Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Quick Self Confidence

by

This is guest post by Mark Tyrrell of Hypnosis Downloads.  There is nothing I really need to add, as he captures the very essence of self confidence in this article.

Improve your self confidence in 15 minutes

quick self confidence
15 minutes – what’s the rush?

I used to be frighteningly under confident in social situations. And although people who know me now would never believe I used to doubt myself so much I literally had to learn confidence until it became a natural part of me. I can tell you relaxed optimistic confidence is just, well so much more fun.

 

Here I’ll tell you about the things that made the most difference to my confidence levels…

Some people have naturally high levels of confidence but everybody can learn to be more confident

Firstly, it’s important to get a clear idea of what self confidence really means, otherwise you won’t know when you’ve got it! So, self confidence means:

1) Being calm. For every situation in life you need to run on the appropriate level of emotion. Too much emotional ‘leakage’ into a experience can spoil the experience. You make great strides towards confidence when you begin to relax in a greater range of situations.

2) Being cool. The second part of self confidence is about [Read more…]

The Kings Confidence

by

How would you feel about taking on a job that you were totally ill equipped to perform, where your self confidence was absolutely rock bottom?

A job that entailed making public appearances , being the centre of attention,  when you were shy and reserved.  A job that involved making speeches in front of thousands, and live broadcasts to millions, when you were inflicted by a terrible stutter.

The Kings Weaknesses

I‘m sure many of you have seen the Academy Award winning film, “The King’s Speech“. This depicts the story of how the future King George VI (who wasn’t “scheduled” to be King until his brother abdicated) received help so he could fulfil his royal duties. Even before he became King his role representing the Crown necessitated public appearances and speeches. [Read more…]

Self Confidence more useful than Self Esteem?

by

The title of this post is similar to a recent one at Herald-Net, which appears to be an on-line newspaper in Washington, USA.  I’ve added the question mark! Their post has a sports focus, so its unsurprising that the argument is very much in favour of self confidence being the key factor.

self esteem
Who Cares about Self Esteem then?

The author James McCusker  states that coaches preparing teams for games know that the enemy isn’t the opposition, but a lack of self confidence. And, as  in other aspects of life, self confidence is frequently the key to success. He throws in a great quote:-

Automotive pioneer Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” That is what self-confidence is all about, the belief that you can do what needs to be done, that you can succeed.

Self Confidence not same as Self Esteem

Unfortunately people interchange “self confidence” and “self esteem” as if they are the same thing.  Mr McCusker gives a neat definition of the difference:-

“Self-confidence is built on achievement; self-esteem is built on opinion.”

If you have a good opinion about yourself, if you believe in your worth as a person, you generally have high self esteem.  If you depend on the opinions of others to feel good, then your self esteem has a very shaky foundation.

[Read more…]

Self Confidence in Leadership

by

self confidence in leadership
self confidence in leadership

Marshall Goldsmith is an author, professor, consultant and executive coach.   He has an entry in Wikepedia and searching his name on Google gets 272,000 results – enough to give anyone self confidence! Whilst his field of excellence covers business and management, he appears to have guru status in Leadership.  Unsurprisingly, when he coaches CEO’s (and potential CEO’s) he rarely encounters problems with self confidence.

But Marshall didn’t get where he is today without being able to give sound advice on this topic. After all, if you spend your working life surrounded by confident people you should pick up a few tips.  And you won’t have to buy one of his many books, as Marshall sums it all up in two sentences on his rather unassuming blog:-

You won’t get to the top without self-confidence; to build it, you have to believe in yourself. Don’t worry about being perfect — put up a brave front and do the best you can.

Whilst its written with a business slant, its worth reading his blog post. But in summary he expands the above into 5 points.

Don’t Worry about Being Perfect

Perfectionism is something that has come up several times in past posts, linking to setting yourself impossibly high standards and never feeling what you have done is good enough. [Read more…]

Say Thank You

by

In the UK we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but to me it seems a great idea – a day set aside to say thank you.  That seems more meaningful than having an extra day holiday to celebrate a Royal Wedding, one participant of whom may by accident of birth be set to “rule” us!

say thank you
universal Thank You note

Some people keep a gratitude journal or diary, which at first seems a bit woo~woo or bound with religious practices. However, research has shown that such an activity does help. A study carried out at the University of California, Davis found that:-

In an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

Research has also found “gratitude” benefits in goal attainment, grade scores of students, lower blood pressure and improve immune function. In fact Professor Emmons, co-author of that research and other experiments on gratitude says

“The evidence that cultivating gratefulness is good for people is overwhelming…gratitude enhances nearly all spheres of human experience”

[Read more…]