Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Could you stop complaining for 21 days?

by

One of the joys of living this side of the Atlantic is I have never seen “Oprah”. However – trying to find my way around Mybloglog.com I came across a great site called UnconditionalConfidence.com, run by Nancy Tierney.

Nancy reviewed an episode of Oprah that feature a Pastor, Will Bowen, who initially challenged his congregation to stop complaining for 21 days. He produced purple bracelets to help this happen, which you switch to your other wrist if you find yourself complaining. The goal is to leave the bracelet on the one wrist for 21 days.

Nancy takes the challenge further by suggesting finding 5 things to appreciate if you find yourself grumpy and complaining. I’ve never been one for wearing wrist bands, but I’ve sent for one as it sounds a great way of changing your underlying attitude.

Are you popular?

by

Happy anniversary Tony

 

Happy Anniversary Tony!

Do you worry about people not liking you? Do you try to be friends to everyone – and end up with lots of acquaintances but few real friends?

Today is the tenth anniversary of Tony Blair becoming British Prime Minister. Now, I have no hard facts to back this up, but I would say millions of people in this country don’t like Tony Blair. Many would even say they “hate” him.

I’m sure that in most countries throughout the world, the people most disliked are those in power. The same happens in business and other fields as well as politics – you don’t get very far by trying to be liked by everyone you meet.

Over the next few years Tony Blair will earn mega bucks giving lectures around the world – people will pay top dollar to hear him speak. I’m not going to discuss his merits as Prime Minister, but simply point out that he didn’t get to where he is today by being nice to everyone!

But does it worry you, undermine your confidence, if you know there might be people out there who don’t like you?

Have a dump to build confidence

by

We all have experiences we would rather forget about. Times when we made a fool of ourselves, died with embarrassment, did something that we never want to go through again. But we do – it seems so easy to recall these events in our mind and replay them over and over.

Moving on from bad experiences is important if we’re to feel good about ourselves. One technique is to literally “dump” the experience. Write it down, draw it, or get some other physical representation of that memory. Then dispose of it – screw it up, tear it up, bin it, burn it, flush it – the choice is yours.

Doing something symbolic is our way of telling ourselves that its time to move on. If the experience tries to creep back into our memory – we can shut it out quickly by recalling how we dumped it and move on.

There’s no comparison

by

Do you find yourself comparing yourself to others all the time? Are you being fair on yourself – it’s easy to under value your achievements in comparison with others. If you look you can always find someone who can do something better than you – so why look!

In any field of human endeavor there will be experts who specialize or train to such a degree they are at the very top. But it would be a sad, dysfunctional world if no one else bothered. Many thousands achieved a huge amount by completing the marathon on Sunday – I hope none belittled their achievement by comparing themselves to the race winners.

Telling yourself that anyone could have done it is also self defeating. Are you sure? Does it matter? What matters is – YOU DID IT.

Great self confidence from praise

by

A chapter in the excellent Happiness Toolkit is devoted to praising yourself. The author Jennifer Summers states:-

Most people have no qualms about putting themselves down when they’ve not done something as well as they’d hoped or wanted. People put themselves down for all sorts of reasons, examples can include: being late, messing up the baking of a cake, scratching the car, quite often even injuring themselves can provoke a reaction, “I’m so clumsy.”

The opposite reactions can be experienced when you praise yourself, and tell yourself you did well. This shouldn’t be reserved just for big events – like running a marathon!

Recognize that most of what you do each day is positive

To do this Jennifer suggests listing 10 positive things you did today, and describe how this makes you feel? This ensures you focus on the mundane, as well as the special. The Happiness Toolkit includes a worksheet to help with this exercise, although any form of diary or notebook would suffice. Give it a try.