I tricked myself into being confident and I want y'all to be patient and really listen to this story. I actually like to tell it. But when I was in ninth grade, I was at the end of my middle school insecurities.
I had insecurities about my hair. my face, everything. But I got to the end of it and I wanted to make a change. I went through a little heartbreak and all that stuff. And I built this alter ego or persona.
I called him HBK mind, heartbreak kid mind, right? and he was not set out to break any hearts but his his philosophy was that he would break your heart if you tried to break his heart and it was not in the same way that you tried to it was more so that i wouldn't give you the reactions necessary to break my heart i wouldn't entertain bs and then on the more confident side of things i i walk differently i talk differently i became better at conversation i actually studied conversation and the way people speak interested in people and the way they speak and people used to say that i speak in riddles like the way i speak and my cadence there's just something about it people like listening to it but i had to hone all those skills i used to be shy didn't want to talk to people couldn't walk up to people couldn't look people in the eyes i actually um learned eye contact by watching babies um when i was working at a grocery store the babies would come in they would be sitting in the shopping carts and they would just stare at adults and they their eyes and then they would stare at me just lifeless like they don't even know what's going on and i'm like damn like this is just how my mind works i'm like damn they don't even know like they doing things that adults can't even do like you know how hard it is to just look people in the soul so what i start doing is looking at the babies and they'll just go down the aisle and just remain eye contact i'm like damn this little joker don't care about my head all that nervousness would make me want to turn away from but i just kept staring at them until they They would look away. Sometimes I would lose.
But just doing those exercises, it helped me over and over and over and over. So all these little insecurities that I had, I basically lied to myself and said that I didn't have them. And I, you know, I became this person that I wanted to be.
HBK Monk. I became him. And it's really about self-belief, accepting yourself, and just taking risks, taking the walks of fire, doing things that you're not supposed to be doing.
you're afraid to do whether that's walking and talking to people and you know trying new sports wearing new clothes just you can't care about what people think if you live your life for the validation and the belief of others you're not going to be confident you're not going to be peaceful you have to believe in yourself you have to accept yourself forget what everybody else you got you and you'll be fine so um you I just kept practicing that and the better I got at it the more I practice it the more um closer I got to that person and my friends would pick up on it like you know everybody called me HBK Mon at that point like it just it'd be became my thing and I embodied it so well that it was to the point where I didn't need him anymore because I had became him and I could drop the name HBK Mon and when I dropped the practice of the alter ego people still called me HBK Mon. came on and it just it was like a manifestation it just kept ringing kept ringing kept ringing kept ringing and then i didn't have bravado anymore bravado is fake confidence or fabricated confidence when you act like you're brave and stuff like that i didn't need the bravado anymore i didn't need the the fake conversation skills like i had it it was instilled in me right um i was insecure about my face i had acne so i started doing uh face care and i started fixing my skin and my skin started to glow I had the little the little baby face and stuff my hair was short it started to grow out I started to twist it and style it I eventually end up growing out locks the more my hair grew and the more I shaped it to fit me the more confident I became I was already going to the gym I've been working out forever since I was this big I always like muscles and you know I just always been working out so I always had that going for me and um Yeah, man, I started to find my style. I started to dress for me and not for other people.
And, bro, I was, look, I come from a town where everybody want to dress the same. Everybody want to dress like rappers, graphic tees, ripped jeans, sagging with chains. I was wearing revolutionary clothes.
That is like the clothes with the ruffles on the front that they wore in the medieval times. And these gangster dudes, right? It was like, damn, bro, that's... fire.
Like I couldn't wait. But it's like bro, like just do you like if you like something Just do it right, but Clothes don't make the man the man make the clothes Same with the conversation skills all those things you have to embody who you want to be you have to embody that confidence and just live with it you have to take risks and know that you are going to be okay that's what confidence really is at the end of the day um just believing in yourself and knowing that at the end of the day no matter what what you go through, you'll be fine. That's why professional athletes can go into games and you don't see them sweating.
Like when amateurs, they go into games, they, oh, I got to do good, I got to do good. But that comes from the lack of repetition, the lack of practice, the lack of self-belief. These athletes get paid millions of dollars because they go in day in and day out and kill and kill and kill and kill.
And they practice until things are second nature. Musicians, they playing with their eyes closed and they're on the stage doing, doing all types of moves because they practice so much. It's second nature. But when you barely pick up your instrument or you barely pick up yourself and you barely practice improving yourself and talking and conversation and meeting people and trying new things, when you are presented with the opportunity to do so, you think you was going to do good?
You think you was going to perform well? You have no practice. It's new to you. That's why you're afraid of it. That's why we have the lack of confidence because we're afraid because we're not.
familiar with it it's like if you're driving in the city for the first time you're like damn is that the right exit oh snap you know i'm saying you're nervous because you're not familiar with it after you're driving that city 10 times you like you own the place because you're confident in your ability to do so because you have practice you believe in yourself and it's normal now you're familiar with it so to end this all in one sentence become familiar and practice on being the person you want to be and you'll trick yourself into being confident like I did thank you very much that's gonna be it for this video that was just a magic spell or something but thank you I love you guys