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We're going to talk about self-esteem and the self-esteem movement in chapter four because it's one of the things that we have since learned about the self-esteem movement is that if you tell people to feel good about themselves without them earning it, it backfires.

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What you create is a little narcissist.

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And I grew up being told that I was...

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amazing and could be amazing at everything without earning it, without accumulating that evidence.

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And so I became a bit of a narcissistic twat, which we will.

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We'll get to that.

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We will definitely talk about that.

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First though, let's talk about where self-efficacy comes from.

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Yes.

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So domain-specific confidence.

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Yes.

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Let's talk about that.

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So he came up with where does this self-efficacy come from?

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Like, how do we build this?

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You know, we've talked about the evidence and all that.

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He had these four sources that he came up with, though.

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First and foremost, and these are in order of how big of an effect they have.

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Yeah, how big of an impact they'll have.

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First is the mastery experiences, kind of what we've just been talking about.

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You do it, you have some success with it, and it kind of feeds on itself.

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And you build up that evidence.

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It updates the beliefs in the most durable way, okay?

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Because you have direct experience with it.

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You have a felt experience with it.

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You have all the emotional stuff that comes with it.

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You have the evidence right in front of you.

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Importantly, too, though, like...

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Early on, like failures, especially early on, can kind of wreck that process as well.

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So it's fragile at first.

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It gets more durable as you accumulate more and more evidence.

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That's pretty obvious, right?

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The second one is vicarious experiences.

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So watching other people do it.

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and succeed that can have a lot of impact too importantly though it needs to be someone you see as a peer or near peer so this is why like if you see like a i don't know an nba player doing you know something crazy like slam dunking from the the free throw line or something and then you and you and i have no chance

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That is not motivating whatsoever.

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That does not make me feel like I can do that.

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But if it's like somebody else who maybe I grew up with or maybe just a little bit older than me, maybe they're just a little bit ahead of me.

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That makes a lot of sense to us, too.

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Like we can watch other people succeed in a domain that we have some experience in.

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Maybe we're just starting out.

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Maybe we're just starting those mastery experiences.

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And then we see them doing like, oh, that's a little bit motivating for us.

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Right.

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Yeah, I think it's there's a relatability component that has to be there.

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And it's the role model thing, right?

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Like it's growing up or having somebody around you that it's like, okay, if they can do it, I can do it.

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We already shit on one TED talk, but in general, I do actually like TED talks because a lot of times it's somebody you don't, you've never heard of that has this like amazing talk and they're like, oh, I was this way.

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And then I did this and something happened.

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I love those.

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kind of the people I follow maybe in our industry, they usually have some sort of background where it was like, I was in a really shit place, right?

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I relate to those people way more than somebody who was just like, oh yeah, I came out of the womb just like shit and excellence, right?

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Like this is interesting you bring this up because I actually think you just touched on like a really, really important point about

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the personal growth and self-help industry in general, it's this piece, right?

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It's the relatability of the person that you're listening to, right?

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Like tons of people listen to Mel Robbins.

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She's a middle-aged woman.

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I imagine a large percentage of her audience is middle-aged women, right?

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Moms, like with minivans living in the suburbs.

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Yeah.

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Because it's when you hear it from her, it's going to land differently than if you hear it from me or you.

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There's a demographic component of this because it's we need to feel like somebody who came from our background or came from our situation made the transformation that we want to make.

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It's having those two ingredients side by side.

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That is is what inspires us.

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Well, and I think that was the part of the problem with the kind of last generation of the whole self-help thing was a lot of them, you know, were put up on a pedestal or tried to come out and say, like, I'm superhuman and here's how you should.

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It was the guru model.

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The guru model.

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Yeah.

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These days, it's much more about, hey, I'm just a person like you.

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Right.

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Which I said I was going to check you if you pat yourself on your back, but I'll pat you on the back a little bit because that was one of the, like early on, you know, you were somebody who was like, man, I fucked this up.

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Very anti-guru.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And that was a big appeal and still is a big appeal to a lot of people that you're very honest about that kind of stuff.

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And that's what we try to do here too.

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Right.

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So I get that.

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But those vicarious experiences need to be rooted in some sense of reality for somebody to actually be able to relate to them and learn from them and gain some self-efficacy from them, right?

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Third one, verbal persuasion.

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So we're getting down the rung here.

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Okay, pretty quick.

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Being told you're capable can actually help you develop some self-efficacy, okay?

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Okay.

