Episode 60 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

The way that we talk to ourselves is the biggest thing that either erodes or creates success in life. Hi everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den, good to have you back, Dan. How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:21):

Good to be back, Rob. Yeah, feeling good. Hi everyone. Looking forward to a big conversation today around a topic that we’ve all got experience with, which is confidence.

Speaker 1 (00:30):

Yeah, it’s a huge one isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (00:32):

It really is. And I think setting it up the right way, there’s so much that we can take for granted with confidence there. It’s not, I know what it feels like. I’ve got it. I don’t, we’re so definitive in all of those areas, but there’s something we really want to hone in on today when we do talk about confidence and why this episode matters so much in this context.

Speaker 1 (00:52):

Yeah. The area we are really going to pinpoint on today is around how confidence drives your decisions and your actions and your behaviour to generate the results that you want. As you said, there’s so many facets of confidence that we can talk about, but in particular we really want to talk about how it drives those decisions and actions and behaviour.

Speaker 2 (01:15):

You can have all the skills, the strategies, everything in the world that will help with your confidence, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the self-confidence to take action. At the end of the day, confidence isn’t that nice to have. It’s the foundation for taking action. That’s how we want you to listen to this episode today. Confidence being your foundation for Taking Action.

Speaker 1 (01:35):

Yeah, it’s one of those things where I think a lot of people have that mindset that confidence comes before action, but it’s really important to remember that confidence is built over a period of time through action. And that’s the distinction between the two.

Speaker 2 (01:54):

It is, it’s a big one built through action. So if you don’t actively create the moments by taking action, if you don’t take the action, if you don’t build through the action, then you’re just going to be left almost standing on the edge of the cliff. That fear, doubt, hesitation gets to take over so you don’t act, you walk away from the challenge, you walk away from the opportunity, you walk away from taking action all because you are hoping that confidence is there before you start.

Speaker 1 (02:22):

Yeah. It also, it’s important to remember that confident, we can’t just label ourselves as confident. There’s going to be areas of life where we’re super confident, but there’s areas of life where we completely lack confidence. And I’m sure we could both talk about this in our own lives for days, but I think it’s just one of those things that we’ve coached enough business owners in our time now to realise that the one thing, as you said before, that fundamentally distinguishes between those who go on and achieve great levels of success and those who probably don’t fulfil their potential. It’s just confidence in the middle because as you said, if it’s the way that you show up on a day-to-day basis, it’s how you walk. It’s how you talk, it’s how you carry yourself. And as you said, if you can have all the skills, experience and strategy in the world, but if you don’t have the confidence to get on with what you need to get on with and take action and execute like a champion, then the results aren’t going to come. And it’s not because you didn’t know how, it’s just that you didn’t take the action because you didn’t have the confidence to take the first step.

Speaker 2 (03:32):

And today, this is what we want to do is help you be able to give yourself, I like to think of it as giving yourself the gift of confidence through taking action. So how do we break that down and these four key strategies for building confidence and getting you into that place. So let’s break ’em down. First one we’re going to talk about is celebrating wins.

Speaker 1 (03:52):

Celebrating wins is a huge one, and this is something we get our clients to do weekly, to do quarterly, to do yearly and twice yearly. They do it at end of calendar year and end of financial year. And I think as business owners we underestimate the importance of stopping, reflecting, looking back, what have we achieved, what progress have we made, and give ourselves a nice little pat on the back for doing what we said we were going to do and achieving what we’ve achieved throughout that period. It’s such a huge gateway to achieving even more in life by celebrating your wins.

Speaker 2 (04:32):

It is, and as I think about how we do it at Pravar and the emphasis we put on celebrating your own wins, I think we’re constantly having to do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone that’s been with us for three years, five years, six months, whatever it is. We’ve got to keep drumming this in because in society today celebrating wins is almost frowned upon this idea of why do I need to celebrate win? I’m not that sort of guy. I don’t want to sit there and beat my own chest, I’ve just got to get on with it. You know what I mean? Those sort of conversations that happen, that’s the surface level stuff. But the power, the gift you can give yourself by celebrating your own wins means that when you’re faced with challenging situations in the future, you get to draw on these experiences, these actions that you’ve taken and you get to live by a mantra of, Hey, I’ve done this before. I can do it again.

