73 Jordan Harbinger: How to Increase Confidence and Overcome Fear of Rejection

This week on the School of Greatness podcast, Lewis Howes and Jordan Harbinger discuss the journey of cultivating a confident way of being. It's a powerful one. To get the show notes and more valuable information about the two, we welcome you to www.lewishowes.com/73 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 73 with Jordan Harbinger.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Hey, what is up, greats? Thanks so much for tuning in today on the School of Greatness Podcast. My name is Lewis Howes. I'm your host. If you're joining me for the first time, thanks so much for tuning in. I appreciate you for checking out the show. And if you've been listening for all 73 episodes, then I thank you as well. I'm super pumped to introduce to you Jordan Harbinger, who's got an amazing podcast called The Art of Charm, and his business is called The Art of Charm as well. And what The Art of Charm is, it's an educational business and relationship platform to support you on social dynamics and understanding psychology

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  in order to win more friends, earn the respect of your peers, and they usually work with a lot of men to teach them how to get the girl of their dreams. Now, in this episode, we really talk about how to translate these social dynamics into business and into relationships for both men and women. So for the ladies that are listening, don't be turned off because all this can be translated for you as well. But Jordan goes into a lot of different things about how to build confidence. And we talk about if confidence is something you're born with, or something that can be learned skill. Talk about some really interesting and unique exercises for changing your beliefs about yourself and that internal conversation that

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  we have sometimes that holds us back from our own greatness. So he talks about a few really key exercises that I'm excited about to practice and learn because I think it's going to support me and taking me to the next level as well. So very excited about that. And then we just go into some other great stories and examples about how to become the best version of ourselves and really applying the right habits to increasing these skills in our daily lives with relationships and in business. So make sure to listen to the entire show. Jordan's a really smart, funny guy. I think you're gonna love this. So without further ado, let's jump into this class and these lessons with the one and only Jordan Harbinger.

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, your host, and I'm here with a friend of mine, Jordan Harbinger. What's up, brother?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Hey, man. Thanks for having me on the show.

• 2:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm super pumped. We've been friends for about a year and a half, maybe two years now, actually, since I moved to LA. And our mutual friend, Caleb Bacon, introduced us and we actually had dinner at some, you know, schwanky little spot in West Hollywood one night. And I was like, you know what? This guy's all right. So here we are a couple of years later. Been hanging out for a while, helping each other in business, you know, talking about different things. And I've been on your show, you've got The Art of Charm, and it's all about where ordinary guys become extraordinary men. And I like that. So you've got a really clean site,

• 3:35Lewis Howes?

  and you teach basically men what, you teach the art of charm. And then you talk about what the art of charm is. You say, well, teach you how to leverage the power of social dynamics in psychology to win more friends, earn the respect of your peers, and get the girl of your dreams. And to me, it kind of sounds like, you know, How to Win Friends and Influence People, the book, but how to learn it and actually be it, not just intellectually know it.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I love that. In fact, I might have to steal that. It's so true because I love that book. And that's one of the things that I started out with, right, is How to Win Friends and Influence People. I read that, you know, 10 years ago, and I was like, this is really cool. This guy's onto something. Maybe I should work with this guy and then I found out he died like, you know, 50 years ago.

• 4:22Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  So, so, because that book is from like 1936 or 38 or something like that.

• 4:27Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I mean, it's pre-World War II. But the book, the principles held up and then I went, okay, I need to learn how to apply all this stuff. And then I found out somehow, they're, of course, they're Dale Carnegie courses, but they teach you things like, and not to, not to dump on those guys, they're great, but they teach you things like, look him in the eye and be like, hi, my name is Jordan Harbinger. Nice to meet you. And I'm like, that's all fine and dandy, but what happens when you're doing all that stuff and people still think that you're a close talker or you have really bad body language that comes across as insecure?

• 4:59Lewis Howes?

  Or you have a quirk. Creepy, yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  You're creepy, you have awkward eye contact, there's a million things.

• 5:05Lewis Howes?

  Not genuine, yeah.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, disingenuous behaviors of any kind. There's a million things that can go wrong in romantic dating, business, social situations, and no one's gonna be like, hey Louis, I like you, but you're a close talker. I mean, I would have to be really good friends with you before I would be comfortable saying that. And nobody's gonna do that otherwise. So you're missing out on business and opportunities because, yeah, somebody thinks that you're awkward or somebody thinks that you're goofy or somebody thinks that you talk too close or you have bad breath or, you know, a million combination skills or a lack of skills when it comes to nonverbal communication can literally be the difference between somebody who's crushing it in business because of the relationships that they make and somebody who just can't get things off the ground.

