756 Believe in Yourself with Aubrey Marcus

YOU HAVE TO HAVE FAITH THAT YOU'LL FIND A WAY. Do you allow doubt to trickle in? Maybe I won’t make it. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m not the person for the job. Your self-belief has to be airtight if you want to go all the way. It has to be unwavering. Once you believe in yourself authentically, you will get others on board who believe in you, too. You have the power to create a movement. That’s why, for this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Aubrey Marcus where explains how champions use self-belief as a tool to win. Aubrey Marcus is the founder and CEO of Onnit, a lifestyle brand based on the holistic health philosophy Total Human Optimization. He regularly provides commentary to outlets like Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Doctors, and The Joe Rogan Experience. He has been featured on the cover of Men’s Health, is the author of the life-coaching course Go For Your Win, and author of the book Own The Day, Own Your Life from HarperCollins. Having self-belief doesn’t mean you’re cocky. It means that you’ve put in the work and you have the mindset to know you will accomplish what you set out to do. Learn why a strong belief in yourself is a key to success in any field in Episode 756. In This Episode You Will Learn: How champions use belief in themselves as a weapon (2:00) The way Conor McGregor uses self-belief to win fights (2:30) How to get your belief in yourself to 100% (5:45) Why politicians don’t use self-belief effectively (7:00) The line between confidence and cockiness (8:00) Follow me on instagram: @lewishowes 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 Five Minute Friday.

• 0:11Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to this episode. I'm very excited. My friend Aubrey Marcus has graced us with his time to come on and share some of his wisdom. Now Aubrey is the CEO and founder of OnIt.com, which has been a sponsor of mine and a big supporter of mine as an athlete, but also they've sponsored the show, The School of Greatness, from the early days. And he has just been a great friend. We work out together, we hang out together. I see him in Austin when I'm out there. He comes out to LA. We'll go hang out on the beach, or just go out to dinner and get some sushi. And it's always great to connect with him. He's got a brilliant mind in business, but a great philosophical mind as well. And he hangs out with champions all day long. He's

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  got a fitness company, and he's constantly training and hanging out with champions.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Champions utilize belief to their advantage. And I think in The Great Champions, belief becomes more than just something, "Oh yeah, I believe in myself." It becomes a weapon. And I think, you know, no more can that be seen than with Conor McGregor.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  And it's really interesting. It's really interesting with fighters, because fighters is a one-on-one contest, you know, and it's direct competition. There's not a lot of rules. There's not a lot of things in place. Just the bare minimum.

• 1:30Lewis Howes?

  It's not like five-on-five.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's not like there's a ball that you're at war, but we're actually just trying to get balls in nets, or cross lines, or something like that. It's a lot more like just a direct, physical, primal confrontation. And so I think one of the things that you're doing leading up to the fights, because you know who you're going to fight, which is incredibly terrifying. I've gotten in fights, but I've never known that. I was like, "I gotta fight this guy in this amount of time." Is we're, we're very adept at detecting other people's beliefs. We have great belief detectors because belief is such a powerful force in determining whether you'll be a success. As a biological evolutionary advantage, those people who could detect other people's belief certainly would have an advantage. So I think we're better at that than we realize. So

• 2:14Speaker 01

  when you're squaring off with someone and you have someone like Conor McGregor, whose belief in himself is at flat a hundred. Yeah. It is at flat a hundred. It's crazy. Like there's no wiggle room. So you're coming in and let's say you're pretty good. Your belief's at ninety-eight, five, you know, you're like, you have a little bit of doubt. Just like a little tiny little bit of doubt. But that's usually better than, than almost anybody you see. So, and then you're looking over at this guy Conor and you're thinking, okay, where's your ninety-eight? Where's that two percent? You know, where's that five percent? Where, oh shit, it's at a hundred. It's at a hundred. And then it starts to get you to question more and then your belief number drops and then you're down to ninety-five. Man, you still at a hundred over there? Okay, damn. So then your, your number starts to go down a little lower to ninety and then,

