Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

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…]

8 Ways to Start Faking It

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A common  method suggested to build self confidence is to “fake it till you make it”. Easier said than done. Here’s a few ideas.

Practice

The old saying “practice makes perfect” could be rewritten “practice makes confident”. It may sound obvious, but in this day and age practicing a skill seems to be overlooked. We forget we weren’t born able to walk or talk!

I touched on practice a few weeks ago in my post on activity. What I like about the use of magic tricks, as opposed to ballet and karate is that the children could perform confidently after a short period of time. But, they still needed to practice to get there. Practice only makes permanent what you practice – good or bad. My daughter practicing her singing is a case where bad may become permanent!

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Since I started writing this post, I’ve just come across this article on the importance of practice

[Read more…]

How to Build Self Confidence Through Activity

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Does ballet increase self confidence?

I have set up my browser with google/ig and get regular alerts on web sites that feature self esteem and self confidence. Looking at my links to self confidence, there have been three recent articles that suggest doing certain activities can boost self confidence. I highlight the comments from the karate and ballet instructors, plus the psychologist who looked at magic tricks.

Karate Helps Self Confidence

This article is about Dubai Karate Center. According their karate instructor Sensei Renjith:-

“Karate is more than a self-defense technique. It makes one confident to face any situation in life. Many parents who have sent their children to me for training have admitted that there has been a radical transformation in the behavior of their children after learning karate…

anyone who familiarizes himself or herself with the sport, can actually develop virtues like patience, discipline and respect towards others.”

[Read more…]

Can you take criticism?

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You may have noticed the new theme! Still quite basic as I haven’t started tweaking the customization facility. It will keep me busy next week. I will also add, my eldest daughter is 21 tomorrow. I’m both very proud, and feel very old!!!!!!!!!!

Not everyone agreed with last weeks criticism sandwich, some feeling giving praise at the same time weakens the message. Like everything I write on this blog, it is up to you to find what suits. There are no rules carved into stone saying how you “must” behave.

Like giving criticism, receiving criticism can be difficult if you have low self esteem. Looking back at assertiveness, our responses to criticism can follow the same behavioral patterns:-

Passive – we believe everything the person is saying

Indirect aggression – agree at the time or say nothing, but then go off and sulk or be critical to others about the person who criticized you.

Direct aggression – angrily deny and challenge everything that is said to you.

Criticism may be unfair – and when it is we need to counter it by putting our own case succinctly and calmly. [Read more…]