How would things be if you could go into any situation with curiosity and a sense of fun, with the thought 'Whatever happens here, I'll be fine'?

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1 Self-confidence introduction By Ellen Prue Having poor self-confidence or low self-esteem can make many things really difficult. Conversely, when you have self confidence that is solid and reliable, most things become easy and fun as well! Good self-confidence allows you to achieve the real goals in your life whether they are to do with work, relationships or just being comfortable with yourself. Without self-confidence it's difficult to fulfil your potential in any area. If you're giving a presentation and you're constantly worrying about how you're coming across, that's a waste of brain power! How much more compelling, exciting or persuasive would you be if all of your attention was focused powerfully on the job in hand? If you're talking to someone you'd like to get to know better, how will you come across if you're always thinking 'Am I saying the right thing?', 'Do they like me?'. If you're going out socially, you need to be able to enjoy it! That's what socialising is about! People need other people, but without self-confidence, you miss out on the joy that good relationships bring. Think about it now. When are you at your most relaxed, happy, funny, or chatty? It probably is when you're with people you're most comfortable with. Maybe old friends or family. Now, what if you could feel that good meeting new people, in a meeting at work or doing public speaking? What if you could really feel 'I am what I am, take it or leave it!'? How would things be if you could go into any situation with curiosity and a sense of fun, with the thought 'Whatever happens here, I'll be fine'? What will it mean to you to be 100% confident? Not arrogant, not loud and annoying, just easily, calmly confident about who you are and what you can do. It's essential for your motivation that you do this. Think a little about it now. What will those old difficult situations be like once you are self-confident? How will you feel with that person that currently causes you problems? The three biggest myths of self confidence These are the most common things we hear with regards to having confidence: "You have to be born with it." Not true, self-confidence is a set of skills that can be learned, just like learning to drive or play a game. "If you've had your confidence destroyed, it's gone for good." Wrong. It may take a greater leap of faith to start building it back up, but once you're there you'll be much harder than you were before and less likely to have your confidence shaken again. "I'll know I'm confident when I can be sure I'll succeed at something new". How can you know you'll succeed when you've never done something before? Confidence is much more about tolerating uncertainty: being cool with not knowing what is going to happen.

2 There are six exercises which use various techniques from psychology and are designed to increase your confidence. Work through them in order with a notebook or scrap paper. Confidence exercises By Ellen Prue 1. What does self-confidence mean to you The essential first step to building your self-confidence is to assess what 'self-confidence' means to you. Just saying 'I want to be more confident' is like saying 'I just want to travel'! Where? How? When? So, an example might be: "When I am with a new group of people, I want to be able to relax, join in conversations and ask people about themselves." Exercise one In your notebook, write your answers to the following questions: What does 'self-confidence' mean to you? Generally, your answer should start with "I want to be able to..." or "I want to be..." Stay away from "I don't want to be...", "I want to be less..." and other 'avoiding' statements. Stay positive! You need to know where you going, not where you've come from! In what situations do you need more confidence? Where do you already have it? For example: with your family, friends, at work? Around which of the following are you confident in your abilities? Cooking, gardening, vocabulary, spelling, exercising, driving? What do you just know you can do without thinking about it? Write down one thing you will be able to do once you have the confidence you need. This should be something tangible, like making a particular phone call, saying something to a particular person, giving a presentation, speaking up in a situation. We will refer back to this later. Write these answers down now. When you think you've got all of them; stop, take a deep breath and then think some more until you come up with others. 2. Modelling self-confidence One of the quickest and most effective ways to understand how someone else goes about things is to 'model' them. This means copying their outward appearance and so getting an idea of how they feel on the inside. This is so effective that some sports clinics have failing athletes do this - they show them video of their winning days including races, interviews, news footage and have them copy what they were doing at the time. And think of the apprentice system that still survives in some occupations. The apprentice would 'pick up' how to do things from the master just by being around him or her. When you really apply yourself to this you'll find the difference astounding. Exercise two