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Again, though, it's very similar to the vicarious experience.

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This has to come from like a credible source, somebody you're familiar with, and somebody who is giving you some grounding in reality around what they're telling you.

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A close mentor or coach who you've worked with for a while, they know you, they know your flaws, they know your strengths and weaknesses, all of that.

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Something coming from them telling you, hey, no, you can actually do this and I've seen you do it.

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a few times before.

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That means a lot more than the guru telling you, you can do this.

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I know you can.

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Or, you know, just somebody on YouTube staring at the camera saying, I know you can do this.

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Come on.

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So the evidence is getting weaker as we go down a little bit here.

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The last one that he, he, he talked about was physiological and affective states.

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This one, we talked about this, the, the state pump, the emotional pumps.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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There's a way you interpret those types of things.

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So somebody could be like super jacked up, high heart rate, like thoughts going crazy and whatever, and just be like on a meltdown.

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And somebody could be like, wow, I'm really like, this is awesome.

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I'm locked in.

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I'm locked in.

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I'm getting going.

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It's not real dependable.

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It's not a dependable source of self-efficacy.

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Yeah.

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That's kind of the hierarchy he came from.

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Again, those mastery-based experiences are the ones that produce the most durable, longest-lasting states of self-efficacy that we can have.

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So that's what you really should be focusing on.

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That was his whole point.

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I was like, go out and do shit.

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I think if you look at effective interventions, whether it's Bandura or we talked a little bit about Tony Robbins, like there's kind of a laddering up of these four sources, right?

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Like, you know, Bandura just didn't, didn't bring him in and throw snakes in their lap.

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He like brought him in.

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He probably talked to him for a while first and kind of like built a little bit of credibility and confidence.

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Then he had them watch him do it.

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And he probably did it in a way that it's like, see, I'm just a normal, I'm not even a snake handler.

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I'm just a guy at Stanford.

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Right.

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And then he, like, once he's kind of built a little smidgen of self-efficacy enough for them to actually try it and do it themselves, then they get to have the mastery experience.

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Right.

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But so many people in the industry just stop at that, those physiological states, right?

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You just need to pump yourself up and you'll be good.

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It's like, no, there's a ladder to it.

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Because it's easy.

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Yeah.

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It's easy and it feels good.

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And also people spend money when they're emotionally pumped up.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But ultimately, it's those mastery experiences that you have to get to wherever you start.

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Okay, so this gets us into like, what is the actual mechanism for building this self-efficacy, this domain-specific confidence?

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You know, in the subtle art of not giving a fuck, I had a thing called the do-something principle where I point out that most people assume that the loop is...

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You have inspiration that creates motivation and then that creates action.

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And I pointed out that that loop actually starts with the action.

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It's action generates motivation, which generates inspiration, which generates action.

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Right.

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So it's the entry point is actually the action.

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It's not the exit point.

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I think there's a similar loop with confidence.

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Like people assume that, you know, they have to.

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develop a high amount of self self-belief that will create good performance that will create a feeling of confidence which will then create high self-belief and so on and so forth and it's like no you actually begin with the performance the action that builds some self-belief which then that builds a feeling of confidence the feeling of confidence is the output at the end of the algorithm it's not the input at the beginning of the algorithm

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So there's actually a really cool meta-analysis in 2018 about self-efficacy and performance.

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And it found that performance shapes self-efficacy nearly three times as strongly as self-efficacy shapes future performance.

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So they've actually been able to deduce like a ratio between these two variables, right?

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Like where it's your belief in yourself is...

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about as third as impactful on your subsequent performance as your performance is on your belief on yourself, right?

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So the performance is the higher leverage entry point.

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You're going to generate a lot more momentum in your life if you start with the action rather than starting with the self-belief.

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But the self-belief, you still get something out of that.

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You still get something out of it.

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It still matters.

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It's way higher leverage if you go at it from the other way.

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If you start with the performance and the mastery experience.

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Yeah.

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I see.

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And then it builds more self-efficacy that way.

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Okay.

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So here's a really important caveat.

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There's an age split here.

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So for adults, you get this kind of mutual benefit between performance and confidence.

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Yeah.

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Whereas with kids, it's more unidirectional.

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So with children, performance leads to confidence.

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Whereas if you try to make the child confident, it doesn't have an effect on the performance.

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Wow.

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So in many ways, telling students that they can do something that they haven't done

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is not helpful.

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We will, when we come back to self-esteem in a later chapter, we're going to discover that it's actually unhelpful in many ways.

