08:03Better Life Mindset · Interview
How to Build Unshakeable Self-Esteem
Behavior expert Chase Hughes reduces self-esteem to one measurable variable -- judgment and shame -- and gives a daily rating system to shrink it.
July 4thThe argument in one line.
Affirmations paint over what you dislike and highlight it, so real self-belief comes from action, competence and living by your values instead.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You have repeated affirmations in the mirror or on a recording for weeks and still feel the same gap between the words and your life.
- You feel stuck or uncertain in a career or life transition and are tempted to reach for feel-good self-talk to cope.
- You want confidence and self-esteem that holds up when you walk out the door and reality pushes back.
SKIP IF…
- You want a library of new affirmations to recite; this video argues against the practice itself.
- You want a full step-by-step NLP values exercise on screen; the process is offered separately as a free PDF.
The full version, fast.
Damon Cart tried affirmations in college and again during a business transition, and both times they only felt good while reality stayed the same. He argues affirmations paint over what you dislike and highlight it, creating an internal conflict between the part of you that wants to believe and the part that keeps you grounded in truth. His alternative is action, which affirms more than words, confidence built on competence, and self-esteem that comes from aligning behavior with your values. He points to a free values-elicitation PDF.
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00:00 – 01:00
01 · The hook and the promise
Opens on the mirror-affirmation problem and promises what changed his life.
01:00 – 02:50
02 · Two times affirmations failed
College cassette tape, then 50 business affirmations during a career transition. Both felt good and changed nothing.
02:50 – 03:50
03 · Why they were so tempting
Low self-esteem and uncertainty made saying the words look like an easy shortcut.
03:50 – 05:30
04 · Painting over the problem
Affirmations paint over what you dislike and highlight it, creating internal conflict.
05:30 – 06:50
05 · Why the reality-checker is a feature
The part that reconciles truth keeps you sane; fighting it exhausts you.
06:50 – 08:20
06 · The ultimate affirmation is action
Doing successful things beats saying them; talkers relieve the tension that would drive action.
08:20 – 10:00
07 · Confidence comes from competence
You cannot go at confidence directly; know you can learn and improve.
10:00 – 11:26
08 · Values and true affirmation
Self-esteem comes from aligning behavior with your values; PDF offer and a test with success.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Affirmations paint over the parts of yourself you dislike, and painting over something calls attention to exactly what you are trying to hide.
- Saying I am confident in the mirror highlights the fact that you are not confident, which sets up an internal conflict.
- The part of you that checks claims against reality is a feature, not a bug; overriding it is what would lead toward mental illness.
- The harder you fight yourself with positive self-talk, the stronger the resisting part gets and the more energy you burn.
- The ultimate affirmation is action: doing successful things affirms success far more than saying it.
- People who talk constantly about their plans release the tension that would have driven them to act, so they never move.
- Confidence is a byproduct of competence, so you cannot go at it directly.
- You do not need to be competent at everything to be confident, only to know you can get better at anything you practice.
- Self-esteem comes from aligning your behavior and decisions with your values, and you feel it right away.
- Most people think they know their values and do not; without an exercise that draws them out, the connection stays weak.
Stop painting over it, start acting
WHAT TO LEARN
Affirmations feel good because they hide the gap, so lasting confidence comes from action, competence and living by values instead.
- Feeling good while reciting affirmations can numb you from reality, acting as a buffer between where you are and where you want to be.
- Saying you are successful when you are not highlights the gap, creating a fight between the part that wants to believe and the part that checks facts.
- Overriding the reality-checking part of yourself is not the goal; it is what keeps you grounded, and resisting it only strengthens it.
- Doing successful behaviors, such as knowing what you want and taking the steps to get there, affirms success far more than words ever could.
- Constant talk about plans can relieve the internal tension that would otherwise push you to move, so talking can quietly replace doing.
- Confidence is a byproduct of competence, and you build it by knowing that practice makes you better, not by being good at everything.
