the most attractive people in life are not the ones who are perfect my essence was already doing the work over here all i needed to do was show more of it we are the greatest asset we'll ever ever own we're also the only asset we'll always own we live in a world right now that over values all of the wrong things i think it's important that we all get tough to those moments and and learn not to try and make everything perfect all the time uh i have a spot right here on my nose right now let's see if i can see it in the mirror jameson you want to zoom in on that you feel free there's a spot i have right here i think i have a spot up here as yeah i got a spot there as well right now um i'm i'm actually for me my body isn't in shape right now not the way i want it to be um i haven't trained a lot in the last few weeks i've been eating like a pig traveling around uh consuming a ton of sugar and i'm i'm not in the best shape of my life someone even pointed out in a recent video they were like matt's looking so skinny these days ugh that's okay that's okay we have to be okay with these things it's never going to be perfect we now look we all want to look our best i get that and we're all trying to look our best most of the time and there's no shame in that there's no shame in that i want to look at i want to look my best the same way you do so there's no difference there but taking pride in your appearance and wanting to look your best is not the same thing as becoming distressed when you're not at your best and allowing the negative negativity of everyone to affect you in immense ways and that's something i i i will continue conditioning myself against not be again not because i'm infallible not because i never feel the pain of other people's comments or what people say or little jabs that people have from an anonymous place somewhere where they can say whatever they want it's not that i'm never ever affected by those things it's that i want to lean into those things i want to face those things head-on i even want to welcome them because then it's on my terms if i'm if i can if i can shed light on those things myself on or understand ahead of time like yeah i'm putting this out there knowing that this might be a comment i'll get then it's a it's another way of owning it it's another way of shining a light on it and saying yeah you can bring me bad energy but it's going to be on my terms and i i i think we all need to not just be okay with criticism and bad energy but almost uh almost see it coming and and don't try and make everything perfect allow for the fact that yeah there are certain parts of your body you won't like there are certain uh little moments of self-consciousness that you will experience moments of insecurity based on something you have or something that's there on your face right now but won't be tomorrow but you wish it wasn't here on this particular day i found that there is a particular power in owning those things i used to and by the way this wasn't always the case when i started out on youtube for example there's something about being on camera regularly even if you're not on tv but you're just putting yourself through that on youtube or something there is something about it that immediately makes you self-conscious of all of these things that you know because it's one thing to have a spot appear on your face when you're at home with your family and friends it's another thing when a camera's on you and all of a sudden you're thinking how many people are gonna see this so when i first started on youtube i was hyper aware of all of the things that i didn't like about myself and was almost trying to make sure every single one of those things was perfect before i would go on camera and gradually over time that feeling became eroded now i never stop taking pride in myself i mean i you know when i do work out i work out because i take pride in myself because i like to feel healthy because i like to look good i don't wear a shirt because i don't care about my appearance i wear a shirt because i want to look good but that feeling of needing everything to be perfect began to get eroded and over time i became i became less and less precious about making sure that i was happy with every tiny little detail of myself because i would always remind myself that the most attractive people in life are not the ones who are perfect the most attractive people in life are the ones that really can be confident in spite of whatever isn't perfect about themselves and let's let's stick with the physical for now because i think this is you know we can extrapolate this to other parts of life we could talk we can widen it to uh your personality we can widen it to to everything else but i think it's interesting if we stay with the physical for a moment the people that are the most attractive are the ones who don't allow the things that aren't perfect about their physicality to throw them off of their game and they certainly don't say someone will like me less because of this someone won't be attracted to me because of this they it's almost like they put that to one side and they say okay i accept that for what it is now let's go and be a really fun uh interesting passionate life-loving human being um that's ultimately what makes people confident i i was thinking here's you know here's the funny thing jameson we're getting really meta right now but i think we should if our audience are the intelligent people we always say they are they'll understand and they'll appreciate it um before this video i was thinking to myself like because me and james were talking about this the whole spray tan thing we were like we should talk about this like we should make a video about this for this week and just just let's let's let's own it and let's talk about it there's a reflex part of me that wants to say well guys you know there is a reason that someone that does what i do gets a spray tan when they go on tv or when they do this when they do that they're a reason like there's a part of me that feels the need to justify it and then as that went through my head i said no [ __ ] that like justin i'm not just i don't need to justify to anyone none of us do we we i always remember this time at school where i went into school with my hair like slicked back and i'd never done that before i'd always had like a kind of either just a softer look or whatever and one day i went in like full patrick bateman american psycho like hair slicked back and i remember someone the moment i got in school there was some other guy at school who was like what the [ __ ] are you doing with your hair and the funny thing was my immediate response was to justify it my immediate response was to be like oh wouldn't you no i mean i just did