4 Steps to Increase Your Self-Confidence Today!

One dose of self-confidence for the guy in the corner, please!

There are two core basic needs that everyone strives to have fulfilled in their life:

• experience unconditional love and 
• have a sense of value and worth. 

Everyone works to meet these internally and externally.

The problem is that the needs have to be met internally first, otherwise, no matter how much love a person gets from others or how much other people to work to build their sense of value and worth, it will never be enough and a void will be present.

Self-confidence needs to be nurtured on four different levels:

• mental, 
• emotional, 
• physical and 
• spiritual.

So, that begs the question, "How can a person develop more self-confidence" for themselves internally?

Glad you asked! A person can develop self confidence when,

"You decide to take a specific action, so that you can earn and deserve the right to feel good about yourself, and then celebrate your success."

Let's break it down and see why this seems so simple and yet it can be so challenging to accomplish.

1- "you need to decide."

This is challenging because this step requires a person to really stop, define what is important to them, and CHOOSE what action to take that will lead them to a desired outcome.

This action has to be for you, about you, and be meaningful to you and you alone. It can't PRIMARILY be for your spouse, kids, preacher, mom, dad, friends, or any other social influence. It has to be for you first.

2 - it has to be a specific action

Specific and measureable actions mean that once you have achieved the action you have to be aware of it. This gives absolute proof so you can't talk yourself out of celebrating!

It is not enough to say that you are going to call some people. You have to specific, "I am going to call 5 prospects today and ask for referrals." Even then, some people say, "well, I did call 5, but I could have called 10." That's a no-no!

3- "so you can earn and deserve."
I have said it a thousand times. When you define any goal, you automatically put all of your obstacles in place. If you are going to feel good about yourself, you have to set a specific goal meaningful to you and take action to overcome the obstacles (mental, emotional, physical and spiritual) the goal came with, before you feel that you have "earned and deserve" the right to feel good about yourself.

"Earned and deserve" implies that you have put some work, overcome adversity, and succeeded in the task you set out for yourself. This is where self respect, integrity, honor, and courage are bred.

Then and only then, when all three steps have been accomplished INSIDE OF YOURSELF can you really feel like you deserve that feeling of self-confidence. It is not free. Self-confidence does not just stop by, ring the doorbell, share a pizza with you on the couch, and miraculously, when you get up the next morning, you have lost a pound, feel great about yourself, and are full of energy! Would be terrific if it worked that way, but sadly, it does not!

4- once you achieve your goals, you have to celebrate!
And, I recommend that you celebrate at 100%. If you want the self-confidence to stick, you had better celebrate and anchor in the great feelings.

If you talk yourself out of your success with language such as, "Yeah, but I should have done more, I could have been better, I need to work harder" Self-confidence does not stay for long. It is good for you to acknowledge yourself and being great, working hard, and achieving success.


NOTHING IS TOO SMALL TO CELEBRATE!


So, there you have it! Self-confidence in a can!

Comment below and let me know what you do to develop confidence in your life. I bet your list is a lot longer than you think it is!

To your continued success,

Do You Have a Success Plan?

The gun went off at 6:00 am, Saturday morning, April 2, 2011. Twenty seven hours, 44 minutes and 34 seconds later, I crossed the finish line completing my first 100-mile Ultramarathon. What allowed me to succeed? Two things: a plan and my word!

It seems surreal even now. As I have gone over the event in my mind for the last few days, I think about the key factors that enabled me to reach my goal. It certainly was not all due to my training because in all reality, I trained harder and more consistently for the fifty mile race that I completed last year. It was not due to my superior health because I weigh a little more than I did last year at this time. So what was it? 

First, I got clear on what my outcome was.  I decided I wanted to complete the race in under 30 hours.  I did some research and I found a plan I could follow to do just that. Provided I ran the first 50 miles in less than 13 hrs, I could complete the race in twenty eight hours with two to spare for unexpected emergencies. I printed out the plan and put it in my race belt. It became my bible during the race. It broke down the lap times so that I had smaller goals to accomplish on the way to the bigger picture. I set small steps and overachieved each lap by about fifteen to twenty minutes. I used these minutes to take care of my body: changing shoes, shirts, and socks, using a full jar of Vaseline, and getting medical support. When I lost the map after the 6^th lap, I felt like I had lost my best friend (I later found it). The plan saved me from destruction. It allowed me to focus on the small consistent actions that made the difference between success and failure: filling the water bottle each station, eating at each aid station, taking my electrolyte caps each hour, and consistently checking my watch to measure my progress versus the plan. 