Speaker 1 (05:20):

This mantra is really big for me and I’ve used this numerous a lot in my ward and not just in business, but I remember that I used to be big into endurance cycling and I’ve done three peaks three times now, and the last time I did it, my knee was absolutely busted. And as you said there before around, I’ve done it before, I can do it again. I remember at the back end of that cycling challenge and to give context, it’s 235 kilometres, three huge peaks over Mount Hotham and Falls Creek and everything and Tawonga Gap and it’s four and a half thousand metres of elevation within 13 hours. And I remember on the third time I was doing it, I was injured and I was busted and my mindset wasn’t, I’m busted, I’m worn out. There was a little bit of that, but when I was in my darkest time, it was, I’ve done it before, I can do it again. I’ve done it before, I can do it again. And that being able to draw on the experiences that I’ve had in the past and the success that I’ve achieved, that’s what got me through to the finish line. And that’s why celebrating your wins is so important is because as you said it, it gives you ammunition in the future when you’re going through challenging times, which is going to be inevitable in life.

Speaker 2 (06:42):

Yeah. It’s the gift you give yourself for later on, really, really important. I love that story and hats off to you for doing that three times in the last one with a bastard knee, but so much of it is the way you carry yourself in with that confidence. So really cool. Second one, success leaves clues. This is all about celebrating your own wins is one thing and tough times happen and sometimes there’s not a lot and it’s really tricky and maybe it’s something that you’ve got no experience in. It’s hard to have confidence in something you haven’t experienced before. We all know that. And there’s different elements, like you said at the start of the episode, that there’s different areas that we can feel confident in more than others. But this second strategy success leave clues is the way that we can circum navigate that. It doesn’t mean that we have to have done everything before ourselves. We can see someone else achieve the success we want or go on the journey we’re about to go onto and we can learn from that. And those clues that we pick up can give us confidence in itself.

Speaker 1 (07:40):

Yeah, somewhat like modelling someone’s results that they’ve achieved or modelling their behaviour. And I think as you said, it’s not about being envious of what they’ve achieved, it’s not looking at them and going, oh, look at them. Look at they’ve achieved. They’re not blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s not being envious of them. It’s having and living by that mantra to be able to go, well, if they can do it, so can I. And if they can do it well what’s stopping me? Nothing really. And if you can really live and breathe by that mantra, it helps you unlock your mind to what’s possible but also help you develop the confidence that anything is possible if you put in the work.

Speaker 2 (08:24):

For sure. I love that. And I think the idea then of when you hear someone talking about their victories, their experience, learn from it. Take out the clues that you’re hearing. Don’t get into that mode where you reflect on yourself and how you are not that, or it’s somehow you are not enough because you’re not doing what they’re doing. We live in a world where people post doing their best life, all this crap on social media that goes on. If it’s real, then the clues will be there. And I think this is the element where it falls over what clues I take out of it. Things like not just hearing someone talk about it, but go read a book, find a biography of someone that you admire and learn what clues they’ve left behind for you to follow. And same thing, we’re very fortunate at Pravar with the community we’ve got that we’re able to hear people celebrate their wins every single week.

(09:13):

I love that because it gives us so much fuel from that perspective and just like the guys that are doing it for the first few times and thinking, who am I to share my wins with the world? Who wants to hear it? This is the reason why it’s important to share your wins. You never know who’s going to pick up from where you left off. And as business owners, you’ve got staff, you’ve got people that are looking up to you, you are in a position where your success, your wins matter a hell of a lot for the people that are following behind. So the fact that you can do it. So if they can do it, so can this fuel is everywhere if we really look around and try and pick it up.

