today’s letter today’s letter comes to us from little Nico. Little Nico writes Dear George G. What is competence? And where does it come from? Great question little Nico, thanks for taking the time to write in topic, a subject that’s near and dear to my heart as I consider myself to be a confident, self assured person. And I also consider confidence to really be one of those superpowers that I like to talk about one of those superpowers that we could all tap into, and would turn us into superheroes and would be able to do extraordinary things. What does What does confidence give you? What what what what is it? I think that it’s a belief in oneself, it is a self assuredness, it is a feeling, and knowledge and belief in one’s abilities. It is experience that I’ve been here before. I know how to handle this, whatever the situation throws at me, I don’t know what it’s going to be. But I am confident in my ability to navigate through it, to put my focus my time and attention to allocate resources towards something, and not knowing what’s going to happen, because I don’t know what’s going to happen. But having a belief that going to be able to make it happen, whatever it is, I think that that’s what confidence is, what would you do with more confidence? What would your life look like? If you are more confident person? How would it manifest in your relationships? How would it show up in your work? How would your life be different? Just what comes to mind for me is a confident person understands their value, they understand their worth. And those are terms that we encourage people to know your value Know your worth. And that’s all fine and well. But that sounds easy and does hard. Right? That’s a simple thing, but not easy thing to do. So if you had more confidence, would you advocate more for yourself? Would you ask for the promotion? Would you ask for more opportunities? Would you approach that person who had been seen at the coffee shop or at the gym and introduce yourself? Would you ask for more opportunities? Would you start a business? Would you become an investor? Would you would you would you would you? If you had more confidence if you had a greater track record of success? If you had more belief in yourself? Would that make a difference? Am I make all the difference? But then for me, it’s made a massive difference in my life. Now, the thing about what confidence is, it’s combination of a lot of things. I think that being confident means that you have developed in knowledge and know how. And you do, you’ve developed that through obviously learning how to do something, and then repeatedly doing it doing it time and time again. So you’ve again, had this track record, you have a sense of I’ve been here before. So that’s an important aspect of it. I think that having courage and being courageous, is also is that a prerequisite for confidence? Or is that part of confidence? That’s that’s interesting, that you put those two things together, you put together experience, you put together know how you put together courage. And then you have the ability to operate more effectively more comfortably in the world with less apprehension. I think that that’s a big part of what confidence is. So I know that confidence to self of self assurance comes from our appreciation of our abilities or the qualities that we have. It means we have this belief in our in our ability and our capability to handle challenges effectively. We get it from successes that we’ve had in the past, achieving things having positive outcomes. When you don’t have any track record and you’re trying something for the first time. Really scary. Think about teaching my kids how to ride bikes, terrified, you have the potential to fall down and hurt yourself. It is you traveling at a speed faster than you’ve ever traveled. Granted, you’ve been in a car but it’s just a different thing. but once you get on the bike, you’ve fallen down maybe a couple of times, but you figure it out. So now you can finally get on a bike and you ride it. Like this is awesome. It’s easy. It’s super fun. Well, that’s really a small, little microcosm for what confidence really is. And then you start doing yourself, you say, You know what, I’m a bike rider, like 100%, ride a bike. So self esteem is a really, really important thing. And self esteem is, is is a really a pretty tricky thing. And I think the important part of it is that that’s something that must be earned. You cannot, from my perspective, give another human being, self esteem, no matter how much we want to No matter how much, it would be great if everybody else was self assured, if everybody had a great self image, if they had a high level of self esteem, you can try to give it to somebody. But unless you really have it earned, I don’t think that people really believe it. And the self esteem movement that I’ve spoken about and talked about in the past, the whole problem with participation trophies, is just that for a lot of it, it is BS, and people know it. Kids know it, like hey, you know, you lost by 500 points. But here’s your trophy, great job, solid effort. Okay, maybe, but maybe not. So, it is how you view yourself. It’s your level of self esteem, which comes from your track record of success. I think that having a good support system, having people that care for you, love you, coaches, friends, advisors, advocates, mentors, these helped to bolster confidence, we need to get good at something we need to pursue mastery. You don’t need to be the absolute leading expert to have confidence. But we have to be on the track and be learning and developing competence and skills and education. 100% leads to more confidence. If I am somebody who has a track record of passing tests, if I understand how to study, if I understand how to calm my nerves by understand how to how to effectively take a test and manage my time and my energy and my attention, well, I’m going to be a lot more confident. Versus if I walk into a test, not having studied, not knowing how long it is not knowing just what the format is or how much time I have, my odds of being successful on that test are a lot lower. So all this stuff is important. And Matt mindset, your attitude is also an important thing. I think that we all know people who are cocky, who are who appear to be confident, but it’s misplaced. It’s not necessarily earned, it is a little bit premature. But having a mindset of growth, mindset of, of learning, of enthusiasm of of full engagement and commitment. I think that that 100% fosters confidence. And I touched on this, but just being prepared. Being prepared presents positions you for success. Luck is the residue of designed design, Chance favors the prepared mind, if I’ve done the work, I have trained. And that’s if like I talked about being ready for a test or if it’s an athletic competition, or if I am going to be putting on a piano recital or acting in a play or something like that I’ve got a dance recital. If I know my moves, or my lines, and I’ve rehearsed and practiced and done it over and over again, through repetition, that’s gonna help me be more confident for sure.

