You Need Some Swagger

This is the Daily Boost Podcast with Scott Smith. Yes, it is. Good to have you here today. Come on in, man. Life is going to change in a second today.

I'm serious about that. And that's kind of how it is anyway. You ever be walking down the streets like everything is in a good mood and you see something or somebody says something to you and, man, it just gets bad or gets good. It could, Scott, lead with the good, okay?

But it gets either way. You know what I mean? It changes in a second. Well, there's a reason for that and there's something you need to make it happen.

That's going to happen today. Good to have you. What is today? Today's Friday. So if you're following my trek, my pretend in advance trek, I recorded these podcasts about a week early.

And I'm in right now today, probably in Lone Pine, California. That is a city, a little town that's near the Mount Whitney portal. And right now we're probably arriving at about maybe 6 a.m., maybe even 4 a.m. We'll see, depending on what time Crow gets there. And then we're going to head up Mount Whitney.

And if all goes well, I'm going to be right with him all the way to the peak. I don't know for sure. We have to get a permit. We only have three. We've got five people.

Not sure I can get a permit to go. But maybe today I'll be summoning Mount Whitney. And maybe not. Maybe I have to stay in base camp and fight off the bears.

Who knows what's going to happen? Anyway, that's our story. When I get to the final result here, I will let you know. But you can find CROIX, C-R-O-I-X, Sather, S-A-T-H-E-R.

Just research him and the Badwater Crossing, and you'll see all kinds of things about that race. Kind of exciting to see. So let's talk about something that is a big challenge for a lot of people. Surprisingly, by the way, whenever people hire me, I do coaching.

I advise people. I do all kinds of fun things. All the stuff I talk about on this podcast, particularly this week, this is what I help people with. people are, they're, they're successful people.

They got it going on, but they're like stuck. Can't figure stuff out. Right. They're kind of beating their head against the wall. Maybe they've headed down the road of a business or something else.

And they don't know quite how to get the communication, right. You know, get a, get a website, right. Or do a podcast. Even they just say, man, it's not, it's not clicking.

How do I get it? Click. I've done it for a while. I help them do that. Anyway, these people hire me. Let me tell you what the, the number one thing is that they need.

And I'm always surprised by this because when they come to me again, these are people you would never in any way think this was their problem. They need a little swagger.

Confidence. A swagger isn't arrogance, by the way. It's walking like you've already decided, like you kind of know what you're doing and things are cool.

It's just a little edgy, maybe, but you got a smile on. It's like the nicest ready gauge you ever met. You know, when I'm smiling, when I have that little grin on my face, you better watch out.

I'm going to be nice to you, but I got something going on. That's swagger. You know, your life can change in a second. When you have swagger, it already has more than once.

You know, a phone call from a boss. You ever sit around waiting for a call from a client to hope, maybe I'm going to get the deal. We'll see. And you feel really small, don't you?

You feel like, well, I hope I got it right. I hope I said the right words. I hope I did everything right. A diagnosis comes around, good and bad. It's a change from lived experience.

It happens. So what I find with a lot of people these days is that when they are trying to affect some kind of transformation in their life, whether it could be weight loss, it could be making more money, it could be just about anything, all the stuff people talk about all the time, right? All that stuff.

It is amazing to me that otherwise very, very confident people, if they talk to me, they'll say things to me they won't say to anybody else, and they should because I'm kind of an expert at helping them with this.

But the self-doubt is debilitating. I mean, think about this. If you've always been the person who could make a decision, and people relied on you to do that, and now you're questioning your own decisions, you can't make up your own mind about what you want to do, that self-doubt creeps in, and it will devastate you. And I see it all the time.

Now, on the surface, it looks like everything's fine. At 2 o'clock in the morning, a couple glasses of wine or a bottle of scotch, and it doesn't seem fine, does it? And I have been that man with the wine and looking in the mirror at 2 o'clock in the morning going, what the hell, dummy?

Smart in every possible way, good decisions my entire life, and yet I can't figure it out right now. Been that person? So a question for you, is it whether life can turn on a dime? That's not the question, because we know it can.

It's whether you're the one calling it to turn on a dime, or you're kind of waiting for a bus to pick you up. Which one is it? Harkening back to my patient's comment the other day, a lot of folks are doing that. And what ends up happening is when people lose the confidence and they get some self-doubt, they don't have the swagger.

