Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Adjust your Attitude

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self confidenceAs we move towards year, and decade, end its a usual time to reflect and make plans (dare I say resolutions!) for 2010.  Last year, in When New Year Resolutions Break Down, I discussed not getting too hung up on 1st January as being the only time to set goals.  The more important part of that opening sentence is reflect – what can we learn from our experiences.

My own period of reflection is still a "work in progress", but one thing I'm going to work on in 2010 is my attitude. Self confidence is nothing if not an attitude – and what attitude you adopt is under your control. Here are a couple of examples.

Gill Hicks

Originally from Australia, Gill Hicks has lived in London since 1992.  Her life was totally transformed by the terrorist attack on London in July 2005 ("7/7") – as Gill put it she "started life number 2".  Standing close to the suicide bomber, she lost both her legs and nearly died – losing 80% of her blood and suffering 3 cardiac arrests in the aftermath. [Read more…]

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

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Have You Organized Your Expedition Yet?

de3If you search Google for “self confidence” you will often come across articles about children gaining confidence by participating in various activities, as diverse as karate, ballet or magic. One of my favourite posts,  “How to Build Self Confidence Through Activity” discusses this issue.  I did express concern that the amount of practice and skill required to do some activities (ballet, karate) well may make them counter productive – especially when aimed at children.

However, the post and my general attitude to activity (especially as an Occupational Therapist!) as a tool to build self confidence is very positive. I had a chance to reflect on this last week when my daughter received her Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) Gold Award at an elaborate ceremony in London.

The DofE  has been going over 50 years and over 4 million young people have completed either the bronze, silver or gold award. The purpose is:-

DofE programmes help young people develop into fully rounded and responsible individuals.  Participants will see new talents and skills develop and emotional maturity blossom whilst also building their fitness and initiative.

At the ceremony the expression “build self confidence” came up on a few occasions; from a recent survey 85% of gold award holders reported increased self confidence. [Read more…]

Make Every Day Count

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One of the first personal development books I ever bought (the Magic of Psychic Power!) had a number in it that shocked me so much that I have remembered it ever since – 25,500. That, according to author David J Schwartz was the average number of days someone lives.  (Life expectancy in the developed world has increased; in Japan it’s now around 82 years, near enough 30,000 days)

When I first read that figure, aged around the age of 20, it seemed such a small figure. Now 30 years – or 11,000 days – later I’m rapidly eating into my allotment, if I’m lucky enough to get an average quota.

The film American Beauty has a nice twist on the famous poster quote:-

“Remember those posters that said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life?” Well, that’s true with every day except one: the day that you die….”

In the chapter of Schwartz’s book, he further illustrates his point by saying that every day 5500 Americans die (it’s a generally cheerful, uplifting book!). [Read more…]

Start Challenging Your Beliefs

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Last weeks post looked into our beliefs and came up with the, unsurprising,  suggestion that perhaps we should abandon our unhelpful, negative beliefs.

beliefs are like headlights...
beliefs are like headlights...

People confuse their beliefs with facts, and generally a belief is something we see as being true.  Having been told all their life that they’re useless, a person with low self esteem may see this as a fact of life, rather than a belief they have learnt over the years.

Our mind is full of thoughts, that we are conscious of; our belief system is generally silent and we don’t notice it. But our thoughts arise from that belief system.

“Just because you’ve believed something for a long time doesn’t mean its right. It just means you’ve believed it for a long time!”  Craig Harper.

Take Stock

Thats why its useful to take stock and separate out what you believe and why. For example, you may be a vegetarian because of a decision you made in your teens that eating meat was unhealthy and cruel to animals. Or it could be that you were brought up in a strict “meat is murder” household, where there was never any  questioning of this as a fact. In both cases you would have an underlying belief that eating meat is wrong, but reached from different directions.

If we are out driving a car at night, we only see the bit of the world that our headlights pick up. Our whole awareness, what we take see,  is determined by what our beliefs allow us to see:- [Read more…]

Do your Beliefs help your Brand?

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If you meet someone for the first time, one of the first questions you exchange is “What do you do?”. Our reply tends to focus on what we do for work, our occupation. We label, or “brand” ourselves as “a student”, “a nurse” or (dare I say it) “a plumber”.

There was a very interesting  post recently on one of my favorite blogs  The Positivity Blog. In describing 10 steps to be the brand you want in life, Mike King says:-

“Work is really just a portion of our lives since working for 40 hours a week and 50 weeks a year for up to 40 years (about 80,000 hours) is actually only about 11.4% of our entire lives (700,000 hours) if you expect to live to an age of 80 years old.

Even if you took 1/3 of your life away to account for sleeping, you still only work about 17% of your waking hours in a lifetime. Think about that for a minute. Is work really that important in the whole scheme of things if it is such a small portion of our lives from birth to death?  I’d say not.”

After going through the 10 steps he feels we need to take to review and build the “brand” you want to be, Mike closes the post with another interesting statement:- [Read more…]