3 Think of one person who you consider to be self-confident in a situation where you would like to be (see your answers to exercise 1). Write down their name. Do this for every situation in which you would like more self-confidence. Once you have a 'confidence model' for every situation, write down what it is that lets you know that that person is confident - make it specific. For example, rather than, "the way he looks", write "his face is relaxed and smiling a little". Cover all aspects of the person: facial expression posture voice tonality (loud, soft, deep...) gestures the way they dress how they interact with others how others react to them anything else you notice about them And if you can't remember enough details for a really good description, study them and watch them. Important: When describing the person, it is vital to be as specific as possible. It's no good writing that their posture is confident-looking. Its confidence you're learning to make here, so you need to know its ingredients! 3. Building unconscious patterns of self-confidence This exercise builds up an unconscious pattern for confidence. One of the biggest problems with self-confidence is that people spend their time trying to be less uncomfortable in a situation, or less nervous. Getting away from something is hard, and there's no guarantee you'll end up where you want to be. Just like a route map, the exercise lets your mind know where you want to go. Without a clear idea of your destination, you could end up anywhere! Exercise three Now, for the first confidence model on your list from exercise two, (if there's more than one), read carefully through what you wrote about them until you begin to build up a strong idea of them. Then, as long as you're somewhere you won't be disturbed for 5 minutes, close your eyes and imagine being with that person in the sort of situation where you admire their confidence. The more relaxed you are, the better this works. Focus on the way their voice sounds, the way they look, how other people interact with them, the way they stand or sit, their facial expressions, gestures and so on Once you've got a good imagination of that person in your mind, then imagine merging with them, or drifting into them. Imagine what it's like to be that person, seeing how others react to you, how they look at you, how they talk to you, how it feels to be that person. Some people find this very easy; others take longer to become good at it. However, it is worth the effort - successful people are naturally good at this type of imaginative exercise - it's an essential ingredient for success.

4 Although this may seem very simple, it is startlingly effective. If you can ride a bike, you may remember a time when it was very hard to do. Then all of a sudden, it became easy. After that, even if you haven't ridden a bike for years, you can hop back on one and off you go! This is how this exercise works. By imaginative rehearsal, you teach your mind to perform the skill unconsciously. So, just like with riding a bike, confidence becomes effortless. Some people worry that if they're copying someone else, they're not being themselves. Well, guess how confident people got that way? They learnt it somewhere! Usually this is by copying other people unconsciously while growing up, be it their parents or peers. This is partially how we form our personalities - by 'trying things on' and keeping the things we like. One last tip for keeping your confidence is to surround yourself with optimistic, positive people and ideas. You can't expect to be at your best if people around you are always bringing you down. This doesn't mean I advocate dumping your less upbeat friends of course, just to be aware of the effect that others can have on you. Read over what you have written in your course notes so far, just to get you in the swing of things. Do this now before reading further, paying particular attention to your answers to the questions in exercise one. 4. Self-confident fantasy Now you read over your notes from the previous exercises, get yourself comfortable and ready to do this exercise. Exercise four Imagine you have been granted three wishes. One of your wishes is to have the selfconfidence you want. You go to bed tonight and during the night miraculously your wish is granted. When you wake up in the morning, you have all the confidence you need. What is life like? Close your eyes and really begin to explore this fantasy. Imagine going to bed, doing your night time routine, switching off the lights, getting comfortable in bed and that lovely feeling as you begin to drift off This is a fantastic way to use your imagination. (After all, you probably use it to scare yourself enough - imagining things going wrong, why not use it to help yourself for a change?) In your fantasy, answer the following questions: How do you feel when you get up in the morning? What do you look like in those situations that used to be a problem? How do you sound? 4 What is your facial expression like? What do others notice about you that is different? How do you think about those things that used to be a problem? What do you do during your day that you didn't before? Work at doing this exercise. The more detail you include the better. This could be the most important 15 minutes you have ever spent. Afterwards, write in your notes the things you noticed about the newly confident you. This will be very useful for future exercises. Also, as I've already said, you MUST know where

5 you're going if you're going to get there. This exercise provides the target for your conscious and unconscious mind to move towards. Confidence Tip: Things You Can't Do! This is a really common habit I've noticed people get into if they're feeling a bit down. You think of something other people can do and then feel bad because you can't do it too. Have you ever noticed yourself doing that? Of course it's natural to want to be able to compare favourably with others, but consider this: *There will ALWAYS be more things you can't do than things you can do* The World is huge, and possibilities are endless! So, by the law of averages, you are always more likely to be able to think of something you can't so than something you can. So don't let your mind play tricks on you! If you find yourself doing this, deliberately change the contents of your thoughts to things you *have* learnt to do in the past. This way, you will end up feeling more capable, better about yourself, and you're more likely to start tackling some of those things you'd like to be able to do! 5. Practising self-confidence Although this might seem like 'revision', it's important that you give it some time. The stronger the roots of your self-confidence, the more likely it will stand up to the next storm! You heard about the three biggest myths of self-confidence. If you can't remember them, look back over them now. As you do this, think about how your attitudes have changed towards the myths. In what ways are you clearer now about what exactly confidence is? Look back to see what your definition of self-confidence was in exercise one. How has this changed? And how far have you moved towards realising those goals? You described some self-confident people. Has your opinion changed about them? In what ways do you understand more about their self-confidence now? Read over what you wrote about your confidence fantasy experience. Take two minutes to re-experience that now. Exercise five Write down at least five things you notice during the week ahead that illustrate to you that your self-confidence is improving. They're easy to miss, like an unexpected feeling of comfort, or relaxation in a previously stressful situation, so really look hard. However small, these are the indicators that things are moving. And like a snowball rolling down a hill, once you get going...! Confidence Tip: Trust 'the back part' of your mind! As a human being, you are blessed with the most incredibly intelligent system, fine-tuned by millions of years of development. Your unconscious mind moderates your body temperature, your co-ordination, your immune system. It allows you to remember things that you heard only once, years ago! It makes

