ego together. What was it that Rorschach said from the Watchmen? “It’s not that I’m in here with you, it’s that you’re in there with me.”
If you start feeling good about yourself and start allowing yourself to be yourself, then that won’t be an issue anymore. Find out why you feel that you’re not going to fit in, what the root causes are, and then address those.
5. Social Conditioning
Have you been taught to downplay your achievements or worth?
Think about NFL football from 10 or 15 years ago. When you scored a touchdown, it was supposed to be a very muted celebration – maybe spike the ball, maybe point at the stands, but pretty calm. Nowadays, they have the entire team doing little performing monkey routines, which is kind of ridiculous, but it shows how things have changed.
In the past, you might have been taught that you had to hold it together when you accomplished something – got a good grade on a test, did something well at work, won a trophy in a sporting competition. But nowadays, the world is a little more open to celebration after winning or scoring. You don’t have to hold it together like a black hole – you can sort of let your freak flag fly.
People give a lot of crap to The Big Bang Theory, saying it was making fun of nerds, but what it did was expose those types of people who can just be into something because they’re into it and couldn’t care less about what anybody else said. As a result, people understand that people are on the spectrum and might have issues with being introverts or outcasts or not fitting in, but this show gave people an idea that these people exist, and that’s okay.
Don’t get bent out of shape if you’ve been taught something in the past about how to think about how you fit in. You’re an adult – you can do adult things now, as long as you hold it together a little bit and don’t go too crazy.
6. Perfectionism
Do you feel like you have to be flawless to be accepted?
Nobody is perfect. When I started these live streams, I put it off about six weeks longer than I had expected because I wanted to get all my lessons just so, all my slides just so, my video setup just so – I wanted to get it all perfect. Here I am, finding myself 10 live streams in, and none of the plans I had for the themes or content is turning out to be what I expected.
I wanted to make it perfect, and once I got moving, I found out that I was trying to perfect something that didn’t need to be perfected. I just needed to start moving.
In situations where you feel that you’ve got to be perfect, flawless, funny, good-looking, on point on everything – no. Try to put some effort into it if you think it’ll benefit you and go from there, but don’t let it slow you down or stop you. I’m just six weeks behind now, and all that work to be perfect got me nowhere.
If you want to go out into the world and live this different life you’re aiming towards, don’t wait until you get perfect and then go out. Go out and work in the world as you become perfect.
7. Impostor Syndrome
Do you feel like you don’t deserve to be in certain spaces?
Impostor syndrome is an internalized fear of being a fraud despite your competence and success. A lot of people think they have to be perfect. Even though they’ve done hard work and been promoted into a situation or done well in a class, they sit there and have these nagging doubts like, “Am I really supposed to be here?”
There’s the possibility that things could go south, but deal with it. What if it doesn’t go south? What if it goes awesome? That’s a possibility too. We just discussed that you are competent and successful, so why would you have the impression that something’s going to go bad? It’s just as likely, or actually even more likely, it’s going to go good.
8. Body Language and Self-Presentation
Does your posture or expression reinforce insecurity?
Girls are not turned on by guys with slouched shoulders and bent-over necks who look at their phone all day and are trying to minimize themselves and hide. The reason that Chad and Tyrone and the alpha male do as well as they do is because they present themselves differently. They stand up tall, stand up straight, pull their head back, look around, make eye contact.
If you have trouble doing those things, first figure out why. It’s not that big of a deal to start improving your posture. There are simple exercises – as simple as standing up against a wall and putting your hands up and your shoulders up against the wall to improve your posture. Just the way you walk, or if you wear scrungy clothes, wear something a little bit nicer.
That little tiny input will achieve fantastic results. They might be small at the beginning, but they get better and they’re cumulative. Once you go out and people start reacting to you because you’re presenting yourself differently – standing up straight, dressing well, maybe you went to the gym and got a little better body so you’re feeling kind of swaggy – that’s going to pay off a lot. It’s not hard.
That’s therapeutic too. Lifting heavy weights – if you do have residual anger from any of these things we’re talking about, work them out with the iron. Take it out in the gym. You’ll feel better, I promise.
9. Inner Dialogue
What kinds of thoughts run through your mind in those moments?