I think that I’m definitely going to be a lot more positioned for success or positioned for success and feeling good about everything that I’m doing. So these are ways to 100% Have confidence. So if you’re interested in building it, thank that starting small by setting and achieving goals, making the manageable goals. You give yourself a history of success, a track record of success. If you say every day, these are the three things that I’m going to do. These are the five things that they’re going to do. And you write them down. And then throughout the course of the day, you cross them off the list and you keep track. We can look back at the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month, the end of the year and say hey, you know what? I just proved to myself, I showed myself that I can do these things that I’m perfectly capable of setting the goal, setting an intention to do something and then executing on it. That’s a super powerful thing that will make you more confident. Having positive self talk I am a pretty hypercritical person I am tougher on myself than anybody else certainly isn’t. I think that that’s probably common for most people who fancied themselves to be high achievers, which I certainly do fancy myself to be a high achiever. And I need to remind myself that while if probably, I don’t think that being so hard on myself is having a negative impact probably does. So it’s better to have positive self talk. So getting rid of negative thoughts, getting rid of negative self talk, replacing it with positive, focusing on what you’re good at what you’ve done, it’s gonna position you for success, more so than beating yourself up. And learning and practicing talked about the importance of mastering your skill, whatever it is, and every avenue of life, your work your professional life, your relationships, your work to become a better parent, are you working to become a better partner, you’re working to become a better professional, you’re working to become a better pickleball player, or trumpet player or drummer, whatever, these are so important, it’s also critical that we take care of ourselves. So endorphins are a real thing. Having a fit, strong, healthy body will help your self confidence, there’s just no two ways about it. If you don’t think that that’s true, and you are not currently a strong, healthy person, well give it a shot, I think that you will discover that it’s going to play a massive role in how you feel about yourself. And even better, if you can get up a little earlier in the morning, move the body a little bit, do something that’s uncomfortable, you will benefit from that and feel great for the rest of the day, knowing that you’ve already done a difficult thing, you’ve already proven to yourself, your ability to get out of bed, to reject comfort, and to embrace discomfort, that’s gonna help you to become more confident, much more self assured. When we face your fears, the things that you are frayed of the things that make you uncomfortable. That’s a lot of where learning happens. That’s a lot of where you’ll make your gains. There’s plenty of things that I’m uncomfortable with. Or rather, there’s plenty of things that I used to be very nervous about. And not comfortable doing that now I really enjoy, and I couldn’t be more comfortable. Public speaking is one of the biggest fears for many, many Americans. In fact, that might be the biggest fear of Americans. And I used to be very uncomfortable doing it the thought of getting in front of a roomful of people, or rather, even raising my hand in class was uncomfortable for me. Small groups, just talking about introducing myself, that was uncomfortable for me. So today, I speak in front of hundreds of people really consistently, almost on a weekly basis. And you know, doing a podcast doing a video like this, when you see the red light flashing? Well, that’s a nervous thing. That’s an uncomfortable thing. And without question, for the first many podcast episodes that I recorded, super nervous, super uncomfortable now 1000s In, it’s a lot more comfortable. So just gradually exposing yourself to certain situations that make you uncomfortable, and make you anxious. That’s how you overcome those fears. And then when you do that, you’re showing yourself, you’re giving yourself evidence, wow, I’m a person that can face my fears that can overcome them and can actually be comfortable and even thrive in these kinds of situations. And it’s important to, I’m not saying that you need to throw yourself a parade or a party every time you do something difficult. But it’s important to reflect on your success, to remind yourself of just how far you’ve come the things that you’ve overcome and the things you’ve accomplished. I bet there’s a lot of things that you can point to and say, look, look what I did, I didn’t think that I was the kind of person that could do X, Y or Z. But I totally am, I am that kind of a person. In fact, I am that guy, or I am that gal or I am that whatever however you think it yourself, I am the person who does these things. I’m a person that does difficult things. And I think that that is extremely powerful. And I think that we’re all perfectly capable of it. I think that there is I know that there’s evidence that says if you adopt a really strong posture, know, stand up straight, put your shoulders back, put your chin up a little bit. Just adopt that kind of an athletic posture. There’s evidence that says it’s going to help the way that you feel about yourself and the way that you physiologically feel not just intellectually and mentally. So all these things. And then certainly, just because you’re prepared doesn’t mean that it’s always going to work out the way that you want it to. And we probably all know and understand that but just keep it in mind that failures. These are wonderful teaching and learning opportunities. Say, Okay, what did I do wrong? And how can I do better next time. I mean, as the saying goes, if you hit, if you’re a baseball player and you’re successful three out of 10 times, you’re on the Hall of Fame, for goodness sakes, because you’re hitting 300, you’re batting 300. And so that’s at the