Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Unhelpful thinking – part 2

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gozo self confidence Through the wonders of WordPress this post is appearing whilst I am 1200 miles from home on the Mediterranean Island of Gozo (part of Malta). Please leave comments, but they won’t appear till my return (unless I need to hide from the heat and find an Internet Cafe!)

As I said in part 1, self confidence and self esteem are undermined by poor, unhelpful thinking habits. These are things we all do to some extent – don’t mentally beat yourself up if you recognize things you do. Noticing a habit is the first step to changing it. The second is to tell yourself an alternative thought and practice using it.

Mental Filter

This is focusing on single events, or single details, and allowing them to color all your thinking. Unfortunately you exclusively chose negative details to focus on. For example, if you make a mistake you ignore all the successes and good things you did. [Read more…]

Changing habits

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Car habitMy twin daughters are both learning to drive at present. I’ve only just recovered from helping my elder daughter learn, two years ago! If you drive, can you remember how strange it felt at first, how much concentration it demanded. Synchronizing gear and clutch, regulating your speed and direction, being aware of other road users and predicting their next move.

Today, I don’t consciously engage in the task of driving – likewise I don’t consciously think about how to tie up my shoe laces or walk (try thinking about how you walk and tell yourself out loud what to move!). Reflecting at my keyboard its quite frightening how we rely on our unconscious mind and embedded habits to propel a large metal box at great speed.

I have repeatedly touched on how much of what we do is habit. Our brains process millions of messages a day – putting most of our activities on automatic pilot makes us more efficient. If we did have to consciously engage in tying our shoe laces, or driving, then we would end up exhausted. [Read more…]

Procrastination at 50

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happy birthdayMy past weekend was quite chaotic, which partially explains the delay in this post. I hit the grand old age of 50, which is somewhat weird – mainly because everyone expects you to feel different. Age is just a number, and I’m sure all of us can find examples of people who act and look very different (better or worse) than their real ages.

I must confess my physical body does at times feel a bit ancient – something I would like to address – whilst mentally I feel quite young. But I got myself into a mess by being over confident and falling back into a habit of my youth – procrastination.

I spent the weekend working on my photography portfolio, which I need to hand in this week as part of my adult education course. I had taken all the photographs I needed and had done the practical work for the assignments – but I kept putting off writing everything up. I kept telling myself I was capable of doing the work, that it should be quite straight forward. But that doesn’t get the work done!! [Read more…]

Unhelpful thinking – part 1

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self esteem dummies

Self Esteem Review

As there is no “Self Esteem for Dummies” (yet!) I have decided to partially fill the gap in the market. The first issue of my newsletter “Self Esteem Review” will be sent out later this week. For those of you who read my blog through the RSS feed, you need to visit my site to sign up for the free newsletter. The content will be different to the blog, including articles by other writers and reviews of other sites blog posts you may find useful.

Unhelpful Thinking

Several of my posts have focused on thinking – today I want to start looking at the link between how you feel and your thoughts. Ultimately, self esteem and self confidence are undermined by poor, unhelpful thinking habits.

Shoulds
There is something called the “tyranny of the shoulds”. Here we set ourselves up by saying “I should” or “ought to….” It is as though you believe that you need to threaten yourself to achieve anything. Its like using a big stick approach to yourself:- [Read more…]