Do Something Amazing and Tell Nobody
all right you good
all right you’re gonna go in five
four three two
one
socrates once said the only thing i know
is that i know nothing
now wait a second i know what you’re
thinking did i just click on a video to
hear some 17 year old kid who
just figured out how to ask a girl the
prom try and tell me how to live my life
with a generic socrates quote
well yes but hold on there’s a little
more to it than that
i didn’t quote socrates because it was
truly necessary to introduce my argument
i didn’t even quote socrates because i
wanted to
i quoted him because i
care that you think i’m impressive i
wanted you to think that i’m smart
and insightful and that i spend my free
time pouring over ancient greek texts
when in reality i got that quote from a
fortune cookie
i don’t pore over dense philosophical
works i just really like crab rangoon
i mean it’s fried cream cheese and so
that very thing is the one i want to
discuss with you today
no not crab rangoon but the
externalities
of our self-esteem what is true
internally rooted confidence
and how can we build it in order to
answer this question
let me put you in my shoes when i was 13
years old
in elementary school everyone always
tells you that kindness is everything
and that you should be nice at all costs
so
throughout middle school you are nice at
all costs
even when that means getting taken
advantage of
not only that but to you being kind
meant making sure you never made anybody
uncomfortable
so of course you would stay away from
speaking your mind out of worry that you
might offend someone
as you can imagine quite quickly this
abundance of kindness
became inflated and since it’s what you
identify and pride yourself on
the lack of appreciation caused your
confidence to dwindle
you see you were nice for all the wrong
reasons
you were kind not purely because of your
good will
but largely because you saw no other
option true kindness
doesn’t come from a place of necessity
true kindness comes from a place of
strength
and options it is to have the capacity
for disagreeableness and yet choose the
other path
you your kindness was not a choice
your kindness was a rationalization for
your weakness
and your confidence didn’t come from the
satisfaction of doing good things
it came from people’s admiration of that
trait
which in turn just led you to emphasize
that trait even more in your personality
for example you’d give out compliments
for the sake of appearing kind
like the time you told your friend’s mom
that her cooking could win a michelin
star
i’m sorry miss peters i don’t think they
got michelin stars for chicken that’s
about as flavorful as a bike tire
and really this need to always be seen
as kind was quite dangerous
just because you weren’t able to be
difficult or ill-tempered at times
didn’t mean you didn’t want to be
everyone wants to say no to things they
don’t see the point in
like when your mom tells you joe go
clean your room in your closet there’s
guests coming over
i promise you if guests somehow end up
in my closet the dust is not what’s
going to make that situation weird
of course you had to suppress perfectly
reasonable thoughts and feelings like
those
because after all if people thought you
weren’t kind
then what were you
but like most things you suppress these
emotions just built inside of you
until one day you couldn’t take it
anymore in your eyes
you had given the world so much and had
gotten nothing in return you decided
you know what i’m done i’m done putting
others before myself i’m done
letting their opinions control me and i
am done caring
about what people think of me and so at
15 years old you did it
you no longer cared what people thought
of you
well at least that’s what you wanted
everyone else to think
in reality nothing changed before you
prided yourself on how kind people
thought you were
now you pride yourself on how little
people thought you cared
you didn’t transcend the scale you just
swung too hard in the opposite direction
and i mean evelyn always tells you not
to care what people think
the real problem is nobody tells you how
to do that
to you not caring meant making jokes
acting cocky and above all always
projecting security
and so in order to feel like you cared
less you decided to act like you cared
less
you acted arrogant
condescending and whenever someone
criticized you
you wrote it off as jealousy looking
back
you missed a lot of good advice that you
were too confident to take
and soon this heart and exterior started
to take a toll on your relationships
because vulnerability is essential to
any meaningful relationship
and you couldn’t be vulnerable you went
through life pushing people away
instead of welcoming them and that
that was a breaking point for you after
pushing away
one particular person that should have
been embraced
you had one honest moment with yourself
and in that moment you realized
that your confidence was still in the
hands of others no matter how much you
tried to convince yourself
otherwise there was obviously a problem
and yet you still had no idea how to
solve it
all you did though was that for the past
year and a half everything from the way
you
dressed to the way you spoke was loud
but your confidence was still fake and
so from that moment on
you promised yourself that everything
you would do would be
quieter you’d still strive for success
but instead of accomplishing things for
the way they will make you look
you vow to accomplish them for the way
they will make you feel
and to make sure that was actually the
case and your actions weren’t corrupted
by validation
you’d ask yourself one simple question
why you’d say why am i climbing this
mountain
is it because i want to have an
experience for myself
or is it because i want to post it on
instagram and show how adventurous i
you’d even ask yourself why am i hanging
out with this person
is it because i genuinely enjoy their
company
or is it because they’re super
attractive and being with them makes me
look good
however uncomfortable to answer it was
these questions
that slowly shaped the way you behaved
for example
you no longer used fancy words like
abysmal because
anytime you were going to use the word
abysmal you were just trying to make
yourself look smart
you even started to pass upon chances to
brag when people would ask you
oh hey joe what have you been up to and
everything in your body wanted to say
oh i don’t know i’ve just been writing a
ted talk
but you wouldn’t and to be honest in the
moment
passing upon those chances to brag felt
pretty
abysmal but you also knew like most
things worthwhile
this was going to be hard and that quick
fixes for confidence
were what got you into this mess and so
you kept quiet
and you kept humble and even if this
modesty was fake at first
it started to feel like it was working
all the things
you would normally scream from a rooftop
you kept to yourself
but more importantly for yourself in
other words
because you forced yourself into modesty
you had to do things
for personal satisfaction instead of
external validation
and that personal satisfaction is the
defining characteristic
of where true confidence comes from that
is what people mean
or should mean when they say confidence
comes from within
so by doing amazing things and telling
nobody
you were able to develop true
self-confidence
the kind that doesn’t rely on how many
people know your name or whether that
girl over there thinks you’re cute or
not
but more importantly the kind of
confidence you don’t have to prove that
you have
and that is where our story ends
that’s where at least i wish it ended
more realistically
our story it doesn’t end
take this for example i’m standing on a
stage with my name plastered on a video
i mean the mere fact that i’m giving
this talk without a bag over my head
makes me a hypocrite
and i would be lying if i said i was not
alert by how
maybe you would think wow he seems
pretty articulate
or even he’s kind of cute
but the point of my talk is not to run
from praise
or public achievements it’s to be honest
with ourselves
when we answer three simple questions
one
where does your confidence come from two
how much control do you have over that
source and three
do you actually want another order
of crab rain good thank you