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See, this was the thing, like I said, when I was growing up, I never felt like the teachers around me or anybody said, you can do it.

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They just said, do it.

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Maybe that, maybe that was just my interpretation of the whole thing.

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I don't know.

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Maybe it's where we grew up, right?

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Yeah, it could be.

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I went to a hoity-toity private school where everybody was fucking special.

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So we've established this loop, right?

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The correct entry point is action that kicks off everything else.

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So then the question becomes like,

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how do you get the loop going?

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Like this, this is the problem that everybody faces is like, how do I start?

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Right?

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Like it's a catch 22.

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I am anxious, insecure.

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I have no experience.

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So like, how do I get experience?

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It's like the confidence version of the classic job conundrum of like, how do I get a job if I have no work experience?

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How do I get work experience if I have no job?

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Right?

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It's, it's how do I get confidence if I have no evidence?

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How do I get evidence if I

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break it down into small wins.

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We've talked many times about a concept that I call minimum viable action.

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It's been in every course I've ever produced.

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It's been in like probably a third of our episodes of solve that we've done.

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It is the solution that just comes up over and over and over again throughout any psychological intervention, which is whatever the desired action or behavior is, you break it down to a point that it feels feasible and doable.

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And then you just start there.

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A really simple example that I use all the time is meditation, that if it feels intimidating to sit down and meditate for 15 minutes, sit down for one minute.

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If one minute feels intimidating, then just fucking sit down.

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Close your eyes for five seconds, right?

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Anybody can do that for five seconds.

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And then once you do it for five seconds, you're like, oh, this isn't so bad.

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Then you do it for a minute.

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After a minute, you're like, oh, okay, yeah, I can do this.

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Then you do it for 15.

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building up self-efficacy through guided mastery.

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There's also just an entry point with the actions themselves.

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If you can start with the smallest possible action, it removes a lot of the intimidation.

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It removes a lot of the narratives and what ifs that are going on.

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It lowers the stakes to the point that it feels doable.

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So that's a good example.

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What are some other examples of this, though?

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Because I think this is a really important point.

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And there's lots of areas where people aren't confident.

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We just did a webinar for our community members a couple months ago.

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And one of the questions I was asked, and I get asked this quite a bit, is that when you started writing, when you first started publishing your writing online, what?

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were you confident?

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Did you have self-efficacy?

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Right.

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And my answer is no.

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But the answer I always give people is that when I started writing online, the stakes were so unbelievably low.

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Like, I started blogging because my roommate had a blog and he was like,

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It's pretty cool.

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You have some good ideas.

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You should write a blog.

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And I was like, okay.

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My expectation was that I was going to write a couple hundred words each week and like my roommates and my mom would read it.

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And that was kind of it.

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I didn't have any of these grand visions about being an author and having millions of readers and followers and all this stuff.

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If I did, I probably would have shit my pants and never published anything because it would have been terrifying.

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Absolutely terrifying.

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I hadn't built any self-efficacy in that domain yet.

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But because my audience was just like three or four people, I'm like, well, I talk to my roommates all the time.

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So let me just write down some of the stuff that I would talk to them about.

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And then that built up a little bit of confidence.

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And then they started sharing it with some of their friends.

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Now I'm like writing some stuff for some people that I've maybe met once before or I've heard about once before.

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And they like it.

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And so they start sharing it with people.

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And after about six months, you start, strangers start showing up, right?

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People I've never met in my life.

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But I remember the first time that started happening, I was like, oh my God.

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I have no idea who this person is.

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They don't even live in my city and they're like reading my blog.

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That's like such a strange thing.

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And so it was a very gradual ascent, right?

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Whereas like a counterexample to that would be when I went into music, I really did have aspirations of like,

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I want to be a professional musician.

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I want to play arenas.

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I want to play theaters.

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I want to play stages.

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I want to record albums.

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I want to do all these things.

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And there was just an incredible expectation put on myself.

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I went to music school where I'm like surrounded by just unbelievably talented people.

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And it was extremely intimidating.

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It was very difficult to keep with it.

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I was...

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insanely insecure, despite the fact that I was good at music, I put myself in an environment where I'm like, okay, I know I'm a good musician, but I don't know if I'm this good.

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And I'm about to be judged and critiques.

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And like, my life is going to be based on those judgments and critiques.

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And it was just too much.

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I couldn't handle it.

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That's an important point too.

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Bandura makes that point.

