Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

7 Life Lessons from a Wet Weekend

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This post is about my weekend. An enjoyable, but not particularly remarkable weekend. What’s this got to do with self confidence or self esteem?  The main philosophy of this blog is that to improve self confidence, self esteem or anything you need to learn skills that help, rather than adopting any “system”. Being able to reflect and learn from experiences is an important part of that process.

Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral

Have a Plan

On both Saturday and Sunday I woke up and knew what I was going to be doing and when. There wasn’t a tight, pressured, timetable but I had a plan for each day. Like many, at work I use a diary to schedule appointments, meetings, etc. But weekends and evenings, or whenever our leisure time is, we tend to shy away from planning as its too much like work.

As I mentioned recently, only 17% of our waking hours are spent at work during our lifetime. Planning how we spend our time ensures we do what is important to us.

Friends

Following an impromptu phone call last week my wife and I met up with friends Saturday lunch time. [Read more…]

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”

[Read more…]

Randy Pausch – stories on how to live

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Eeyore as depicted by DisneyImage via Wikipedia Professor Randy Pausch died last month. Until I read this in my favourite ezine Kickstart Today I had never heard of him. As his lecture from 2007 now has over 6 million views, some of you may already have heard of him, seen the video (or one of the subsequent TV programmes about him), or read the book he wrote based on this lecture.

I had some doubts about suggesting you watch a video – 75 minutes long – when neither confidence nor self esteem are discussed. Especially on a weekend when Team Great Britain have managed to win as many gold medals as Michael Phelps! But watch it if you can, otherwise jump to my summary…

[Read more…]

Achieve your Goals with a Compass

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yellow-confidence We’ve just started the second half of 2008, and some of us have just reached a landmark of a different kind – hitting the big five oh! A time to review and reset goals? I have written about goal setting quite a few times, especially about six months ago when everyone was setting goals and resolutions:-

In Are goals necessary? I reflected that I have had mixed success with goal setting and in my career I have taken opportunities rather than following a clear plan – so why be “SMART”?

Do you have passion or desire? discussed the concept of a “road map” – all the rage in December – and looked at getting excited about making changes, finding passion or desire.

Do you have a dream – concluded goals are necessary, but insufficient. We need some inner drive or passion.

Why haven’t you set goals? did address the balance with arguments in favor of goals and reasons people don’t set them.

In Achieving goals with support I used the example of goal setting being like using a GPs unit. For the first time I mentioned how coaching, or using support, could be helpful to get us to where we want to be.

Recently I have been coached and I have been coaching someone myself – more of which some other time. A broad definition of life coaching that I had been using is

“unlocking a persons potential to maximize their own performance. Its helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
(Tim Gallway, quoted by Whitmore in Coaching for Performance)

I’ve recently adopted a broader definition “helping facilitate growth and change“ as coaching is something that is happening all the time. As I argued in achieving goals with support a friend or family member may “coach” you and help you achieve or change, but do so through everyday conversation. [Read more…]

Dealing with Perfectionism

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dealing with perfectionismPerfectionism came up as a comment on my last post, being good. It sounds fine – searching for the highest standards, being displeased with anything less than perfect. But it can lead to distress and self condemnation when you do anything thats less than perfect.

I’ve come across this interesting test that gives you a rating (%) of how much of a perfectionist you are. But most of us know whether or not we are perfectionists, and whether or not it you feel its an asset or hindrance.

There are differing theories as to where perfectionism comes from, some suggesting that there is a genetic component as it tends to run in families. But equally the behavior of parents towards children has a huge effect. If parents are strict, disciplinarians then children learn to fear making mistakes.

If a child only receives love or attention when successful – such as getting top marks in class, they will strive towards perfectionism in adulthood. To be loved, they have to be perfect. [Read more…]