6 unbelievably complex tasks ridiculously easy, such as catching a ball, understanding a sentence, or recognising a smell. You CAN trust it to do more for you. If it can do all this, it can certainly think of what to say in social situations, give you greater abilities in any area you need, enable you to learn almost anything you choose and much, much more. All YOU need to do is let it. And to do this, you need to relax. When you're relaxed, your mind and brain function in a much more intelligent, focused and efficient way. When you do relax in a situation that used to make you nervous or tense, you'll really amaze yourself. (Or rather, your unconscious mind will amaze you!) So, think about how it feels to just trust yourself a little more to do your best in a situation. Just have faith that whatever happens, you'll be OK. Relax and enjoy watching what your unconscious mind can do for you. The best way of building lasting confidence is to do things that make you surprised at your own ability. Typically, under-confident people have high standards so they don't see little things as being worth much. So push it. Give it a go, whatever it is. There's only this life (arguably!) and one way to make it a boring one is to avoid doing new things. So go ahead, it won't kill you! 6. Putting it all together Now we're going to do some work to consolidate all that you have learned over the previous exercises. To truly learn something in this field, conscious understanding is usually not enough. We need to experience a new skill or feeling in order to integrate it. Because this 'unconscious' type of learning is so vital to building self-confidence, what follows is a 'poetic' script with hypnotic qualities that you can read to yourself or record onto audiocassette if you wish. *(If you do this, don't listen to it in any situation where you need to maintain concentration, like driving)*. Just like poetry, this sort of language appeals more to the right hemisphere of the brain and encourages the listener to have an experience that will teach them what they need to know. Before you read this, take a little time to get comfortable and ensure you have a few minutes to yourself. Like poetry, you need to absorb the words, rather than examine them. So read it slowly and deliberately, taking time to explore the concepts - you can even read it out loud if you want (as long as you are not in the office!) So, reading this slowly and deliberately, like you would to a child, just notice the way your feet feel, whether relaxed or comfortable, cool or warm. And allow yourself to become aware that there are particular sensations in your fingers that you hadn't noticed until now... And do you remember yet the last time you were able to relax very deeply? Whether it was on vacation or going to sleep at night, in that twilight area between waking and sleeping... And there's a part of you, apart from the part that worries that can do all the things the other part wants to do comfortably and easily. And it's that part that's able to have faith in you, to trust your abilities that are going to take you forward to bigger and better things...

7 Of course we don't know when the first time will be that the thinking part of you will be surprised by the confident abilities of the other part... But just like when Spring comes, before the first green shoots appear things are happening beneath the surface... And perhaps just now you can't imagine just how you will feel good, or be really interested, in situations that used to be less than comfortable... But you know that the eagle is confident that it can fly and glide without knowing that it's confident... And the idea of that effortless ease, gliding smoothly and freely can give you all the knowledge you need to feel confident when you need to... And there's a part of your mind that has been absorbing the ideas of the last few exercises and it can take the time now to put those ideas together while you rest assured that those green shoots are moving upwards to bring forth new growth and fulfilment of your potential as a self-accepting, confident person... Allowing your mind to drift back in time a little, you can begin to remember the feelings of that confidence model from the first exercises the way they look... how others relate to them... the things they say... their attitude to risk... all those qualities that you can integrate and absorb as your own... And take a little time to really get into that now, the longer you spend now, the more amazed you will be as your confidence increases over the days and weeks to come... Not so long ago, a miracle happened in your imagination, when you woke in the morning feeling as perfectly confident as you could wish, enjoying the prospect of a day, a week, a month, a year, a life full of confidence and high self-esteem... That feeling of being able to approach things with a carefree attitude, exploring with the curiosity of a child, smiling confidently in the face of adversity, knowing that whatever happens, you'll be OK... And with that can come the trust in your own abilities that allows a person to be comfortable in new situations and to see new opportunities in old ones... And as your mind makes sense of these words, you might like to take a little time to allow yourself a little well-deserved rest and close your eyes for a moment or two... now... "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it" - Goethe