that because it was wet when i got out of the shower and i just put some gel in it and this isn't what happened and what you you start justifying it that's exactly what i did i started justifying it and i look back now and i go you know what that was the moment where i gave up all of my power was when i felt the need to justify it when i thought when i gave someone else so much status that i said i need to tell them why it is i made the decision to do my hair this way today and i know as i'm speaking about this i know there will be things there will be times that you remember maybe even recently maybe even today where someone said something to you about something you were wearing or something you were doing and you felt the need to justify it to them or downplay it or pretend like you didn't do it on purpose so that they wouldn't mock you and i remember looking back at school and thinking my god i would have i would have been completely in control if i didn't feel the need to justify it at all if i just laughed or smiled or even poked fun of myself in that moment just owned it whatever but but but the wrong route is for me to sit here and justify myself and that reflex you'll find it creeping back in from time to time and you must be very very wary of it because it's the moment that you try justifying yourself for decisions you've made in that way it's that moment that you really lose your power instead just own it just own it it doesn't it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you'll be far more attractive i made a video that where i had a spray tan and it had worn off of my hands and my hands were white okay own it whatever it is it doesn't matter why did i get a spray tan who [ __ ] cares do i need to justify it no do you need to justify anything that you do no think about your body insecurities think about something that uh you you worry about or you get self-conscious about think about a style that you want to go for in your life but you're afraid to in case the friends and family around you call you out on trying something different think about those things and think about how you don't need to justify yourself for those little actions you can own them and you'll be far more attractive when you do um so like we're all uh we're all afraid right we're all afraid we all want to be liked we all want people to say nice things about us anyone who says they absolutely 100 don't care ever is lying and they tend to be the people that are the most scared um but you you can build a mental and emotional toughness that makes you extraordinarily resilient i mean part of this starts with loving yourself which i talk about if you've ever ever been on my retreat program we do an entire day dedicated to how to transform the relationship you have with yourself so that you don't rely on that kind of validation from other people but it's also to some extent about building a a mental and emotional toughness whereby people's energy can't affect you in that way anymore a because you're conditioned for it right i put out that video regardless because i wanted the knocks i don't care i want to be conditioned for negative energy so that's the first part but secondly um just the knowledge that if in spite of criticism in spite of bad energy in spite of whatever you're self-conscious about you project your most confident your most passionate your most life-loving image that will make you more attractive than if you didn't have the imperfections in the first place because nothing is more attractive than someone who we think could have reasons to not feel confident and yet they're still unstoppable that's the person we really fear in life because we're like oh [ __ ] i can't even compete with this person uh this person this person hasn't got this confidence because they've got it all this confidence comes from somewhere else and that's really intimidating for other people it's a very very powerful thing to have so um i think this is an important message i think that it's i think that we all need to feel almost uh almost united in the fact that we are insecure and we are human and there are things that we wish we could avoid in life we wish we could avoid criticism and condemnation and uh the harassment of bad energy we wish we could avoid these things but they are part of life the thing that makes us feel less alone is that everyone else is feeling it too you're not the only one i you know what makes me feel not alone is i know that every single person watching my videos i could show up at their house with a video camera and put it straight on them and every single one of their insecurities and self-conscious ideas about themselves would be magnified too there is no one that can hide from this the only difference is i'm out here i'm doing my thing i'm going for it anyway and you should too stephen fry uh if you don't know him a british comedian and a kind of a national treasure he said we all have this idea that everyone else is carrying this giant club walking around they have this like knowledge these secrets that we don't have and we're sort of cowering with like a you know a tiny toothpick you know and we're like oh god don't please don't hurt me and we think everyone else has the secrets that we don't have everyone else has something that we can't obtain they've somehow figured life out and we haven't and the great secret and the magical secret is that uh there is no secret that we're all the same and we've all we we all fear uh this bad energy we all fear this criticism and that that's okay and that that beginning to understanding that is the beginning of becoming resilient and knowing that you can actually get through it and if you go one step further than resilience and you own it and you're as confident as you want to be and can be in spite of it then you become a leader in life well we did a video last week and i asked you to leave a comment i said here's the comment i'd love you to leave me what is the thing that you feel is holding you back from being the most confident version of yourself here's what you wrote the thing that's holding me back from being the most confident version of myself is the fact that every relationship that i have had in the last several years mostly short term ended with the person leaving me chronic health problems most guys wouldn't want to deal with them or have the maturity to embrace me with them yesterday i had a realization that my crush may not be as interested in me as i am in him the thing that makes me insecure is my age i'm almost in the mid-30s me too stephen and seeing all of the other friends married or have partners in life makes me feel bad for myself and worthless well i suppose part of the link between all of these things is that there