• 5:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and you know, for me, the key to success really in anything, whether it's relationships or business or whatever, is understanding people and being able to communicate effectively, but also having the, uh, the social dynamics and understanding the psychology behind listening skills, behind speaking, behind body language. All of that comes into communication when you have to understand people. And that's really the key to being successful in anything. And what I like is that you guys teach this. You guys do workshops, you do, you know, three day type of retreats where people dive in and learn these skills because we're not born with these skills necessarily.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  We don't just have these skills and there's a lot of, you mostly work with men, but you know, we don't all just develop this on our own. It's something that really needs to be developed by practicing it. Wouldn't you say?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it definitely is a learned skill and a lot of people don't really believe that. I remember when I first started the Art of Charm with our team here, some of the critiques we were getting or criticism we were getting was really bizarre to us because it made no sense because we had learned confidence, we had learned relationship development, we had learned nonverbal communication. And then you'd get some guy who's like thirty, thirty-five, you know, we were in our late twenties at that time. And we would get some guys like thirty-five and he'd go, nah, you're either born with that or you're not. And it's like, wait, what? That's the most ridiculous thing in the world. It's not like being tall. It's like, it's not like having blue eyes, but people really thought that was the case. And it's kind of like you see an athlete and you go, oh yeah, well, you know, that took me years to realize that that was an excuse

• 7:24Speaker 01

  process and a bad mindset that people have. It'd be like looking at you as an athlete and going, yeah, well, you know, he was born with really good hand-eye coordination and with low body fat and really fast. There's some element of that, but at the end of the day, you practice every day. Right? Almost every day and you eat right. You know, you don't, you don't just walk onto the handball court and go, hey, guys, um, I kind of want to be a professional handball player. Is that cool? And they're like, yeah, sure, bro. You look tall. I mean, that's not how it works.

• 7:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's a journey for sure.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  It is. And people will do that with, with dating skills or with confidence in general or with relationship building. They're like, oh, well, he has the gift of gab. And I'm thinking to myself, I didn't say two words in pretty much all of middle school unless I was called on by the teacher. And then fast forward to now, I can't shut up and I get paid to talk. Right? This is a practice and learned skill set. Nobody thought I was a funny, charismatic guy in college. Nobody, nobody thought I was that way in high school. And in law school, I, you know, I sort of grew over time and actually faced a lot of resistance because of it where people were like, hey, what happened to you? First year you were all quiet, you know, shy guy in the corner and now you're a loud mouth. What's up with that? And you know, some people thought it was great. They're like, you're coming out of your shell.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  And other people were like, "Look at this guy, he doesn't know his place." You know, "You're supposed to shut up and be quiet, like you always did." You know, and I wasn't naturally like that. So what we do is, we teach this in a systematic, and this and emotional intelligence, really, are the keys. We teach emotional intelligence in a way that's systematic, that anyone can learn and master. So you'll get a guy who's an engineer, or something like that, or a software guy who's in a cubicle a lot, and he's like, "I'm stuck in this hole all day, I don't have this skillset." And then we'll also get guys, like, we had SEAL Team Six come in here, we had some Green Berets come in here, and they go, "You know, they were awesome dudes, and they didn't need this in order to reproduce or date girls."

• 9:25Speaker 01

  You know, they were killing it, but they're like, "There's a 0.1% chance we're gonna need this, and when we do, it's gonna be because it's a life or death situation, and we need to be able to deploy this skillset ASAP, expertly, without fail."

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. So, you know, when we talk about confidence, you know, because a lot of people, confidence is a big key to getting what you want, really. And being confident and exuding confidence. And, you know, you said that example, that 37-year-old guy who was like, "You either have this or you don't, you're either born with this or not." But is confidence a learned skill then? And if it's a learned skill, can you also lose confidence, or unlearn it?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. You totally can. In fact, there's a lot of guys listening right now who probably think, "Man, you know, in college, I was the man," or "In high school, I was the man," or "At my old job, I was the man," or "When I had my family," and it's usually followed by a dramatic circumstance change. So say you had a lot of situational confidence in college, or you were really the king of the hill when you lived in your town, and you were in the cool band in town, and you were also a bartender at the cool venue in town. Then you move to the big city, thinking you're gonna take your show on the road, and maybe, you know, your family falls apart, or, God forbid, right? Or you lose your job, or your band stops doing what it's doing.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  You might become much less confident, and a lot of guys come through because they're divorced, and they're like, you know, "I don't know." Where to start. I don't have confidence in this area because everybody has situational confidence. And by definition, that's only in certain situations. So that might be like you on the handball court playing arena football. You you're out there crushing it. And then maybe when you started speaking, and this might be a bad example because this might not be the case, but humor me. When you started public speaking, you might have been like, whoa, this is kind of terrifying. I don't really know what I'm doing here.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, no, that's true.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  It's true, right?

