Supreme self-confidence in dating, relationships & social situations

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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All Rights Reserved Copyright © 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from MeetYourSweet. com. The information contained in this book is provided as is without warranty of any kind. The entire risk as to the results and the performance of the information is assumed by the user, and in no event shall MeetYourSweet.com be liable for any consequential, incidental or direct damages suffered in the course of using the information in this book.

What is Meet Your Sweet? Your new life starts today. With MeetYourSweet.com, you get the ultimate toolkit to creating the success you crave in Life and Relationships. We know that you’ve got the smarts to take care of most areas of your life. So why should dating and relationships be any different? That’s why we here at MeetYourSweet.com take a life coach’s perspective to romance. We don’t want to give you a paint-by-numbers program or dumb down what it takes to master REAL success. Rather, our goal is to empower you by giving you the life skills that you need to achieve a complete personal and social transformation… …the kind that will have you feeling confident, secure, desirable, and powerful, no matter what challenge you face! We’ve done the research, and we know what works. Our non-manipulative approach harnesses capacities that everyone has within them. Whether you’re male or female, young or old, single or in a relationship, we can help you become the absolute best you can be at relating with the opposite sex. Just imagine it. Gone are the days of struggling to get a date. Gone are the days of struggling to keep someone attracted. Gone are the days of worrying about whether you’re good-looking enough, popular enough, or captivating enough to get attention from the opposite sex! With MeetYourSweet.com, you get expert advice from a team of the world’s greatest writers, life coaches, and counselors in the field of dating and relationships. Every Meet Your Sweet course includes collaborations with top names in the field. Our team of contributing authors includes our very own Slade Shaw and Mia Summers, as well as Amy Waterman from 000Relationships.com and Andrew Rusbatch from SaveMyMarriageToday.com. So kickstart your personal and social transformation with MeetYourSweet.com. We look forward to hearing how our courses have changed YOU!

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Contents Introduction

9

What Is Supreme Self-Confidence?

11

Personal Confidence

13

Self-Awareness Create a Plan of Action Journaling Worry Time Don’t Do This Focus on the Now A Quiet Mind It’s All Up to You What Happened to Anne

14 15 15 15 16 16 17 17 18

Self-Doubt and Being to Stick with Decisions Making Decisions is a Process How to Feel More Comfortable Making Decisions Making Good Decisions Feeling Comfortable with Your Decisions What Happened to Jonathon Significant Life Event

20 20 21 23 25 26 27

Be Kind to Yourself Share Your Feelings Seek Help Reframe the Experience: From Failure to Opportunity What Happened to Kevin Getting Angry At Yourself

27 27 27 28 29 30

Why Self-Confidence Isn’t About Succeeding Winning in the Game of Life Be Kind to Yourself What Happened to Sarah

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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30 31 33 34

Depending Too Much on Other People’s Approval Why We Care About What Other People Think Walk in Someone Else’s Shoes Making Criticism Work to Your Advantage What Happened to Janie Feeling Helpless

35 35 36 38 41 42

The Law of Attraction Focus on What You Can Control Forget About the Fear What Happened to Sam How Do I Become More Personally Confident TODAY? Personal Confidence Review Personal Confidence Challenge Personal Confidence Goals

Social Confidence

42 43 44 45 46 46 47 48

49

Why People Lack Social Confidence  Social Identity and Life Direction

49 51

Life Coaching Emotive Responses Demonstrating Social Awareness Dressing to Impress Making Conversation

52 52 54 57 59

Reading Non-Verbal Signals Conversation Routines Keeping Conversation Flowing

60 61 62

Embarrassing Social Situations

64

What Happened To Alex? Learning to Laugh

65 65

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Overcoming Shyness

67

What is Shyness? Being Shy Doesn’t Mean You Have Low Self-Esteem Being Shy Doesn’t Mean You Don’t Like People Your Shyness Makes Others Shy Shyness Solutions What Doesn’t Work: Alcohol Jumping Off the Deep End Techniques for Small Talk Controlling Nervousness Visualization Self-Hypnosis How Do I Become More Socially Confident TODAY? Social Confidence Review Social Confidence Challenge Social Confidence Goals

