Ep 2: How AI can boost your Self- Confidence
Welcome back to Mind and Machine: AI for Personal Growth and Development, Episode 2. Today we are diving into one of my favourite topics: self-confidence, and specifically how AI can help you cultivate self-confidence and feel really good about yourself. So, who doesn’t want to feel good about themselves, right? But often the reality is, we doubt ourselves more than other people do.
We’ve known ourselves for the longest time, yet it’s ourselves that we don’t trust, that we don’t believe in.
Ideally, it is within ourselves that we want to feel the most trust and empowerment. So, let’s have a look at how AI can help us get there.
If you missed it, last time we broke down what makes an effective ChatGPT prompt and used a drunken Scottish sailor as an example.
We looked at how knowing what you want, being decisive, and having clarity around what you want is key to getting a good response from ChatGPT or other similar AI bots. So, what if you do not know what you want? That is something we also talked about, and I provided an AI prompt that can help you figure out what resonates best with you, so you know how to best prompt ChatGPT to help you.
This makes the interaction individualized and personalized.
I was thinking about this idea that we often don’t know what we want, especially when we’re struggling with self-doubt. And you know what? Why would we? We are constantly surrounded by other people’s ideas and opinions, especially on social media, and they always tell us their idea is the best. It’s pushed on to us.
We’ll often hear something like, “You need to do the things that scare you. You need to push harder. You need to face your fears. You need to ignore what your body is telling you and just push harder. You’re not doing enough.” Or maybe your social media algorithm pushes a different message, one that’s more like, “Don’t let it bother you, just carry on, flow with life, water off a duck’s back.” It’s a type of approach that encourages you to not try hard and just sort of dance your way through life, as quoted in the new Wicked movie.
So, we have these two opposite sides of the spectrum pushing their ideas onto us. It can be really, really hard to know what we want. So, if you’re in that place and trying to figure out what you want, give that AI prompt a try and see if it helps you figure out what resonates best with you. I’ll provide the prompt in the link below so you can check it out.
In today’s episode, we’re going to cover one of my favourite topics: self-confidence.
The reason it’s one of my favourite topics is that it feels like something I’ve had some success with. I used to really struggle with self-doubt, imposter syndrome. I could never take compliments from anyone. I was always just trying to shy away, stay quiet in the background. In meetings, I wouldn’t speak up. I wanted everyone else’s opinions to validate what I was doing. I would ask for advice from everyone around me and really cared what others thought about me.
All of this is very normal when you’re in the headspace of self-doubt, right? But I do feel like I’ve had some success along this journey to the point where I can talk about it on a podcast and on YouTube. It feels like a big step for me. So for that reason, it’s one of my favourite topics to talk about.
So based on my experience and also 15 years of working with people in physiotherapy and everything we learn about the nervous system in that field, along with probably upwards of about 50 books on self-help, personal growth, mindset, brain development, and everything else, I’ve put all of this information together to create a five-step framework for building self-confidence. We’re going to quickly go through it here, but if you want more detail, I have a blog post linked below where you can read more about it.
As we go through these five steps, I’ll also share how I think AI can help you implement these steps so you can achieve self-belief and self-worth faster.
Step 1: Settle your nervous system.
Self-confidence is the ability to make decisions, create opportunities for yourself, and have a sense of full trust that you will be able to overcome any challenges or obstacles that come your way.
It’s the belief that, regardless of the circumstances, you’ve got it covered. But when you’re in a place of self-doubt, it’s hard to imagine feeling any differently.
Self-doubt is usually something we’ve carried for a long time, and it develops over many years. But in very simplified terms, self-doubt is nothing more than your nervous system trying to protect you. It’s a self-preservation strategy.
Your nervous system knows that if it keeps you small, if it keeps you blending in, you’re less likely to be targeted. You’re safer blending in. So it gives you self-doubt as a strategy to keep you safe.
However, the difficulty arises when your ambition or optimism is in conflict with the self-doubt, and you feel a sense of uneasiness or restlessness as those ideas clash. Knowing that this is your nervous system trying to keep you safe helps us identify what the first step is to cultivating self-confidence.
Step 2: Make settling your nervous system a habit.
It’s not enough to do 5 or 10 minutes of meditation or journaling twice a day. Over the 24-hour period, that’s not a sufficient amount of time to cause neuroplastic change. We need repetition of the specific skill we want to achieve. So, how can you include more activities into your day that reduce the stress your nervous system perceives it’s under? Can you do meditation three or four times a day? Can you take a really long walk? Maybe you can discuss this with your AI bot to figure out how to make settling your nervous system more of a habit.
Step 3: Know and understand your North Star.
What are the guiding values that you believe are important to you? Often, we are told what our values should be, or they come from culture or society. But there may be values deep within our brain that we aren’t necessarily aware of. So we have to ask the question: what is truly important to us? From there, we need to understand the rules we have for those values. For example, if you value success, but your rule for success is based on having a net worth of over a million dollars, is that rule realistic? Is that rule helping you feel good about yourself? These are the things we need to question when it comes to our values.
Step 4: Change and select the rules you have for your values.
The goal is to intentionally design the values and rules that work best for your life. Rather than continuing with old, outdated rules, this is an opportunity to change them. This is where The Confidence Quest game comes in. It helps you identify and explore the values that are important to you, as well as how they influence your life and decisions. By identifying your top values and avoidance values, you can work with ChatGPT to navigate any conflicts and gain clarity on how to move forward.
Step 5: Show your brain evidence of how awesome you are.
The final step is a fun one: showing your brain evidence of how awesome you are. A great way to do this is by learning a new skill and allowing yourself to be a beginner again. Every time you achieve a new step or reach a new level, you’re providing your brain with evidence that you are capable and that you can overcome challenges. Consistently doing this with a growth mindset will help you rewire your brain, making those negative self-doubt thoughts less utilized. Over time, your brain will begin to reinforce the positive, growth-oriented thoughts.
The Confidence Quest can also help you practice applying a growth mindset to real-life scenarios. With the scenario section of the game, you have an opportunity to respond to situations either instinctively or intentionally. The goal is to reflect on how you would respond with a growth mindset, helping to reprogram your default responses and optimize for neuroplasticity towards self-belief and self-love.
So, that’s my advice for today on how you can use AI to help with self-confidence. I’d love to hear how it goes for you, so please let me know if you try it out. The Confidence Quest is available for free on my website. You can try the first level and get a feel for how it works and if it’s right for you. If you found this helpful or think someone might, please share this podcast with them.
Otherwise, I’ll see you next week with more tips on how AI can help you on your personal growth and development journey.