absolute highest level, you’re failing seven times out of 10, but still, really, really celebrated. So let’s talk about some sort of practical things that you can be doing mediately. I think that every day, it makes a lot of sense to start your day with intention, decide this kind of day, I’m going to have, I’m going to be really positive force today, I’m going to have excellent presence, I’m going to show up and absolutely do my best, I’m going to have wonderful energy, it’s going to be infectious people are going to feel the electricity around me make the decision to do that. And I think that you will be very pleasantly surprised by the reaction that you will get, you will have an infectious energy and people will want to be around you think that the more we can be developing new skills, learning something new, whatever it might be thinking new thoughts, explore new ideas. That’s not the but a good thing. That Helping others is also a really beneficial thing that can help to improve your confidence. I mentioned public speaking a minute ago. If it is, in fact, one of your fears, I advocate that, you start to do a little bit more of it. There’s all kinds of groups like Toastmasters and things like that, where you can get the opportunity to get up in front of people and practice and improve your public speaking skills. And when you’re able to do that, you’re just able to articulate your viewpoint, you’re able to get your point across to get your ideas across to challenge other people and have a have a great dialogue. And then the more thoughtful that we can be about things. That’s all for the better as well. Because fallibility is a feature of humanity, it is not a bug. And the more we can pay attention to how we think and feel in certain situations and what we can get better at and where our emotions are taking us. The more we can be thinking about what we’re thinking about, the better thinking we’re going to do, the more critical thinking we’ll have, it’s not a bit of really good thing. And understand that it’s not an overnight thing, just because all of a sudden, something went your way doesn’t not make you a competent person, it might make you a confident person. But a lot of the time, it’s going to be a gradual process, where you’re proving to yourself, that you are somebody who you can rely on, can I rely on myself, think about who you have confidence in the people you have confidence in? Why is it that you have confidence in them? Oh, probably because you know, what you can expect, you know that that person shows up and they bring it, it’s predictable. And that’s a good thing. We want to be reliable. We want the people we care about and the people that are in our lives to be reliable. So think about that. And recognize how can you become more reliable? How can you become more dependable? How can you be more consistent and show up and deliver at high level? If you’re the kind of person that does that? Well, you should be a very, very confident person. So in terms of money, in terms of being financially confident to talk about, I think if you had more confidence, would that help you to advocate more for yourself in your professional life? Would you step up,

take on more responsibility? Would you if there’s an opportunity, do you take it? Do you see an opportunity where responsibility has been abdicated and you can pick up the ball, you can pick up the responsibility, accept the responsibility, take on the biggest challenge and pick up the heaviest thing that needs to be carried. You’d be the person to pick it up, ask for a raise, ask for a bonus, ask for more, ask for something a little extra. Maybe it’s time to start a business. Maybe it’s time for you to become an investor. Maybe it’s time for you to have an uncomfortable phone call with a creditor somebody who thinks that, you know, there’s just so many different scenarios. But as you are working to get out of debt, do you have the confidence to do the things that it takes to do that? Because it takes a confident, courageous person to sometimes do the things that it takes to get out of debt? Because odds are, odds are the behaviors that got you into debt are not going to be the same behaviors that get you out of debt. A lot of the time in order to make the changes that need to happen in order for change to happen. In our lives, particularly when it comes to money, it’s incumbent upon us to have the courage to sometimes take a step back. And to reduce lifestyle, not forever, but maybe for a little while, till we can get out of debt, move from Red back end of the black, and start moving forward in a more positive manner, and requires a competent person to be able to say those things, to be able to look yourself in the mirror and to say, I’ve made some dumb moves, made some terrible financial decisions. But that doesn’t define me. That’s not who I am. In fact, this is a new me, it’s a new me who’s going to make better decisions is going to make the tough decisions, and the uncomfortable decisions, whatever those might be, in order to position myself to take a bunch of steps forward, I’m confident enough to take a couple steps back. Once I do that, successfully, that I can really start taking huge strides forward towards the life that I truly want to find the financial situation that I truly want, not the one that I’ve sort of got myself stuck into. So I think that the first thing that we need to do as you’re trying to establish is you’re trying to establish financial confidence, money, confidence, however you want to think about it, you need to find financial peace of mind first. And that is function of taking on the responsibility of, it’s never going to be anybody more interested in my financial success than I am, which is high close, every one of these shows never going to be here. But there’s never going to be anybody more interested in my financial success than I am. And I accept the responsibility. I’m going to take charge of my finances, my future is going to be better than my past. Okay, that’s step number one. Step number two is you need to get some money saved up, get 1000 bucks saved up in an account that’s separate from your everyday