[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan Dan today we're going to talk about something that's not a word we mention often and that is insecurity you talk about the solution to insecurity so what is that and it is something an entrepreneurs deal with and ental teams face so I'm I'm curious yeah well I think insecurity is being in circumstances in situations and in activities where you don't blow on in other words that you're dealing with topics in conversation or you're talking about things and the truth is you're talking about things that really you're not sure that you really know what you're talking about okay or you've committed yourself or you're you're obligated to undertake activities which require skills that you basically don't have and I would say the third thing is that whatever you're doing whether you're talking or whether you're thinking whether you're communicating or whether you're in action and getting results you're comparing all of that to something outside of yourself and not comparing how you at one time in your past not as good as you are today so I think that all insecurity comes from instead of comparing yourself against yourself you compare yourself against others that's really powerful and this is something that every EQ and being experiences especially as they're growing growing up getting older what is the solution to that you know I mean if it's where we don't belong or skills we don't have or we're comparing ourselves I mean comparison is the thief of joy is such a great quote so I could not agree more what is the antidote to that Dan kind of mastering the human being you arrived with you know you know I have to tell you the only eyewitness to me for 77 years is there's just one who's seen everything and it's me I think it's really you know liking who you are and realizing that you're really all you've got any control of any responsibility for and really taking that seriously and realizing it's true for everybody else too that you know that everybody has a fundamental if they want to happy you can get through life without being happy but if you want to be happy that happiness it can only be an internal measurement of how you were and how you've improved from where you were there is no basis for happiness except internal measurement of progress you know and learning and you know getting better all unhappiness by contrast comes from measuring who you feel you are inside with how you see other people are performing with no knowledge whatsoever of how people are feeling inside you have no notion that they feel inside like you feel inside yes so comparing our insides to other people outsides is just a very dangerous track to go down just never works I love it well Dan let's talk about why this is so important because you've run into a lot of a lot of humans over the 77 years and a lot of entrepreneurs who are feeling insecure even though you see that they have enormous capabilities yeah I blame childhood okay we know there's a lot of them out there before we know there's one of us inside right six or seven before the sense of self-awareness where you can be alone by yourself and realize that you're actually with someone you know it just takes quite a while for the notion that hey I'm me you know and that's kind of a really interesting experience okay but we know there's a lot of them right from the beginning you know I mean newborn babies after about a week know Mom from Dad I mean they knew Mom before they were born because they could hear the voice they could hear everything like that so my sense is that it's kind of a chancy thing you know when you think about it how does a new human being you know in childhood how do they actually become aware that they're who they are you know how does that actually happen and I think a lot of it goes off track very early because they are how they're treated by other people right they don't have a sense of identity about how it is that they interact with themselves and I think to the degree that you don't feel confident about making internal progress and you know becoming more internal capabil I think you become increasingly insecure of progress and achievement in people outside of you that you yourself don't experience I think that makes you very insecure I have phenomenal insight into that and when people really do take who's in their in their chair right now as you're listening as they do take that seriously and they do start to do those internal measurements they develop some capabilities yeah they kind begin developing Notions of what's successful thinking and what isn't successful thinking what decisions you make that are good decisions against not so good decisions how you communicate and get a result that's good and how you don't you know so there's a constant trial and error success and failure thing but you're testing your internal capabilities in outside circumstances so that's his reality I mean actually when you think something and then you see an outside result that's a proof of reality that things are actually happening out there that you just in you know make up in your brain that's why I don't believe in self-esteem at all because self-esteem is a story that you tell yourself internally without any external proof that any of that is true where self-confidence comes from I have an idea that I can produce a certain result and then you put a plan together take action and you get that result that tells you that that was real and you're real so you get this sense of reality and I think security comes from that there's a direct relationship between who you are and external results and you're getting better at producing them I love that direct relationship between who you are and the results you can produce and outside results that you achieve and you're getting better at it can't write that fast enough I love that that's so great yeah and when you do it enough you know it's Concept in coach we call Unique ability you know you just realize that you have a unique capability to have this idea and make it real to get it into the world which is really exciting my sense is the more you stay in your unique ability the more you discover it expand it figure out the Right audience for it it leads to that sense of self-confidence or security that is unalterable it's kind of like someone could critique you and you're like that's not true which is kind of an amazing place to be in does that make sense yeah and I think that there's a magic point where you realize that you're good enough to get results through other people's abilities you know which is teamwork you know a lot of people never get to that stage it's always kind of a necessary evil that they have to interact with other people to kind of get what what they want and it's never really satisfying for them you know and they say you know I like doing things on my own and everything else and the most successful people are the people who are so sure of themselves that they can be very confident about other people oh okay talk more about that Dan so confident in themselves that they're confident about other people well they know what they like and what they don't like I mean that's basically it and they don't doubt it okay they find in dealing with other human beings that some of them you get great results with and some of them it's really struggle and they've learned not to judge themselves by the result but to master the art of picking out the ones that are really easy to work with I love that and what they find is that the ones that are really easy to work with actually are kind of like them they're also confident about themselves confident people find it really easy to work with other confident people well that's an really interesting point then that people who are not confident are kind of hard to work with yeah and insecure people usually end up attracting a lot of other insecure people that does not sound like fun teamwork or like teamwork at all well it's not teamwork but it is busy you know it can