EP 54: Increasing Confidence
Welcome to the Vermillion podcast, a free audio library of business strategies,
creative inspiration and industry knowledge for actors, filmmakers, writers and anyone
looking to activate their creative potential. I'm Misha Calvair, a writer -director who
helps artists build the careers that they dream of. I really hope that this podcast
inspires you in some way. Thanks for tuning in.
Confidence. Let's talk about confidence. I used to be really shy.
I know, I know I'm a recovering shy person. Well, when I was first born, like age
zero to five, I was very not shy. I was
And I was spoken and extroverted, very adventurous, fearless, I would say,
and I would just go for it. Like I would talk shit to adults,
I would do whatever I wanted to do. I mean, you know, I wasn't like a maniac,
psycho kid, but I would just go wherever I wanted to go. And then from five Until
25, I had very low confidence. I was bullied a lot during that time.
And also I found myself in sort of the bottom layer of a lot of the social
environments that I was in. So like felt and in many cases was at the bottom of
the totem pole, the schools that I went to, the rooms that I was in, and that
really stacked and it left a lot of damage. So I've spent from age 25 until now
coming back from that and rebuilding my confidence.
It was very high till age five and then 20 years of very low.
But the good news is you can come back from it and if I can come back from how
much shame I lived with every single day and how little I thought about myself.
If I can come back from that, I think you can probably come back from anything
'cause it was quite low. I remember one time when I was a teenager, 13 or so,
I was thinking I would rather be anyone other than me. I would rather be any other
person in this world other than me.
That's a pretty sad space to be in. And now I feel pretty good about me but every
day is stronger than the last and it's not by accident that that's happening.
I am doing it on purpose and the changes are not temporary. It's like gaining like
one centimeter of ground every day and that feels really good as I climb this
mountain of self -esteem and And now, these days,
my confidence is quite high. Could it be better? Yeah, it could always be better.
That's what we spend our lives doing is building and rebuilding, sometimes letting
the ravages of time tear us down without a build, you know, but I choose to build,
I choose to build. And it excites me that I have the power to build my own
confidence and my own self -worth. I think we all do, the brain is plastic, Meaning,
it is malleable, it's buildable. So I hope that today you can walk away with the
tools to improve your confidence and start to really, really value who you are.
Confidence is so important.
It's important to have confidence because I do see in my years and years of
coaching that confidence is the biggest hurdle to career progress.
Not believing that your dreams are possible because of a lack of confidence is the
thing that is most likely to prevent you from reaching your dreams. It's not the
outer world. It's not the size of your dreams or the unreachability, quote unquote.
It's do you feel like they're possible for you. I figured out four stages of
building confidence. And these are the four stages that I followed when I was
building my confidence. No one taught me this. I had to figure it out by
happenstance and then journal about it and take notes and try and put the pieces
together of what did I actually do to increase my confidence? And so I'm gonna give
you these four stages and I hope that they they might be a little bit helpful to
you. Each of these stages has an inner and an outer component, so there's a piece
of inner work and there's a piece of outer work as well. The first stage is your
health. Another way of thinking about that is your instrument. What are you bringing
into the world? Who are you? What are you? And the outer expression of that
instrument is simply your brain and your body health. This is step one because
without that brain and body health it's really hard to do the other stages.
Your brain health is so important. The other stuff isn't going to go into your
brain and stay there. It can't stick unless you try to cultivate a healthy brain,
a healthy environment to grow your garden, right? And your body is a vessel for
that brain. So you could be taking all sorts of new tropics and brain supplements,
but if you treat your body like shit and you're, you know, for instance an
alcoholic or you're constantly sleep depriving yourself, you're not getting any
exercise, the brain's going to suffer because your brain is a part of your body. So
brain and body health is stage one. And the internal version of this Health that
I'm speaking about is shame is the presence or not of shame Or the opposite of
self -love Shame is a very damaging emotion and if you live with a lot of shame It
in my opinion and based on the science that I've I've seen about it Which I cannot
cite here and now because I don't have it in front of me, but shame has a
deleterious effect on your health.
Processing it and coming to terms with it and then becoming friends with the shame
so that it can finally leave your mind and leave your body is a really important
part of building confidence. Again, stage one.
Clearing shame is essential. If you want tips on that, just drop me an email. We
could talk about it. I have a lot of modalities for processing shame that I've used
over the years.
Stage two is looking at your environment, and this is going to be about the
influences that are around you, people, places, things. The external version of this
is like literally your home for a start. If you're trying to,
say, Oh, a world famous artist with like,
you know, like a, like a Beyonce or a Taylor Swift. And you're looking around at
your home and you're living in squalor or your roommates are, are like leaving like
dangerous things and out in the open and like almost burning your house down or
being really mean to you or letting the trash overflow onto the floor and you have
all these roaches, like, you know, that kind of stuff, like that's not gonna get
you to Beyonce. You gotta deal with that shit and do what you need to do to clean
up your environment. If you're trying to clean up your life and get your life
organized and create discipline, you know, maybe your really filthy room,
bedroom is going to be helpful.
There's a study I just read about this that women actually they register stress
higher due to a cluttered environment than men do so women are less able to tune
it out but the recommendation is regardless of gender I think that cleaning up your
environment and getting rid of anything harmful or like I had a friend that just
Had a terrible sinus Surgery from mold in his air conditioner stuff like that.