The second thing that kept me going was my word. I created a tremendous amount of leverage for myself to accomplish this goal. I told my friends, my family, my clients, and everyone on every social media network I am involved with, that I was going to do this! Most importantly, I told myself that I was going to give this everything that I had! I did not give myself an escape route anywhere. 

There were times I could have quit. Before starting lap seven (after 75 miles) the Red Cross Medic looked at my feet and told me there was nothing they could do for my feet since the pain did not come from an external blister but an internal separation of skin. If I wanted to continue, all I could do was to slap on some Vaseline and suck it up. There were also several times in lap eight when I actually stopped and told my pacer that I wanted to quit, period. I was done. And, even as I said the words out loud, doubled over in pain, I knew that I could not look at myself in the mirror when I got home if I didn't give it everything I had. And, unless I blacked out and they took me away in an ambulance, I could not stop. In those moments, I looked down deeper into myself than ever before, checked my handwritten plan, pulled myself together, and kept on going. 

It is ironic as I look back on my life, that 21 years ago, I could not run a mile.  It's clear that if a person wants to have a full life they are proud of, success takes work and effort. It took just as much work and effort emotionally 21 years ago for me to push myself to run 8 laps, walk 4, run 4 more; to tell myself that I could run three miles and then keep on doing it every other day for the next 6 months. The only difference between then and now is that I have conditioned myself to take on bigger goals. My first 10K seemed like an eternity.  The first marathon I signed up for I never ran, but I signed up again and the next year I ran my first ˝ marathon followed by my first full marathon.  The first 100-miler I signed up for I cancelled but the following year I ran 50 miles. This year, I learned everything I needed to learn to complete a 100-mile race and accomplished something that had enormous meaning for me.  The road to succ ess has not come in a straight line.  I've tried and "failed" at times, I have fallen on my face and come short on some of my goals.  Yet, I have gotten back up and tried again, and again set in the conviction that our past does not equal our future.  By having a plan for success, a system to follow, and by putting enough leverage on myself to accomplish my goal, I put all the chances for success on my side.

Whether you are reaching for a small goal or a big goal, whether it has to do with your personal life or your business, success will always take work. To achieve all that you want in life remember that having a good plan that you can rely upon and keeping your word --to yourself and others-- will always serve you well, even when all you want to do is quit!

To your continued success,

James 

I welcome your feedback!  What other topics would you like to see covered?

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Do You Have a Strategic Plan?

“It takes just as much energy to create a failing business as it does a thriving business.”

My wife made this interesting comment the other day… It is true that the success of a business, or any endeavor for that matter, cannot be guaranteed simply on the basis of hard work. In fact, many businesses fail in spite of offering great products or services, and in spite of being run by intelligent, hard working people. Hard work is not enough.

I have been fortunate to bring on a brilliant Director of Marketing for my company (my wife) and upon joining the business, she decided we needed to go through the Guerilla Marketing 30-Day program by Jay Levinson. Quite honestly, the process was painful at times, but also immensely valuable. The exercises forced us to stop and think  strategically before jumping into action.

As service professionals, we often focus 90% of our time on sharpening our skills and refining the strategies and tools we provide our clients in order to continually increase the quality and effectiveness of our services. Spending time on strategic planning and business development can sometimes get lost.  We’d rather be with clients than create or revisit a marketing plan or a business plan.  We want to be doing something.  And we should.  But taking the time initially for some strategic planning is a crucial element of success.

Spending the initial time plotting your course, gaining clarity on where you are and what you want can be frustrating at time.  It can be an uncomfortable process, but that time is in fact well spent. It will ensure that you won’t expand your energy in random directions, working very hard and getting very little reward for all that work.  You will be working smarter rather than harder as a result.  

Whether it’s in your business or in your personal life, achieving any goal will entail expanding some energy. Simply rushing in and throwing yourself into action without first thinking strategically about how to go about achieving that goal won’t get you there.  Take a minute to gain clarity about what you actually want and which strategies will work best.  And then, jump in with passion!

To your continued success,

James

Thought of the Day!

"A man can get discouraged many times, but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying." -- John Burroughs, Writer

Living a successful life means choosing which actions to take in your personal and/or business life everyday. When a person shifts their focus away from actions that are within their control and instead focus on how the results are not what they wanted, life gets difficult. Success and failure begin and end in the mind.