• 11:20Lewis Howes?

  It was true.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so and that's normal because for me, I can go up on a stage and speak to hundreds of people and so can you. But if somebody was like, alright, there's a crowd watching you play a sport, I'd be like, I just wanna, I just wanna go home right now. I do not want to play a sport in front of other people. I don't even like playing sports in front of myself. Let alone with like tons of people watching and women everywhere, you know, it's not my thing. I'm not good at that. I'm not good at that at all. And that that the thought of that is is mortifying. So like, there's tons of people out there that that have situational confidence. They're a college professor and they go up there and they're just killing it and they get hired into a great corporation and they're really killing it. And then there's a company softball game and they're like, whoa, this is my worst nightmare.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  You know, I the the boss at the law firm, he might have to put on the softball glove and then the interns are running circles around him sometimes literally. And it's the worst thing. It's his worst day of his life.

• 12:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  He just wants to sit down and drink wine.

• 12:19Lewis Howes?

  So how does someone? First, you know, for me to get kind of fall with that example, I did want to become a great public speaker and I was terrified to get in front of anyone after I was done playing football. And I said to myself, the only way to get to overcome this is to go through it by practicing every week. So I joined a Toastmasters organization in Columbus and I went and practiced standing in front of a small room of about 20 people each and every week. And sometimes I presented and sometimes I just answered a couple of questions, but I went through it as opposed to just thinking that I was going to be able to magically be good on stage without practicing it. So how does someone become more confident or increase their confidence level initially? And then

• 13:04Lewis Howes?

  how does someone do that when it's a new situation as well?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Sure, so confidence essentially, it comes down to this, your beliefs influence your actions, which influence your results, and that's one of the key principles at The Art of Charm is, so your mindsets influence what your body does and what you say and do, which influence your outcomes, right? So, we know that a lot of, for example, like, pick-up artist guys and weird guys like that, that really are not doing what we're doing, but are sort of trying to mimic those results, they do stuff like, "Okay, you need to wear this goofy hat, and you need to say this cool thing, and look this way, because it seems cool", but they don't bother attacking the mindsets that are toxic, right? The bad stuff that's causing them to be not confident in the first place,

• 13:48Speaker 01

  or the ideas that they have that are causing their lives to be where they are, right? And, that's a, that's a problem, because people who are really perceptive, and women are much more perceptive than men, generally speaking, they can see through that stuff in a New York minute. So, if you don't have, if you don't have the proper mindset, you're in trouble, and the same thing happens in sports, for example, I would imagine, where if you don't have that sort of killer, like, third quarter, fourth quarter instinct, where you're like, "All right, I'm tired, they're tired, I'm a competitive son of a bitch, but I wanna, so I wanna win this, so I'm gonna dig deep and get it", you know, discipline only matters when you need it.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter in the beginning of the game, where you're like all hydrated and fresh, right? It matters in the fourth quarter, when you just wanna go home,

• 14:36Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  and you're tied up, or whatever, and so, that's the way-

• 14:40Lewis Howes?

  So how does someone change their mindset then, to, you know, if the mindset's at the root of confidence, increasing your confidence, what are the things that we should be thinking first, before we start doing something?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  So, as we know, changing our thinking and changing our habits is a huge pain in the butt, right? It's not easy, it's really difficult, and the only thing that can really change mindsets is looking at evidence that your belief is not true, if it's not serving you. So, for example-

• 15:07Lewis Howes?