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And also DC and Ryan and self-determination theory make that point that usually in those mastery experiences, like it has to be kind of like just maybe a little bit,

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past your comfort zone where you were kind of trying to shoot for, I need to be mega star, mega rock star guy, you know, and you're like, well, no, you need to practice your scales a little bit more.

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Yeah.

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That's what it was.

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Right.

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Okay.

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Let me return to the blogging example because like what ended up happening?

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I, I ended up mostly writing about my dating life because that was, that was mostly what my roommates and I talked about.

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And that started getting traction.

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The readership started to grow.

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And pretty soon, like hundreds of strangers who I'd never met in my life were reading about my dating life.

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And they started emailing me and asking me for advice.

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Long story short, I became a dating coach.

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And it was my first business.

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And it was kind of the very nascent stage of this career.

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And so there was a period of time where I, I took socially awkward single people out and help them meet other single people.

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Like that was my entire job.

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I was like a professional wingman.

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You lived a weird life.

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Anyway, go on, go on.

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It was interesting because it was the exact same principles.

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I would get these people.

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It was usually like very nerdy men, right?

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Like some engineering guy who had read 16 books about evolutionary psychology and mating theories and like, you know, social cues and all this stuff.

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who had all of these aspirations for what kind of woman he wanted to marry and how many girlfriends he wanted to have and what his dates were going to be like.

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Meanwhile, I'm talking to him.

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I'm like, okay, you can't hold eye contact.

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You don't know how to even say hello to a stranger.

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You haven't showered in three days.

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Like, okay, let's take care of the basics first.

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And so I used to get clients.

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I was usually the guy that they came to when like nothing else worked because I was very practical and I was very critical of that industry.

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These people would show up and they're like, I've tried everything.

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Like nothing's working.

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I've studied all the few.

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I've done seminars.

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I've hired coaches.

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I've like hired matchmakers.

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It's like nothing's working.

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And I would take them out and I'd be like, okay, so your goal today is to stop and say hello to 10 attractive women.

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That's the whole goal.

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That's all we're doing.

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Just stop, say, hello.

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How's your day going?

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That's it.

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And they would look at me like, they would almost be insulted.

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They're like, I'm paying you all this money, and you brought me to a mall to say hello to random women.

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And I'm like, yes, that is what we're doing.

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And it was amazing because they had all these theories and ideas in their head of like what was supposed to happen.

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And it turned out that for the majority of them, if they just...

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walked up to somebody politely and said hello and introduced themselves and asked her for her name, things went pretty well.

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The piece that was missing was just really basic social skills and kind of getting over that initial anxiety about an interaction.

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And then once they were kind of in the pool, so to speak,

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they figured out how to swim.

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Like the rest kind of took care of itself.

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I remember regularly having experiences with clients who they would get angry.

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Like they would actually like, I would spend a weekend with them and they would get fucking angry because they were like, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars and I've spent two years trying to figure this out.

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And you took me to a mall and made me say hello to a bunch of random women.

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And it's like,

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that's all I ever had to do that like this whole time.

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That's what I had to do.

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And it comes back to the self-efficacy thing of like, they just need to get those small wins under their belts.

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Right.

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It's like, stop reading about women and actually go talk to one.

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And, and then once they talk to one, they're like, Oh, this isn't, this actually isn't that hard.

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Like why, why was I obsessing over this?

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Why was I worrying about this so much?

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Um,

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And then, you know, after they talk to a certain amount, maybe they get a phone number, maybe they get a date.

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They're like, oh, okay.

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Yeah.

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I just go do this a hundred times.

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And then I find my wife and like, that's it.

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I mean, when you break it down like that, it's like, oh, okay.

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Like it's because you have a very actionable thing you can do that you can approach.

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It removes a lot of the worry and anxiety around it because that thing is so simple and so low stakes.

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So I get, I definitely get that.

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Yeah.

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Dating itself is a good example of self-efficacy in general because it is something that you kind of have to be bad at to become good at.

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And being bad at it is very uncomfortable and very painful.

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But there isn't really a way around getting good at it without doing it.

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It's something that you have to actually get out there, experience, build that evidence.

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Because so much of attraction and chemistry is confidence dependent, right?

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Like you can't really truly present yourself authentically if you don't feel good about yourself in that situation.

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There is no other way to do it than to do it.

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Congratulations, you made it to the end of this clip.

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This is actually part of a larger podcast episode and you can get access to the full episode right here.