Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Overcoming obstacles

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Although its Sunday lunchtime, when many families gather together, I’m sitting alone in our house as my wife and two younger daughters are all working and our eldest is 275 miles away! I will return to this on Wednesday with a look at habits and routines.

I don’t usually like intrusive noise in my environment, but prefer undistracting music rather than silence. However, at the moment I can hear the television in the room next door which is broadcasting the Great North Run. This is a half marathon road race, where thousands of people rise to the challenge of running 13 miles and usually trying to raise money for worthy causes.

I have touched on challenges like this before, such as my Big Swim, and the Confidence Marathon posts. Important as setting ourselves challenges can be, it nice to be reminded that throughout the world people are having to overcome challenges imposed on them by circumstances of birth and nature. [Read more…]

Confidence in your environment

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improve confidenceI recently joined a new forum – Personal Development Partners – which, although in its infancy, does seem to have the makings of a very useful place to share ideas. Do check it out (its free, although you can pay for more enhanced features). This post was inspired by a thread I contributed to this week, as I realised I hadn’t mentioned an important element in improving self confidence.

One of my previous jobs involved working in a prison that had been built in 1856. Working with the prisoners was generally fine, but the building was incredibly noisy and dirty, overcrowded and cramped. I also commuted by train – and my journeys were also in an environment that was noisy (occasionally dirty), overcrowded and cramped! This gradually wore me down and took away other satisfactions from the job. [Read more…]

Desiderata

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One of the delightful things about blogging is how interacting with others running similar sites can be both stimulating and informative. I’ve mentioned before about Priscilla Palmer’s personal development list.

But I was initially irritated when Bob Clubbs posted a comment on my Affirmation Software post (as it wasn’t relevant to what I had written!) – but now I have commited myself to writing a post for his blog. Bob had put up the poem Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, which he said said was close to his personal philosophy on life. He wanted others to volunteer to write about particular sections of the poem that appealed to them. Here is the poem:- [Read more…]

Who do you trust?

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Over the past week in the UK there has been a major financial new story. A leading bank, Northern Rock, asked the Bank of England for a loan, to help resolve a “cash flow problem”. Since then, there have been constant queues outside the banks branches as anxious savers have been withdrawing their money.

As bank officials, government ministers and the Bank of England have given assurances that “there is nothing to worry about”, “that everyones money is safe” – the queues got longer. Would you trust a politician who says there is nothing to worry about! [Read more…]

Challenging beliefs

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improve self esteemI’ve come across an interesting twist on thinking and how what we believe affects the way we feel. And to reiterate – how we feel and how we view ourselves is at the heart of our self confidence.

In the UK there is a popular TV show called “Who do you think you are?”, in which various celebrities unravel their ancestral history and draw up a family tree. Its quite addictive TV, as often (with much background help from the production team!) they can trace back several generations.

This week they featured actor John Hurt. He had grown up being told by his family that he was descended from an Irish aristocrat. This had always affected him, this belief he had Irish blood in him. When visiting Ireland he felt that “it was his home”.

Unfortunately for John, the programme did not have a happy ending. [Read more…]