  Feedback.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Feedback, positive feedback, and, or negative feedback, if we're trying to get rid of something else. So, for example- If you are a guy and you're, you're short, a problem that you don't have, Louis. If you're a guy and you're short and you, and you walk around and, you know, women aren't, certain girls don't like you. You might have a story in your head that says, "Women don't like me because I'm too short." And then, maybe you go on a business trip to Japan, right? Just randomly. And all of these girls are like, "Oh my God, you're so tall and handsome." You don't necessarily keep that belief system, right? That you're too short. Of course, now you're probably like into Asian girls because they're shorter than you or whatever, but we'll take that aside. This is just an example, get your mind out of the gutter.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Um, but, you know, you'll take that example and you go, "Oh, okay." And then suddenly you might come back, say you're in Japan for a year, you're stationed over there. Now you come back to the United States, you don't, you're not thinking, "I'm too short." You're thinking, "Women love me, this is great. I don't have this problem." Same thing if you go to a sport, maybe if you went to go play basketball in Asia, you would, even though you're not necessarily a basketball pro, you would probably crush it with, you know, a lot of the guys around you because you'd be tall and athletic already. So you'd come back to the US if you'd never been here before and essentially thinking, "I'm really good at basketball. On an objective scale, I'm really good at this sport." Right. And, and that's a thing that, that takes a long time to format that behavior. So how do we get that positive feedback?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Well, we change a little bit of our physiology, we change our actions, of course, to try to influence our mindsets. And it can be really difficult, but that's essentially what we do at The Art of Charm. We have our, our live programs where guys come in and learn this stuff. And I'll give you guys a couple of, of drills right now, um, if you're interested to sort of go over some of the, the ways that we help change confident mindsets. And these are very simple and our, our podcast essentially, The Art of Charm, is every week we're doing like a ton of these things. So, for example, a lot of guys have bad posture and a lot of women have bad posture. And one of the ways that you read other people is by looking at their nonverbal communication. In fact, we know, and I'm sure you've heard this before, that nonverbal communication is the vast, it's like 70 plus percent or 80 plus percent of whatever communication.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  And that study's dubious, but you know from your own experience and from the science that... Nonverbal communication speaks much, much more loudly than words and actions are always louder than words. And we also know that people from science, again, that people trust what they see versus what they hear. Your body has a difficult time lying. So, and you've met guys that walk around going, "Oh, I'm so great. I'm so rich. My business is so great." But something in their body language, something you say, "Mm, this guy's not passing the sniff test. I don't want to do a deal with this guy."

• 17:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Right? And you're usually, you're looking at something that has to do with this nonverbal behavior. And this is like the Malcolm Gladwell blink, you know, looking at something, not knowing what it is, but having your quote unquote gut tell you, tell you otherwise. And so, we know that our body language affects our communication no matter what. And we know this happens in relationships and that your body language is a reflection of your internal state. So, your mindset is always communicated through your body language, whether or not you're an amazing actor and you think you're faking it. Somebody who's watching what's important can easily tell.

• 18:25Lewis Howes?

  They can read the cues anyways, yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  They, they can read the cues. And so, we spend a lot of time at AOC, teaching people how to read cues, as well as teaching people how to transmit the right communication. And the only way to really nail body language is to have proper, proper mindsets. Because you can't be thinking, "Stand up straight, look people in the eye, smile, move slowly, reach out and shake hands with people and you just stand, have your weight evenly distributed on both of your balls of your feet." I mean, you can't think about that stuff because you'd be in, you'd be such a weirdo in conversation because you'd be in your head the whole time.

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  And you'd be totally ungrounded, to use a little bit of a woo woo term, um, which, with which you might be familiar.

• 19:08Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  So, if we have our mindsets in place and we are naturally confident, and if you don't believe me, think about a time when you're naturally confident, you stand around looking good. You're upright, you're smiling, you're relaxed, you're open. Your, your weight is quote unquote evenly, all these little things that body language experts will tell you are signs of confident body language, they just happen. You're not, so what we need to do is focus on changing those, right? And so, one of the drills that we do... To get people into great posture, which is just one sort of element or channel of body language, is we say, alright, listen, you know, a lot of people hunch over, especially us guys that sit all day.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Yup.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  We hunch over a ton. So if you're at your desk right now coding away on a computer or programming or doing anything that requires a computer, which is like 99% of us most of the time, you probably sit way too much. And so if you're standing upright, you know that you're displaying confident body language. If you're smiling, that's confident. If you're open, you know, facing somebody with open body language, that's very confident. Now, how do we keep doing that? We need to build a habit. Well, the best way to build a habit, and this is just a beginner's drill again, and if you guys need more explanation of this, we talk about it on our show Ad Nauseum.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  You know, every time you walk through a doorway, straighten up, chin up, and smile. Just like, just like you have a light on your chest that you're gonna shine on other people in the room. You don't have to exaggerate it. You know, you're not, you're not Iron Man.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  You can, you can shine that light on people in the room and do it every time you walk through a doorway.