• 2:58Speaker 01

  then the fears start to creep in and then doubts about your performance start to creep in. But Conor uses that and he knows that and he uses it as a weapon. And it's not only against other people. He's so good at believing in himself, he tells people exactly what he's gonna do. Yeah. That's why they call him Mystic Mac. Cause they say, oh, against Chad Mendes, he said, within two rounds, I'm gonna knock his head clean off. Well, obviously that was an exaggeration. Nobody knocks their head clean off out of a video game. Yeah, yeah. Basically, he's gonna knock him out with a punch to the head. Right? And what happened? Chad got him down in some brutal positions, had him on the mat, was bouncing elbows off his head. His head was pinned to the canvas. He's bleeding. What's Conor doing the whole time? Just talking to him. He was talking. Just talking to him the whole time. Oh, is that all you got Chad? I'm gonna get up. I'm gonna knock your head off. Wow.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Oh, is that, you know, in his ear the whole time. His belief never wavered. So Chad's doing the very best he possibly can, crushing him ostensibly for all to see. But Conor's belief never wavered and then they pop up with like a minute left to go in that second round. Conor predicted he was gonna knock him out in the second. He's talking again. And what happened? The KO. Wow. You know, and even in, in the interviews, Chad's like, man, that guy never stopped talking the whole fight. So that belief just wore him down, wore him down, wore him down until finally the skills, you know, caught up and were able to Wow. to execute that. And I think You know, getting that belief to a hundred, that's gonna be hard. That's gonna take a lot of hard work. Cause you're not gonna be able to believe, you know, people say, oh yeah, what if I believe I can beat my Tyson?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Well, you're never gonna believe that because you haven't put in the work.

• 4:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  You're not that caliber.

• 4:33Lewis Howes?

  You haven't got the results.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  You haven't got the results.

• 4:35Lewis Howes?

  Close to him or whatever, yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  So belief is, a really good belief system is supported by evidence. And then there's that little bit of delta. There's that little bit of, I'm a little bit crazy. I believe this no matter what. And, and a lot of that is that mental override, that ability to just tell your mind like, I'm not gonna indulge any doubts. I'm going to do this. This is happening. This is the future. I am going to be a millionaire. I am going to have a bestselling book. I am going to start a company that's gonna change the world. I'm going to do this. And just believing that, and, and it's the characteristic you see across the board, from athletes to entrepreneurs. Their belief is the most unwavering. And people follow that belief. If you have that belief, and you want people to, to line up and join your team and be part of that cause, you know, work on your belief.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Do the, do the small steps to get you that belief. And then really, you know, really believe that.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  He just doesn't waver. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. He believes in himself that he can make it happen.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:33Lewis Howes?

  And he's building a movement around that belief and staying true to whatever it is that he believes. So.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  No doubt, no doubt. You know, and politicians, you know, they're, I don't have the highest respect for most politicians. And I've noticed them playing games with belief. They all say now, at a certain point, it shifted in the debates. Everybody started saying, when I am president.

• 5:53Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Like if you ask them, when I am president is what they'll all, what they'll all say, right?

• 5:57Lewis Howes?

  Smart.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  But it doesn't read authentic for most of these guys because they've had someone coaching them to say that.

• 6:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  They don't really believe it. Like, that's the, that's what people call the bullshit detector.

• 6:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, that thing's going off. There's gears flying off that one.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  When Ben Carson is saying, when I'm president.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  When you have 3% poll ratings or whatever.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. When I'm president, really? Jeb Bush? Really? You know, like, I don't think so, buddy. Like, you don't believe that. I don't believe that. What kind of game are we playing here?

• 6:26Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  You know, so, you know, you gotta be careful. There is that, a little bit of that fake it till you make it, but it's gotta be genuine. Cause people, you know, people will detect if you're just putting on airs. And that's, that's that line where it becomes cocky. Like Ronda Rousey. Yeah, cocky. She was super cocky and talking trash in a negative way. It's hiding some kind of insecurity, you know, then that insecurity was probably that shit, my team may not be really that good, you know. Or maybe she can beat me, or maybe she was a better striker. Maybe there are matchups that are different and, you know, the great thing is this gives an opportunity for her to learn, you know, and I have immense faith in Ronda because she is a great champion, you know, but she'll figure it out and she does have some good people on her team, Mike Dolce is on her team. Oh, there you go.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  So she's got some good pieces to that, she's just gotta, you know, sort out these other pieces and, you know, a great champion will adapt and, you know, I think that's obviously, there's a lot of other things that we could add on there, but another thing is great champions adapt. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like you put them in uncomfortable situations, they'll figure it out and a lot of that is belief, belief that, oh, this is a weird spot I'm in, like Conor McGregor, oh, this is bad, I have a, you know, partially torn knee and I'm on my back and this dude is bouncing elbows off my head and I have blood trickling on my face, not optimal, doesn't matter, doesn't matter, it's all part of the plan, you know. I think that's important and you just adapt and you get up and then you figure out the way to do it, you know, belief leads and then, you know, you just have to have faith

• 7:56Speaker 01

  that you'll find a way.