- Self-esteem arrives right away when your behavior and decisions line up with a value like kindness or success, and it keeps you moving toward who you want to be.
- Most people do not actually know their values, so drawing them out with a deliberate exercise comes before aligning behavior to them.
Terms worth knowing.
- Affirmation
- A positive statement repeated to yourself, such as I am confident, in the hope that you will come to believe it or that it will come true.
- Values elicitation
- An NLP process for drawing your real values out of your unconscious by working from a goal or an area of your life, rather than guessing them.
- NLP
- Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a set of coaching techniques for changing thought and behavior patterns, which is the framework the speaker teaches.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
05:40
“The ultimate affirmation is action.”
03:55
“You're trying to paint over parts of yourself that you don't like. But in doing so, you end up highlighting them.”
09:40
“When you're doing the things that you value, self-esteem is automatic. Confidence is automatic.”
Word for word.
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Have you ever stood in front of the mirror and said, I'm confident, I'm successful, but after a while, nothing changed. You might've been told to keep saying it until you believe it, but to get the most out of affirmations, you need to change one specific thing. I know because as an NLP coach, I've helped thousands of people get unstuck.
That's why in this video, I will show you what I learned about affirmations that changed my life. And by the end, you won't have to fake believing in yourself anymore. To understand what I learned about affirmations, I need to take you through a bit of my journey.
The first time I remember really trying to use affirmations to change myself and my life was in college. I even went to the extent of recording my voice saying the affirmations, and there was about 30 of them. And I said them over and over and over again.
I would put it on a cassette tape, and every time I went to bed, I would put my headphones on and listen to it. Did it actually change anything? No, not really.
It didn't. But I didn't completely give up on them. Periodically, I would try them out.
There was one more time where I went all in trying affirmations again. It was during a time of transition where I was moving away from my old business of doing insurance and moving into the business that I'm doing now. There was so much uncertainty about that that I felt like I needed something more.
There was a guy whose videos I used to watch on business and entrepreneurship. I even took his trainings. He was really good.
His trainings really delivered. He also had this recording of about 50 affirmations for business entrepreneurs. and it was his voice recording them, basically saying them to you.
I got the recording and I listened to that every single morning. This felt good, just like the affirmations felt good when I listened to them when I was in college. Once I finished listening to the affirmations and then went to work, reality really hit me hard.
It made everything that I felt like I got from the affirmations just sort of disappear. Just like I did in college, I listened to these affirmations for months. So this last time that I was using affirmations, it was about 10 years ago, and you might be thinking, well, it did work, right?
Because you... you're doing this business now and you've been doing it for quite a while, shouldn't I tell you that the affirmations worked? The answer is no, the affirmations didn't work.
And one of the reasons why I know they didn't work is because it was when I stopped using the affirmations, when I realized what I'm about to give you, that was when I was able to make that transition and make this business successful. All that I really got out of using affirmations both times was it kind of felt good when I was doing them.
You might be thinking, is there anything really wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with feeling good. But what if that feeling good is actually kind of numbing you from reality?
It's sort of like acting as a buffer from where you are right now and getting to where you want to be. When I looked back on both times and I was trying to figure out, did affirmations really work? did they hold me back what i started to realize was not so much about the affirmations but where i was in my life both times in college i was suffering from really low self -esteem i wanted more confidence i wanted to feel like i had some sort of agency over my life because at the time it didn't really feel that way i wasn't getting what i wanted i didn't have the social life that i wanted a lot of things weren't working out when i was going through that transition from one business to the next i felt really lost i felt like things were so uncertain in both situations i could see that i didn't know how to get what I wanted, and if I did know some pieces of it, how to get what I wanted, I was unwilling to do what it took to get it.
If you find yourself in that situation, Affirmations seem really attractive. This idea that all you need to do is say these things over and over again and you'll either start to believe them or it'll start to come true in reality.