• 20:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  This is a tough habit to build, but think about it. How many times during the day are you walking through a doorway? Like a million times a day?

• 20:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  And so if you're doing that constantly throughout the day, then you're constantly changing your physiology to something confident and positive.

• 20:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  And not only that, think about when you make your first impression. It's usually when people first see you, not when you first see them, right?

• 21:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure, when you're walking through the door.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Right, when you're walking through the door. So if you're straightening up and you're smiling every time you walk through a door, you're changing your own physiology, which helps change your mindset. Cause we know that the mind follows the body and the body follows the mind. We've, we've already established that with that. Now, if you're doing that every time you walk in the door, not only are you changing those physiology, that physiology and those mindsets, you're also making a kick butt first impression on pretty much everybody that sees you, which is money, right? I mean, there's probably a million better adjectives than money, but it's great.

• 21:40Lewis Howes?

  It's baller.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  It's baller. It's greatness embodied.

• 21:44Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. So let's repeat that again one more time. So when you walk through, anytime you walk through a door, straighten, put a smile on your face. I would say a genuine smile, then

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:55Lewis Howes?

  Then, what'd you say? Straighten your shoulders.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, shoulders back. The easiest way to do it is, and this isn't something I invented with the string here, but string pulling your head up, string pulling you back down. You might even, if you have a trouble visualizing that straight line, just a string pulling your head up. And that's sort of a zen meditation yoga thing, I think. And if you imagine that string pulling your head up, your back's gonna straighten out, your chin's gonna be at the right level. And then the genuine smile, you know, that can be something that a lot of people in and of themselves need to work on. Because some people go, "Heh," and there's a weird plastic smile happening and it's awkward, you know? But if you think the people in this room might be my next business contact, my next life partner that I spend the rest of my life with,

• 22:41Speaker 01

  there might be some cute kids or beautiful flowers. I mean, anything you can appreciate, you can put that on. It doesn't have to be this beaming insane Tony Robbins smile. Like, you can have a real kind of calm, subdued, normal smile. You don't have to be like, "Bam, Billy May's here, you know, for the smile." You don't have to do that. You can just be totally natural. And in fact, the more authentic you can be with this, the more powerful it is. Because people connect with the real you, and whenever there's anything disingenuous going on, it's awkward. And so a lot of people right now are going, "But wait, you just told me to straighten up my body language and act confident, and I'm not. Isn't that disingenuous?" And here's the thing, it's not.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Because everybody, I believe this, and maybe I'm just, you know, drinking too much of the Kool-Aid here, but I believe that everybody, when they're with their friends and family, and when they're just relaxed and calm and doing something they love, and they're not overly stressed by the day and by life, they're naturally confident and relaxed, you know? And if you think about it, anytime, if you're listening to this right now and your life is a ball of stress and anxiety, it's probably because of work, your boss, maybe your relationship isn't doing so well, maybe all of those things are wrong. But I bet you could call your mom, brother, sister, someone in your family, a close friend, and you could go hang out, have a beer with them, and you'd be a totally different person. Right?

• 24:08Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  And, and we wanna be that person around everyone, wherever possible.

• 24:14Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  If you're, uh, uh, cause I remember when I was a kid, I was always such a ball of stress at school and I hated it. And I would skip and like stay home and program on my computer and stuff and I was just like this giant geek. And I remember having a friend come over after school one day and I was so silly and goofy and just funny. And he goes, I've never seen, I've known this kid for years. I grew up with this guy. I, I grew up with this guy, you know, we never really hung out that much after school, just during school and at sports and stuff. And with other people and it was just me and him and he goes, I've never seen you like this in my whole life. Why don't you bring this to school? You'd be the most popular guy there. You're hilarious. And I didn't believe him, of course, cause my mindsets were poor.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  But at the same time, I thought, wow, I feel so good and so light right now, but when I go to school, everything clenches up. And if we can release that by displaying and, and that confidence and changing that mindset so that we're confident, not just in one situation where you're the drummer on stage in a band, or you're playing arena football, but in any situation that you can, if you can display that everywhere and you can change your physiology and mindsets to get there, man, you are gonna feel a million times better and that in itself is attractive.

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Yeah. I mean, a lot of business coaches and life coaches or coaches in general will say, um, and I know you've heard this, how you do anything is how you do everything.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:33Lewis Howes?

