How to Fix Your Confidence

About this video

Dan Martell explains how to overcome self-doubt and build confidence, drawing on a tough childhood he describes as involving addiction, violence, emotional trauma, group homes, foster homes and prison a couple of times, and on ballooning to over 265 pounds at age 21. He opens by linking depression to focusing on the past and anxiety to focusing on the future, urging presence in the now, then gives four strategies. First, keep the commitments you make to yourself in private — wake-up time, reading, gym, cold plunge, making calls — because breaking them erodes self-confidence, while doing hard things builds momentum: ’the work instills the worth.’ Second, ’no vision, no value’: during an 11-month rehab program he rebuilt fractured family and friend relationships and created a transition plan documenting the life he would create, including getting his high school diploma and learning to write code, writing goals down before they became reality; having any big vision, even if it changes, beats indecision and waiting for 100% clarity. Third, volume of work: his son Max put in dozens if not hundreds of hours on Tech Deck fingerboard tricks, built a whole Tech Deck world and got a top YouTuber to respond and evaluate his video; Martell parallels this with running 50, 60 or 70 kilometres a week to build the base for half marathons, marathons and ultra marathons, arguing confidence comes from unreasonable reps. Fourth, boost confidence by helping others for free: you are always one step ahead of someone who has not started, and he recounts a friend nervous about speaking to a classroom of kids whose confidence rose when their intelligent questions showed the talk landed. Giving knowledge away freely, he says, gives you permission to charge a premium for what you know. He closes by offering his Future Living training on setting a vision and living six months into the future.

Key takeaways

• Keep private commitments to yourself — wake time, pages read, gym, calls — because each broken promise to yourself erodes confidence and each kept hard commitment builds momentum and self-worth.
• Create a written vision before you feel ready: Martell’s rehab transition plan, listing goals like his diploma and learning to code before they happened, pulled him forward; a changeable big vision beats indecision.
• Use volume to build confidence: like his son Max’s hundreds of hours of fingerboard practice, put in an unreasonable number of reps — Martell cites running 50-70 kilometres a week as the base for marathon confidence.
• Help others for free to prove your value: mentor, coach, speak or consult at no charge; feedback from people you help builds confidence, and giving freely later supports charging a premium.
• Stay in the present to manage self-doubt: Martell frames depression as focusing on the past and anxiety as focusing on the future, so confidence work happens by acting in the now.

Episode details: published July 17, 2023 · 8:58 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: We hit 100K subscribers! · Next: 3 Sources of fuel that will sustain you as you grow →

All Dan Martell videos · Dan Martell profile · Dan Martell (official site)