Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

7 Life Lessons from a Wet Weekend

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This post is about my weekend. An enjoyable, but not particularly remarkable weekend. What’s this got to do with self confidence or self esteem?  The main philosophy of this blog is that to improve self confidence, self esteem or anything you need to learn skills that help, rather than adopting any “system”. Being able to reflect and learn from experiences is an important part of that process.

Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral

Have a Plan

On both Saturday and Sunday I woke up and knew what I was going to be doing and when. There wasn’t a tight, pressured, timetable but I had a plan for each day. Like many, at work I use a diary to schedule appointments, meetings, etc. But weekends and evenings, or whenever our leisure time is, we tend to shy away from planning as its too much like work.

As I mentioned recently, only 17% of our waking hours are spent at work during our lifetime. Planning how we spend our time ensures we do what is important to us.

Friends

Following an impromptu phone call last week my wife and I met up with friends Saturday lunch time. [Read more…]

Start Making Friends

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market11.jpg

One thing I have never particularly enjoyed is making “small talk” with strangers. Everywhere we go we are surrounded by new people (a nicer term than strangers) – just try walking down a shopping street. Most of the time we make little effort to interact with them. “Small talk” situations arise socially or at work when we are thrown into a confined space with these new people, and feel we have to interact to be polite.

Yesterday I had to go one stage beyond making small talk. As part of my photography course we went to a local market to do a social documentary project. It was suggested we politely ask stall holders if they minded having their photograph taken before shoving a camera in their face!

It was an interesting morning. Before setting off, most of us expressed misgivings about approaching total strangers and asking if we could take their photograph. We joked about being arrested or punched for our trouble – trying to hide the fact that we weren’t particularly confident. Even our tutor, Simon Lawrence – an experienced photo journalist – reflected on how such situations can create tension.

The worst thing that could happen did – [Read more…]