  So you can't, you can't just do it once and, uh, expect to like have it pop up, like be confident like once every, every three days or something when you go to a meeting. It's like, if you're gonna be dragging and lazy and insecure and have this like baggage most of the time, then that's probably gonna ha- translate into when you wanna be confident. You're not gonna be able to step up into this confident being that you could be unless you're practicing it constantly. And of course, there's gonna be ebbs and flows and moments where we're, you know, having a remorse or grief or having downtimes. But I think the more you practice, I like that, that drill of like going through a door and practicing being confident

• 26:14Lewis Howes?

  and expressing it in a genuine way, that's gonna be automatic, like Jordan was saying. So I really like that exercise.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny you should mention how you do anything is how you do everything and that a lot of people expect that they'll be able to do this, because I remember 10 years ago when I started learning this stuff. I remember thinking to myself, oh, you know, uh, when I see like this girl tomorrow that I have a crush on, I'm gonna like walk up and every guy knows what I'm talking about right now, because we've always done this, or like, alright, you know, whenever I see the opportunity to get this kinda like business deal, I'm just gonna walk up there and be like, "Hey, I've got the right thing for your business," you know, or whatever. And we never do that. When we see that, when that happens, we always make excuses, because we don't, and I heard this from the Green Berets and Army Special Forces, so I can't totally take cred here, but

• 27:02Speaker 01

  it's, you never rise to the level of your expectations, but you always default to the level of your training. And what that means is, that's exactly what you were saying. It is powerful. It is. Because what that means is, you know, these guys might think, "I don't wanna shoot today. I don't wanna work out today because I'm tired." But here's the thing, if you're getting shot at by Al Qaeda in, on the Arabian Peninsula or whatever, you don't go, "Alright, time to get into superhero Army Special Forces mode." You are in extreme fight or flight, survival lizard brain, and the only thing that's working is the fact that you've shot 10,000 rounds in the past year, and you could probably hit a target at 100 yards,

• 27:46Speaker 01

  you know, basically with mud in one eye and blood coming out of the other, you know what I mean?

• 27:53Lewis Howes?

  That's a great visual. Yeah, I hope no one has that, but...

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, if you have that, stop listening and go to the hospital right now.

• 28:01Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  So, yeah, I wanna ask you this question. Why do so many men, why are so many men afraid to go up and talk to a woman when they think, "Wow, that woman is really attractive, I would love to talk to that woman"? How come basically 99% of the time, in general, most men won't go talk to that woman?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  You know what, it's fear of rejection and that doesn't surprise anyone, but I'm gonna dig a little bit deeper. And because everybody goes, "Well, yeah, duh, thanks." Uh, but, you know, we don't wanna get rejected. But here's the thing, we don't really know why, because women right now are listening and they're going, "Yeah, but we're not scary. I'm not gonna reject you. I'm not gonna throw a drink in your face unless you deserve it. I'm just gonna be like, I have to go to the bathroom. What's the big deal?" And, you know, women right now are also saying, "How come the only guys that approach me are the gross ones that I don't like?" And all the cool, normal guys who have their stuff together are like, "I'm scared. I hate that. Why does that happen?" The reason is because when you're a thinker, when you're a smart guy, when we're in our heads a lot,

• 29:07Speaker 01

  and also when you are somebody who's maybe confident in many situations, but not necessarily with the opposite sex, which is the vast majority of men, it has to do with any kind of feedback. So you might get a guy who's really confident in every area of their life, but one time in third grade, he wrote a girl a note and was like, "You're really pretty," and she told the whole class and he is scarred. And that trauma, as ridiculously childish as that is, made a dent somewhere in a mindset, in a subconscious part of this guy's brain. And I'm telling a personal story right now, that made a dent in somewhere in this guy's brain that says, "When you put yourself out there with women, there is an extreme danger

• 29:51Speaker 01

  that this could happen to you again." And that's insane, because in order for that to happen again, I'd have to walk up to a girl at a party, you know, at Lewis Howes' house, at your house, and have her be like, "Can you believe it? This Jordan guy actually thinks I'm gonna go out with him. What an idiot. What an idiot. That is never gonna happen. Get outta here, Jordan Harbinger." And that's totally never gonna happen. Even if it did, I wouldn't expect everybody, I think everybody would be appalled and she would be out on her butt. You know what I mean? Right. So like, it's not a realistic fear, but it doesn't matter, because our emotions guide us when it comes to this. This is completely reptilian lizard brain stuff that happens. And so, we have to spend a long time-

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Weeding out these mindsets that say, hey, women are scary. And that's why, when you think back to your childhood, maybe you knew a kid that had an older sister and maybe he was super confident with girls because his sister had the girls over to her house all the time. And he saw that they burp and fart like everybody else and they, you know, they swim in the pool and they talk about how insecure they are with boys. And so he got a good view of all that stuff and realized, oh, they're really not that scary. And pretty girls are just kind of like everybody else. And maybe you got another guy who had a, who grew up with a sister and he's not confident because his sister and her friends treated him like crap.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  And he thought, okay, well, girls don't like me, especially girls that are my sister's friends or look like my sister or remind me in any way of my sister or any of the friends that I saw in the 20 years growing up with her because they were all mean to me when we were younger. Now, as adults, as adults, they might all be madly in love with them, but it won't matter because that childhood mindset, that pattern was, was set and that fear was built.

