Start with belief, not talent

- [Announcer] This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. - [Host] Self-confidence sounds like a good thing; we'd all love to have it. Could you maybe share some research that reveals how more self-confidence can really translate into actual results for professionals, particularly, if you got those examples, as opposed to just feeling good? - [Instructor] Absolutely. - [Host] It'd be nice to feel confident, but what does that mean in terms of results and victory? - [Instructor] Well I think the first thing you have to recognize is- let's start with the definition of self-confidence, so everybody's playing and starting at the same place. And so, the definition I use in the research is this genuine belief in your ability to accomplish the task at hand; self-confidence, right? And I want everybody to know, it's not this magic pill that you just take and you can swallow and you can just, "Oh! I'm all of a sudden self-confident." But the research that started looking at this goes way back to some foundational work that talked about optimism and happiness. But the big one that got me in this venue was looking and reading about Angela Duckworth and "Grit". - [Host] Mm hm. And she was studying grit, which is the belief in your ability to accomplish tasks, despite setbacks. And she was looking at how people- what they told themselves, how they believed in themselves, how that really influenced their belief to move forward. And she studied a bunch of military personnel. It was Beast Barracks week, during West Point Military Academy. And the military academy, they're really interested in: how do people decide that we should make it through candidate training school? 'Cause it's hell. They don't get to sleep, they don't get to eat, there's noise pollution- all these things. 'Cause they're testing those candidates to make 'em ready. And so they did a aptitude test, they did physical testing, they did all these leadership scores, they did a battery of tests. And when they looked at these tests, they were somewhat predictive of who would be successful. But when Angela Duckworth came with these 13 items to predict grit and resilience, she found those 13 items more reliable than those hundreds of questions combined. And then when I read that I'm like, "Whoa! Grit is a reliable predictor of performance and your ability to succeed? And when I started really looking into grit, I studied just the first half of it, which was this genuine belief in your ability to accomplish the task at hand. And then there was further research that went into how affirmations played a role in that- which is another word for self-talk, how focus played a role in that, how repetition played a role in that. The research is out there and it's all saying the same thing: that you can't start with talent. You have to start with this belief in your ability, and only then will the talent get a moment to shine.