But this will only serve to hold you back. So what really happens when you say affirmations? When you say affirmations, what you're really trying to do is paint over parts of yourself that you don't like.
And you're trying to paint over parts of your life that you do not like. But in doing so, you end up highlighting them. If you think of what it means to literally paint over something something that doesn't look good like graffiti and then everything looks okay the graffiti is still under the paint but there's really not a problem there but when you're using affirmations you are calling attention to the very thing that you're trying to change if you're looking in the mirror and you're saying i'm confident or i'm successful in a sense what you're doing is you're highlighting the fact that you are not confident and you are not successful what happens is you start to create an internal conflict the part of you that is trying to make something true that you know is not true that you don't truly feel or believe and then the part of you that's trying to reconcile reality trying to reconcile the truth that you are indeed not successful and not confident some people take this to a further extent they'll look in the mirror and tell themselves that they're a millionaire at some point they're going to see their bank account and those zeros are just not going to be there there's this part that's really trying hard to make that true and this other part that's saying hey but it's not true look this is reality that part of you that is reconciling the truth that is a feature not a bug this is what keeps you sane this is what
you connected to reality if you were able to override that part of yourself and break that part of yourself you would slip into mental illness we need that part of ourselves that's the only way we can really stay grounded and function in the world around us you need this part of yourself to reconcile the truth to reconcile reality and the more you try to override that and try to paint over it the stronger you make it in a sense the more you resist resistance the more you fight yourself, the more internal conflict you create.
And this is just going to drag you down. This takes up so much energy to do this. So if you want these things, like being confident and successful, there are ways to go about that.
But if you now bring in a war with yourself, that you're fighting yourself through this process, that's just going to slow you down. It's going to exhaust you. And ultimately, you're probably not going to get what you want.
So how can we make affirmations work? What is the ultimate affirmation? The ultimate affirmation is action.
So instead of saying you are successful, go and do successful things. You don't have to... have successes constantly to feel like you're a success.
Just engaging the behavior of successful activities, successful behaviors, knowing what you want, and then doing the things that you need to do to get there. Those actions are 10 ,000 times more powerful than words. You've heard the saying before, talk is cheap.
And it is. Actions speak so much louder than words. Actions affirm so much more than words ever could.
So instead of talking about it, actually go and do it you probably know people like this they talk a lot about all the things they're going to do all the plans they have all the goals that they're going to achieve and these people what do you know about them they never do anything why because the more they talk the more they relieve that tension within themselves they give themselves the sense that they're actually doing something about it when they're really not.
They're sort of fooling themselves. They never take a step in the direction. They never take an action that would actually bring them to the kind of success that they want.
When you take an action, you are literally moving something forward. When you take an action that's aligned with your idea of what success is, what could be more affirming than that? And you're actually getting closer to the success that you want.
Now, confidence is a little bit trickier because confidence is a byproduct of being competent at something so in order to be confident you cannot go at it directly and that's what a lot of people are doing trying to do with affirmations and no shortage of personal development gurus out there who are trying to teach people how to go at confidence directly you can't you are not supposed to be confident about things that you are not competent about does this mean that in order to be self -confident you need to be competent at everything no you don't you just need to know that you are a competent person what makes a person competent it's the knowing that if you take the time to practice something to learn something that you will get better at it you will cultivate the competence in it just knowing that makes you feel like you're a competent person when you feel like you're a competent person and you really believe that confidence is a natural byproduct of that you cannot go at confidence directly you cannot boost your confidence directly it's just like what I was saying these affirmations and you've probably experienced this as well you have a sense of greater confidence so you feel good about yourself because you're saying all these positive things but then you walk out your front door reality hits you and that just destroys that confidence why because it wasn't
true confidence. It wasn't really grounded in anything. It was just a bunch of feel -good words that you told yourself.
But when your confidence is grounded in your competence and who you really are, there's no shaking that confidence. If it ever does get shaken, it bounces right back because your beliefs are more powerful than words. In a moment, I'm going to point you in a direction of where you can learn more about how to cultivate confidence, true confidence.