• 31:42Lewis Howes?

  So how does someone, you know, whether it's getting rejected, a fear of getting rejected from a, a, a girl that they're interested in or a man that they're interested in, or, you know, they're getting rejected, no one's hiring them to find a job, or every time they put themselves out there to pitch to get a new client, no one wants to work with them. How does someone overcome or shift out of like this mindset? Because, you know, say you're getting rejected a lot, that doesn't feel good to anyone.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Right, that feedback, that feedback's not helping.

• 32:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like, oh, why do I want to keep putting myself out there if I'm never going to win? So what can someone do to like, you know, obviously it's, you probably got to, you go much more in detail in your trainings, but, uh, just sort of some mindset things that people can do to, to shift out of it so that they're not like. Terrified to put themselves out there again.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Sure, so one of the things that I had to do personally was we had a sales guy at the Art of Charm and he just, one day, he just quit with no warning. This is years and years ago. And we were, he quit when we called to wish him a happy birthday.

• 32:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Can you believe, because we were like, "Hey, you know, you're working remotely" and we just called to wish you a happy birthday and he goes, "Yeah, um, I'm, by the way, I meant to tell you guys a couple of months back, I'm not really gonna be working after like next week or so." So, and we were, we were freaking out because we thought, "Oh my God, we just lost like our revenue generating person." And this is not, we're like in, we're in launch phase, this is the worst, this is our worst nightmare. So I had to learn how to sell our programs, which was terrifying. Uh, because I was, I hated that idea that I would have to like ask for the sale and pitch and go develop relationships and things like that for the company. I thought that was,

• 33:30Speaker 01

  you know, totally gonna be someone else's job and I'd create this content and it'd be fun. And I had to learn, it was survival. And so I called thousand, tens, probably tens of thousands of people over the next few years and I heard no much more often than I heard yes. Because if I didn't, we'd be having this show on my jet if I'd heard yes all the time. But, you know, we had tons of rejection and the thing that steeled me, and I, and not, not stole, steeled, as t, you know, as in the metal, steeled me to that was the idea that every ten to fifteen to twenty-five or whatever the number was back then, people that I would call, who would be like, "Yeah, no thanks."

• 34:10Speaker 01

  They, there would be one that would be like, "Yeah, oh, awesome, this is amazing. I'm, I'm looking forward to this opportunity. This is gonna be great." And they would come in and have an amazing time. And so I'd go, "Oh, I'm actually doing people a favor." By persuading them to come to the art of charm because it's a life-changing experience.

• 34:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  So that mindset, and this is what you need to think about your own products and services as an entrepreneur. You need to be thinking, man, if they don't do this, they're making a huge mistake and I care about them enough not to let them make that mistake. And so if you believe in your products and services that much, you will still get rejected a ton. But when people reject you, you'll go, you know what, I feel bad that they don't understand how awesome this is gonna be. And then you look at your own processes and you go, how am I not communicating this? It's fixable. It's not that they go, and that's the thing, I had to learn to take it not personally, not take it personally.

• 35:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  It's really easy to go, no thanks, I don't want to go to the art of charm because I don't, I don't like red and black and those are your colors. Or whatever at the time, right? And I could have gone, he doesn't like me, what a jerk, I don't like him either, wah, I hate my life, you know, or whatever that follows from that. I easily could have done that, but what I did is go, okay, I'm doing something not quite on point that needs to be tweaked in order to communicate this. It's like, you know, if you write a sales letter, if you're a copywriter, if it doesn't convert, you don't go, everyone on the internet hates me. You go, alright, I need to tweak stuff so that it converts better.

• 35:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. I like that. Well, Jordan, this has been extremely helpful for me and I know you have lots of great tips and strategies and exercises that people can follow over at theartofcharm.com and at the art of charm podcast, which is absolutely free. I recommend everyone check it out, you're running it two or three times a week right now.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  And most of it is for, you know, enhancing the psychology and social dynamic skills for men. Wouldn't you say that's most of the episodes?

