Ten Feet Tall and Bullet-Proof : How unhealthy confidence often leads us to ineffectively self-assess

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0:00:00 - Speaker 1
Konstantin, I'd like to welcome you to the light inside today. Thank you for joining us. 

0:00:06 - Speaker 2
Jeffrey, such a pleasure to be here and thank you so much for inviting me, and I can't wait to spend this time with you and with the audience. 

0:00:14 - Speaker 1
So glad to share your insights today. We've done a lot of pre discussion conversation around why we tend to a sometimes have a little overconfidence in our abilities and be, more importantly, why we sometimes struggle to self assess our abilities, our skills, our competencies and even our sense of confidence. With that in mind, i'd like to start off today by looking at a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a paper that established a study group that assessed their past performance on a recently taken test. By doing this study, they were having the study group, male and female, take a test And then estimate how well they felt they did or performed on that test. Within the study, women consistently rated their performance on the test lower than what they actually scored, and men rating their performance higher than what they tended to do in their performance. Men, on average, ranking themselves 61 percent of the time as higher than what they actually performed at or their actual score, and women giving themselves 46 percent lower ranking than what their actual performance was. 

In the same study, it was established that women struggle more with self image, yet men tend to inflate or compensate more socially. As human beings, and especially men, are we sometimes expected to be the proverbial 10 feet tall and bulletproof. I'm going to allow that to kind of stand as our framing question today. Constantine, are we sometimes leading ourselves to believe that we have to be that kind of mythical 10 feet tall and bulletproof? 

0:02:03 - Speaker 2
I would say yes, jeffrey. I mean, i've seen it in my life and I like to look at myself first before I tried to look at others. And absolutely the way I was raised not necessarily by my parents only, but society, grandparents, everyone in my life It led me to this belief that I have to be 10 foot tall and bulletproof. I can make mistakes. If I make mistakes, i can't show them off to the world Right, and all these things will factor in because you're a boy. You can't show emotions, you can cry, you pull your pants up. You got to show up in the world and do the best that you can do so you can provide for your family and for those around you. 

0:02:41 - Speaker 1
Now find that interesting to observe how much of this might lean on that premise of social condition conditioning. No, i'm struggling with my wording today. I'm going to acknowledge that my skills are a little bit rusty here. I'm going to lean in. Our men expected to be more self-actuated in many regards and our women somewhat programmed historically to fall back or take that more submissive role. That's somewhat of a rhetorical line of thinking. Yet statistically I feel we can see where these social norms are reflected throughout society. I'd be curious to jump in today and hear your perspective or take on why you feel this might be. 

0:03:22 - Speaker 2
Well, it starts off to me based on the idea that our ego, or mind, is there to protect us. So if you look at societies, doesn't matter which society we look at, it's all about how do we instill rules and policies that will protect the store school, will make it such that we continue progressing but still stay the same. And I look at my culture. I was born in Eastern Europe, then I moved to North America when I was 17. And then in Canada and, of course, in the USA as well, in many other countries, you see so many cultures coming together, but they all bring their ideas, their preconceptions, their norms, And then you watch them interact and you realize that wait, a second. 

Culture plays such a huge role in how we develop as human beings And in a lot of cultures, of course, men and women are treated differently, despite us being humans at the end of the day. We're treated differently and expected to do different things in life, which of course, puts you in a tiny box and dictates a bit of how your life should end up being. And why does the case? Again, i think it comes down to maintaining the store school, maintaining a sort of control over the outcomes, potentially, and making sure that if we don't deviate from the norm, then it's less risk for us as a society perhaps, or even as an individual, to put ourselves in harm's way. 

0:04:43 - Speaker 1
From that regard, it's really interesting to me then to start looking at where do some of those social norms fall into place? Where do some of those cultural norms we learn within our in groups and out groups? You know we start to see some of that dynamic at play. Listen to a number of different podcasts where it's interesting to look at how emotionally we're taught and conditioned a lot of different things. Grief was a great example to look at. You know, how we view grief from society to society, from culture to culture, can be a very differing and nuanced experience. Some cultures have this prolonged period of grief, this prolonged period of observation and respect, where we have a lot of social norms and a lot of social patterns were expected to observe. Other cultures are less engaged to a by and large degree Where to those other cultures It might seem a little foreign. So that's interesting to look at to me how that role plays out. 

0:05:45 - Speaker 2
And it does, you're absolutely right, and I see cultures where, for example, grief and celebration go hand in hand. 

0:05:51 - Speaker 1
Yeah. 

0:05:51 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we're celebrating someone's life as opposed to just being sorry that they're gone, and that was a foreign concept to me as well. And I noticed with friends and I have a very diverse group of friends how you can turn something negative into something positive in your own life, because, at the end of the day, something that's negative for you, jeffrey, may as well be positive for me, and vice versa. So things are never really good or bad. We just apply those labels to them, based, of course, what we just discussed, how we grew up, the culture, the society, religion, politics, you name it And then we apply these labels on everything, and that, of course, will then lead to perhaps a challenging self-assessing ourselves properly, because now we're overconfident or underconfident, like in the in the study you show. 

0:06:38 - Speaker 1
I think that's a great way to kind of frame things today and set kind of an established starting point As we look at unhealthy confidence. it might be viewed as over assessing or inflating the value of your core abilities or competencies. So the question I'm posing to you, constantine, as a general overview and starting point today how can unhealthy confidence affect our self assessment abilities? 

