Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Do you believe the answers?

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Today I said I’d post the answers to the quiz I set within the Seven Strange Things post. Congratulations to Amy for getting the answers nearly all correct – as I explain below I don’t think you can find an answer to question (i) on the Internet. Here are the questions again:-

i) How many vertebrae does a giraffe have?
ii) Whose moment of flame came on 25th July 1992
iii) Which of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Stories takes its name from a racehorse?
iv) What is the connection between Citizen Kane and The Brownies?
v) How many people have walked on the moon?
vi) What was the loudest noise ever recorded on earth?
vii) Who wrote the chart topping hit (for Maria Carey amoungst others) “Without You”

Answers:-
(i) Like most mammals the giraffe only has 7 vertebrae in its neck, but that wasn’t the question. Amy, like others before her, I assume found the website that erroneously states 24. The answer is between 45 and 51, slight variations taking place between species of giraffe.

When I originally set the quiz, 4 years ago, I had to go to a Natural History Museum (in Dublin) to count the vertebrae on a giraffe’s skeleton! That one had 48. The person who got the answer correct used to carry out postmortems on giraffes when working as a zoo pathologist… [Read more…]

How to Have Great Self Confidence

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In a funny sort of way, this blog is an example of gaining confidence in something simply by doing. And now, I've hit 100 posts. My early posts were considerably shorter than what I write now. 

But whether or not we believe other people, trusting ourselves should be simpler. Rational, unemotional, self assessment should tell us whether or not we have the skills and ability to do something. If the answer is yes – end of story? No, the story goes on.

Quite a few posts have been purely skills based – such as learning assertiveness, how to say no, how to improve your speaking voice, how to solve problems. But to date 24 posts have been tagged with "thinking" – automatic thoughts, irrational thinking, affirmations, worry. So much of our self confidence, our trust in ourselves, is undermined by our thinking. [Read more…]

Seven strange things you didn’t want to know

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confident giraffeThis is my 99th post. The first to include a competition (now over) To date I have sprinkled the odd bit of personal information, trying to avoid being too self indulgent or bore you with irrelevant facts.

Recently I was asked to come up with 7 Strange but True Things about Me. So here I go (if you’re impatient, the competition is in point 7!)

1) I currently live 6 miles from where I was born; I’ve never lived more than about 5 miles from the sea, always along the South Coast of England. As far as I’m concerned, visiting London is “going up North”. One of the most important skills I learned at school was how to swim. Its never too late to learn if you can’t.

2) I ran the London marathon in 1998. The most traumatic part was the finish – I found myself running alongside three men dressed up as the Teletubbies, the popular children’s television characters. Suddenly I could see myself in my finishing photo, crossing the line with my arms raised in triumph – but as the fourth, missing, Teletubbie! The thought of being called Tinky Winky forever more spurred a sprint out of my tired legs. The thought of humiliation can be a great motivator. [Read more…]

Does your face convey confidence?

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Does my photograph on the top right of this page give weight and authority to what I write? Or does it put you off, as I look a bit of a wimp? And if you subscribe by RSS you don’t have to look at me at all!

Researchers at Tufts University in Massachusetts have come up with an interesting take on faces. Using photographs of top and bottom Chief Executives of Fortune 1000 companies, they got their students to rate them as “powerful” or “warm”. They found:-

“CEO’s who are ranked higher in terms of looking more powerful do better or have more profitable companies than those who are ranked warm.”

So does your face determine your fate, as they suggest? [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…]