What ends up happening is it just kind of slowly wears you down so much so that you'll walk in a room like, here I go. And then you'll second guess yourself.

Okay. Let me try this path and see if I can get, you'll be on chat GPT till five o'clock in the morning, trying to figure out if you're going to make the right choice.

Researching all the other people who are trying to make the right choice at 3 o'clock in the morning. You're like getting their answers too. Well, according to what I know, everybody's lost at 3 o'clock in the morning or 2 or 5.

But what happens when you truly make a decision? Think about how you feel. Your posture changes. Your voice changes. You walk differently, don't you? Swagger shows up in a second.

You know when it shows up? It shows up after you make a decision. That's the connection. It's like motivation. Motivation shows up after action. It's easier to get motivated once you start doing something.

Swagger, having confidence, shows up after you've made a decision to do something. Now, I'm not going to talk about how to make a decision today. That's a whole other conversation. But a decision can be very, very small.

It doesn't have to be huge. And when I'm coaching somebody, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get them moving in a little bit of a decision. In fact, to be really honest with you, they don't even know I'm doing that.

I don't tell them, okay, I'm going to teach you to make a decision right now. Sometimes I'm their chief decision maker. I will tell them that sometimes. I go, good, I need some help.

So sometimes I'll make the decision for them to move them down the road. Other times I don't say a word. What I do is I start being sneaky. I start trying to get them to make just a tiny, itty-bitty little decision.

And sometimes they'll have to go away for a week and come back after making that decision. And I'll say, well, how'd that work? Oh, it was really good. And we'll build on that, get that confidence back, take some time, right?

Depends on how long you beat yourself up. I mean, if you're mid-career, if you're sitting in your 40s maybe, and you're mid-career, you have been beat up like, whoa, you know it.

The last couple of years with AI, boy, have you been beat up. And depending on what city you live in and what sector you're in, You have no confidence in the world. And if you happen to be an AI and you're a woman and you turn 40, oh my God, nobody wants me anymore.

A guy, you get maybe 45, right? Better have a good stylist and a good photographer. But swagger will show up. What you're missing right now shows up when you make a decision.

And it can be the tiniest thing that moves you in a certain direction. So think about that right now for just a second. Is there a tiny little decision you can make that can move you?

It may mean nothing to anybody else around you. And in the big picture, it may mean nothing to you. But you know, it's like going to the gym. Ah, you know, it's not going to help anything, man.

What I need to do is pay attention to my career. But just the decision to say, I'm going to go to the gym and do the best I can and come home and do it, you know, four or five days a week.

That little decision begins to build your self-confidence and you start to get the result of doing it. And that's going to build up more evidence that you can make a good decision.

But just remember this, friction shows up first always, every time. The timing is not right. The money. I'm not ready. Happens all the time. The friction just comes.

It's not a stop sign, though. If friction shows up in your life, it's proof that you've touched onto something that's real. And I know something for sure. When I come up with an idea that I think is really good, it scares the crap out of me.

I have one percolating now. It kind of rides within and on my book. An idea that I've been searching for for a very long time, and I've I've kind of danced around a little bit, but I have not told you what it is.

And nor will I, because I'm a guy who tells you everything. But this one ain't getting out of my mouth into this podcast. It scares me what I have in my mind.

But it gets me out of bed early, too. A lot of friction right now. Just trying to get myself to do it. Wow. You feel that way sometimes? Come on. People say, what are you doing, Scott?

You can't do that. You're not my boss. I can do anything I want to do. Remember me? I'm the nicest renegade you ever met. Nice people like me and like you, we wait for permission, don't we?

We wait for what we want because we're nice people. We're not mean people. I'm not a people pleaser, although I'm a people pleaser, just like you, right?

Also a little renegade too. So consider this episode right now today, nice people in the audience to bring out your inner renegade. Consider this your permission slip to get some swagger back on to make a small decision that will move you forward.

Make one decision today, if you will. A real one. Say it out loud. Notice how it feels. Something that moves you forward just a little bit. Get that swagger back.

And if you need some help, somebody can help you. You got a mentor someplace. You got a boss someplace. You got a wife someplace. You got somebody somewhere who you can say, man, I need some help figuring this stuff out.

And yes, if you need help, I do it professionally. Coaching at MotivationToMove.com. But you don't necessarily need me. Did I say that out loud? Oh, you absolutely need me.

Absolutely. Yes. Contact me now. I can help you. See you tomorrow.