67 69 70 72 73 73 74 75 77 78 79 80 80 82 83

Professional Confidence

84

Work and Self-Confidence

84

When You’re at Work, You’re on a Different Planet Confidence Outside of Work Doesn’t Mean Confidence At Work The Stressors that Target You and Your Self-Confidence Why Work Stresses Affect Your Self-Confidence

84 85 86 86

Choose Your Own Response

87

Disassociate Yourself from Results

92

What to Do in a High-Pressure Situation Preparation is the Key Set Your Own Standards for Professional Value by Valuing Yourself I’m Just Not Worth That Much! How to Stop Undervaluing Yourself Stand Up to the Inner Critic All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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94 95 97 97 99 100

Success and Failure: Why Taking Risks is Worth the Effort

101

How Do I Become More Professionally Confident TODAY?

105

Professional Confidence Review Professional Confidence Challenge

Sexual Confidence

105 106

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Why People Lack Sexual Confidence What Doesn’t Work: Comparing Yourself to Others What Doesn’t Work: Spending Money Sexual Confidence Comes from Self-Knowledge

109 109 110 110

The Path to Greater Sexual Confidence

112

Breaking Old Habits that Sabotage Your Sexual Confidence

114

Break Your Fear of Rejection What Happened to Cody

115 116

Unleash Your Sexual Energy

119

Masculinity and Femininity: The Keys to Attraction For Men: Unleashing Your Masculine Self For Men: 10 Tips to Become More Attractive to Women For Women: Unleashing Your Feminine Self For Women: 10 Tips to Become More Attractive to Men Become Sexually Confident in Dating Who Should I Be Interested In? Selecting a Potential Mate Meeting and Approaching Someone New How to Ignite Attraction Be on the Same Wavelength Flirting Be Alone Together Don’t Just Talk All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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119 121 123 125 127 130 130 134 136 136 137 138 138

Nonsexual Touch

138

Dating: The “Real You” Emerges From Commitment to Relationship and Beyond

139 142

1. Clinginess and the “She’s Turning Into Me!” Phenomenon

142

2. Love interest on the scene: life goes on hold

143

3. Do you love me? Do you love me yet? Do you love me now? How about now?

143

4. The Best Mindset to Have

145

5. Ways to Deepen Your Connection in a Relationship

146

How Do I Become More Sexually Confident TODAY? Sexual Confidence Review Sexual Confidence Challenge Sexual Confidence Goals

148 148 150 151

Concrete Confidence-Building Techniques Stress: How It Affects Your Confidence and What to Do About It A Quick Introduction to Stress Physical Relaxation Techniques Controlled Breathing Progressive Muscular Relaxation

Mental Relaxation Techniques Visualization Meditation

152 153 155 159 159 160

161 162 163

Setting Goals: Why It’s Important and How to Do It Setting SMART Goals Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Timely What Is a SWOT Analysis? How to Fill Out a SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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167 168 168 169 170 170 171

172 173 173 173 173 174

What to Do with the End Result

174

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy:

175

Changing Your Thoughts to Increase Your Confidence

175

Benefits of Volunteering What’s Involved in Volunteer Work Deciding What Type of Volunteer Work Suits You Best Where to Start Looking

177 178 179 179

How Do I Become More Confident TODAY?