Like you got to deal with that stuff. This also goes to the Inner part of this
which is the negativity of people So clean up your social environment clean up any
voices of oh, you can't do that or who do you think you are? That's funny that
you think you can be that You can do that. You can achieve that, you know That's
not who we are. Like all of that stuff get rid of it. Get rid of it Doesn't mean
that you never need to see those people again, but care take your own dreams and
make sure that you're protecting them Your little dreams that are just starting to
grow up out of the soil and Someone you know a parent a sibling a friend comes
and stomps on it Well that plant's not gonna grow It's gonna take weeks to recover
from that boot on your dream So look around honestly and See are the influences in
my environment positive or negative? Do I need to clean up my environment? Stage
three is your agreements Your relationship to the truth Try to get really good about
keeping your word, not just to others, but to yourself.
If you find that you consistently make promises to yourself about what you're going
to accomplish and then you fall short,
that stacks year after year, month after month, day after day, those broken promises
erode your confidence, because you then are telling yourself that you are not
reliable, that nothing you say is ever gonna happen, because you just can't meet the
moment. Whatever you say you're gonna do, you're actually probably not gonna do it.
And this makes it impossible to believe in yourself, start to really try to keep
your word to yourself, so that your brain can believe itself.
It can believe, when you have a dream that's very convincing, you're like, "Oh, I
see myself on stage, and all these people are just loving the performance." And you
can be like, "Oh, yeah, and that's going to happen," instead of, "Yeah, it's just
like everything else that you never do." So develop a relationship with your own
brain where you can trust each other.
You create confidence in yourself, in your own brain, and in your own work ethic,
this also applies to other people. So the outer version of this, the external is,
are you constantly over -promising to people and then breaking that promise? Are you
telling white lies, are you telling red lies, big, bad lies about who you are?
Why? It's not the truth. And telling those lies erodes your confidence.
Take responsibility when bad things happen. And just say, yep, I did that. It was
bad. Didn't work out. That was a poor choice. I shouldn't have done that. That was
really silly. And let other people react how they're going to react.
Their reactions are on them, and if they react poorly and cast you out,
that's their smallness. It's not you, it's them. Your job is just to sit in the
truth and allow that truth building be the blocks of your confidence,
brick by brick, one moment at a time.
Stage four,
This is where things start to get good. This is where your confidence starts to
really blossom. And you start to notice you are showing up very differently in
rooms. We're getting there with a lot of my Vermillion members right now, where
they've worked through stages one through three. And now they're at stage four, where
they're seeing the evidence of their confidence building. Evidence is really important
For confidence because your brain needs it Your brain wants to see it like Judge
Judy your brain needs evidence Well, why should we feel confident? Oh because I
actually have done ABCDEFG I had how do I know because it's literally right here in
front of me the playbill from that performance The finished script in my hand the
check that is in my bank account. "Oh, yeah. Oh, I did that. I did those things.
Yeah, mm -hmm. Got it." And your brain's like, "Oh, I see the receipts now. Okay,
well, I guess our value is significantly higher now." There is nothing wrong with
evidence, and your brain needing it in order to believe in you.
Start building that evidence. Start taking the action steps to actually physically, In
real time, have proof that your self -worth is valid and merited.
Yes, on the spiritual sense, we're all valid and merited no matter what we do.
We're valid from the day we come out of our mothers and we're just beautiful little
babies and perfect. I'm not bypassing that, but real talk, We're living in a
physical world. We're living in a capitalist economy and results mean something on
this plane. So you might as well just kind of work with that and be like, "Okay,
well, if we're living in a world of proof, then proof I shall give you. Give
yourself the proof." And by the way, you can pull other people into this process
and you can use the energy from other people. Show them that proof. They are going
to amplify your confidence. It becomes a cycle where you're showing them proof and
they're like Oh, well, I guess I guess Misha is really that that cool I guess she
is a big deal because look she she just did she just made that movie that is
pretty cool I'm talking about the feature that I haven't yet made, but I will How
do I know I will because I've been giving myself evidence that I will make it. Now
they're giving you energy of confidence and you are receiving their energy that they
have confidence in you and that is amplifying your own confidence. That's just how
energy works and you can go on to do something even bigger. You know how they say
rich people stay rich. You have money to make money. It's the same principle.
If you're wealthy with existing confidence you can use that to build even more
confidence so it accrues like wealth. So you've got to start somewhere, in the
beginning you're going to be bootstrapping, no one maybe will believe in you or see
you the way that you know you are capable of being seen. Follow stage one, get
your health, follow stage two, get your environment and your influences, follow stage
three, align with the truth, keep your agreements, and then stage four, start
building that evidence. You and others are going to very quickly see that you are
capable of the most incredible things that no one can do what you do.
I mean that literally in your ear right now, me to you,
no one can do what you do and you're probably only at maybe one -tenth of your
potential. I'm telling you that I know you are capable of great things.
How do I know? Because the people that listen to this podcast are built different,
you guys are built different. I see you, I believe in you, and I know what's
coming. So start there and let's make the rest of this year.
Absolutely incredible. I can't wait to hear what transpires on your confidence
journey. Thank you so much for coming with me. I love this topic so much. I'm so
passionate about it, and I'm really grateful for this community and for you. So
thank you, and I will see you next week. The Vermillion podcast is sponsored by
Vermillion, a home for artists. We offer classes, coaching, and community for
creatives and innovators in the arts. If you're ready to find your voice and build
the life of your dreams, we're here to support you every step of the way. Check
out clubformillion .com and schedule a free call today.
