Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Being good at what you do

by

Samuel SmilesImage via Wikipedia

It may be of comparatively little consequence how a man is governed from without, whilst everything depends upon how he governs himself from within. The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.

Samuel Smiles Self-help 1859

I recently came across what must be one of the first ever self improvement books. Self-help by Samuel Smiles was first published in England in 1859, but was widely translated and sold in thousands worldwide.The book largely chronicles the lives of remarkable people, making much of how ordinary they were at birth. They achieved great things through perseverance and dedication, toiling away through hardship and unremitting hard work. [Read more…]

Authority Blogging

by

hand

Sometimes my posts have veered off topic or had only a tenuous link to self confidence or self esteem. This post is more of a reflection on why I blog and how I would like to improve things over the next year. I started blogging at the end of March 2007. So as this is a sort of anniversary, please forgive any self indulgence.

In my recent tinkering and upgrading of this site, I have also added a couple of advertising “widgets”. Whilst I don’t expect this blog to generate any significant income, like most I’m used to getting financially rewarded when I do work that benefits others.

My previous hesitancy was whether putting adverts or affiliate links on my blog would dilute its “authority”. That sounds totally pretentious – and has probably knocked my authority for six anyway! But that was something I picked up in my early days learning how to be a blogger.

The work authority has come up a few times for me recently. Initially I was inspired to write a post for a competition, about being an Authentic Blogger, by Chris Garrett. Despite being someone I would describe as an authority himself Chris responded to my first attempt at a meme. Consequently I’ve been an avid reader of his daily blogging ever since!

Over the past weekend I found myself struggling when trying to explain why I started a blog. I was on a Coaching for Occupational Therapists course – all of us experienced, professional people who are embarking on training that will give us expertise to practice in a related field. [Read more…]

Self Esteem Building

by

Good self esteem means having a good relationship with yourself. In the same way as we have good relationships with other people who are less than perfect, who have faults, so it is with ourselves. We don’t have to be perfect or wonderful. The trick is to appreciate and believe in ourselves, “warts and all”.

When I started this blog a year ago, I initially tried to cover self esteem and self confidence as one broad, somewhat interchangeable concept. The terms are confused and have different connotations in different cultures. Self esteem is a narrower concept, and really just boils down to the relationship between you – and yourself.

So with high self esteem we:- [Read more…]

Do you believe in fairies?

by

minstead1Let me tell you a bit about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. He was born in Scotland in 1859 and he studied to be a doctor at Edinburgh University. Medicine took him to the Arctic Circle (on a whaling ship) and Africa before he established a practice on the English south coast.

His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, became widely read worldwide before he was 30. Throughout his life, Conan Doyle saw the “Holmes” stories as commercial and wished to be regarded as a serious author by his other work (plays, historic novels and poetry – Sherlock Holmes initially gained huge readership in a popular magazine).

A man of principle and courage, whatever his own reservations regarding his creation of Sherlock Holmes, his knighthood and other awards made him one of the most influential and respected men of his generation. But he was not without controversy. He held strong beliefs in the occult and in particular he expounded spiritualism, being able to communicate with the dead. [Read more…]

Challenging beliefs

by

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…]