Before I do that, though, I want to explain how you'd really take this to the next level, and that is by knowing what your values are. When you know what your values are and you allow align your behavior and your decisions to those values, you feel good right away.
And it's lasting goodness. It's not the temporary stuff that you get from affirmations. Where does self -esteem actually come from?
It comes from aligning your behavior and your decisions with your values. Now, you might be thinking, oh, that self -esteem thing, I don't have a problem with that. That was something I had when I was a kid.
That's not true. Almost everybody is suffering from self -esteem issues and almost everybody wants to feel better about themselves. You do want to feel better about yourself.
If you're saying affirmations now, trust me, there's a self -esteem issue going on. So how do we know what our values are? A lot of people think they know what their values are and most people do not.
Unless you have done an exercise to really elicit your values from your unconscious, you probably don't know what your true values are or at least you don't have a strong connection with them. There's an NLP process. that shows you exactly how to do this step -by -step.
You can take a goal that you wanna achieve, or you can just focus on an area of your life and elicit your values from that. If you wanna get your hands on that process, there's a link in the description of this video, or you can scan this QR code. It's a free PDF, and it'll show you exactly how to elicit your values.
Once you know what your values are, it's just a matter of aligning your behavior and your choices and your decisions to those values. And like I said, you feel it right away. Think about a value like kindness.
When you act in a kind way, when you align your behavior, with kindness, you feel good about yourself. You feel it right away.
You feel kind. And this is what you value. This is what is important to you.
So you feel good. When you're doing valuable things, the things that you value, self -esteem is automatic. Confidence is automatic.
This is what true affirmation is. You're affirming who you are because you're aligned with your values and you're going to feel really good about that. It's also moving you toward being the person you want to be.
Every single day that you're doing this, you're becoming more and more the valuable person. you want to be. And as you're doing that, you're also creating the life that you want to live.
It all works together. It's not one thing or the other. You're putting it all together all at once, guided by what's important to you.
If you don't quite believe what I'm saying because you're heavily invested in affirmations, give this a try. Think of a value that you value. Think of times when you acted in alignment with that value.
Take success as an example. A lot of people think they're only successful when they're actually succeeding at something specifically. In the in -between, they don't feel like they're very successful.
This is not going to help you very much. But if you value success, you know that you value success and you know what that means to you because success can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. So be very clear about what it means to you.
Just by doing behaviors that are aligned with that success, you feel that right away. It's also motivating. It's fulfilling.
So you keep moving in that direction. You keep doing more and more successful things. You keep adding to that.
And as you're adding to it, you're becoming more and more successful. There is no way that saying, I am a successful person in the mirror, 20 times, 100 times can even come close to matching that.
So give this a try and let me know how it works for you. Let me know in the comments below. And if you're not sure about how it works, ask me a question in the comments below.
I will respond to you. And if you want to learn how to build that confidence, build unshakable confidence, resilient confidence, definitely check out this next video.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A question most people who have tried affirmations can answer yes to, followed by a promise: change one specific thing and you will not have to fake believing in yourself anymore.
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:38concept
Painting over graffiti
Affirmations cover what you dislike the way paint covers graffiti: the problem is still under the surface, and you keep drawing attention to it.
Steal forexplaining why positive self-talk backfires
06:53model
Competence leads to confidence
Confidence is a byproduct of being competent, and competence comes from knowing that practice makes you better.
Steal forrebuilding self-belief through practice
08:22model
Values-aligned behavior
Acting in line with a value such as kindness or success produces self-esteem immediately and keeps you moving toward who you want to be.
Steal fordaily decisions
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
09:30link
“There's a link in the description of this video, or you can scan this QR code. It's a free PDF.”
Offered right after the values idea lands, then a closing ask for comments and a pointer to the next video.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
Visual structure at a glance.
