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How I Became REALLY Confident

2021-04-30 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 13:46 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Sponsor segment present, Lesson from a book, His own products discussed, His medical past

Ali, once a shy teenager, gives nine tips for becoming more confident: see its value, carry confidence from one domain to another, fake it till you make it because observers cannot tell real from fake confidence, take baby steps, simply choose to be confident, beat the spotlight effect and stop judging others, go first, practise, and treat confidence as a skill that can be learned.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: from a shy teenager to confident, nine tips from 15 years

  • ★★ When younger, Ali was shy and unconfident across the board, especially at public speaking, and never thought he would be comfortable enough to make YouTube videos. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali treated confidence as a skill he wanted to improve and says he spent the last 15 years actively trying to become more confident, to the point where he is now reasonably okay at it. — 00:00:29

00:00:47 — Tip one: appreciate the value of confidence

  • ★★ As a secondary school teenager Ali knew his lack of confidence would hold him back, and envied classmates who were comfortable socially and could banter with teachers. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali's first tip for becoming more confident is to appreciate its value: the more confident we become, the more opportunities come our way. — 00:01:31
  • ★★★ Ali's second tip: confidence is partly domain-specific and partly domain-general; he learned to carry the feeling of confidence from things he was good at, such as video games or maths, into any domain, trying to feel it even when he did not. — 00:01:31

00:01:45 — Tip two: confidence is domain specific and domain general

  • ★★ When Ali feels particularly unconfident, he flips a switch in his head, pretends he is making a YouTube video and turns on his YouTube persona. — 00:02:23

  • ★★★ Ali calls "fake it till you make it" genuinely good advice once paired with a line from a book he cannot recall: to an observer there is no difference between real and fake confidence. — 00:02:45

    “there is no difference to the observer between real confidence and fake confidence”

00:02:50 — Tip three: fake it until you make it

  • ★★★ When Ali does not feel confident, he tells himself that acting as if he is confident is no different from being confident, and so chooses to act confident and fake it until he makes it. — 00:03:42
  • ★★ Ali thinks we all pretend more than we let on: even making YouTube videos or speaking in public, which he is good at, he is still playing a part, a persona more engaging than his low-key self with friends. — 00:03:42
  • ★★ Around half the students of Ali's Part-Time YouTuber Academy who want to make YouTube videos are uncomfortable with putting themselves out there on the internet and talking to a camera. — 00:04:11 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:04:26 — Tip four: take baby steps

  • ★★★ Ali's fourth tip, taught to his Part-Time YouTuber Academy students afraid of the camera, is baby steps: send a friend a WhatsApp video, post an Instagram story, upload an unlisted YouTube video and share the link, then film one and press publish. — 00:04:41 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali says the students on his course who took these baby steps found that their fear of publishing a YouTube video was mostly in their heads. — 00:05:10 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali cites Neil Strauss's book Rules of the Game, an action plan for men uncomfortable talking to women: its 30-day plan begins with asking strangers the time, then directions, baby steps that build confidence in talking to strangers. (hedged) — 00:05:39

00:06:28 — Tip five: confidence is something that you can just have

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth tip, from a few magicians: confidence is not something you build or acquire but something you can just have, by choosing to be confident and playing the part. — 00:06:38

    “Confidence is something that you can just have.”

  • ★★★ Ali's sixth tip is to appreciate the spotlight effect: believing everyone watches and judges our mistakes makes us unconfident, because confidence comes from comfort within ourselves and being okay with taking risks and looking a fool. — 00:07:07

00:07:21 — Tip six: appreciate the spotlight effect

  • ★★ Against the spotlight effect, Ali says broadly no one really cares: everyone walks around with their own spotlight, worrying what others think, so very few people analyse our actions. — 00:07:45
  • ★★★ Ali tells people who go around judging others' clothes or hair to stop, calling it a total waste of time: judging others keeps you unconfident because you are doing the very thing you fear. — 00:07:45

  • ★★★ Ali's seventh tip, which he tells himself all the time: everyone is friendly, but you have to go first; at work with a new doctor he makes the first move, and people almost always respond well. — 00:08:44 · go first

    “everyone is friendly, but you have to go first”

00:08:47 — Tip seven: everyone is friendly but you have to go first

  • ★★★ Ali's tip to just practise: confidence is a skill that can be improved, and the more we put ourselves in uncomfortable situations that stretch our comfort zone, the more confident we become. — 00:09:38

00:09:55 — Just practice: questions in class, close-up magic, introducing himself at university

  • ★★ To build confidence at school, Ali made a point of asking a question at the end of every class, lecture or presentation; it became so normal that he now has no qualms asking one even among 400 medical students. — 00:10:07
  • ★★ Confidence was part of why Ali took up close-up magic; he did shows at hospices, restaurants and later at university balls and parties, which stretched his comfort zone and raised his confidence. — 00:10:36
  • ★★ Starting university, Ali resolved not to be the shy boy he was at school, and introduced himself to anyone he sat next to in lectures, meeting loads of people. — 00:11:05
  • ★★ Ali came to think that the story of being shy and unconfident was one he was telling himself, and that he might be a confident guy after all. — 00:11:35
  • ★★ Ali's last tip is that confidence is a skill that can and should be learned; he recommends the YouTube channel Charisma on Command and its book, one of the first he read on confidence. — 00:11:35

00:11:50 — Confidence can be learned: Charisma on Command and How to Win Friends and Influence People

  • ★★ Ali recommends How to Win Friends and Influence People to anyone who wants to be more confident; he still rereads it about once every two years. — 00:12:04

00:12:20 — Audible sponsor read and sign-off

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: fake it till you make it

Also: People: Neil Strauss

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: How to Win Friends and Influence People · Rules of the Game

Organizations: Charisma on Command · Instagram

Concepts: go first · spotlight effect

Products: WhatsApp

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