0:07:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So how can it really impact? Well, first of all, it's all about giving us an inflated perception of our capabilities, skills or knowledge, and I've struggled personally in my life because there have been times when I, let's say, i moved from Romania to Canada and in Romania I went to a high school that was dedicated to mathematics and computer science, so my level of mathematics was fairly high for the same grade level in Canada. So I was overconfident. I'm like, oh, you know, i'm coming from this country, i know college equivalent math, i'm going to do so good, and that made me overconfident. But then I didn't factor in things such as language barrier, perhaps some element of the study in school. So that posed challenges in my life, or at least in my early life in high school here, because of this overconfidence, and I was not properly self assessing my skills. 

Now, when you overestimate your abilities, like in the case, you're under risk of overlooking areas that need development and improvement, and I have many examples there as well, from my own life again. And then, of course, that leads to ineffective decision making, because if I think I'm better than I am, then I'm obviously going to make different decisions than if I had a more accurate representation of how I am, how I feel and what I can do. And then, of course, you miss opportunities, opportunities for growth and learning. You fail to finish projects, perhaps on time, or fail to finish something period, and you're like just giving up because you're like, oh, i don't want to touch this anymore. So those are just some examples that come to mind right away. 

0:08:35 - Speaker 1
Again interesting to me how we sometimes utilize those assessments to overestimate our abilities or downplay our shortcomings. Yeah, you know, we're patterned by those past experiences. Absolutely, looking at that idea of our past experiences, what are some of the factors that influence our tendency to overinflate our abilities, either intrinsically or extrinsically? I'm going to frame it intrinsically, being, from our self view, extrinsically based on the feedback and compassionate, empathetic input we receive from others. I'm going to frame it. 

0:09:13 - Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. That's another great way to dive deeper into this, and if you look interestingly, like what's within you, it's your level of personal awareness. Are you aware that you're making certain decisions or certain self assessments, or that you're being overconfident or underconfident? And I like to say this in my line of work, be it in my professional life, personal life or anything else is the idea that awareness is half the battle. If I'm not aware that something is going on, it's very hard for me to do anything about it or even allow others to hug me in that regard. Right. So then from there you go to ego development, you go to the character differences And, for example, agreeableness is one of the five character traits that you and I can have, but you're agreeableness could be very different than mine. 

That could really impact how I show up in the world and how I show up to myself. Right, like the self assessment that we talked about. Right, there's so many other things that traits, physical limitations. Right, i'm a bigger guy, you're a smaller guy. How am I going to show up? 

Let's say, my group of friends, evan is skinny, i'm the bigger guy. Well, now I'm going to be more insecure if we go out. Right, i'm going to be more self-conscious perhaps, and those are things that you may not realize until you stop and think about what's going on and how they can impact you. The only other thing I would add is, like this idea of distortions that come into our mind, the cognitive distortions that start to happen, because our brain is very good and I say brain, i say brain and ego very good at just looking to protect us, keep the status quo and prevent us from making changes that could be seen as dangerous, and any change for our brain and our ego, the way I see it, is seen as dangerous. So once I realize personally that our brain and our ego are not there to hurt us, they're actually there to protect us, now you can start working with them as opposed to against them. 

0:10:59 - Speaker 1
It's interesting to look at that framing, even in some of the conditioning we've been patterned to believe, we've been taught, we've observed throughout society that we do receive a lot of that message, that that protection is working against us, that it's something to be feared, Rather than seeing that from the other perspective that simply says the things that protect us are working for our betterment, for our good, to reach our optimal, elevated state of being. And an interesting interaction just this past week on LinkedIn questioning where we might use that personality model that's typically shared in the Myers-Briggs And how often we use that or what value we see that in our interactions as businesses. Over the last five years I've kind of evolved into also comparing the five factor model of personality. You mentioned agreeableness, which is one of the core, alphabetically first, functions of five factor model of personality, Agreeableness, extraversion being one of those factors. 

how going are we? How open and available are we to interact with each other? So we have agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness. You know, how aware and open are we to things? How able are we to look at different perspectives? And then openness itself being part of that five factor model. How vulnerable can we be? How accepting can we be? How agreeable, might we allow ourselves. We've got in there neuroticism. hey, I leaned to neuroticism because I can be highly neurotic, you know, and that could be good and bad. It can be beneficial, adverse. We'll put that out there. 

0:12:43 - Speaker 2
And I love the touch on that, Jeffrey. No, you had all five. 

0:12:46 - Speaker 1
Did I hit all five? I thought I was missing. 

0:12:49 - Speaker 2
Yeah, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion Actually, maybe we missed extraversion. No, i think you said extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism. Right, those are the five. That is, that's five. 

0:13:01 - Speaker 1
Five. I don't know why I sometimes find that difficult to remember all five of those things And sometimes that perfectionistic trait does crop up or I'm like I should know this. Anyhow, you know, it was interesting to see in this conversation on LinkedIn I'm going to reel it back to that How this idea of neuroticism had kind of stirred the pot kind of in this conversation. Well, we can't go around calling people in business neurotic. You know people don't want to hear that. Well, there again, that is a conditioned filter. What level of understanding or what filter are we applying to that notion of neuroticism? 

You know, neuroticism itself, when we look at it, is our ability to kind of be fluid and flexible, yes, or the converse of that. When we're in a more adverse state, that neuroticism is when we are a little bit more inconsistent and unpredictable in our behavior. So, when we get some of those filters out of the way of ego and emotion, some of those conditioned beliefs, some of that gears years back, when we dealt with mental health, you know well, their neurotic was suddenly the undesirableness, it was a stigmatized mental health that we're still looking to overcome today, with mental health awareness day just being well, like a week ago, i feel we're fairly aware of mental health. Are we changing our perspective on mental health? Maybe becomes that next step, exactly To complete a site? 

