Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Bafini, founder of America's largest business coaching company.

Here's a short classic cut from one of our all-time favorite episodes.

Over the past 25 years, I guess, I've been involved in the coaching and training and speaking side of things.

The number one thing I see that plagues people is a self-doubt or the consequences of not having a sufficient self-belief.

So, first of all, we're going to talk about and ask you a question, what do you believe about yourself?

Next, we're going to talk about what do you believe about your abilities. And thirdly, we're going to talk about what you believe about your future. Belief, according to Mr. Webster, is a state of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or something. So the person we're going to talk about, the thing we're going to talk about today is us. Because if it starts with us, then we can have belief in others. So what are some of the consequences of this

lack of self-belief? Well, first and foremost, it shows up in low self-esteem. It shows up in all

walks of life. It's proven to show up in many, many interpersonal conflicts, it shows up in poor relationships,

it shows up in poor performance on the job. In fact, Max Malz, now Max Vermilion Malts wrote

Psycho-Cibernetics, one of the most powerful personal growth books of the 1970s. And he said that

low self-esteem is like driving through life with your handbrake

on. Have you ever felt like you weren't quite fully able to engage to the degree that your

gifts and your talents and your abilities and your effort was desiring to? So I will tell you how I

recognize self-esteem in people, low self-esteem. First of all, I see it in the form of people being hypercritical.

Second, and the most easy to spot low self-esteem is when people are arrogant. They're trying to

falsely inflate their low self-esteem. And third is, is that people of low self-esteem,

they are always trying too hard. How I know that one? Because that's the area that my low self-esteem, they are always trying too hard. How I know that one, because that's the area

that my low self-esteem has manifested itself in my life. Years ago, I developed a phrase for myself

that said, just being myself is good enough to be great. If you look at someone in public life,

there might be a sports star, there's somebody, and you really admire them, it's usually somebody

you think is being

extremely authentic to who they are. They're just comfortable in their own skin. And the more

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