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we get, we have tons, I mean, thousands of female fans, but usually they're like, I'm applying some of it and I'm really enjoying the conversation about other stuff. And then there's a lot of entrepreneurial stuff and business stuff in there that women really dig, but I think, yeah, 90... Eight percent of our audience is dudes who are like, "Okay, great business stuff. Tell me how to meet and attract women and manage relationships."

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  But the thing is, once you understand how to meet and attract women, you can do that in any of the other, you know, in business as well. So it all, it all crosses over. So, you know, I think it's fascinating stuff. There's always, you know, I'm, as a single guy still, I, uh, I'm always learning ways to just connect with women. And not like a sexual way or try to like, you know, swoon them over or whatever it may be, but just like have a, have a relationship and have a connection and build that foundation with women. Because I think women are fascinating. They inspire me. They bring a lot out of me. Their energy is infectious, I think. So, the ways to like connect with women and obviously to apply these skills to connect with men, to connect with everyone.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  But, um, I think it's important for everyone to know, again, it's, if you want to really be a leader in your life, in your community, in your business, you need to be able to understand these type of social dynamic skills and understand people and what makes people tick. So, whether you're using it to apply to attract a woman or for business, these skills all cross, cross over. And I think they're valuable to learn and check out. So, yeah, make sure to check out theartofcharm.com. And where can we find you personally online? Are you on?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, people can email me. I answer everything. It's, I'm Jordan H at theartofcharm.com. Also, I'm on Facebook, of course. Uh, I encourage people to hit me up there just because it's something that I can see and check. But I'm also the Art of Charm on Twitter. If people are, people are still using the Twitters.

• 38:05Lewis Howes?

  Love it, man. Are you on Instagram too or no?

• 38:07Speaker 01

  I'm not, you know, it's just, it was, I had to draw the line at Instagram. And I think it's, I think it's cool, but I just don't take enough pictures. And I also am like, I'm not going to put a filter on this. And my girlfriend loves it. So I'm like, "Hey, join Instagram where I'm in every picture anyway."

• 38:26Lewis Howes?

  I love that. Well, I'll make sure to send everyone over there, over at the show notes. So check that out over at LewisHowes.com. And final question for the day before we let you go is, what is your definition of greatness?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  You know, I, that's a great question. I should have seen that one coming, right? You know, I, I think, and this might sound a little cliche, but I think people who are just going for it and not, well, all right, I'll try to keep it short. Life is a battle against this process of rationalization where you look at the clock in the morning and you go, I can sleep for another half hour because, and you make up some reason in your head that makes sense at the time. Or, I don't need to study for this test. I can keep hanging out with my friends because, and you make up some reason. Or, I don't need to pitch this right now. Or, I shouldn't talk to her. Or, I shouldn't create this business idea because it won't work. You're constantly rationalizing yourself back in, which is logically persuading yourself, back into your comfort zone. And I feel like my whole

• 39:22Speaker 01

  life is a constant battle against that process inside my own brain. And I think that people who achieve greatness, not that I'm there yet, don't get me wrong, but I think that people who achieve greatness are people who are absolutely ninja warriors against their own logical fallacies and logical processes that would normally keep them safe and comfy and cozy and mediocre.

• 39:47Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. I love it, man. Good definition. Thanks again, Jordan, for coming on. And make sure to check out theartofcharm.com in the show notes over at LewisHowes.com. Thanks, brother.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, man.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. And if you did, go ahead and share it with your friends over on Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Google+. Just go ahead back to the show notes at LewisHowes.com/73 to see all the different notes that we talked about, the exercises, the examples from Jordan, and all the other links back to his podcast as well, over on The Art of Charm on iTunes. I really appreciate you guys and all your support. Keep sending and updating those Instagram photos, tagging me where you're listening to the show all over the world. It's a lot of fun to connect with you over there. And make sure to check out the show notes, lewishouse.com/73. Got some big things coming up ahead in the near future, some huge guests that I think you're gonna love.

• 40:57Lewis Howes?

  And I'm so grateful that you guys come on here each and every week to hear who I bring on to teach these lessons on greatness. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today and make sure to go out there and do something great.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  It's pushing me down

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Down Down Down

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Down It's pushing me down Down

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Down

• 41:42Speaker 02

  It's pushing me down

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Down Down

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Down

• 42:09Speaker 02

  It's pushing me down