...to live the life you want
Does taking risks build confidence became too long to add a reflection on my family holiday(vacation) to Gozo. Although I was being critical of the risk taking (see Comments below), I’m not advocating remaining within our comfort zone. In the case of our holiday, the comfort zone was swimming, sun bathing, reading, walking around the local area, eating in the many restaurants. All very pleasant.
But my lasting memory of the holiday is when [Read more…]
Back to work and usual routines after our vacation, although as I write the house is quite. My eldest daughter flew back up north to Yorkshire on Friday to attend a wedding and our 17 year old twins have invaded Cornwall, south west England, to stay in a caravan with friends.
Holidays give you plenty of time to reflect. I know when I was the age of my children I certainly lacked the confidence to do the things they are currently doing (and planning!). Yet we constantly hear stories on the media about how over protected children are in modern society. They get driven to school and we don’t let them out of our site to play with friends for fear of abduction.
Schools and local governments become more risk minimizing and ban many activities for fear of being sued if accidents happen. Councils cut low branches off trees to prevent children climbing them, schools put bubble wrap on sharp corners of tables to prevent injury!
Despite all this my children seem to be emerging into adulthood far more confident than I did. I’d agree that in many ways they have been more sheltered than I was, but I don’t think that paints a true picture.
Through the wonders of WordPress this post is appearing whilst I am 1200 miles from home on the Mediterranean Island of Gozo (part of Malta). Please leave comments, but they won’t appear till my return (unless I need to hide from the heat and find an Internet Cafe!)
As I said in part 1, self confidence and self esteem are undermined by poor, unhelpful thinking habits. These are things we all do to some extent – don’t mentally beat yourself up if you recognize things you do. Noticing a habit is the first step to changing it. The second is to tell yourself an alternative thought and practice using it.
Mental Filter
This is focusing on single events, or single details, and allowing them to color all your thinking. Unfortunately you exclusively chose negative details to focus on. For example, if you make a mistake you ignore all the successes and good things you did. [Read more…]
I use Firefox as my browser – which I would recommend to anyone as it has many useful pugins you can add. Its also supposed to be safer than Internet Explorer. One feature you can use on either Firefox or IM is Google/ig. This allows you to create a personalized home page and populate it with a variety of features – from games or news feeds to RSS feeds or weather forecasts.
I enclose a screenshot of my “IG” page – which includes a feed from Google news. As well as “Top Stories” and in my case “UK” and “Health”, I can add interests like “Self Confidence” and “Self Esteem”.
Some of the stories classed as “self confidence” have little merit But just looking at this mornings pick, the feed leads to some fascinating and informative stories.
I’m no great tennis fan. My colleague at work had Centre Court tickets in the first week of Wimbledon, which left me cold. But I did see a large chunk of the mens final, and cannot help but admire the skill of the Nadal & Federer.
The link from Google News is to an article in The Times (London) reflecting on Wimbledon [Read more…]
We’ve just started the second half of 2008, and some of us have just reached a landmark of a different kind – hitting the big five oh! A time to review and reset goals? I have written about goal setting quite a few times, especially about six months ago when everyone was setting goals and resolutions:-
In Are goals necessary? I reflected that I have had mixed success with goal setting and in my career I have taken opportunities rather than following a clear plan – so why be “SMART”?
Do you have passion or desire? discussed the concept of a “road map” – all the rage in December – and looked at getting excited about making changes, finding passion or desire.
Do you have a dream – concluded goals are necessary, but insufficient. We need some inner drive or passion.
Why haven’t you set goals? did address the balance with arguments in favor of goals and reasons people don’t set them.
In Achieving goals with support I used the example of goal setting being like using a GPs unit. For the first time I mentioned how coaching, or using support, could be helpful to get us to where we want to be.
Recently I have been coached and I have been coaching someone myself – more of which some other time. A broad definition of life coaching that I had been using is
“unlocking a persons potential to maximize their own performance. Its helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
(Tim Gallway, quoted by Whitmore in Coaching for Performance)
I’ve recently adopted a broader definition “helping facilitate growth and change“ as coaching is something that is happening all the time. As I argued in achieving goals with support a friend or family member may “coach” you and help you achieve or change, but do so through everyday conversation. [Read more…]