is a universality to insecurity to having our confidence knocked at different stages of our life i mean that's the thing about confidence isn't it you can have had it at one stage you can relate maybe to a moment in your life where you felt confident and then something happened in your life that knocked you and now you're trying to get it back or maybe you've never felt as confident as other people and you're wondering what is this confidence thing people have what even is confidence confidence is defined literally as a feeling of certainty about the truth of something and when we look at that idea of certainty it i mean there's your problem right we don't feel certain about an awful lot in our lives and that's why even when our lives appear on the surface to be going right we can still not feel confident confidence itself exists independently of the good and bad things in our lives if you don't consider yourself to be confident in dating i'll bet you that that lack of confidence follows you through every stage of the process right now you might be trying to meet someone and you might not feel confident in that you may be wondering am i ever going to meet someone i never meet anyone i like i'm messaging someone on an app they didn't message me the last two days now i feel rejected or it's never materializing into a date and that's making me feel like i'm hopeless that i'm not worthy of a date maybe you get on a date with an attractive person and you think here we go i should feel confident now because i'm actually on a date with an attractive person only now a new insecurity creeps in i'm not good enough for this person or you look at other pretty people in the restaurant and think they've got something i haven't they're prettier than me my date is more busy looking at them than he is looking at me or maybe you get off of that date and into seeing each other and you think well i should be confident now right we're seeing each other we're regularly sleeping together and having a great time and it seems to be in a good place only now your insecurity is the fact that you're going into people-pleaser mode and you keep going out of your way to do everything for this person you see them in their part of town you see them on their watch their schedule you feel like you're doing everything to make them happy but they're not trying as hard am i not worthy of this person trying as hard but you don't say anything because you don't feel confident enough to ask for what you really want the lack of confidence follows us to every stage well if you're getting a relationship with that person should feel confident now right you've got the person you're in a relationship only now you feel like you're not good enough to keep that person how will i ever hold this person i'm not good enough for them secretly i know that and they know that one day they're going to wake up and they're going to realize they can get someone better than me more successful wittier funnier prettier younger and that plagues you even within what could or even should be a happy relationship and so what do we do in order to be more confident we build up all these stocks in different areas of our lives we try and fix things don't we let me get the best body i can because that will make me feel confident let me get the best job i can because that will make me feel important let me put some money in the bank because that will make me feel confident in my financial security let me make myself as pretty as possible because confidence lies on the other side of that let me get into a relationship because that will make me finally feel okay except in truth none of these things really work if confidence lay on the other side of a great body a relationship a great job then there would be confident people everywhere but it doesn't that's the first problem with putting our confidence in these things is that they're volatile they're volatile stocks it's like building a house on quicksand you're only as good as that thing staying the same the problems with putting our confidence in those stocks is always highlighted when something in life happens to remind us that that thing can change and that we've got too much of our self-worth wrapped up in it a few weeks ago i got a stye right really puffed up my eye made it look a mess immediately i was like i don't want to do a video today even this week i don't want to do a video and it was annoying it was uncomfortable and it was like just this little reminder oh yeah look look at you think you're confident but just this little thing can throw you off right now that's a nice reminder and that's natural that's human right it happens to the best of us but in that moment it's a nice little signal to reorient where we're placing our value where we're placing our confidence are we placing it in things that can just be taken away from us hence why these things don't work because we're trying to find certainty in things that are inherently uncertain and changeable but the second problem is that even if those things are going well it still doesn't guarantee confidence you know i was told by a premiership footballer from decades ago who once won the golden boot meaning they scored the most goals out of any player in the premiership league that season he said the next season after winning the golden boot you'd think amazing right won the golden boot riding on on a high he said the next season was the worst season of my career because i could never live up to that the best i could do was live up to that right and and that was literally the best i could do more likely is i would fail i wouldn't live up to my last season so even when we're winning that doesn't guarantee confidence a lack of confidence or an insecurity follows us to the top and of course when we put our value in these stocks am i as pretty as that person am i as successful as that person am i as intelligent or witty as that person when we put our value in these stocks we start to invite comparison because we compare our stocks with other people's stocks and now we're in a dating game of top trumps where we're just a series of playing cards being drawn against each other and you're always afraid that you're going to be drawn against someone who's scoring higher in all of the major categories money success looks you know all of these things that we look at and go those are objective measures of how attractive and confident someone should be i remember when i was starting out in my career i was about 18 i wanted to be great at public speaking having this thought that you know tony robbins was this incredible public speaker who could captivate thousands of people in an audience at a time i remember having the insecurity that well no matter how good i