from your everyday checking account, stop doing anything until you have that. Once you’ve done that, then you start paying yourself first, you put yourself first you’re in the habit of putting everybody else first, and then waiting around to the end of the month to pay yourself, well, you’re going to quickly discover that there’s never never any money left over for you. So you need to put yours and your family’s interest rate where they should be, which is numero uno, you do that by paying yourself first, then you can enroll in your company’s 401k open up an IRA or, or B funding your emergency fund. And that counts. Those are all ways that we pay ourselves. Then once you’ve done that, I want you to start working on getting one month’s worth of expenses saved up. That’s a lot of money, I totally get it. But that demands it know what your monthly expenses, our demands, the have a budget, these are all really really really important things on your path to financial peace of mind, which will then pursue or give you the ability rather, to pursue competence when it comes to money. So get to one month saved up however long that takes you next step from there, get mad at your debt, consumer debt, if you get credit card debt, it’s time to put a plan together and attack that debt, get mad at it paid off all along, that’s going to take you got a free course it’s called get out of debt. You can access it on the website, money, lemon academy.com under courses, get a debt free course and I’ll help you put a plan together. Once you’ve done that, then I want you to get to two months saved up then three, then four, then five. And then finally six months worth of expenses saved up. And again, I know how hard all this is. But you can do it. You’re fully capable of doing these things. Once you’ve done that left, tension come on your shoulders, you could take a deep breath. That’s financial peace of mind right there. Get your debt paid off, even paying yourself first got six months, but the cash, you’re in good shape, you’re now position to really pursue financial confidence. But I bet I just bet after going through that process, you’re going to be a lot more financially confident. You’ve proven to yourself, the ability, the wherewithal, the grit, all these things that it takes to do those stick to do those steps that I just laid out. And you should be confident you should feel really good about yourself, you should be self assured. It’s going to help you get financial security. And then from there with the confidence you’re going to be able to pursue financial prosperity, be a person who is an investor, you can invest in the stock market you can invest in real estate you can invest in so many different places, but those are all going to help you so all nothing but a positive thing. So I think that once you have a record of success, wherever it is, whatever aspect of life or whether Avenue or area of life, I think that there is a power of trance tivity that says, Well, I certainly have been successful in this arena or this area of my life. I wonder if that’s going to translate over to this area? And I think that the answer is yes. I think that the answer is yes. When you demonstrate that I have a record of success, I have a demonstrated history of success. I’ve proven to myself, I have a sense of certainty that I am capable of doing difficult things. I know how to get better at things, I know how to execute. I know how to complete tasks. I know how to get things done. And so while there’s no guarantee that you’re going to be good at the thing, that you’re all that the new thing, well, why wouldn’t you be? And I think that you can confidently approach that new endeavor, that new situation and say, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But if I apply the same things that helped me to be successful in these other areas, I bet I just bet, I’m going to enjoy success in these other areas as well. That’s certainly been the truth been true for me in my life. And every aspect of life. And when you have confidence, it takes it says that, you know, I’m a highly confident, self assured person. And that’s true, because I’ve done many things I’ve set my mind to not everything, I’ve certainly fallen short in many things, but a lot of things. I’ve proven to myself, that I have the discipline, the grit, the wherewithal to accomplish things, I can harness the power of single minded determination to bring my desired future into my current reality. So if you are, and just just just just from my work, can you be a highly confident new financial professional? Yeah, I think that the answer is yes. You don’t have to have 20 years of experience, and this is true of anything. Can you be a highly confident attorney, couple of years out of law school, a couple of years practicing law? Sure. If you have a demonstrated, if you have demonstrated success in other areas of life, why wouldn’t you take all of that learning all that grit, all that know how all that courage, all that confidence into every endeavor of your life, and still operating with humility. Because the most successful people I know, literally, the most successful people I know, are operating from a place of gosh, I just don’t know anything at all. But I’m here, showing up doing the best that I can. And I’m confident self assured enough to be able to say these things. And to continue moving forward and doing everything that I need to do with confidence. I think that a big key to all of this is really knowing what matters, knowing what must be done in service of what matters, and then actually doing what needs to be done. Life is very cluttered these days, we have so much clutter and junk and noise, and it’s hard to find the signal, it’s hard to find our true north. But when you know what matters to you, you know, the seller stuffs just minutia. It’s just noise. It’s keeping me from doing what must be done. I have clarity. These are the items I’m going to do today. If I get these things done, well the rest of it, that’s going to have to wait I did the most critical things. When you make habits of doing what must be done. That is I think that that is a huge key right there.