0:14:32 - Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely, i love that, and you know you touched on all five factors and what's really interesting to me and I've seen this in my life again it's like how each one of them is heavily impacted by those filters you mentioned, and both internal filters that we applied based on what we see in the world and what we've learned, but also those conditionings you touched on, and I know we're going to expand on that later. Yeah, to emphasize that idea that all of these elements and everything we talk about is heavily, heavily influenced by our own biases. 

0:15:02 - Speaker 1
You mentioned that role that awareness, self-awareness or introspection plays. How do you feel on the other side of that? We sometimes might stray off course a little bit with our own awareness in self-assessing Well, what we? 

0:15:19 - Speaker 2
stray is at least. Again, i look back at myself as if I'm overconfident. If I'm someone that believes something is as good as it can get, then I'm not going to make any effort to continue learning, to continue exploring other perspectives. So let's say, jeffy, you and I are working together on a project. You want to give me constructed feedback or maybe criticize me for something I did. I won't be receptive to any of that. It doesn't matter how constructive or not it is. In fact, i'm actually taking it personally and will impact the group dynamic, the work dynamic that we have together. 

0:15:54 - Speaker 1
That's an interesting point to look at where we take that offense and what filters are triggering that offensive reaction. And I interjected a little bit there. 

0:16:07 - Speaker 2
No, no, that's a great point. It all comes out to filters, and maybe it's a time for us to talk about what filters are and why they come up. Maybe you want to touch on that. So, to me, a filter is essentially a lens through which we see ourselves or the world around us. And the example I like to give let's say, jeffrey, you and I, we both have a pair of glasses. Your glasses just use a crystal clear lens and you see the world as it should be, but my glasses have blue lenses on. Well, i'm going to see the world blue. No matter what I look, everything is going to be blue. And that's what we do in our life with these ego lenses, emotional lenses, whatever other lens you can think of. because we keep applying these lenses and we keep distorting the image, we distort the perception of ourselves and others, and now we allow it to influence our life. And I think you mentioned this earlier. It's about removing those lenses. It's about removing those filters and seeing what's truly there. 

0:17:05 - Speaker 1
Constantin, we look at that angle and this is something we focus on specifically, not only in the podcast but in our coaching practice at unconscious filters and how that plays a crucial role in shaping that perspective. But it also forms that role in what we might perceive as a limiting ability for our perspective making. Even that way that we assess and evaluate what a limitation is is subject to the same filters. Limitation for you might be different than a limitation for me. As you form different goals and values, you might have a different core goal objective. My objectives and goals might be different. How do we align to simply see those values as coexisting? Ultimately becomes that goal, Ultimately becomes that ability to simply just be more agreeable, more conscientious, more open and less neurotic, or neurotic in a more beneficial way. We'll say not more or less, even because that becomes a kind of a slippery slope of filter. 

0:18:09 - Speaker 2
It does absolutely. And looking back at my childhood, let's take the example of showing vulnerability, which, as a man, i was raised to again never cry, never show emotion. So then it conflicts as you grow up and you have these emotions. You talked about grief at the beginning. Someone close to you passes. Are you supposed to not cry because it's not mainly? Or can we remove that lens and say wait a second, that lens, it's not something I want deep down in my heart, it's something that was imprinted on me earlier in my life. It doesn't serve me anymore. I want to remove that lens. And that's where the real world begins, Because now I'm aware that there's a lens, i'm aware of the fact that it doesn't agree with who I want to be, And I can go ahead and try to remove it. And you have those two steps. You can remove it. It just takes time and work. 

0:18:59 - Speaker 1
It's a great place to look at that idea again of our introspection I found through my work and through my interactions, especially communicating with other individuals on the podcast, where sometimes we run into that introspection illusion bias. Yes, there are certain things that we do that until somebody else points them out, compassionately and empathetically, hopefully, that we don't recognize because they are an unconscious pattern, that we don't have that ability to kind of put on the lens and glasses to see. You know, we're a little bit cloudy and unfocused on why we do certain things, myself included. Until recently I kind of hid that knowledge that sometimes I do over intellectualize things. It's not to say that our intellect is inherently good or bad. I do sometimes bypass that emotional interaction that's valuable and of benefit in feeling what other people are feeling can become very intimidating. We just acknowledge that in a past episode on ego. 

0:20:13 - Speaker 2
It's a good way to look at it, because we're very good as human beings to overestimate our ability to actually look at how we understand our inner workings, how we think, why we think a certain way, why we take a certain action and I'm no different than you and others. We all fall prey to that at times in our lives, sometimes more often than we'd like to admit. but how do we get over it? It's by doing a self-assessment, by peeling back the layers, which include lenses and other self-development practices. But yeah, that's the goal. It's like how do we look at these illusions that we're creating for ourselves and allow others to help us, but also help ourselves get out of that illusion? 

0:20:52 - Speaker 1
From that perspective, we look at how our emotions act as fillers through which we interpret the world And, for example, when we're feeling angry or fearful, our emotional filter may lead us to interpret situations in a negative or threatening way. We talked about taking offense to somebody's feedback. Now, there is a fine line there. We talk about complexity today. That fine line of is this person being compassionate and empathetic? Is this person understanding of how I'm feeling? Does this person take my perspective into consideration? We are patterned a lot of times in our upbringing to simply emotionally react. I feel fear or I feel anger, i feel insecurity, so I'm lashing out, i'm looking to blame, i'm looking to place the reasoning somewhere else. Sometimes that trauma-based healing that needs to occur can make it difficult to simply remove ourselves from that perspective. Would you not agree? Oh, absolutely. 