get i'll never be as as persuasive or as powerful on stage as tony robbins because of his sheer physical presence the height of him the breadth of him this is a giant man literally i'll never be that i'll never have that no matter how hard i work and therefore maybe i'll never command the stage the way that he does what's dangerous about that comparison is we try and emulate somebody else in a way that can have us drifting further and further from our true nature but what's more insidious about that kind of comparison is that we end up discounting and often ignoring completely what works about us thank god i didn't get stuck on that thought about not being as tall as tony robbins who is by the way because of course the reason that people connect with me is specific to me and to my relationship with people to something that people connect with in my energy dare i say my essence and i think essence is a very interesting word because have you ever walked past a couple and secretly thought to yourself one of the couple seemed a lot more attractive and there was that part of you that terrible part of you that thought how did he or she get him or her but the truth is we don't know the essence of that person that attracted the person next to them we don't know what that is if it were all about the metrics then you'd look at someone on instagram who appears to be scoring high in all of the metrics and that would be enough except you get on a date with someone who scores high in a bunch of metrics and then you just go to yourself something's off something feels off about this person i don't know what it is on paper it should all be right and yet something doesn't feel right because you didn't connect to their essence and someone cannot score high in those categories that we all think we need but there's something about their essence there's something about the way they are the way they carry themselves the the outlook they have the energy they bring that it becomes very compelling about that person and i think one of the most powerful things we can do in life is get to know more about our essence get to know more about what works about us i'm not saying that getting better at things in life is not a worthwhile task that working on your body working on your career doing getting good at skills doing things isn't gonna in some way improve your life it certainly can and it can even give you a certain type of confidence it can give you a kind of localized confidence in an area a confidence that arises from competence in something but that doesn't mean deeper confidence because of course those things can go away life changes and we'll often find that that you know we look at people in life who appear to be very confident and then a change in their circumstances means the complete erosion of their confidence because it's based on circumstances it's not based on something deeper sturdier more rooted the two pieces of advice that i can impart about this that i use for my life is number one since you know empirically from your life that achieving something getting to a certain metric getting what you thought you wanted doesn't change all of your confidence issues doesn't eradicate every insecurity you can almost adopt a bit more of a fatalistic approach to your confidence instead of saying i'll be confident when say to yourself there's no guarantee i will be confident when so if that's true i may as well have a bit more of a [ __ ] attitude now instead of waiting for a feeling you're going to get later enjoy the feeling now and say listen i'm going to get better at something because it's worth getting better at it i'm going to try and achieve that because there's benefits in my life from achieving this but if i know i'm going to feel the same way at the end of it anyway or if i know that there's no guarantee that i'll have eradicated my insecurities by getting there then i may as well have more of a sense of abandon right now and just say screw it i'm gonna enjoy this and number two focus on understanding more and paying attention to what your essence is i know that sounds heady but to spend time figuring out an easier way of saying it's just what works about you what is your special magic as a person and sometimes the clues are in the kinds of things that the people we love say to us when we get our best qualities reflected back or discovering what it is we mean to people and why i've had the benefit of hearing these things in the course of my career even in the comments you guys tell me what works about me and why you follow me and that has been incredibly useful to me because it's shown me that while i was trying to be good enough in all of these areas over here my essence was already doing the work over here all i needed to do was show more of it that's the really insidious thing about insecurity is that it hides our essence it stops us from leaning into what already works about us while we're trying to replicate what works about somebody else and the most beautiful thing about your essence about your special magic is that it doesn't need any of those external wins to exist you know for me my essence is my essence whether there's a million people subscribed to my channel or a hundred it doesn't matter how well i'm doing in the scorecard of life that thing i take with me everywhere and it's about leaning into that as much as possible now if you're watching this video and you want to develop this mindset for yourself because you don't want to be reliant on things going well in your life for your confidence and you also know it hasn't worked in the past no matter how many things you do you never seem to feel more confident internally they all just become more and more masks that you wear to hide your insecurities a lot of people have been asking me lately about this concept that i've been really big on in the last year and that's the idea of the attraction formula every attraction follows a set formula for how it goes in other words they were always the same components in any lasting attraction now remember these components are necessary for long-term attraction for what we call deep and lasting attraction you don't need them all for shallow and transient attraction that only lasts a night but let me give you these four if you've got a pen and paper right now i want you to write these down i'm so big on this idea right now because it's the basis of everything in our love lives the first thing we need is visual chemistry visual chemistry is that animal attraction that you feel when you're in front of someone now this isn't just about looks people think it is like i i don't have the right amount of visual chemistry because i'm not good looking enough but i'm here to tell you that the smallest part of