Speaker 1 (09:46):

Absolutely. And it fuels our confidence, it gives us hope, it gives us something to latch onto it. It drives us to want to show up and be better and do more and achieve more because it really unlocks our minds to what’s possible. And then we can draw the confidence from them and put it into ourselves and then we can almost nurture that confidence internally to be able to develop from within. Because we can’t always rely on external validation. We’ve got to grab that, put it inside, and then let that internal confidence grow. Because when you develop that level of internal confidence, that’s when you become unstoppable on what you do on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 2 (10:32):

Yeah. Come back to our working definition for this episode, that internal thing that you’re putting within yourself that you’re talking about, it removes barriers to taking action. It gets you into action quicker when it’s there. So the more we can put in there, the better off we are in terms of getting into action. Third one, this is a huge one. This is a whole nother episode that we need to talk about I think, and I’m sure we will, but the role of positive self-talk. Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. And I think that in a nutshell is positive, but give us your take, Robert, in terms of positive self-talk in the sense of building your confidence up enough to take that action to take that next step.

Speaker 1 (11:16):

The way that we talk to ourselves is the biggest thing that either erodes or creates success in life. If we talk negatively about ourselves of you can’t, who are you? I don’t know how that’s not possible. Who do you think you are to be able to do that? And guess what? That’s going to create limited to no results. You’re not going to take the action because you’re not driving that positive behaviour. Look at the other side of the equation. I can, I will. It’s a done deal in my mind. Anything’s possible. It’s just a matter of time. Two ends of the spectrum, two different, completely different conversations in the mind create two different levels of behaviour and two different outcomes. And so the way that we talk to ourselves in any given minute, in any given hour, in any given day is what drives our behaviour on either a positive or a negative way. And so this whole conversation around self-talk, which you’re right is another episode, I believe is fundamental to our success because our self-talk drives our confidence. Our confidence drives our behaviours, our behaviours drive our decisions, our decisions drive our outcomes. And so yeah, self-talk in the end of the is the cornerstone of developing confidence.

Speaker 2 (12:36):

Yeah, absolutely. Without going into the details, I think if you look at the first two, we talked about celebrating your own, when celebrating or learning from the success leaves clues of others, you’re going to come up against self-talk. No one gets out alive without this self-talk going on. So this is something you have to learn, you have to address. If you can master your own self-talk, you are going to have an uninterrupted run into action with confidence if you can get this right. So the ability to take on those lessons, celebrate those wins, use them and get into action happens, self-talk is not right. You’re going to come and rub up against that every time. Again, to use that edge of the cliff, everything can be in place. It’s just about time to fly positive self-talk kicks in, you go negative self-talk kicks in, you shrink back, you walk away from that edge, you don’t take the action.

Speaker 1 (13:23):

Correct. And this is where you’ve got to be really mindful of it. And like we’ve been saying, you’re not just a confident person in business. You might have confidence around doing business development sales calls and reaching out outward bound sales and the conversation you’ll have in your mind there will could be completely different if you lack confidence in understanding your numbers or managing people or dealing with conflict resolution, for example. So in business, you’re not going to be just a confident business owner. There’s going to be areas in business where you are confident or lack confidence. And so you’ve got to be really mindful of the self-talk in those areas. But what you can do is draw from the confidence in other areas and inject that into the other areas that you’re not so confident.

Speaker 2 (14:12):

Yeah, we’ll talk more about that when we get to our challenge towards the back end of this episode. We’ll build that in and let you know how you can pull that lever. Last one, your environment. I think one of the fastest ways to build confidence to get the momentum, to take the action to keep taking steps forward is to put yourself in an environment of success or an environment of confidence if you like.