0:21:56 - Speaker 2
I agree, i had a percent of that And you touched on something beautiful that I mean fear is a big or significant emotional filter, because what fear has done for me, for example, it gets me to underestimate my abilities and my potential at times, that it can lead me to avoid risks or challenges which might be growth opportunities. I could allow fear to be like who? I don't want to have this deep conversation with Jeffrey today because I'm not prepared or I don't know enough or I'm not perfect yet. Well, that's a missed opportunity right there. That's a pretty good for growth because you learn in this process and it doesn't have to be perfect. It's never gonna be perfect because you can always dissect and dissect and realize ways that I could have done 10 things differently, and then there's no perfection, right? 

0:22:43 - Speaker 1
Look at that idea perfect. We form that filter ourselves anyway. You know I can look at the act of baking. You know I'm a former chef, the act of baking. I do feel my skill level in the baking realm is not on, you know, a comparable level to a lot of other people. I can look at that with a healthy assessment and say my results. when I make a cake I don't tend to hit as frequently based on how I've developed those skills, based on other bakers, i can have a healthy perspective about that and say, in order for me to make the cake that I'd like to make, i can increase those skills. I can move toward an awareness of perfecting those skills. I'll say perfecting. I think we sometimes have that unhealthy fear of the idea of perfection itself. 

0:23:30 - Speaker 2
Yes, let me ask you this This is actually an interesting thought that came to mind right As you talk about the perfection. What I ask myself lately and I ask people as well in the audience and otherwise is the perfection you're striving for yourself, then perfect, go for it. Or is it because of someone you're looking up to or you want to be like? Because if it's not for you, you're likely not going to make it there And the process is going to be very painful and it's going to be very frustrated. 

0:23:57 - Speaker 1
I think that that can itself be a double-edged sword. Are we looking at what mode of comparison you're operating from? You know? are you looking from an insecure standpoint where you see yourself as unworthy because you aren't reaching that? Does that become an emotionally triggering thing that does diminish your sense of accomplishment, that does keep you from feeling some sense of fulfillment in that, that old equation? I don't often like to lean into sports comparisons because sports and life can be very different, but that old comparison with Michael Jordan and be like Mike, we can look at how a healthy relationship to that can drive you to excel. 

Michael Jordan himself We dissect probably a million and one different ways as a human being with a lot of judgments and variables. But from a more objective standpoint, he utilized a lot of those same concepts to reach that healthy pinnacle of his output and performance, that ability to say I'm like you, but I'm not like you. I'm like this person but I'm me. You know, and I know and understand where my performance level is. I drive myself relentlessly. Now I can't speak for Michael Jordan and what his career path ever has been His personal path as a human being, but by a lot of perspectives. There was some healthy drive in that. You can also see where some of that here I say become unhealthy because others felt that drive and diminish themselves by it. 

0:25:35 - Speaker 2
Exactly No, you, that's a great example And I love it a lot because of the idea that when you look at someone as a role model let's say Michael in this case, are you looking at the role model because they achieve so much success and they have so much money and everyone talks about them. What are you looking for? specific values that they uphold, for severance, work ethic, whatever values you really like to bring into your life? And when I shifted that mindset for me from putting someone on a pedestal and be like I want to be the next Michael Jordan. No, i actually want to be the next Constantine. I'm the only one. 

That's the one I want to be and I reframed my entire mentality around thinking about competing with myself. Am I better than I was yesterday, a month ago and a year ago? That's the only person I want to. I want to compete against because that's the only person I know. If I compete against you, jeffrey, there's so many things I don't know, hey, how you grew up, what's going on in your life or anything else. So then, when you start to compare yourself with others, is when I've noticed myself all short and fall on my face. I go either overconfident or underconfident. I, you know, have a fragile ego at times, for example, because I feel hurt if someone doesn't see me. Things of that nature And it's really interesting. Like I said, we can't decide this a million ways. 

0:26:52 - Speaker 1
Looking at that idea, then, of the ego filter coming into play, that self assessment, it's self even in how we communicate it. Are those filters stepping in place? Do we bulk under? that idea of comparing social statuses can become very valuable from a lot of perspectives to compare social status If your goal is to reach that social status. It only becomes unhealthy when it starts to demoralize our sense of self, where we start to devalue our sense of self can also become very valuable Where you're able to step away and say I don't give two fly and flips about what those people make or even what I make, because that's not my core value. Yes, i get coaching offers every day to grow. What do you want to scale to? I'll be God honest, those aren't values that drive me. They're not core values for me. 

It's important to make an income. We have a lot of ways in our household to make income. Do I allow that to become my core concept? Hell, no, no. I'm not money, i'm not what I make. That doesn't validate to me what my value in this world is. I could be completely happy and content, living under a rock. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it today Yeah, triggers somebody Maybe? look at your filters, absolutely, let's threatening in that to you. Ultimately, what makes you feel insecure? What are you projecting upon? Why does that become inferred with your emotional interactions? Why now do we start to assimilate those things? Are we looking at the social and cultural norms again, being the filters that ultimately, unconsciously, are there blocking us? 

0:28:37 - Speaker 2
Oh, that's so beautiful. Jeffrey And I couldn't agree more, and until a couple of years ago I was in that mindset as well. Oh, i need to acquire more, i need to chase the perfect American dream, or North American dream, hope you want to look at that More money, more possessions. And as I was climbing the corporate ladder and I was chasing more money, more validation, the less happy I was And you realize that money is not what makes you happy. Money is not what brings you the satisfaction, the joy, it's not the value that most people can pull joy out of And again propel themselves as a beautiful human soul And we've kind of took a little turn there into the extrinsic motivation of that. 

