Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Forget New Year Resolutions

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self confidenceAs in my previous post, I'm going to highlight When New Year Resolutions Breakdown, which I wrote this time last year.

To end this year I'm going to break a variety of habits, firstly by publishing an article by someone else! It also has no direct reference to either self confidence or self esteem. To cap it all, its about 5 years old!!

That said, I think this article says everything that needs to be said about New Year Resolutions, and the more important issue of having a Life Plan – more of which from me in 2010.

Forget New Year's Resolutions – They Don't Work

by Vic Johnson

You can forget about making New Year's Resolutions if you're hoping for a successful outcome. Most aren't worth the paper they're written on.

No less than Mark Twain has written of New Year's Resolutions, "Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever."

The biggest majority of New Year's Resolutions have gone by the wayside before January is over and most won't even be remembered six months later. And the reason is pretty simple: Most are made in response to something negative — a habit or situation that the person wants to change or end. [Read more…]

Self Confidence

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Why do we need to build self confidence? To me confidence has always been the core of self development; the building block on which goal setting, motivation, problem solving, communication, willpower and other aspects of self help stem from. No confidence puts us at a major disadvantage in life.

Definition of Self Confidence

How do you define self confidence? Dictionary.com says

“realistic confidence in one’s own judgment, ability, power, etc … belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities”

The word confidence originates from the Latin “confidere”, meaning to trust. Trusting and believing in ourselves, having faith in our ability in whatever situation we need to perform.

Building Self Confidence

To be more confident then, we have to somehow generate this faith or trust in our abilities. Unfortunately, we are constantly being challenged by new situations full of variables we cannot control. In building confidence, we cannot eliminate this uncertainty.

A common approach to build confidence is good preparation. If I have to give a speech tomorrow, I would carefully prepare what I was going to say. I could reassure myself, challenging my automatic negative thoughts. However, even though I’ve given speeches before, there are always going to be variables that I cannot eliminate or control.

Self Confidence

At the heart of building self confidence and becoming more confident is this conundrum of uncertainty, our inability to control the world around us. Whilst there are many other techniques and ideas that we will cover in this blog, the first and most important is to accept this lack of control.

You can build self confidence by not letting the feelings generated by uncertainty take over.  We have an built in system to protect us from danger – “fight or flight” – that creates what we identify as anxiety symptoms when threatened. Tolerate that feeling of anxiety, recognise that uncertainty is a challenge rather than a threat. Once you start to do that, then you’re on the way to building confidence and generally being more confident.

Definitions of Self Esteem

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self esteem definitionEarlier this week I read a blog post Building Self Esteem by personal development blogger Alex Shalman.  I've followed Alex for a while, taking part in his happiness project about 18 months ago.

Alex has just started dental school – good luck to him as dentistry is a total turnoff to me!  But he was reflecting on a class where his tutor defined self esteem as:-

…it’s a feeling that you are a valuable human being by possessing a quality that makes you such. This could be for a number of reasons, including but not exclusive to, having a skill, talent, job, relationship, helping people, being attractive, etc.

Do we have to possess some quality to make us valuable? If someone spends all day at home watching TV, with no interaction with others, does that mean they have no value? And by this definition, low self esteem?

If you do a search on Twitter for "self esteem", the main attributing reason people describe their self esteem as low is through how they look.  Unfortunately many deem themselves unattractive – thats why the Dove video looking at image manipulation was so effective.

[Read more…]

That Dove Photo Thing

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I’ve mentioned the Dove Self Esteem Campaign before, I think in Self Esteem Exercises.  Its easy to be cynical about their motives – at the end of the day they are still marketing soap!

But as various surveys always seem to conclude that the majority of teenage girls want to change the way they look, then their campaign has merit. Dove say they are:-

"very commited to freeing the next generation from self-limiting beauty stereotypes"

That might be rather optimistic, as those stereotypes are deep seated and constantly being reinforced. Its been around for a while, but I only saw this video the other day. Personally I think its quite powerful, and says a lot in 75 seconds. What do you think? Have Dove helped women improve their self esteem?

Are Affirmations Useless?

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Its 150 years since the publication of what is now regarded as the first self help book – Samuel Smiles “Self Help“.  Still on sale today – and apparently a big seller in countries such as Japan and China.  selfhelp1But when first published it sold 20,000 copies in its first year, and by the time of Smiles death in 1902 had sold over 1/4 million copies. In the 19th Century it was only out sold by the Bible!

In a recent radio program it was said Smiles book was published on the same day as “On Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin.  I cannot find any other proof of that fact. Either way,  it could be that Smiles message “Heaven helps those who help themselves” was reassuring to a society held together by Christian beliefs.

But the underlying message from Smiles was that success came through dedication and hard work.  He didn’t appear to believe in the concept of “genius”, all those he portrayed in his case studies got there by hard graft and application. Interestingly, this is a central theme of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers.

The End of Self Help?

oprah1I write this as some have been predicting the end of self help, [Read more…]