181

Confidence Techniques Review Confidence Techniques Challenge

181 182

Best of Luck…

183

Classic Confidence-Building Resources

184

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Introduction A lack of self confidence has a tremendous negative impact on your life. When you lack self confidence, you’re compromising your career, your friendships, your relationships, your social life in general, and your life overall. Self confidence is absolutely central to getting ahead in life – and I’m not just talking about tangible accomplishments like getting that pay rise, promotion, or beautiful partner. I’m also talking about the intangibles that make life worth living, like the ability to relax … the ability to feel secure … the ability to simply like and appreciate yourself. After all, it’s difficult to enjoy life when you’re always questioning your own talents and doubting your abilities! True self confidence doesn’t stem from achievements. It doesn’t stem from winning awards. It doesn’t stem from receiving compliments. It all starts from a belief in yourself and your own, innate talents and abilities. Not what other people say; not how you’ve reacted to situations in the past; and not the outcomes of those situations. It’s self belief. And that is exactly what I’m going to help you to attain. My name is Slade Shaw, and I’m here to help you achieve Supreme Self-Confidence by taking a look at the skills you ALREADY possess … and showing you a new way of thinking and acting that will lead to a greater feeling of confidence than you have ever known. If you feel competent and capable in just one thing, then you can enjoy that same feeling in ANY activity you embark upon! Imagine … feeling 100% confident in your ability to enjoy a relaxed first date, make a difficult presentation, interview for a job, socialize at a party, or learn a new skill. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been able to feel confident in those situations before. The techniques and ideas that I am going to teach you will help you build a feeling of confidence that will NEVER leave you, no matter what situation you’re in or what’s required of you! All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Best of all, when you feel the power of Supreme Self-Confidence, there will be no situation you need to avoid, no risks you are too afraid to take, and no holding back on the life of your dreams. You’ll be able to summon that confidence whenever you need it to banish anxiety, fear, worry, and hesitation. You’ll discover that you can do things you never thought you’d be able to do and feel good about it! You’ll start to enjoy new challenges rather than worrying about whether you’ll be any good at them. Instead of seeing the barriers in your life, you’ll start to see the ladder that will take you over them. All the best!

Slade Shaw MeetYourSweet.com

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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What Is Supreme Self-Confidence? You know, there’s a lot of hype these days about self-confidence. We’re told that confident people are more successful people. We’re told that as long as you just believe really hard, you’ll somehow magically end up a more confident person. There’s just one problem: you can’t make yourself believe in something you don’t. That’s why this book isn’t about “believing in yourself” or “feeling good about yourself” or any of the clichés that pass as self-confidence builders. Take it from me: the way that most of us are taught about self-confidence can actually work AGAINST us when it comes to maintaining that confidence in new situations. For example, many students who were used to being popular and successful in high school find themselves floundering in college. Why? Because their self-confidence was based on their ability to master a very limited environment. It’s easy to feel confident when you’re comfortable with a situation and know how to do what’s expected of you. See, if you believe that self-confidence comes from being good at something, then the minute you get into a new or challenging situation, your sense of confidence will fall through the floor. Basing your sense of confidence on achievements is just plain shortsighted. Other people think that confidence comes from being praised by others. They think that a child who gets stars for effort will end up becoming a more confident adult. But what happens when that child grows up, enters the real world, and finds out that effort isn’t good enough? In the real world, people don’t have a vested interest in making you feel better about yourself. It’s sink or swim. If you’re not confident that you can perform your job, someone else will come along and take it. Basing your sense of confidence on praise isn’t going to work. What I’m here to teach you is the more POWERFUL form of confidence … Supreme Self-Confidence. Supreme Self-Confidence comes from powerful belief systems that grow even STRONGER in the face of challenges, mistakes, rejections, and even failures. That’s because Supreme Self-Confidence is NOT based on the arrogant assumption that only a “successful” person has the right to be confident.

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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We ALL have the right to be confident in every aspect of our life … even those aspects of your life that you don’t think you’re any good in! Whether your confidence is threatened by a mind that won’t stop worrying, selfdoubt, feeling helpless, a confidence-shattering life event… Whether you find it hard to make conversation, navigate embarrassing social situations, or overcome shyness… Whether you struggle to interview for a job, ask for a pay rise, make a presentation at work, or demonstrate leadership in a team… Even if you lack confidence with the opposite sex and find it hard to ask someone out on a date, ignite sexual attraction, or move a relationship from casual to committed… …Supreme Self-Confidence has concrete techniques that WORK in an easy, effective, and permanent way to help you gain the confident edge you’ve always dreamed of. You’ll learn how to change your negative thinking and apply practical, positive, empowering techniques that will achieve measurable results in your personal, professional, social and sexual confidence. Best of all, when you truly “get” the concepts in this book, you’ll find that your quality of life increases … you feel happier and less stressed … and you no longer need to let self-doubts get in the way of you doing what you really want to do. Confidence will provide a competitive edge – socially and professionally – that will let your true abilities and capabilities shine. So are YOU ready for Supreme Self-Confidence? Let your life-transformation begin now!

“Basing your sense of confidence on praise isn’t going to work.”

