E29 | BDE

 

Melissa and Siria discuss BDE, what it means, and how to channel it. They discuss how BDE relates to self-worth, how to build confidence, and techniques they’ve used along the way on their own self-confidence journeys.

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BDE

On this episode of BDE, what it means, and to channel it.

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BDE, what is that?

You know what BDE is.

I know what BDE is, but do our readers?

Readers, BDE, Big Dick Energy. That is our topic. It’s BDE or short. When you hear that, I hope you know what that means. If you don’t, that is what we’re going to be talking about.

Let’s talk about quickly how we came up with BDE.

How did we do that?

It was through your intent. It’s your word for 2021.

It was with that. It was also coupled with a couple of things that I’ve got going on in my world. It has to do with just showing up with that extra confidence.

You had gotten out of a meeting. You’re like, “I just walked in with that big dick energy.” I just came up with the acronym. I was like, “That BDE.” We just fell in love with it. It’s now stamped forever in your bracelet that you wear that says, “Play big,” which is your intention for 2021, and then inside it says BDE.

I had to add the BDE. It was something that we’d talked about. I was in a meeting. I felt good after this meeting. I felt that part of what I’d done was show up with my dick swinging.

That’s exactly how you said it, too.

That’s the only way to put it. I know it sounds crude. I’m female in all areas, so that’s not what it is.

Thank you for clarifying.

I have a dear friend whom I’ve talked about here before on this show. I won’t name him because he doesn’t always read. Anyways, it’s a whole another topic. We were talking about it, and he’d told me before, he’s like, “I’m glad you weren’t born a guy.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “Well, because we couldn’t be friends because your dick would be too big.” I’m like, “What do you mean by that?” He’s like, “You have so much confidence that I’m just glad you’re a woman.”

Let’s strip that down. What do you believe BDE is?

It’s confidence in a way that you know you have it. There’s nothing anybody can take away from you. You’re not trying to fake this confidence. You’re not trying to do anything else because you just have it, and it radiates off of you.

For our female readers out there, can feminists exhibit or display BDE? Is it only males?

I don’t think so. it’s more of an energy that you are projecting out into the world. I don’t think it’s exclusive to anybody. The way that we’re talking about it, being BDE is that embodiment of this is what alpha males in this position show up. How do you have that in other spaces? This is something that you just have that confidence in when you know that you nailed that interview or that performance. Whatever it is, it comes from within and knowing that you rocked it. You killed it. I don’t know how you fake that.

Is it confidence or is it cockiness? Is there a difference?

There is a difference. the difference between being cocky and being confident is that being cocky to me means that you are almost arrogant about things. Maybe you don’t have self-awareness around it. You think you know everything, but in actuality, there’s a bunch of things that you don’t know, and so that’s why it’s like, “They’re being cocky.” Maybe you’re a one-trick pony kind of a thing.

 

When you have confidence and you have BDE, you do know this. This is something that you are so cemented in. You just have the knowledge that people could challenge you on it, and that’s fine, but you’re still going to come out on top or you have so much resolve in that position and confidence in your position that it doesn’t matter if people try to come at you. Come at me, bro. Do it.

This is what I have to deal with all the time, dear readers. When we first started talking about BDE, I was trying to reflect on what I thought it meant to me. I agree with you. I thought that it was an attitude or mindset toward life in which one exudes confidence through words and actions. I know we talk about mindset a lot. We throw that out there a lot. I do believe that it serves as the foundation for BDE, but I struggled a little bit because mindset is such a broad term. We talked about catch-all terms. that if I were to strip BDE down, it goes down to one’s self-worth. Would you agree or disagree with that?

I’m interested to hear more. What are your thoughts on it why it goes to self-worth?

Self-worth is something that I’ve struggled with a lot of my life still. What I learned was that self-esteem is not self-worth. When you’re looking up BDE or how to obtain confidence, it was dressing well and maintaining eye contact and body language. The thing is I don’t want to fake confidence. I want to be confident. That goes beyond self-esteem. Self-esteem is about things that I think about myself. Self-worth goes down to a deeper level. I’m worth more than that.

I came across this amazing quote by Dr. Christina Hibbert. She is a psychologist. She mentioned that self-esteem is what we think and feel about ourselves. Self-worth is recognizing, “I am greater than all of those things.” It is a deep knowing that I am valuable, that I am lovable, necessary to this life, and of incomprehensible worth.