Speaker 1 (14:37):

Yeah. It’s putting surrounding yourself with people where you want to almost model each other’s behaviours and you have a shared vision in terms of where you want to go and what you want to achieve. And you’re surrounding yourself with like-minded people to celebrate the wins, get the success leaves clues, mantra, and an environment of positivity and accountability to be able to build the confidence and take action. So your environment really shapes who you are and the action you take and the confidence you develop within yourself.

Speaker 2 (15:10):

And like we said, we’re so fortunate that we get to live in this world where we’ve got multiple communities of people. It’s a huge part of our coaching, right?

Speaker 1 (15:19):

Yeah, it is. And we have different communities for the different levels. Then you can surround yourself with people who are in those different stages of the journey that you’re in. But then we also get clients from levels beyond to come back and share to the guys in the early stages of their journey to be able to show them what’s possible and show them the clues that they need to be able to take and help them develop the confidence to be able to take action and help ’em develop that mindset that anything is possible if they just put in the work. And it’s only a matter of time.

Speaker 2 (15:50):

And I think that’s why so many of the guys we get to work with, they love hanging out in that environment probably more than they do in certain circles that they’ve either been a part of previously or just hanging out in the real world where it’s a very different kettle of fish. So yeah, that environment one’s huge. Final thoughts, Rob. Again, as we said, there’s so much in this topic, but confidence being that gateway to action, sticking with it, round it out for us.

Speaker 1 (16:16):

Yeah, confidence is, it’s not a feeling that you wait for, it’s something that you build day in, day out, and I think that’s what’s really important to remember. It’s not about having to feel like you’ve got to know everything or have all the answers before you start. It’s your ability to start and have belief that you will prevail in the end and that just trust that the pathway will unravel itself over time as you keep taking action. And just know that as you then take further action, just allow your confidence to build you build your confidence will build your action. Your action will rebuild your confidence. And so it just becomes an evolution over a period of time. But it’s just remembering don’t wait to start. Just start and let your confidence build over a period of time.

Speaker 2 (17:06):

It really is the only way. Do the action, get the confidence, give yourself the gift. Like we said, let’s help you with a challenge then for this week, thinking about an area and note I’m saying an area where you feel you could use more confidence right now, sit down and have a think about that once you’re finished listening to this episode. Which of these four strategies can you apply today? What wins can you celebrate that you’ve had of your own? What actions have you taken, succeeded, come through it? What can you go back to celebrate those success leaves clues? Who else have you seen do it in the past? Who do you follow? Who do you think they’ve done a really good job of that in the past? What clues have they left behind? Can you reach out to them? Can you learn more from them?

(17:50):

What can you do to pick up more of those clues and get really clear on what those steps were? Third one, positive self-talk. Explore your positive self-talk. Think about the thing that you’re being challenged with. And as Rob said, different areas have different levels of confidence, right? Explore for a minute, if this is you, positive self-talk needs to be worked on. Go and think about an area where you feel confident and listen to yourself, talk about that area, then come back to the other one and listen to yourself. Talk about the area you’re not confident in, and then use those lessons that you’ve got in terms of having that experience to rebuild your positive self-talk in that area where you might be lacking confidence. Really simple one that you can do. And then it just becomes doing the reps. Lastly, explore your environment. Please think about the environment you’re surrounded in.

(18:37):

What it’s doing for your confidence. Is it helping? Is it adding to your confidence and building confidence for you to take more action? Or is it eroding it? Is it making you shrink back? Does it make you feel like things are harder than what’s necessary? Or is it just something that you’ll shy away from as a result? Just purely because the people surrounded by you aren’t helping you get into action, they’re willing you away from it. So that’s our challenge for the week. Go out and have a little bit of practise with it and see how you can give yourself that gift of confidence through the four strategies we’ve talked about today.

Speaker 1 (19:10):

Yeah, love it. If you found this helpful, share it with someone who you could use a bit of a confidence boost today. And if you want more strategies like this, hit the follow button and stay tuned for next episode. Until then, we’ll see you next week.

Speaker 2 (19:23):

Catch you soon.