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Personal Confidence “We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.” Roderick Thorp, Rainbow Drive

Do you have a mind that won’t stop worrying? Do you get angry at yourself all the time? Do you feel like you depend too much on other people’s approval? This chapter is on personal confidence, your ability to feel confident in yourself. A lack of personal confidence can manifest itself in many ways. For some, it’s an inability to make decisions or a tendency to keep changing their minds. For others, it’s a feeling of helplessness. And still others can find their low self-confidence manifesting in an unshakeable sadness or depression. Each of the following six sections addresses a different challenge to personal confidence: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

A mind that won’t stop worrying Self-doubt and feeling unable to stick with decisions Significant life event Getting angry at yourself Depending too much on other people’s approval Feeling helpless

You’ll learn how the biggest enemy of self-confidence is actually your mental dialogue. What you tell yourself affects your confidence in a far greater way than what other people tell you or how good you actually are at something. Each section will follow a case study of six individuals who found that gaining self-confidence meant looking deeper into themselves … and accepting what they found.

A Mind That Won’t Stop Worrying Anne had a thinking problem. That’s what she called it, anyway. “I can’t stop thinking about every possible mistake I might make, what might go wrong, or how I might screw things up,” she told me. “I know that I can do something, but then I psyche myself out. How do I stop?” All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Inside everyone, there’s a mental dialogue that goes on constantly. You may not even be aware of what you’re telling yourself. The average person thinks anywhere from 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day, and most of those thoughts are the same as the ones they thought the day before. When you get stuck into thinking the same negative thoughts over and over again, you program yourself for failure. So how do you break the cycle?

Self-Awareness Marie Forleo, life coach from TheGoodLife-Inc.com, explains that it’s important to realize that you have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. Through simply increasing your self-awareness, you can break the power that your thoughts have over you. Here’s how it works. You can recognize when your mind starts putting ideas into your head automatically, but you don’t have to believe those thoughts. Recognize that they’re simply default responses to situations. They’re like a computer program that runs automatically. You may not be able to keep that program from switching on automatically, but you can turn it off manually. Simply don’t give those thoughts any power. Recognize that your thoughts have no power to predict the future. They’re not telling you anything accurate about what’s going to happen. They’re not even helping you be more prepared for what’s to come. Most fears and worries don’t actually help us, but rather distract us and limit us from achieving our true possibilities. One useful exercise to increase your awareness of the power of your thoughts is to keep a notepad and pen handy, and write down any negative thoughts as you think them. You’ll soon realize that most of your negative thoughts are completely baseless. Looking at them in the clear light of day, you’ll realize that your worries are more a result of your mind looking for something to worry about rather than a helpful tool for predicting future problems. We can easily get into such a habit of worrying about things, such that we can end up reacting to anything new with an automatic pattern of imagining everything that might go wrong. Constant worrying can ruin your self-confidence and prevent you from taking healthy risks. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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So become more conscious of your mental dialogue, and don’t allow your thoughts to prevent you from doing what you really want to do.

Create a Plan of Action Every time you have a worrying or fearful thought, ask yourself: “Is this alerting me to a real risk, or is it just an excuse for not trying something new?” If the thought does seem to contain a valid concern, then do something about it. Brainstorm possible ways that you can address that fear or worry.

“Recognize that your thoughts have no power to predict the future.”

For example, if you are fearful that you’ll feel awkward if you go to a social event on your own, brainstorm ways that you can make the situation easier. Maybe you can ask a friend along. Maybe you can develop a list of things that you can do if you start to feel uncomfortable, such as exploring the venue or introducing yourself to three new people. Maybe you can set yourself a time limit for how long you’ll stay at the event, and allow yourself to leave afterwards if you’re still feeling awkward. Creating a plan of action can go a long way towards silencing the fearful mind.

Journaling Another excellent technique for dissipating the power of fears or concerns is to write them down. Keep a journal where you allow yourself to be 100% honest with yourself about what scares you the most. Often, just writing things down can make you feel better.