this is your looks because it has far more to do with the way you walk the way you move the way you gesture the way you stand those things have the biggest impact and also of course your facial expression how you emote see animation creates attraction and if you understand how to animate in a really powerful way that's the thing that's going to create the biggest amount of attraction that's why you can see a picture of someone and not be attracted and then you see them in the flesh and you're like oh i get it they're really charismatic charming attractive i find them hot i didn't in the picture that's visual chemistry and there is so much you can do to master visual chemistry that you actually have control of that has nothing to do with looks the second part is perceived value what value does someone see you having now this is different from saying well we're all valuable inside we're all worth something that's different i believe human beings are all worth a lot that's why i do what i do but there's a difference between having a great product and being able to sell that product and many people are not good salesmen of their own product them we are the greatest asset we'll ever ever own we're also the only asset we'll always own so if you're the only asset you'll always have you better learn how to sell you and perceived value comes down to that how do i show what i'm worth how do i show that i have a great lifestyle to someone how do i show them i have a lot to bring to the table and how do i do that in a way that comes across natural in conversation i don't want to boast about myself but i need to be able to show someone how much i have to bring to them the third component is perceived challenge now people say well isn't it enough that i have perceived value why do i have to play games and be challenging you don't have to play games but you do have to understand that people value what they earn if something comes too easily no matter how valuable it is people do not respect it and they do not want it in the same way every guy has to see that there is a part of you that is challenging even if it's just in the beginning showing little ways that he has to prove himself to you before you give him the next five minutes or the next day or the next date it doesn't have to be done in a game playing fashion sometimes perceived challenge isn't setting up some hoop for someone to jump through sometimes it's just saying to someone i can't see you as soon as you'd like to see me i have you have to wait a little bit you know i don't have four hours to see you tonight but i have half hour if you want to come and see me in my part of town there are ways to be challenging that are completely natural and show someone that you're someone they have to earn the fourth thing is connection now you could have all of the first three and someone can think you're a great person and have attraction animal attraction with you they could think you're challenging but if on a deeper level you don't have connection that's not a relationship that's gonna last you have to understand how to get down to what really drives someone what are their core motives in life and what are they all about and that all comes down to the questions that you ask them what are the questions that get down to who someone really is and one of the ways to do that is to actually ask someone about what their motives are in life rather than asking what they do ask why they do it and when you do that you're going to get to the core of who they actually are have you ever felt like you weren't pretty enough for the person you want or that the person you want is so desirable and so attractive that they have so many options why would they choose you i recently asked my fast track members what was a moment with a guy where you realized you were deeply attracted to him here's what they said a mother was pushing her stroller across the street and didn't notice when a blanket fell out without hesitation the guy i was on a date with grabbed it caught up to her and gave it back the guy i was seeing stayed over for the first time the next morning i went to make us coffee and when i came back to the bedroom he had made my bed me and a guy were taking a walk one day and he spontaneously asked me what two things you're grateful for it made me so attracted to the positive way he looked at life i also asked a handful of guys for these moments where they felt deeply attracted to a woman here's what a couple of them said i mentioned a book that meant a lot to me and a week later i found out that she not only had bought a copy but had started reading it for herself i was speaking on the phone to the woman i was seeing and her friends had just invited her out that night she told me that she said no to them because she wanted to stay in and finish a work project that was important to her i was on a date watching the movie interstellar and i was trying not to cry during an emotional scene i looked over to see if she'd noticed me but her eyes were glued to the screen and she was already crying i call these moments micro attractions the understated moments and behaviors that make us realize someone is the kind of person we might want to spend a life with and i think this is where the real game of attraction should be played this is crucial to understand because we live in a world right now that overvalues all of the wrong things money fame popularity how many followers you have on instagram all of these things that we think are the barometers for how attractive someone is but the truth is when it really comes down to it for mature intelligent people they are looking for a person of character for a person of integrity for the type of person who day to day exhibits the qualities that they want to experience in a relationship over a lifetime so we have to stop rolling ourselves out of the game simply because we think that someone gets a lot of attention or they have a lot of options and start valuing properly our growth as a person and our character because i promise you with the best people with the most mature and intelligent and emotionally intelligent people that's where the game is being played in one of my favorite movies vanilla sky david ames played by tom cruise reflects on the small moments in his life that had giant consequences he concludes the little things there's nothing bigger is there i really want you to watch this next video i think it's going to make a big difference in your life click the link here and then we're looking every day for reassurance did you mean what you said yesterday are you are you really going to stay with me are you really never going to cheat on me we can never get enough reassurance and reassurance always needs to be topped up