0:29:20 - Speaker 1
You know we look at motivation a lot of times from an either or equation Either I'm motivated or I'm not. When we take that to a perhaps more complex view of motivational factors, they're literally for every action we have throughout the day an infinite number of factors that are influencing why and how and what we do. in any action we do Motivational factors. It's not necessarily that black and white thinking of either or either I'm motivated or I'm not. From my certain perspective there again I'm willing to trade this out any time From that perspective, what are all those factors? Sometimes that motivation is unconscious. You're doing something that you intrinsically know you inherently need in that moment This drive to extrinsically validate. sometimes I have to get this job done. Well, there's a part of you right now that you have to get this job done Right now that you haven't given your awareness and attention to that needs. the rest that needs to do something. 

A lot of times it's that unfulfilled need of simply being in the wrong scenario for yourself, serving the wrong goals, values and purpose, says. sometimes we can over identify with that notion of purpose. I'm only sent here to this earth to do one thing can become a very limiting perspective, if you allow it to be. I'm going to throw the challenges out there because I know from a certain perspective they can be challenging. You know we struggle with that idea of what is my purpose to be here. 

Basically, we can make that anything we want. We can see purpose in everything you know, and the more purposes we see, the more ability we have to be purposeful in our actions. We reel that back into black and white thinking. I've only got one purpose to be here. If you're not meeting that purpose, what happens? Usually there's an emotional response. Usually there's an external validation that we feel like we're not meeting. There's an unconscious filter of play. Our ego is wounded. I'm not feeling now that I'm of worth and value because I formed this perception that there was only one way I could do that. Sometimes we have to pull that facade down, give it a good kick into pants and say it's the way we're looking at things that is keeping us stuck here, because we're only seeing one way of doing things. 

0:31:48 - Speaker 2
It's a beautiful reminder of what we see around us in the world all the time Professional athletes retiring after a beautiful career and then feeling empty because the purpose is gone. Now They're not an athlete, maybe a parent, and I've seen this in my life. I'm not a parent myself, but I've seen others when they identified as a parent. That was their purpose in life, and then the children grew up and move out and how they lost their sense of identity. So I like the idea of looking at your purpose as not just one thing, especially something that's tied externally to you, by looking more inwards. 

Is your purpose to be in service of others? Is your purpose to share love, or however that may look for you, what is that purpose? And if I let's say I'm a parent and my purpose is to raise beautiful children and that's my purpose, well, go deeper. What does it mean? Well, maybe you want to be in service of others. Maybe you want to share love with someone and raise them so they can have a huge impact on the world. And now your purpose is tied not necessarily to something like that's outside of you, but more to internal to you. 

0:32:49 - Speaker 1
From your perspective, Constantine, what are the more common patterns and behaviors associated with unhealthy confidence and ineffective self-assessment? 

0:32:58 - Speaker 2
Great question, jeffrey. So common behaviors associated with unhealthy confidence may include an unwillingness to accept criticism and feedback We mentioned that earlier but also these regarding your opinion or others' opinion or perspectives, because I believe I'm right, you are wrong, maybe because of how you look or what you believe in or who you support. It's also about overestimating one's skills and capabilities We talked about it as well in the past and also the inability to recognize our own shortcomings and mistakes. And really, these behaviors, what they do unfortunately or fortunately, they don't know how to look at this. They will lead to a distorted self-perception, strange relationships, because, of course, if I'm not accepting your feedback, i'm disregarding your opinion. How is that going to impact our relationship? Likely not very well. And then, of course, it impacts ultimately your ability to grow and improve as a human being, because if you put yourself up with such a high pedestal and you know everything and you are the perfect person, then why continue learning? Why continue growing? 

0:34:06 - Speaker 1
That's a great one to sit on. Yeah, from this insight about our perspective, are there specific biases that may arise that hinder our ability to self-assess at times? 

0:34:20 - Speaker 2
That's a lot of this question, jeffrey, because there are quite a few biases that I've noticed in my life and since I've been able to correct to some degree. But, for example, one that's fairly famous in psychology is the Downing Kruger effect. Well, it's essentially people like you and I we have a low ability to a specific task, but we overestimate the ability, like when I started doing my own podcast, i'm like, oh, i'm such a good speaker, i'm going to do all these things, and then you overestimate it. But then you can start to realize wait a second, there's so much more to learn, there's so much more to do. But then there's also confirmation bias, and this is something that showed up in my life often earlier in my life Your favoring information that confirms an existing belief. 

So I'll take public speaking, something that I used to dislike big time in school, in university and even in my early professional career, and I would always look for reinforcers that would tell me, oh, i'm bad at public speaking, so maybe I fumbled the stage, maybe I spoke too fast or some words came out the wrong way, instead of looking at it holistically and saying, well, yeah, i had those fumbles, but I also did these amazing things and people appreciated the work I put in, and then the message I sent across. And then you have the self serving bias, which is your attributing success to yourself. I guess something I did before is like wow, i was in school, i got an A plus in this course, that's all because I'm amazing and I put in the work Right. But then I got to see in another class Well, no, that's because of Jeffrey. He's a terrible teacher And oh, that's because my parents didn't let me study when I wanted, right, or something happened. 

And that's something that shows up in your life and you don't even realize it. And again, that's self serving bias. And the last one I want to mention is the self enhancement bias. You perceive yourself more positively than your objective. We are overestimating your positive attributes and underestimating your negative ones. So these are all biases that will show up in your life, for most of us anyway, at one point or another. And until again we become aware that these are possibility and they show up. It's very hard to sense it in the moment. Do you know of any other? Yeah, yeah. 