Worry Time Some people even allow themselves 15 minutes of “Worry Time” at the end of the day, during which they can just go crazy about all the thoughts and fears they have. In exchange, they promise themselves that they won’t waste their time worrying during the day. If a worrying thought comes up outside their Worry Time, they tell themselves, “I’ll think about that tonight.” This delay tactic can defuse the power of many fears, because those niggling fears will often get forgotten before it’s time to worry about them! All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Don’t Do This One technique that’s sure to make the problem worse is to try to suppress your fears and concerns. If you try to tell yourself, “There’s nothing to worry about, don’t be so silly,” you can actually make your fears worse! Why? Because anything you resist will stick around in your consciousness and nag at you until you recognize it. Imagine that your thoughts are like children clamoring for your attention. If you try to ignore them and tell them, “Go away and don’t bother me!” they’ll simply become louder in their attempts to get your attention. You can’t squash your worrying mind. What you can do is to see your thoughts as they float to your consciousness and recognize that they’re simply automatic responses that have been programmed into you over time. Tell them, “Thanks for sharing,” then turn your focus to something more productive. What could be more productive than worrying? Well, focusing on the present moment, for a start.

Focus on the Now One of the reasons that the mind worries so much is that it projects from past experiences onto future experiences. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that every time you’ve taken a certain test, you performed badly. Sure enough, the next time you are preparing to take the test, your mind will start popping up with all sorts of fears that you are going to perform badly this time as well. You can cut off these worries at the source by focusing on the present. Marie Forleo describes this state as “being in the moment,” and it’s incredibly powerful. You may have heard about the concepts of being in “the Zone” or being in a state of “Flow.” Learning how to achieve these states can go far towards silencing the worrying mind. You can’t worry and be engrossed in what you’re doing at the same time. The simple act of placing 100% of your attention on the current moment will leave no room for fears.

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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A Quiet Mind If you’re anything like me or my client Anne, the minute you don’t have anything to think about, your mind will start to come up with all sorts of bothersome thoughts. Sometimes your mind worries just because there’s nothing else to do! If you notice that you start to worry the minute you have any free time or start relaxing, but you don’t seem to worry when you’re always busy, don’t take the easy escape of just staying busy all the time. It’s actually quite common for many people to try to keep busy simply to avoid their thoughts! There are better ways of achieving a quieter mind, and one of those is meditation. During meditation, you are asking yourself to be at ease with doing and thinking absolutely nothing. Meditation doesn’t have to involve the lotus position or controlled breathing. You can harness some of the benefits of meditation simply by taking a moment to be still every day. Turn off the television and radio, and dim the lights. Sit in a comfortable position in a place where you won’t be disturbed. Set a timer to alert you after fifteen minutes. Then, simply enjoy the experience of doing nothing at all. Become aware of the easy rise and fall of your chest, the sensations in your body, and the thoughts floating freely through your mind. Don’t try to resist your thoughts, but don’t use this time for thinking. Spend some time being still every other day, if possible. Meditation is most effective when practiced daily. As you begin to enjoy your meditation sessions, you can extend each session for longer. You may wish to even explore the concepts of more formal meditation, which involves controlled breathing.

It’s All Up to You The best thing about all these techniques is that they’re 100% up to you. You don’t have to rely on externals changing for you to worry less. I remember Sarah, a mother of a rambunctious seven-year-old, telling me that the only way she would ever be able to worry less is if her son stopped acting out! It took a while for her to realize that becoming more attuned to what was happening now (rather than what could happen) actually protected her son more than worrying about him. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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She had thought that worrying made her a good mother when, in reality, paying more attention to her son was what was important. She told me, “I always thought that if I didn’t worry about my son all the time, people would think I didn’t care about him. Now I know better.” If you’ve always been a worrier, remind yourself that there are better ways to care for people than by worrying about them. There are better ways to excel on an exam than by worrying about it. There are better ways to ensure that everything will be all right than by worrying about it.

What Happened to Anne For Anne, her fears and worries were keeping her from enjoying her life. Every time she started a new relationship, she worried about whether he liked her, whether she’d said the right thing, or whether she was attractive enough. None of her relationships lasted for long, to say the least. She worried about whether she was going to grow old alone, whether she was going to get sick, whether she was going to be able to financially support herself into retirement, and whether she was doing enough for the loved ones in her life. All her worrying was not just exhausting; it was ruining her quality of life. Anne knew that something had to change, and that’s why she came to me. Because Anne was ready to change and aware of the havoc her thoughts were wreaking on her life, she was able to turn her life around in no time at all.

“Sometimes your mind worries just because there’s nothing else to do!”