Self-esteem is what we think and feel about ourselves. It is a deep knowing that we are valuable, lovable, necessary to this life, and of incomprehensible worth. Click To Tweet

With that definition of being valuable, lovable, and necessary, I would agree that BDE is about self-worth and self-acceptance. This now becomes how you are having those things seen and you’re projecting out this information of I’m valuable, I’m lovable, I’m necessary to the world. More so, what I have to say matters, and I know it. That’s a big difference with it. You can have self-esteem. You can feel good, but being willing to say it out there is going to be a big difference. Not everybody’s going to agree with it.

I’ll keep saying that until I’m blue in the face because it isn’t going to be for everybody. Being able to speak it out and stand behind it is a self-worth exercise. It almost goes into self-love, which I do think is a little bit different. For that particular meeting, I did feel good about how I looked that day. I took time because I wanted to look a certain way. Recently, I was on an all-day marketing day where I was out going into the community. As I was standing in my closet trying to figure out what did I want to wear that day, I changed the question from, “What do I want to wear?” to, “How do I want to be?”

I thought I have to do certain things because I was going out into the community saying, “I’m a lawyer.” I am a lawyer but I’m also not just a lawyer. Is that what I want to be putting out there, show up in a suit with all of these things that people are going to expect? No. How do I want to be in this moment? I want to be cute, stylish, and comfortable. I ended up picking a pair of jeans that make my butt look fantastic.

I’m surprised I didn’t get a selfie. Usually, when she is looking good and feeling good, she’ll usually send me a picture, and be like, “Don’t these jeans look good? Doesn’t my butt look good?”

From my toes all the way to the top of my head, I felt fantastic. It wasn’t because of what I was wearing. It was because how I wanted to be in that moment. I wanted to be the confident self that I can be without having to play into any stereotype or anything else, so it’s that self-acceptance. I wanted to do that. That’s how I’m going to show up. This might be the first time you’re meeting me, and you’re meeting me in jeans, so what?

That’s important. We have so many thoughts that go through our mind at any given moment. I think that I’m pretty, I’m introverted, and I’m pretty funny, but what do I believe about myself? How we form beliefs is that we give credence to those thoughts. What thoughts are we feeding our mind about ourselves? What are we saying about ourselves? It’s so important to look at the self-talk that we engage with ourselves in every day at almost all points of the day.

I am almost always in an internal dialogue. It wasn’t until I stop to look at what I am telling myself. Is what I’m telling myself true? There’s an exercise that a lot of people say to do, which is to stand in front of a mirror and say, “I’m worthy.” If you do that, at first it’s going to feel uncomfortable. I speak from experience because this is something my counselor had me do. It does feel weird and awkward, but that’s because I’ve told myself the opposite for so long.

What you’re getting into is cognitive dissonance. Your brain knows one thing and you’re trying to tell it something else. Your brain doesn’t like that.

It’s conflicting.

It’s going to do everything it can to align itself where there’s no longer that internal conflict. If you start telling yourself, “I am worthy. I’m good at managing money. I have BDE,” and not just, “I’m going to do these things,” you have to do it in the present tense, “I have these things,” your brain is going to say, “We have to do actions that support these things.“

 

I love that you said that it has to be written in the present tense. In the work that I do, I help clients formulate strategic intentions that are in the present tense. The reason why it’s so important for things to be written in the present tense, it’s like, “I will go back to school. No, I am going to school.” There’s a huge difference because it does evoke action as opposed to some blanket statement that it’s something I will do in the future. No, you’re living it out now.

Melissa, have you experienced BDE?

Not that I can think of. I’m sure I’ve had brief moments, but none where I got a call as I did from you, and you’re like, “My dick was swinging.” I haven’t had one of those moments, but it’s because I’m also working on that self-worth piece. I know that you and I both go to counseling. You and I have talked about this. You are further along in that journey than I am. That’s not good, better, or different. We’re on the path together.

It’s a fact.

It’s something I look towards. It’s inspiring to see that it’s possible to have my dick swinging maybe sometime in 2021. You’ll get that call from me and say, ” I nailed it.” I believe that I’m close, but I am still working on that cognitive piece, reminding myself that I am worthy and that I am capable of BDE.

You’re completely capable. there are things where when you start flexing, you’re exercising this muscle that we’ve talked about. You’ve had it where I’ve seen the video content that you’ve been creating, and things where you’re like, “Okay. I’m not sure.” Other times, you’re like, “This is hilarious. You’re going to die.” You’re right. You have it in there. It’s just a matter of if you want to channel it into something bigger and see where it is.

It’s like, “I’m going in with this energy. I’m trying to play big. I’m trying to flex. These are things that I just haven’t done before. I’ve been confident. I’ve had a lot of confidence in things. I’ve also not been very confident in situations where later, it was like, I had that the whole time. A lot of people get that where you start over-preparing, overanalyzing, doing everything, hold on, let me overthink. This is a little frame that’s now in our show workspace. Hold on. Let me overthink this.”