0:36:28 - Speaker 1
This is not a game of one upmanship today, but I feel like we're on a good path because there are so many different ways that we've kind of dissected these behaviors as human beings. I stumbled across a great website about a year and a half ago called the decision lab dot com, an organization that focuses specifically on looking at our experience of heuristics and biases throughout our lives, especially in organizational settings. You know they've listed, i think, upwards of about 188 different ways that we experience biases and heuristics throughout our lives. Wow, you mentioned several that you know are very pertinent as we experience these filters that limit our ability to self assess. 

Experiential rationalization is kind of a bigger umbrella, one that kind of embraces those. Experiential rationalization is why we justify our decisions and actions based on past experiences. Experiential rationalization We're rationalizing why we do certain things. We're looking sometimes to blame and subjugate why we did things. We're looking to validate externally, sometimes with our rationalizations. For instance, if I might, if you rationalize a bad decision by focusing on the positive experience instead of recognizing it as a failure or mistake, you'll be more likely to repeat the same behavior in similar situations. 

Selective reinforcement takes place. Whether we see it as positive or negative, can be both beneficial and adverse. Sometimes, if we're overly positive about something and neglect to look at the negative aspect, where our skills might be lacking, where emotionally we might be suppressing, where, from an ego filter, we might sense a void in our self concept, our sense of identity can become selective reinforcement, both good and bad, both positive and negative, both healthy and unhealthy, both beneficial and adverse. Now, as you can see, i'm trying to go down different scenarios here and not only look at from one black and white angle of thinking. 

What often happens is the ostrich effect bias, the cognitive bias, where we ignore past experience in data in order to confirm our past belief. There again, nodding to your confirmation bias, horistic shortcuts result in our thinking and reasoning. Shortcuts are just simply ways we try to come to a quicker conclusion, the easiest way to frame it. We'll go with simplicity on this and make simplicity work. Sometimes those shortcuts are beneficial. A lot of times those shortcuts can omit pertinent data, can become very biased and limit what we're able to consider. I love that. 

0:39:29 - Speaker 2
I also like to look at it this way. I'm a techie guy. I work in tech, i have a degree in computer science. I look at my computer. I have Windows 11, which means I'm running the latest operating system. It might not be the best in the world, but it's modern. It has new technology. 

By the way I see it, our brain, our ego, usually runs on our dated software. It might be Windows 98. Windows 2000, because, like you were giving examples earlier, it's going back to our early childhood and picks up on those programings that were back then. It applies to me in our life, because we can't always sit on a decision for seconds or minutes. It has to be quick. Our subconscious has to act on our behalf. Again, it's all about protection and keeping us safe. What it tells us is not that we don't have a choice and we can't do anything about it, but rather that we can go in and change those programings. We can update the software. If I'm acting on 30-year-old software, like in my case, how can I go in and change that to a more modern? 

0:40:28 - Speaker 1
one. We're looking at that level of implicit and explicit memory. Implicit is to imply. A lot of times we're in that unconscious habit of implying our reasoning, explicit again being that more kind of factual, validated reasoning. We move through different areas of the brain. When we're aligned, when we're engaged, when we're self-regulated emotionally, we're working out of the prefrontal cortex, more explicit in our memory, when we're kind of emotionally activated, responding from that activation, we're working from the amygdala, the hippocampus and the hypothalamus Areas of the brain that don't require as much of that conscious feedback and awareness. 

Simply respond, simply try to ensure my continued safety, my continued existence, my continued being. There are times like when we go to step in front of a bus. Do we have time to get across the street or are we going to get smacked? We have to operate quick in those actions in order to guarantee our survival. Are we able to kind of slow the framework down a little bit and say let's put this in slow motion a little bit? You know, there again we get a lot of programming. Why do we have to rush to action all the time? What's driving that rush? What's driving that need? What pushes that sense of urgency? What are the motivational factors. Who are we trying to appease? Is it external validation? Are we answering to some insecure inner filter that says if I don't do this right now, suddenly I'm of lower worth? Amazing, i love to hear your thoughts on that. 

0:42:12 - Speaker 2
Well, first of all, i'm 100% with you there, because it does come down to your own beliefs about yourself. At the end they said you're worth your personal worth. Well, if, growing up, i heard the message that I'm not enough, or I'm not good enough the way I am, or I am not right because I'm trying to be different, that's going to manifest in exactly what you explained in my life, because I'm always going to look for things to prove myself that I am enough, and then if something happens that goes against it, i'm reminded I'm not good enough. So now I'm going to continue on that pattern of reinforcing beliefs that I don't hold in my heart or even in my mind, but they are there at the subconscious level. So again, i like to go back to the idea of realizing with yourself Find your why, find the purpose you were talking about earlier, expand on it, like what resonates with you and what doesn't. Start questioning it, start becoming aware of it, and then you can do the work which we'll talk about later. 

0:43:10 - Speaker 1
As we consider these differing aspects, as we consider these ideas of bias that we've mentioned, how might these states lead us to sometimes over identify at times, either with ourself, with circumstances, with our emotions? 

0:43:26 - Speaker 2
So, when it comes to over identifying with ourselves and our emotions, i also like to look at two concepts that I used to get confused by and I hear other people talk about as well, which is the idea of a fragile ego or the inflated super ego, and they're kind of overlapping, right, because you're like, oh, but they could be the same thing, but not really because of fragile ego, which is something, again, i struggled with in the past is often characterized by a sense of insecurity, a high degree of sensitivity to criticism because you take it personal Oh, jeffrey has something against me, i've got this is way too personal now And also constant need for reassurance and affirmation. And are you seeing what I'm doing? Are you happy with what I'm doing? Please tell me. I'm doing a good job. 

