As I sat next to Joel Osteen in the bleachers overlooking centerfield hours before one of his sold out stadium events, I asked the world-famous pastor if he had ever imagined himself speaking in front of 50,000 people. His answer may surprise you.
“Carmine, when I began preaching I was nervous and intimidated. I’m naturally quiet and reserved. I was bombarded by negative thoughts.”
You can’t do this, Joel.
You’re too young.
You don’t have the experience.
Nobody is going to come.
It took Osteen at least a year to build up his confidence. How? Joel Osteen hit the ‘delete button’ on negative self-talk, replacing words of defeat with words of victory.
“If I had let those negative thoughts play over and over in my mind, they would have contaminated my confidence, contaminated my self-esteem, and contaminated by future,” Osteen writes in his new bestselling book Think Better, Live Better.
Nearly every inspiring leader I’ve met has dealt with periods of doubt. They’ve faced doubt about their leadership qualifications, doubt about their public-speaking ability, doubt about their ability to make an impact. Osteen did the right thing. He reframed his internal narrative, changing the dialogue in his head. Psychologists and researchers call such reframing, ‘cognitive reappraisal.’
According to this article in The Wall Street Journal, “Performing a cognitive reappraisal isn’t turning off your negative thoughts—that is almost impossible to do without replacing them with something else. It is also not about turning untrue negative thoughts into untrue positive ones. The goal is to reframe your thoughts constructively, so they are based in reality.”
The problem with much of our self-talk is that it’s based on biased information. It’s just plain wrong. Researcher turned TED Talks phenomenon, Brené Brown, calls negative self-talk an “unreliable narrator.” Brown says the most dangerous stories we tell are internal narratives that “diminish our inherent worthiness.” When we fail, she says, we tend to make up stories about why we messed up, and it’s often based on faulty information. “Some of us become addicted to our stories, endlessly looping them in our heads.” According to Brown, successful leaders “rewrite the stories” that shape their identities. They become adept at “putting outdated stories out of their misery and create new ones.”
PGA golf professional Jimmy Walker created new stories to become a champion. Walker is currently ranked 16th in the world, but when he first joined the PGA tour he was winless in his first 187 tournaments. Walker changed coaches and won three of his next eight events. Coach Butch Harmon decided Walker’s internal narrative needed more fixing than his swing mechanics.
When Walker was asked by Golf Digest how his coach helped him gain confidence, he said, “It’s just the repetitive nature of telling you how good you are. How good of a putter and chipper you are. How you’ve got this. You can beat the best players in the world. You’ve got all the talent. You just have to believe in yourself. When a guy like that keeps putting that in your ear, you can start to believe it.” In Walker’s case, his coach was the chief storyteller and eventually Walker himself changed his internal narrative on the golf course.
When Jimmy Walker won the PGA Championship in July, USA Today wrote, “To look at him now – the assertive, purposeful long strides down the fairway, the confident look as he stands over the ball for his approach, the poised appearance as he eyes a birdie putt – it’s unimaginable to think he once questioned his ability to win.”
When people see a leader who has poise, presence and confidence—on the golf course, behind a podium, or in the workplace—they assume the leader always had it together. They believe the leader was born confident or a naturally-gifted and charismatic speaker. It’s rarely the case. Most successful people have had to work through periods of self-doubt. None of us are immune from the negative stories we tell ourselves, but some are quicker to reframe the narrative.
“Presence stems from believing in and trusting yourself,” writes Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy. “Whether we are talking in front of two or five thousand, interviewing for a job, negotiating for a raise, or pitching a business idea to potential investors, we all face daunting moments that must be met with poise…Presence gives us the power to rise to these moments.”
In Cuddy’s bestselling book, Presence, she cites studies by professors David Creswell and David Sherman. In a series of experiments, they found that people who are asked to think and write about their unique and most valuable qualities ahead of a stressful situation [such as speaking in front of a panel of stoic, expressionless judges] are far less anxious than those who do not. The studies conclude that a strong and positive internal narrative can actually act as a protection against anxiety.
During my conversation with pastor Osteen, he said that all of us have gifts and talents that we’ve not tapped into. He calls it the “treasure inside you.” As life goes on and we get older, however, the ceaseless bombardment of negative thoughts keeps a lid on that treasure. Reframing your internal dialogue early and often is your key to success. Your internal narrative is the most important story you’ll ever tell.
Pass this advice to your friends. Share with them.
Subscribe to us
100% Free.
close