A lot of people’s self-talk, their inner dialogue, is crap. They’re always saying, “I’m not this, I’m not that, I can’t do this, I shouldn’t do this.” Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
I don’t understand why that has to exist. Maybe it’s self-preservation – you’re protecting yourself or something. But if you’re constantly talking down to yourself or allowing poor thinking to dissuade you from doing or trying things, it’s actually doing you a disservice. Stop it.
Find out why these things are saying it. A lot of times when I’m dealing with stuff like this, I try to change the way I say it to myself. Instead of “I was lazy,” I say, “I was lazy, but now I’m productive” or “I’m on my way to being productive” or “I will be productive” or “I should be productive in the future if I’m doing these steps.”
Just a little change in the way you speak to yourself helps. One of the things I’ve discussed about NLP is something Tony Robbins used to use a lot called a pattern interrupt. If you have a cat and it wants to jump up on the counter, you stand there with a water bottle, and each time the cat jumps up, you spray it. You interrupt its pattern. Now its new pattern is jumping up, getting sprayed with water, and jumping down.
If you’re talking down to yourself or saying bad things to yourself or entertaining poor thinking, stop. Use a pattern interrupt consciously. Once you start to pull back and see your thoughts going through your mind, it won’t be something happening to you – it’s something that’s happening, and then you decide how you’re going to deal with that.
That slight disassociation helps. I talk about thinking about life sort of as a game or simulation because it allows you to step back and say, “Okay, well…” It’s like those first-person shooter games where you can see the guy – you’re not the guy shooting, you can see the guy. That’s the perspective you want to back up to. You’ll see the world happening to this guy, and you don’t necessarily have to think about internal dialogue or things that are working on you. It’s more like there’s this guy here and there’s this stuff here, and they don’t have to…
I wish I could explain that better, but hopefully you’re smart guys and you’re digging what I’m getting at. Just change the way you think and don’t allow yourself to think poor thoughts. Just stop.
10. Unrealistic Standards
Are you holding yourself to standards no one else expects you to meet?
Sometimes we just discussed perfectionism. Nobody’s perfect. Everybody’s stumbling down this path just like you are, so don’t hold that against yourself. If you’re not graceful like a swan or you don’t look like Fred Astaire dancing, you can look kind of clumsy like that guy from Digital Underground in “The Humpty Dance” – that’s an old hip-hop song you ought to check out. It’s kind of funny.
He talks about his dance where it seems like he’s got broken legs, so it’s kind of clumsy and ridiculous looking, but he’s like, “Well, I don’t care because I’m on the dance floor and I’m having a good time.”
Just think about your life like that. I don’t have to be perfect, but I’m in this life and I’ve got this opportunity to have a good time, so hey, let’s have a good time.
11. Validation Seeking
Do you feel like you need external approval to confirm your worth?
Once again, low self-esteem and low self-worth – the idea that you need to earn somebody’s approval or affection or praise. Dr. Robert Glover in the book “No More Mr. Nice Guy” talks about this. A nice guy would be a guy who does all these things upfront before he ever has the opportunity to form a relationship with a girl, in the hopes that if he gives her enough or does enough stuff, he can earn her affection or get a relationship. No, no, no, no, no.
Do you have that nice guy syndrome? Do you feel that you’ve got to earn people’s respect or acceptance or attention? If you’re having to be a performing monkey, it’s not manly. When we talk about alphas or sigmas or Chads or Tyrones, they’re not going, “Here baby, I brought you flowers or I’ll take you to some super nice place for dinner, now give me love.” That’s not how it happens.
Don’t go down that path. If you feel that you need to do something to get something back from somebody else, figure out why that is and then move away from that idea.
12. Strengths versus Weaknesses
Are you focusing more on what you lack rather than what you bring?
This refers back to the point I made earlier. You have everything go right in your day except for one or two things, then you say it was a bad day because those one or two things went bad. It’s also the situation where you have a situation where you can’t approach a girl or can’t feel confident in a situation, and you allow that one aspect of your personality or situation to cause you to think that you’re doomed. That’s overblowing the situation.
If you actually sit down with a piece of paper and draw a line – on the left side put your strengths and on the right side put your weaknesses – if you were being honest, your strengths would be a lot longer list of items. That should give you the confidence that you’ve got this tiny little list of things that are holding you back. Now that you’re thinking about it, now that you’ve got them right here on this piece of paper, you can identify them and start to eradicate them, start to feel better.