We’ll do all of that over and over again. After I’m done, that tends to be for me in depositions, where I will super over-prepare because that’s how I’ve done it for a very long time, and it’ll be, “I didn’t need that.” If I feel underprepared, that’s where it’s been coming out where it’s like, “I don’t feel like I spent enough time. I didn’t spend days and hours dedicated to figuring out every single possible question that I need to ask.” I go in, and I knock it out of the park with my intuition, experience, and knowing how to listen and ask those follow-up questions. That’s where I have to trust myself a whole lot more than I do on a regular basis.

We speak about confidence a lot, especially here with BDE. Confidence is built. I am good at math. I have built up my confidence in math. Even with video editing and creation, which I took and experimented with earlier this year, my confidence is building. When we lack self-confidence, it’s something that we can build. It just requires practice. When we excel in something, that’s typically where we want to stay. It’s those portions or parts of our life where we maybe don’t excel well or lack the confidence to even try.

If you lack self-confidence, it's something that you can build. You just have to put in the work. Click To Tweet

That’s where we stop. We don’t even try something. You mentioned it in a previous episode. You’re like, “I just told myself I was bad at math. I’m bad at math, so you do it.” You’re fully capable of doing math. You may not have the confidence, but that’s something that can be built. Readers like myself maybe have lacked self-confidence. It’s something that you can build. You just have to put in the work.

Going back to your question of what’s the difference between confidence and cockiness, in cockiness, you haven’t built the skill. You’re just assuming that you know how to do this, and you go in. Sometimes you need that. Sometimes you do need to go in balls to the wall. Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it won’t. With cockiness, people know when you’re being cocky as opposed to you knowing what you’re doing.

What about that saying, “Fake it till you make it,” how do you think that impacts BDE or confidence?

Fake it till you make it is a good thing in my opinion. The reason is that it gets you at least practicing where you want to be. It doesn’t mean that you just get to fake it and not know how to deliver. I think of the young lady who wanted to be Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley. She overpromised and she oversold her product of being able to test all kinds of different things with a droplet of blood.

She even dropped her voice down. She started dressing like Steve Jobs. She started doing all these things, but she didn’t have the product. She defrauded a bunch of investors in Silicon Valley based on this. The book is called Bad Blood. I can see the whole thing. I could see her face. She had these beautiful blue eyes, blonde. Let’s also talk about the fact that she was an attractive young woman.

Elizabeth Holmes? Is that her?

Yes. Elizabeth Holmes was the businesswoman and Founder of Theranos. That’s the company. She was promising that you could take a little droplet of blood from your finger, similar to the test that you would do for your blood sugar. It could run it through her machine and software, and you could get all of the diagnoses for all these different things. It was going to revolutionize medicine. It was complete bullshit.

She did this, and it came out later because instead of showing a live presentation, it was pre-recorded and it was fake. None of the stuff that she was promising was happening. That was her trying to present this confidence and she knew what she was doing, and it was a complete fraud. It eventually came and bit her in the ass, as it rightfully should have, because this was something that had it gone to the market would’ve been devastating.

This is an example of faking it till you make it that’s gone wrong. You’re saying that you believe it can be good because it gets you practicing.

As long as you’re trying to build the skills.

You’re not falsifying anything.

 

Let’s say you’re a business owner, and you don’t do anything to be the business owner. You still have to try to do the work and build on that because all of it is building that foundation for you to fake it till you make it while you’re building your foundation. If all you’re doing is fake it till you make it, going and blowing all your money on expensive items that you can’t afford, and that you’re over here, trying to live that baller lifestyle to the detriment of, “Can I even pay my important bills like electricity, water, rent, mortgage, and those things?”

If you’re putting those things in jeopardy to try to fake that you are a Kardashian, that’s not a good way to do it. Now, if you are doing the work and you are able to save your money and do those things because that’s where you want to go and you’re building something to get you towards that goal, go for it.

We just said practice helps build confidence. By faking it till you make it, once you’ve made it, that has to feel good. That has to build confidence within yourself and within your skillsets.

That goes back to some of the stuff that you were talking about with self-worth and self-esteem. Making it, what does that even mean? That’s a whole thing in and of itself. When you make it, does that mean you’re happy? Does that mean that you have enough money in the bank?

It’s going to mean different things to different people.

Knowing what is that making it to you, that’s going to be different for everybody. There’s going to be people who you think have made it, but in their mind, they haven’t. They’ve set the goalpost somewhere else. There’s a danger in this in constantly setting the goalpost if you’re setting the goalpost out and tying it to your happiness.