Right, that's the fragile ego, because, again, learn behaviors but then you're inflated super ego is actually quite different, because it's an exaggerated sense of self importance, a lack of empathy for others or compassion or love or any of those, and a tendency to disregard all this means the perspectives or feelings of others. So when you're looking at, how do you over identify these these are things that can show up in your life to then, you know, over identify as someone that has a superpower or you're an overachiever, and how does the show up in your life? and if I have a fragile ego, i may over identify with my weaknesses and perceive shortcomings. But if I have a, let's say, a super ego right, an inflated super ego then I will do the opposite. I will over emphasize my strengths and my achievements And you'll see how that will start to show up differently in your life. And we can we can touch on that. 

0:45:01 - Speaker 1
And it's great that we look at those ideals. Ideals, i say you know, they're somewhat socially conditioned beliefs about high achievement or overachieving individuals. We start to look at where those emotional responses start to come in. We start to look at how that ego filter starts to come and play. 

0:45:22 - Speaker 2
So your ego filters, of course, your, your emotional filters. We talked about a bit about the definition behind both of these, but when I look at emotional filters, which is something that again comes up a lot when we're talking about the overachievers again, you know, i'm one of them people that have a fragile ego or a super ego if emotional filters will color your perception, causing you to either over, amplify or downplay certain aspects And we touched a bit on fear earlier, right, but there's also pride, there's shame and there's so much more. But I'll give you an example In my case, shame. 

If I feel shame about a particular aspect of myself, let's say my weight, my size, right, what happens then? Well, i may deny or downplay it, so then I have a skew of self perception, but it can also lead me to hyper focus on the perceived flaw. I could be the perfect weight and size for the age I'm at and my fitness level and my goals in life, but because I'm allowing external internal factors to come in, i know hyper focus on those flaws, and what happens then? It's at the expense of recognizing our strengths. So that's a matter of how good of a partner I am, how good of a human being I am, how good of a worker I am. If I focus on those flaws, that's all that matters in our minds And again, i'm sure many of us have gone down the path and it's it's not the pleasant path to be on. Let's play it that way. 

0:46:46 - Speaker 1
You talk about that level of focus. So often that kicks us into what's known as anticipatory anxiety. We start to ruminate what we perceive is going to happen, we start to speculate, we start to project, we go over and over. Yeah, i look at the idea of ruminated thinking and how it's often labeled as over thinking. It's not necessarily that we have an overage of thought. We're just running the same pattern and cycle of thought. It's anxious thought, anxious anticipatory thought. We're starting to guess what we believe is going to happen It how other people are going to perceive it. 

0:47:29 - Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. And rumination is another big one because you always look back. Again. I say you, as in looking, talking to myself, look back and then you can think of now, 10 different ways you could have done better. I guess what? Now you have a hindsight bias because of course, we're going to think about an interaction we had or something we did and be like, wow, there's so many other ways to do it, you can do it so much better, instead of looking at it from a growth mindset of like, ooh, i've done that. I can celebrate the good parts, but I can learn from the parts I don't necessarily agree with now what I consider them bad. And I come from a background where fixed mindset was the norm. 

Again, mistakes being punished. Mistakes have to be hidden. You have to strive to be perfect, but growth mindset allows you to be like you know what. I can fall down and I'm still Constantine. People are still going to love him, right, i can make mistakes and Jeffrey is still going to be my friend. That's what I'm going to do. That's that's what I want people to to get out of this, and the audience is that we can learn from all of these mistakes, challenges, fails, without beating ourselves up all the time. 

0:48:36 - Speaker 1
You know a lot of that. you mentioned that idea of fixedness in our mindsets, your mindset being the attitudes and values and parameters that are guiding our thinking or thought, or cognition, or filters and frameworks. Sometimes, that idea of growth mindset, do you believe, at times it can itself becomes somewhat fixed, in limiting That's a great question And you know what I've done it. 

0:49:03 - Speaker 2
I just I just a bit I thought about it. Of course it can Because, again it's, if you don't fix the biases you're working with, if you don't fix your internal beliefs and the lenses we talked about either your emotional or ego lenses then of course your growth mindset will be impacted by that and it will be limited to some degree. So it's not like you can say, Hey, I'm just going to go on a growth mindset journey now and ignore everything else, because it's not going to work. 

0:49:27 - Speaker 1
It's a great area for us to point out today. You know, sometimes when we do get locked into patterns of toxic positivity, you know that in and of itself can be an emotionally activating statement. Toxic positivity, i've been told, in condition that positivity is an ultimate goal. Have been told to move away and neglect the negative aspects of things. Sometimes that kicks us in again to that experiential rationality. Sometimes that kicks us into that ostrich effect where I'm now burying my head in the sand and running away from the fact that there are negative aspects to be aware of, to be open to conscientiously consider. 

0:50:12 - Speaker 2
And I love you brought it up because either a decent conversation with my parents we're getting on born in during the communist era and lived most of their life there. And this idea I brought up was like, ok, let's leave from a place of positivity and love where we look at anything that happens in our life from that lens. And then I was challenged on a wall. If you look at the positive, how, what do you do with the negative? Because there's so much negativity around us? And my take was and I'm curious to see your opinion here, jeffrey, as well But my take was that well, yes, negativity will be there all the time. 

You're not ignoring it. Ideally, it's the new example. You're not putting it under the dirt, under the sand, you're actually acknowledging it, but you're not focusing all your attention on it and just leading with like, oh, this is such a terrible thing. More like, celebrate the positives, leave from a place of love while acknowledging the negativity piece and see how changing or shifting your mindset can allow you to tackle the challenges in your life without being bogged down or paralyzed by the fear, the pain, the shame that comes with something negative in your life. 

