James Smith: Become Confident In 100 Minutes | E174

I was failing. (instrumental music plays) That was the point for me where I was like, "I need to do things differently." Hardest thing I've ever done.

It's James Smith, free-talking personal trainer. He's helping you get confidence.

Some see James' curse-filled rants as confrontational.

Oh, James, can be an arsehole. (beep) James, good to see you again.

Self-esteem and confidence is decaying. When you're at that place of feeling that you don't have enough confidence, it's actually a crossroads. It's a left and a right, action and inaction. Whatever you're not changing, you're choosing. Dating is such a big topic, because people either don't have the confidence required to meet someone, or they might not have the confidence to leave someone. We're allowed to be ignorant with these things, and we're allowed to be wrong, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't endeavor to get the best possible outcome.

What are you not confident about?

I constantly have these battles in my head. "Why did I create this fuss? Why did I have sweat patches from such a simple interaction of being uncomfortable?" I have the same insecurities, the same fears, feelings of inadequacies. Sometimes my biggest fear is... Losing is not the same as being defeated. You have to be audacious. You have to put your head above the parapet. I'm sure I'm gonna be absolutely slammed for saying this.

So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. James, good to see you again.

Thank you very much for having me back.

It's, uh, it's... I've got to say, we don't have many guests back, but, um, our conversation was so inspiring and surprising to me. When I, I messaged you the other day and said, "If you're ever back in London, I'd love to have you back on," and then I learned that you'd written a book about confidence. Why did you write a book about confidence?

Well, it's kind of interesting that through my entire career, I've learnt something personally, and then I've, you know, taught other people kind of the processes. So the first book, Not a Diet Book, I went through years of fitness industry bullshit that we spoke about before.

Mm-hmm.

And kind of by the end of it, through my own journeys, I was like, "I could teach people about this." And I didn't want to write a diet book system. I was like, "Let's, you know, break down everything and put it into a book." Then the second book offer, I was like, "I can't do another one." If I'd written a second book about fitness, it would've said a lot about the first. You know, when people do sequels to things, I'm like, "Oh, you must've done a great job." And I kind of realized by accident that my work/life balance was pretty good and wrote the second book. A lot of the things we spoke about in that last podcast were based off I'm Not a Life Coach. Now, a kind of strange thing that I say to people is, "I'm not a very confident person." I have the same insecurities, the same fears, the same feelings of inadequacies as the majority of people. But I kind of have a set of values and a way that I see these problems where I can break them down and dismantle them. And in the book, in the first chapter, I say, "A lot of people sit back, and they think other people are confident as if it's a trait, like height, or people said it's a superpower." But straightaway, I actually typed that, in the first part of the book, I was like, "Confidence is a superpower." But then, superpowers aren't accomplishable by mortals. It's almost something out of your reach. And I'm a big believer that confidence can be within people's reach. And even chatting to people in the same profession, they have a problem or a fear, uh, of judgment, of whatever it is, and if I could spend five minutes with that person, I can motivate them to post on social media, to prospect more with their business, whatever it is. And I've realized it's not something people are lacking, it's more so the way they perceive and view their reality.