Where do you buy self-belief when you’re all out?
[Transcribed from video]
Good morning. It’s July 11th I think, 2019. I’m walking along the bicycle path close to my home right along the Ottawa River. It’s not visible at the moment, but you’ll see it in a minute.
This is experiment number, oh, I’ve lost track now. Trying to see if I can walk, talk, think and record a video all at the same time. That’s four things. My wife’s always winding me up, telling my daughter, Don’t ask Dad to do that. That’ll be two things at the same time and he’ll fall over or something. She always make sure to tell me when I’m well within earshot.
And this is four things! Let’s see how this works. Apologies if the video is a little wobbly. I’m trying to hold it as still as I can anyway. Besides trying to see if I can do four things at the same time.
The question on my mind this morning is: How do you buy . . . (and I’m all about questions by the way. That’s one thing I’m constantly thinking of.)
How do you buy self belief when you’re all out?
Good question.
(Oh, it’s the river coming along here in a minute and . . . )
Here are a bunch of thoughts. In no particular order, by the way.
I’ve been there. Some people are born with just oodles of self belief and they seem to be those that have greatness thrust upon them in the words of the Bard Shakespeare. Or they’re born with it, I guess, in their case.
What do you do when you’re all out of self belief?
I wasn’t born with self belief. It was something that almost seems it has to be modeled for you, and I’ve had to learn it.
The first thought I’m going to give you off the top of my head is, It’s the wrong question.
(There’s the river. Just a bit of it in the background there. We’re going to keep walking right along the river. I’m going to take you to a point here in a minute called The Buff, which has got a great view looking up the river in the morning.)
It’s the wrong question, because you have self belief. The issue is, WHAT do you believe about yourself?
And if you feel like you’re all out of self belief, the problem is, You believe the wrong things about yourself. You’ve had a knock, your worldview has been shown to be flawed. Somebody fired you, sacked you, whatever, thrown you for a loss. You’ve simply found that, oh, the world doesn’t exist to do my bidding. Well, surprise, surprise, it never did.
And all you have to do is just adjust your worldview.
And the second thing is you’re actually, I think in a really, really good position because when you’re at rock bottom, you can’t dig. You have no place to go but up. So now it’s time to do something crazy. Go for broke. Think in the last video I recorded, talking about the first really crazy thing I did. All right, sold up, moved my wife and then 1.9 children and across to the UK. And then just a year ago I did something else crazy, and as I moved us back! Time to go for broke.
I keep thinking about that old washed up boxer in the 1970s. He was a champ, and everybody thought he was washed up. And so he decided the only thing to do was to challenge for the championship again. His name, by the way, it was Joe Frazier. And that battle . . . I’m not a huge boxing fan, but I know enough about it to know that it’s still spoken about in almost hushed terms. The Thrilla in Manila.
Literally in the middle of the match, Muhammad Ali said to him, “They told me you were washed up!” Joe Frazier said, “They lied!” (chuckling)
He lost the fight as it’s recorded. He lost the fight, but in fact, at the end of the 14th round, it was Eddie Futch, his trainer who threw in the towel. But Frazier was ready to fight another round. He couldn’t see out of either eye (chuckling), but he was ready. He was ready to go another round.
And I think Eddie Futch, had he known what was going on in the other corner . . . (If I have this story right, I think it’s correct.) If he had known what was going on in the other corner, he might not have thrown in the towel. Because in the other corner, Ali was telling his trainer, Angela Dundee, to cut his gloves off. He had nothing left.
So yeah, history records it as a Muhammed Ali win.But who really won? It was Frazier.
Now that’s obviously a bone of contention. There’ll be lots who will disagree with me. But the point is, Everybody thought he was washed up. Only nobody told him.
And he dug deep and found another way to make it, to make a difference.
The second thing you can do is remember it only takes one success. Only one. Failures are dime a dozen. They come and they go, it just takes one, one went one, and that’s all it takes.
And then the third thing I would suggest is, Once you’ve had a win . . .
(Look at that. That’s why I walk along this trail. We’re just along here. Last night, my wife and I . . . It just is beautiful. There’s some fantastic wildlife in here. I just saw a cardinal a few moments ago, flaming red cardinal, beautiful. Something about this river really soothes my spirit.)
Once you’ve had one success and you’ve got yourself belief back one more accurately, you’ve corrected your self belief, don’t wait too long before you go and do another one. I moved my family across the UK and it paid off but then I got complacent together and I waited too long for did something else. I waited too long, I got back into it. But the longer you wait between crazy things, crazy experiments, the harder it becomes. You have to make a habit of it.
And forget the failures! Forget ’em. All you need is one success and then another and then another.
I think the fourth thing I want to suggest is, okay, Don’t look inward. Look outward.
(Actually I’m not going to take you to The Buff this time cause it’s a little bit further away but a, I’m going to take you down this spot here, cause this spot there right down here is just gorgeous. Mosquitoes might eat me alive but never mind. This is the path right down to the water’s edge.
Tell me there is no poison ivy along here!
It looks like there isn’t.)
Don’t look inward, I should say. Look outward. The temptation when you’ve been knocked down as to curl up, treating yourself and feel sorry for yourself, wrong, wrong move. Think who you can serve. There is always somebody you can serve. Always somebody to whom you can make a difference.
(Look at that.
That’s looking upstream towards the Ottawa. Partly why I like this river is about 40 kilometers upriver, there’s a spot called Maclaren’s Landing and that’s where my grandparents had a cottage. I have many memories of spending summer holidays at that cottage. I haven’t been there in years and it’s, it’s left the family now, but as a result the Ottawa river does something to me. I just love sitting here watching the river. Even in the winter time you can come, you can come along here. You can literally . . . wife and I were out walking on the river in December cause it was frozen solid.)
There’s always somebody you can serve.
I remember, well, gosh, thirty-something years ago being quite shocked one day when a friend came along and said, Man, you remember when you said x, y, or z? That changed my life!
I went,
Uh, no!
I don’t remember that at all!
I had no idea I had turned his life around. Maybe not turned it around, but I had made a difference to him that day. There’s always somebody you can serve, so right. I’ll stop talking. I’ll just let you look at that for a minute.
All right. Across there, that’s the Gatineau. They’ve had a hard, hard spring, those. They’ve been flooded out. Where I’m standing right now was a meter and a half deep underwater just six weeks ago. But, uh, the people across the river got flooded out. Thankfully it’s back down now. Okay. I’ll do enough talking. Have a good day. Think about what I said.
