Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Archives for November 2007

Distract yourself from self talk

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I’ll start with a postscript to my recent posts. My wife and I have just returned from a weekend visiting our daughter in Yorkshire. Whilst there we visited the Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford.

One exhibition had a large display of news photographs – including one from the Albert Hall, London in 1930. A public meeting was held by family, friends and other supporters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, five days after his death. The photograph depicts an empty chair, left vacant for Conan Doyle in the expectation he would communicate with the meeting in some way. He didn’t.

My other point relates to my last post about the manager of the England football team. Apart from speculating about Britney’s suitability, I mentioned how the sacked manager, Steve McClaren was being vilified in the media. The main thread of the post was “You can’t really care what others say“. Since writing the post I read one of the more reasoned articles that looked at why McClaren had been a poor manager. [Read more…]

Perhaps Britney should manage England?

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I came across this great post recently What you can learn about blogging from Britney Spears – even the title is great! Michael Martine makes some interesting observations and I recommend reading – thanks to Chris Garrett for the original link.

What I found most stimulating was that Michaels observations can apply to life in general, not just blogging. For instance “You can’t really care what others say”

Britney is surrounded by people who fawn over her and satisfy her every desire, while in the media she is the subject of endless speculation, gossip, criticism, and the butt of jokes.

I have said in a previous post on popularity, the most criticised people in the world our the Presidents, Prime Ministers and other leading politicians. In fact the above quote probably applies to them as well! [Read more…]

Do you believe in fairies?

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minstead1Let me tell you a bit about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. He was born in Scotland in 1859 and he studied to be a doctor at Edinburgh University. Medicine took him to the Arctic Circle (on a whaling ship) and Africa before he established a practice on the English south coast.

His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, became widely read worldwide before he was 30. Throughout his life, Conan Doyle saw the “Holmes” stories as commercial and wished to be regarded as a serious author by his other work (plays, historic novels and poetry – Sherlock Holmes initially gained huge readership in a popular magazine).

A man of principle and courage, whatever his own reservations regarding his creation of Sherlock Holmes, his knighthood and other awards made him one of the most influential and respected men of his generation. But he was not without controversy. He held strong beliefs in the occult and in particular he expounded spiritualism, being able to communicate with the dead. [Read more…]

How to breathe confidently exercises

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anxietyIt may sound silly to have a post about breathing – after all, we all do it without thinking. None of us were taught how to breath and, apart from pregnant women, most of us don’t get taught how to breath in later life. An interesting exception is those who perform on the stage. To date I have only touched on speaking, but for those who use their voice professionally, learning how to breath properly is an important part of how to use your voice more effectively.

In how to improve your speaking voice I looked at practical exercises to help you sound better. Learning to have greater control over your breathing will help here as well. But as I highlighted in do you sound confident a big handicap to being confident is how our body reacts when we’re anxious. The fight or flight response kicks in, adrenaline is released into our blood stream, and our body prepares to respond physically to an “enemy.” [Read more…]

If you don’t make changes…

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In what habits do you want to change, I started getting you to think about what aspects of your life will be like in the future – if you don’t change anything. You can look at the whole you, but I find it simpler to take one aspect of “you” – be it work, leisure, relationships, wealth.

Einstein once said:-

“The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over again and expect a different result.”

If you want aspects of your life to improve, something has to change. The reason to start comparing now and the future is to identify exactly what that change needs to be. [Read more…]