If you’re constantly doing that and you’re chasing your happiness instead of trying to be happy in the moment where you’re living life, that’s where there can be some different hardships. That’s also where the disappointment can come in because you get to that goal and you’re like, “I’m not happy.” Reaching the goal wasn’t the point. It’s the process and enjoying that process to get there. That’s where you’re going to find that happiness.

If you're setting the goalpost out and tying it to your happiness, if chasing your happiness instead of trying to be happy in the moment, that's where disappointment comes in. Click To Tweet

You are exhibiting BDE. What are some ways or things that you did to help cultivate that mindset of BDE?

Part of it has been like you said, practice. I’ve been doing this for more than 11 years now. When it comes to certain things in the law, I know my stuff. I don’t need to say it over again. That’s a big part of it. Another part of it is that we don’t necessarily share things that we haven’t tried ourselves. We do walk the walk. That helps with the practice. One of the things that I was sharing with you earlier was having that self-awareness has helped me know what works for me.

I can confidently share that with somebody else, but that may not work for them. That’s okay. If taking deep breaths does not work for you as a way to calm you down, that’s okay. Find what works for you. I know what works for me, but I also know there’s a ton of other strategies out there that can help with stress management. This has also helped with my BDE, managing my stress in a positive way that isn’t causing myself any more harm.

On my path to BDE, because I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve been working on. This has taken years. My first one would be to suggest rewriting your core beliefs through affirmation. I talked about earlier how my counselor had me practice, “You are worthy,” and then I started journaling as to why I was worthy. I was rewriting. It was almost like a broken record.

It was a script that I kept telling myself on repeat as a child growing up in a traumatic event, your voice doesn’t matter. When my parents divorced, it was very tumultuous, and no one asked how any of us kids felt. I wouldn’t say neglected, but our needs and our feelings were secondary. I felt as if my voice didn’t matter. I had to rewrite that, “My voice does matter. I matter. I’m worthy.”

It’s both ends. You felt it, and that’s why you learned it. Your brain took that in as programming and said, “You’re right, Melissa.”

My first step was to rewrite my core beliefs through affirmations. Second, I have to reclaim what’s been repressed, so here I am. I am not only freeing my voice. I’m amplifying it through this podcast. For so long, I was told my voice didn’t matter, and here I am sharing my story, amplifying my voice, which in turn provides me with that confidence which will lead me on the path to BDE. Also, we talked about self-awareness. I realized in a previous episode how much I was a people pleaser, so replacing people-pleasing with self-care.

For some readers out there, that might sound selfish, but I don’t believe being selfish is a bad thing. If you don’t take care of yourself, who will? I’ve been putting myself first and be able to look at what feeds me, what drives me, what motivates me, what inspires me, and stopping, pausing, and looking at the narratives that I’m telling myself, and being able just to put my actions in my words more in alignment with my core being. That’s slowly building that self-confidence so that I can obtain the BDE that Siria has hit.

It’s not there all the time. It ebbs and flows.

I would think so. Nothing in life necessarily is constant other than maybe death and taxes. There are good days and there are bad days. Being able to reach that pinnacle of BDE has to be very exciting because of the attitude, the feeling, and the love that you have towards yourself that you are worthy of being in this life. I loved the quote I read earlier because you are necessary to this life. You are of incomprehensible worth. That resonated with me. That’s where I’d like to get to.

You can. The nice part about having these experiences is that when I recall them back, I get so excited. When I retell the story of this meeting, which one day I will share with you, readers, or maybe I’ll do it in the exclusive Facebook group. I’ve been sharing it with my close friends, and I get so pumped up just recalling it.

Your energy is contagious. Getting off the phone with you after you shared with me this dick-swinging event, I was like, “I want that for myself.” Not only was I happy for you, but I was like, “I want that for myself. It empowers those around you to show that it is possible.

You are absolutely valuable, not just because of what you can do, but because of who you are. Click To Tweet

It also fueled my actions in the coming weeks and my further actions. This happened after we did our Intentions episode. It was already there, and it has added this fuel where I didn’t even know I needed additional fuel, but I am so pumped up and excited about the future and excited about the possibilities because I do just have so much more confidence in myself and my abilities. You’re right. It has to do with my self-worth. I am valuable not just because of what I can do but because of who I am.

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Dear readers, we want to hear from you. How have you experienced BDE? What self-worth techniques have worked for you? Let us know in our private Facebook group, Pivotal Moments HQ. We want to thank our Producer and Music Director, Ron Johnson. Thank you for reading. Remember, it’s never too late and you’re right on time.

 

 

Important Links 

• Bad Blood
• Intentions – past episode
• Pivotal Moments HQ – Facebook
• Ron Johnson past episode

 

 

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