13. Cultural Influences
How do societal or family expectations shape your confidence?
Sometimes parents or culture shapes who you are, and sometimes you have to kind of learn how to navigate within those societies or families. If you want to be a fine upstanding member of that community, sometimes you got to play the game, and you got to reconcile playing the game and being who you want to be.
You got to thread that needle, but the idea is that your personal growth and mental health comes first. Sometimes it could be a situation where you just have to pull back from the things that are holding you back. If it’s family or culture that’s holding you back, identify that and then take steps to fix it. Hopefully you can hold it all together, but if not, sometimes you need to move on or alter the conditions you’re living in.
That’s a tough one and I don’t have personal experience with that, but for example, one gentleman who came to me to learn how to get a wife had come from a religious background that severely limited interaction between males and females. They almost had to be chaperoned when they were together. He was in his 50s and had finally made up his mind to get beyond that, but he had to leave. Once he did that, the next step was to remove the conditioning.
14. Fear of Being Judged
Do you assume others are scrutinizing you when they might not be?
You have to understand that other people are more like you than not. They might have characteristics that are different, but the underlying machinery of humanity is pretty similar. If a girl you’re interested in has a couple of considerations and things you’re concerned about that you think are really reasonable to hold you back, she might have the same things.
That’s going to be a discussion we have coming up fairly soon about the considerations that women have about even getting into a relationship with a guy. There are probably 20 or 30 reasons why, regardless of who or what you are – you might be Chad or Tyrone, but if she’s not able to reconcile these other things, it doesn’t matter who you are.
One of those things that’s a problem for women is that they might also have fear of being judged or being held up to a certain standard. She might be dealing with the same internal crisis that you are, just from the feminine perspective.
Don’t be thinking that if a girl or anybody in any situation is judging you or thinking about you, because it’s just as likely that they’re thinking about their own stuff and grinding on the crap that’s holding them back because they haven’t gotten to the point yet where they’re going to fix it.
Don’t assume that everybody’s looking at you and thinking about you and judging you. Most people, if they notice you at all, have 27 things they got to think about in their head at any given time, plus their cell phone, plus they got their face stuck in Instagram. People are oblivious. You could be invisible if you want, or you can start on this little path to making yourself feel better and start to become uninvisible.
15. Previous Failures
Are you letting past mistakes define your present self-worth?
You were younger and stupider – cut yourself some slack. If you have a situation where you made a mistake or something didn’t go like you planned, you evaluate what happened, make a new plan or have a new idea of how things are going to go forward, and move forward. You don’t hold onto that crap from the past because it’s not real. It doesn’t exist except in your mind.
Think about hypnotism or even some forms of therapy where they’re actually able to attenuate the value of things in your head. You can do that for yourself. Once you decide to stop carrying that crap, then it’ll no longer burden you.
16. Social Anxiety
Could underlying anxiety be fueling these thoughts?
All of these things probably have some underlying issue. If you’re anxious or feeling insecure, you’re going to have to address it. By identifying it – “Hey, I’ve got this situation, I’m anxious because of this or I feel this way because of that” – you can start addressing the root causes.
17. Expectation versus Reality
Are you imagining worst-case scenarios that may never happen?
This comes up with me surprisingly often. Mark Twain, the writer, made the comment, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which have never happened.” You sit there and let your mind just start running, imagining all these situations. If you’re coming from a place where you’re allowing yourself to have poor thinking, you’re naturally going to be coming at it from a negative standpoint, so you’ll find that you’re imagining the worst-case scenario.
We’ve already established that most things go well, most things happen like they’re supposed to. Some things go kind of crummy, some things could be better – okay, well, let’s work on those things. It’s not like we have to work on the 97% of things that work absolutely flawlessly like a Swiss watch every single day of our lives. It’s these little teeny tiny things that are so isolated, it’ll be very easy for us to address them. It’s not hard.
The very first step is just understanding that they exist and that you’re bringing them to mind.
18. Hidden Assumptions
Are you assuming others are inherently more capable or confident?
