Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Lessons from the Olympics

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Beijing Olympics: Usain Bolt Breaks The World ...Image by rich115 via Flickr So thats it for another four years. Boris has got the flag, the flame is out in Beijing and television schedules will return to normality. The 204 competing nations will go home – 81 with at least one medal.

Was it all worth it? Fortunes have been spent getting athletes into finals and for some a gold medal. National pride, the “feel good” factor is said to permeate through those watching. Its interesting that China, the worlds most populated country with 1.3 billion people, topped the medals table. But India, second most populated with 1.1 billion, celebrated their first ever gold medal at the games and finished with a total of three medals.

“You are role models for the youth of the world”

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Gaining self confidence

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self confidence at azureDoes taking risks build confidence became too long to add a reflection on my family holiday(vacation) to Gozo. Although I was being critical of the risk taking (see Comments below), I’m not advocating remaining within our comfort zone. In the case of our holiday, the comfort zone was swimming, sun bathing, reading, walking around the local area, eating in the many restaurants. All very pleasant.

But my lasting memory of the holiday is when [Read more…]

Does taking risks build confidence?

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improve self esteemBack to work and usual routines after our vacation, although as I write the house is quite. My eldest daughter flew back up north to Yorkshire on Friday to attend a wedding and our 17 year old twins have invaded Cornwall, south west England, to stay in a caravan with friends.

Holidays give you plenty of time to reflect. I know when I was the age of my children I certainly lacked the confidence to do the things they are currently doing (and planning!). Yet we constantly hear stories on the media about how over protected children are in modern society. They get driven to school and we don’t let them out of our site to play with friends for fear of abduction.

Schools and local governments become more risk minimizing and ban many activities for fear of being sued if accidents happen. Councils cut low branches off trees to prevent children climbing them, schools put bubble wrap on sharp corners of tables to prevent injury!

Despite all this my children seem to be emerging into adulthood far more confident than I did. I’d agree that in many ways they have been more sheltered than I was, but I don’t think that paints a true picture.

Do we have to put ourselves at risk to gain confidence?

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Overcome a Fear of Failure

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One of the delights of living in the UK is I have never watched Oprah. So I was surprised when one of my favourite blogs, had “Oprah’s Top 7 Tips for Creating the Life You Want“. The writer, Henrik, is Swedish so who knows how far her influence has spread!

Oprah had an interesting take on failure – she redefined it:-

I do not believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.

Looking at some of my recent posts, a fear of failing can be another interpretation of the problems. With perfectionism for example, a person sets their required standard high – and anything less than 100% achievement of that target is a failure. There are no shades of gray.

If we lack confidence in our ability to do something, our thinking can revolve around whether we will fail or succeed. Failure enters the equation, rather than say “mistake”, when the stakes are higher. Usually with the fear of failing we can imagine unpleasant consequence, rather than just inconvenience. [Read more…]

Anxiety, Affirmations & Yaro

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affirmationsThis is the first time I have written about Yaro Starak, although he is probably someone whose work I have read more than anyone since I started this blog. Yaro writes about blogging – so whilst of interest to me, I have assumed he won’t be of interest to anyone visiting this site. If you do blog, Yaro has a free blueprint which is worth reading – I can also recommend his Blog Mastermind course when he next runs one.

I mention him, because I happened on one of his posts from 2006 called The Key to Happiness. Yaro doesn’t normally venture into self improvement posts, but I found it quite an eye opener. By accident, rather than design, my recent posts have all featured successful people who had overcome various adversities in their youth. I now found out that Yaro had suffered from panic attacks in his late teens and early twenties.

Anxiety related problems sometimes get short shrift in the media, as we all get anxious at times. Our physiological make up has programmed in a fight or flight response, so our body can get suitably “prepared” if confronted by danger. Unfortunately, this hasn’t evolved over the years to take on board that usually most of us don’t encounter life threatening danger – tigers and other wild animals are now enclosed in cages. [Read more…]