0:51:15 - Speaker 1
You know, to me that draws us into that aspect of the five factor model of personality Agreeableness. Sometimes we can agree and disagree, that things are both positive and negative. You know, we can shift those perspectives and allow those filters to kind of dissolve or sometimes willingly switch them in and out. I, over the last several years, i've required reading glasses and now pretty much when I drive or anytime you know I'm viewing things at a distance, i need glasses. You know I have to have that filter in order to be able to see. If I ignore those filters and don't put them into place, literally everything is blind to me. Distance of five feet or more, everything becomes a blur. Sometimes we have to be able to be agreeable to put those glasses on and see things from that perspective. 

0:52:08 - Speaker 2
Yes, great example. And it could be. the opposite is true as well. Right, let's say, if you lived in the mountains by yourself and there was no one around you, do you need the glasses? because you have all beauty around you and you know it. But, of course, in many scenarios we need to be open to allowing those lenses to come and go, as they serve a purpose for us. And in this example, you gave a service of purpose, a clear purpose for you. It allows you to navigate life easier, to see the beauty around you, to see dangers, right, any of those elements. But again, if I lived in the mountains, for me it might not be that important. 

0:52:42 - Speaker 1
You know we've gotten real philosophical today And I feel sometimes those are very powerful messages to put out there. Let's look a little bit more procedural in how we look at this. Do you feel, constantine, sometimes that ultimately, insecurity plays a central role in our ability to more effectively self-assess? 

0:53:03 - Speaker 2
Yes, absolutely, and I think we touched on a couple of these insecurities that come out through shame, maybe through fear and others, and they absolutely play a huge role in our ability to self-assess, because if I'm insecure about an aspect of myself maybe my public speaking then of course I'm going to self-assess as if I'm a poor public speaker And I'm going to focus on those. Times are stumbled, i focus on the mistakes I made and less focus on the positive aspects And maybe the aspects that will allow me to elevate my ability to public speak to a point where I would be happy with myself. 

0:53:37 - Speaker 1
We've shared such a rich and insightful interaction today, constantine, and I feel like we've probably reached the pinnacle of our interaction today. Would you agree? 

0:53:48 - Speaker 2
Yeah, i mean like you said, absolutely I agree, first of all, but second of all, like you said, we could be talking about this for hours and hours and hours. They say it a million and a half ways, but it's got to stop somewhere. So people have time to digest, see what resonates with them and start looking in ones. 

0:54:04 - Speaker 1
So do you feel there are any points we might have missed in the course of our conversation thus far? 

0:54:10 - Speaker 2
Well, i think a good place for us to kind of leave the conversation might be some practical steps that we can utilize to overcome these adverse effects of unhealthy confidence improving your self-assessment right. And again, these are things that work for me. May or may not work for every person, but what I've realized in my life is that you have to try things. Try for a day, try for seven days. If it doesn't work, put it on a shelf and come back 35 years. Maybe you'll be ready then and you will have an impact on you. But the first time, of course, for me was cultivating self-assessment. So what does it mean? Well, i develop a deeper understanding of myself, my values, my strengths, my weaknesses, my emotional triggers, and I emphasize emotional triggers because those are big ones. My partner does something that triggers me, and then my ego gets in and my mind gets in and I react right away, without even having a chance to think about it. Well, those are things I know deep down inside that I do want to have in my life. Yet if I don't become aware of them, what can I do? So practicing mindfulness and self-reflection can help a lot. And when I say self-reflection, just sit down with yourself, have a chat, be open. I like to use my outer voice when I chat with myself and allow feelings to come up. I'm not pushing them down and they come out like a volcano. One that's new to me, i was saying, that's again based on those learned behaviors, is embracing vulnerability and humility. Can I be vulnerable and share with you, jeffrey, what's really been bugging me and all my shortcomings, and we've shared some of those. Well, again, exactly, be vulnerable with yourself. I went through a period of depression for seven months last year and in that time, a lot of amazing things happened, but do you think I focused on any of them? Of course not. I was just in that PD party of myself. I was pushing friends away, pushing family away, and just sitting with my emotions and not doing anything with it, until, of course, you become self-aware. So, again, vulnerability and humility are both hugely important. 

Now, seeking constructive feedback, i do this in my professional life and my personal life, and I know I need to do more. Let's say, after this conversation, jeffrey, i want to come to you and say, well, what could I have done better? What did you like, what didn't you like? And constructive feedback is not all about the negative stuff, and I think that's what I was getting in the beginning. It's acknowledging the good parts, but also looking at what could have been done better, and not from a point of judgment, not from a point of being like you make too many mistakes, but more from a point of well, you did that good, but I think you can do it better by doing it this way. And, of course, practicing emotional intelligence. We talked a lot about that setting realistic goals, developing a growth mindset. 

There are many tools that people can employ in their life, and the last one, my favorite one, is engaging in continuous learning, like you're doing right now if you're listening to this podcast. You're engaging in continuous learning and understanding different perspectives, or at least allowing them to come into your mind. Right, it's like planting seeds. You may not agree with everything now, you may not see value in everything right now, but the seed may get planted and maybe tomorrow, a week from now, five years from now, you will blossom into this beautiful flower and it can benefit you. So I want to leave it there, because I know I covered a lot of different tools that have helped me in overcoming some of those biases we talked about and the fragile ego and the super ego and all those things that we discussed. 

0:57:29 - Speaker 1
I want to thank you for sharing these wonderful insights today. Constantine, I want to also compliment you on being so clear and concise in your ability to kind of shape these things up for us today. Thank you so much for sharing your light with us. 

0:57:43 - Speaker 2
Jeffrey, I want to thank you as well. It's been a pleasure and it's been lovely to get to know you and spend some time and discuss these beautiful topics with you.