If you’re coming from a standpoint of negativity, then it’s natural that you would diminish who or what you are, but that’s not necessarily true. You might be a person who’s very confident – we discussed it earlier. You’re competent and you’re successful. If you’re competent and successful at these things, why would you think that someone else is more competent than you or more capable than you, more confident or more capable?
It’s not the case. Once again, it all starts at the bottom – find out why you feel that way.
Every single night this week I’ve discussed the whole math channel on YouTube. He realized that the very first thing he could move forward on and the easiest was his body. He hit the gym and built himself up to having a smoking hot body and started getting girls that would never have even noticed him in the past. He was able to have relationships with them. His mindset changed simply because he took care of some limitations, some stuff that had been holding him back.
Once you start getting rid of those things, you’ll find that whereas in the past you might have felt that others are more capable or more confident, that’s really not the case, and you just move forward from there.
19. Self-Compassion
Are you offering yourself the kindness you would give a friend?
I’ve talked about this lots lately too. People beat ourselves up – we expect ourselves to be perfect or to get everything right and do it well and optimally. You don’t hold your friends to those same standards. If your buddy made a mistake on a test, you wouldn’t call him an idiot. You’d never in a million years do that unless you were absolutely off the rails.
So why would you do it to yourself? “Yeah, okay, well I realize I didn’t study enough or I didn’t study correctly. I made this mistake, but it’s just because I wasn’t prepared. It was not a character flaw that I made the mistake – it’s just that something went wrong.”
Seriously, cut yourself some slack. You don’t have to be perfect. Nobody expects you to be perfect. Let’s just settle for improving right now – that you’re getting better and feeling better.
20. Growth Mindset
Do you see confidence as something that can be developed rather than something you’re born with?
As I mentioned in one of the very first slides, your growth mindset allows abilities to improve rather than remain fixed. As long as you hold onto the option of things getting better, then there is the option of things getting better. Just having your mind open to the possibility and orienting yourself towards growth is key.
All of this is just a situation where as you’ve gone through your life, you’ve had to deal with these things. Sometimes you either didn’t deal with them correctly or you’re still dealing with them. Some of the stuff is just outdated. Evaluate what works for you or what is important to you – what really matters.
If you’re using the growth mindset lens and you can see, “Okay, well, I had these situations to deal with in the past, but I have the ability now to move forward beyond them and kind of leave them in the past.”
I have something I’m saving for when I’m old and gray on my deathbed to remind me of something I had to deal with, and I’m going to see how I’m going to fix it. I’ve got this point out in the future where I’m going to be able to look back. I’m going to reach this place where I feel really good, and then I can look back and say, “Okay, well, this is what I had to go through to get there.”
If anything, it’s going to make you feel better. You’re going to feel awesome that you were so much stronger than you ever imagined and that you’re able to recover from what was holding you back and really strive. It’s going to be fun. It’s not really hard either. It takes some introspection, it takes going through lists like this and seeing how you can apply the ideas, but once you recognize them, it’s going to be a lot easier.
Final Thoughts
Confidence is not about being perfect – it’s about showing up as your authentic self. Your authentic self is the person who you are when you’re born, and those things that are piling up on you – the disappointments, the anger, the hurts, all that kind of stuff – it’s just trash that you got to take out. It’s like sweeping up a dusty cabin – you just got to get rid of all that trash, and then you’ll have a nice cabin.
That’s where we’re headed here. You’re an awesome person carrying around a bunch of crap that is not useful and is not helpful, and it’s got to go. So start taking out the trash.
I do have live streams Monday through Friday around 7:30 PM Central, so definitely show up, hang out, take part. Feel free to say hi, tell me what you’re thinking, tell me what you want to think about, what you want to talk about. Let’s do it. Also, watch the replays in the live stream playlist – I’ve got those there with a lot of interesting information and helpful stuff to get you started.
Thanks for hanging out tonight. Hopefully you’re finding some of this stuff to be useful and you can start to apply it over the weekend and start feeling better. It’s cumulative – you start feeling better, do a little bit more, you feel a little bit better, and suddenly you’re feeling pretty groovy. It gets momentum and just gets better from there.
I’ll show up Monday night, and I think the plan right now is to maybe do another one of these with another couple of ideas – why you might be holding yourself back or things that might need to go, and we can help you identify them.
Thank you for hanging out tonight, and we’ll see you Monday night. Take it easy.