Im not sure how many others there are like me out there, but if there’s any 1 commandment of Heartiste’s 16 commandments of Poon that I struggle with, it’s “be irrationally self-confident”. I’m 5’9 and at the point in my life where I’m not going to grow any taller and it’s taken a mental toll on me. I’ve never been able to shake being the short guy. I always assumed that being short was just something that damned you sexually as a man to picking up 7’s at best

Then a 5’9 chap from across the pond by the name of Conor McGregor started making headlines, and my perspective changed radically

McGregor’s got the uncanny knack for predicting his fights with eery precision. He’ll be at the pre-fight presser 3 days before talking about how he’ll hit his opponent with an uppercut with 1:30 left in the third round and that’ll be game, and he consistently delivers. Not knowing this man’s vitals, watching at a presser or any interview will have you thinking he’s 6’4, 220, and from the future. He’s really not. He’s a regular old 5’9, 150 pound irish fella with some MMA training that’s confident as all fuck.

Now we get into the guts of how he got so confident

First and foremost, McGregor truly does not give half a shit about anything he has no control over. If there’s any factors of a situation that he is going to have control over, he will have how to work them and benefit from them mastered out. Anything that is out of his realm of ability to control is just white noise.

Second, McGregor Truly abandons reality when he looks at himself. There’s a small list of facts Conor McGregor can tell you off the top of his head: the sky is blue, 2+2 = 4, and he is a badass motherfucker that can decisively handle any situation thrown at him. That’s the kind of mindset you have to have. You gotta believe that you’re gonna go out there and kill it, against all odds. The day you recognize that your own mind is your own worst enemy and that you have total control over it is the day you start the path to the mind-boggling self confidence levels.

Third , McGregor is a visualizer. He will sit and visualize his fight with an opponent dozens, if not hundreds of times, tweaking it around a little each time. He has nearly every possible scenario and detail accounted for and played in his head, and he visualizes a win every time. Repeated successful visualization is an extremely useful psychological tool. Your brain, specifically your amygdala, does not know shit from applesauce when it comes to experiences. It’s the same reason horror movies and porn combine for billions in sales every year. Let me clarify one thing though, visualization is a tool of refinement. It’s not a substitute for firsthand experience. If you gave someone who had never seen one before in their life a basketball, no amount of visualization of it going in the hoop is gonna make their shot good. It takes practice. But once you got basic mechanics down, you gotta become a visualizer.

Lastly, McGregor has mastered the art of self confident body language. McGregor takes up space wherever he goes. He could be at a bar, at an interview with ESPN, or at the pre-fight presser for a PPV fight that’s gonna get 100+ million views, and he usually just looks like he’s chilling on his couch watching a football game. He’s loud, proud, rude, keeps his elbows flared out or on the table at all times, and it’s an act of congress to get a word in edgewise if he gets going. Those are all major keys.