fill up your day collisions insecure people collisions you know yeah oh dear makes them want to cancel each other makes cancel each other oh my goodness yes so true so true oh my God this is so fascinating Dan by the way this definition of realities one of my favorites so Dan how can people if they are feeling insecure and and I don't know anyone who isn't insecure in some part of their life for the most part but how can people increase their sense of confidence and security what are some action steps they can do you talked about always kind of focusing on progress what else well I think it gets created you know I just went to a conference that had a major session on what happens to us at night time when we're sleeping and how important sleep is every day some things work and some things don't and I'm going to use a term here it's not exactly what I mean but when things don't work we get a bit bruised and bumped we get bruised and bumped by it and at night time all the bruises and bumps are healed or taken away and we wake up with new capability in the morning okay and one of the things that happens when people are really insecure they find it very hard to sleep which is a real downward cycle that means that they're not getting repaired at night so they're pulled more and more into the past things that don't work and it makes them less aware in the present and they really have a hard time thinking about the future they kind of get turned around in their experience they're kind of back backing into the future and you know you can only solve this with a first positive step where you say I'm going to set a goal to achieve something it doesn't have to be a big thing but I'm going to follow through completely and I'm going to experience making up my mind making a plan taking action maybe it requires communication and I get the result and that's a win okay and that's a start and it's this big you know it's about 3 inches by 3 Ines but it's solid and tomorrow I'm going to make it six inches by six in you know sort of like that I had somebody in my workshop last week and it was the first time that this woman had been in the 10 times program she had been in the signature program and she had bumped up and it was a bad week for her to do this when she came in she said I have to tell you it took everything that I could muster to get myself to come to this Workshop because this just been one of the really bad weeks of my life I said good that's cool yeah and she said I gotta get control my time my time is totally out of control I yeah okay and I let her talk she listened to other people talk and everything and I said I've got a suggestion for you in getting control of your time over the first quarter you're in 10 times now so that you're going to have a first quarter my suggestion is by the end of this quarter have control of Monday and she Mondays I said yeah I mean I think you're not strong enough yet to get control of a week would you be strong enough if you planned and really you know you got everybody else supportive of that would it be possible next Monday to actually have control of Monday so we'll see and then some of the others talked so what you do Tuesday no oh no no no you see that gets you in trouble right off the bat okay you got Monday's control and say now you got your choice of six other days what's the next day maybe it's Thursday so you got Monday control and you got Thursday and you know by the time you get Monday and Thursday the other days get the hint get nervous yeah yeah are you gonna be nervous or are the other days going to be nervous because they've seen what you did with two of them I love that yeah but then again the thing that kills us is that you're not comparing your yourself to your own progress you're comparing yourself to what you perceive to be other people's progress and you're dead in the water when you compare yourself with other people's progress that's so powerful Dan and it's so great your understanding of people never fails to impress me I love it that whole idea being turned around you know and people backing into the future yeah I think most people really really constantly get caught by surprise by new DA daily events almost every day that they're blindsided by them and the reason is they're backing into the future they haven't faced forward in the future maybe in their entire life yeah they've been always relating to things that happened yesterday last week you know 50 years ago yeah so turn it around pick a small thing could be Mondays could be first 50 minutes of your day could be whatever I should get control of what I do before I go to sleep because I stay up too late so getting control of that small thing that you can do effectively and win that and then figure out what's next to win what else can people do in terms of what they pay attention to or how they think be useful oh I love that yeah don't make it about you make it about someone else put yourself in a position where you can be useful in helping someone else make progress so track your own progress and be useful in helping other people achieve their progress yeah and when they thank you and praise you take it in right yeah a lot of people would rebuff that yeah accepting compliments is n normous skill because what you're saying is that I accept that this person sees things correctly even though I don't necessarily feel what they're saying I accept that they're seeing things better than I'm saying it tremendous it's a tremendous skill a lot of people never ever can get to that state of trusting another person judgment another person's perspective this so true and the more you can trust the skills of other people and accept them as real the more you accept your own just a little anecdote about this pretty sure I got coached on accepting a compliment because I was like oh no problem or you know didn't really take it in and then the coaching I heard was okay stop when someone gives you a compliment it's like they're giving you a gift and the appropriate response is to smile and say thank you so I got I'm like okay so that's what I started doing and then I actually coached this in front of the room in a workshop one day because I had someone who was he just came in beautifully put together gorgeous suit just obviously had really got himself ready for the day and I compliment him on some progress he'd made in the quarter and he was like oh no no it was nothing I'm like okay hang on Z guys we're gonna learn how to take a compliment today and I coached them on exactly the same thing and it was tough for them to take get in yeah and he was my example but it was really impactful because people had not been taking what other people said seriously they hadn't taken it as being meaningful but when they did they realized that they were being useful and to do more of it yeah you have to be confident inside to realize that there are human beings around you who in many areas are smarter than you and they're more skillful than you are and that's a good thing and that's not to be compared with has nothing to do with you it has to do with them you're just accepting reality for what it is reality is just reality it doesn't have anything to do with you someone else's achievements have nothing to do with you it's a result of growth that they've had with themselves and there's massive amounts of reality in the world that doesn't have anything to do with you there's been human beings for a long time and they did amazing things and that's real and it doesn't have anything to do with you it frees you up you know the fate of reality shouldn't depend upon whether you make a decision to recognize it it has nothing to do with you reality is just reality you know and we create our own well you get to participate in it you know we're given a chance to participate in it but there's a reality inside you that's absolutely unique it's never existed before and once you start appreciating your uness you start appreciating the uniqueness outside of you wonderful thank you Dan