Too many people major in minor things. And the main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing. So understanding this is what’s important, says what must be done in service of what’s important. And I consistently deliver and do what must be done, to get what I want and service of what matters. I think that that’s the whole trick. Now, all that being said, doesn’t mean that you have everything that you need, doesn’t mean that you’re not constantly going to need to be leveling up and doing new learning. And that’s because that’s that’s the reality, especially as you start leveling up, let’s say as you start doing more and more better things and different things. And as you advance in your career is going to be more demands and more needs, and you’re constantly going to need to be learning. That’s I promise that that is going to be the case. So we need to figure out how to also overcome ourselves how to give ourselves what we need to be successful. And that comes in the form of grace comes in the form of systems. But it’s also that honesty with ourselves of this is An area that I’m struggling in, I’m struggling to do this, or I’m falling down or lacking in the amount of activity, or whatever it is, I’m just not currently doing the things that I know I need. So putting your head in the sand and just saying, Oh, well, that’s not acceptable. You need to determine what you need to do what needs to be done. So you need to determine what you need to do what needs to be done. So if your job requires you to make phone calls, and you are scared to make phone calls, you need to get some support, you need to find somebody who you can make calls with. If you are scared of whatever it is, that’s okay, what’s not okay as you’re not doing it. So, determine what you need, what resources, what help, what support you need to do what needs to be done. So, get the help get, get the support that you need. When you do that over and over again, you’re demonstrating and proving to yourself that you are someone who is capable of doing anything that you set your mind to. That’s a superpower. That’s confidence. I’ve been here before, whatever the situation is. Think about your favorite athlete, think about your favorite performer. I’m a tennis player or former tennis player. And you look at all the greats. And tennis is normally dominated by one person. Over the past decade, it’s been a couple of people. But we normally know who the number one tennis player in the world is. And that person usually wins the majors. Look at Novak Djokovic, right now. Most confident human being on the planet, probably. Even if everything has gone wrong for him. He’s playing a five set match best to five and he’s down two sets to none. Oh, he’s been there before. And I’d still bet on him. I’d still bet he’s going to come back to win that match. Never know. But what I know for sure is he believes he’s going to come back and win that match. And that wasn’t always the case with with Novak Djokovic, earlier in his career, you just hadn’t come to the point where you had that level of self assurance that know how or that experience to draw from and to pull from that confidence of I’ve been here before. This isn’t where I want to be. But it’s not where I’m going to be for very much longer because I am going to figure out and do whatever it takes to get to where I need to go. And the executes. Same as same is true for you. You don’t have to be the number one tennis player in the world. To do that, whatever it is you’re trying to be great at. Follow the steps that I’ve been talking about. That will help you to be more confident, that will give you more self assuredness, if you’re trying to get out of debt, if you’re trying to be the first person in your family to go to college, or the first person or you can help your kids to be the first people in your, in your family to go to college. Or you can be the first person to retire first person become a millionaire, the first person to do do whatever it is you want to do. Start small, start proving to yourself, you’re the kind of person who’s fully capable of doing whatever it is that must be done or that you want to do. So little Nikko, circling back to you. Thanks again for the letter. I bet you are a person who was going to absolutely do incredible things. Start small, every day. Do something that’s a little bit hard to do something difficult. Do it early in the morning, get up, move your body, do some push ups, do some sit ups. Get up run around the block. Do that for a couple of weeks. Do more push ups, do more sit ups, do some pull ups run around the block twice. You get the idea. You keep doing that. You’re going to develop confidence. You’re going to develop self reliance, you can develop self assuredness, just going to prove to yourself that you’re the kind of person who can do whatever you set your mind to. That’s a superpower. So thanks again for the letter. Finally for the reminder, it’s never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are. So act accordingly.