The first week, she was asked to become more conscious of her mental dialogue by recording how many negative thoughts she had per day and writing down as many of her fears as possible. The second week, she tried scheduling Worry Time, during which she limited her fears and worries to fifteen minutes a day. Although, at first, she found that fifteen minutes wasn’t enough, she soon found that she was actually worrying less. Paradoxically, giving her worries her full time and attention for a certain period every day actually made them seem to dissipate.

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Next, she incorporated adding a plan of action. She kept a notepad and pen with her during her Worry Time and wrote down each of her fears that seemed to have some merit. Then, she brainstormed some concrete steps she could take to address them. By this time, Anne told me that she’d never felt this free in her life. It was as if that sense of powerless she’d always felt had been converted into a feeling of empowerment. “I can’t believe all that time I wasted worrying about things when I could have just done something about them,” she told me. Anne found relief from her worrying mind and a new sense of power and accomplishment. You can, too. It simply takes self-awareness, patience, and commitment to change.

“There are better ways to care for people than by worrying about them.”

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Self-Doubt and Being to Stick with Decisions I’d heard it all before. The tall, thin man sitting in the chair in front of me looked like the picture of confidence. He was indistinguishable from so many of the businessmen that pass by my offices every day: clean-cut and tanned, with white shirt and necktie, dark trousers, shined shoes. And, like many, he had a secret fear. “Every time I decide to do something, I can’t stop wondering if I made the right decision. I change my mind a half-dozen times! How can I stop doubting myself?” When Jonathon came to me, he was suffering in his career. He wanted to move up to management level, but when it came to making a decision, he felt paralyzed. He’d deliberate until the last minute, and end up choosing one of the options out of panic. Then he’d torture himself by wondering what would have happened if he’d made a different choice. Jonathon isn’t alone. Decision-making is hard for many people on many levels, from the simple daily decisions of what to wear in the morning to more complex business decisions with financial consequences. For example, I’ve often eaten dinner with friends who couldn’t decide what to choose on the menu. When the waiter came, they’d order one dish, then change their minds after everyone else had ordered and call him back. Then, once the meals came to the table, they’d wish they picked something else. A crucial component of self-confidence is the ability to make decisions and stick with them. A confident person may not always make the right decision, but is confident in their ability to handle the consequences of any decision they do make. That’s not to say that confidence means never changing your mind. We all have the right to evaluate our decisions on the basis of new information and make new decisions. But if you find yourself constantly changing your mind because you doubt yourself, then there are some techniques you should know.

Making Decisions is a Process How do you make your decisions? Few of us are formally taught how to make good decisions. When we’re young, our parents make many decisions for us. We may not have any choice in what we’re going to eat, what we’re going to wear, and what we’re going to do. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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When we become adults, the variety and quantity of decisions that confront us can be overwhelming. Where will we live? What jobs will we apply for? What shall we do with our incomes? What sorts of goals should we set? It’s not unusual to find it hard to make these decisions! It can be easier to simply choose the easiest option, or the first one offered to us, or the one our friends chose. But there comes a point in everyone’s life when they have to make hard decisions on their own and bear the consequences. That’s what scared Jonathon so much. “I am terrified that my wrong decisions will lose my company money or get me fired. That’s what scares me so much about moving up into management: I won’t just be responsible for me, but for everyone else, too.” What was keeping Jonathon stuck in a less-than-satisfactory role was his belief that good decisions rested on personal ability rather than an impersonal process. You don’t have to have all the answers to make a good decision. But what you do have to have is a good decision-making process. With a tried and tested method of making decisions, Jonathon will be able to trust the process even if he thinks he can’t trust himself.

How to Feel More Comfortable Making Decisions We can’t ever make a “perfect” decision. There is no process that will guarantee that your decisions will achieve their desired outcomes every time. Accepting the fallibility of your decisions is the first step towards feeling comfortable with decisionmaking. I want to give you an idea of the complexity of even the simplest decision to illustrate why the “perfect” decision doesn’t exist. Let’s take the example of choosing a dinner option off a menu. Imagine that you’ve never been to that particular restaurant before. Your goal is to choose a meal that will taste good to you and satisfy you. However, having never tasted any of the options on the menu before, what option do you choose?

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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1. You can ask someone who’s been to the restaurant before what they like. But there’s no guarantee that your tastes are the same. 2. You can ask the waiter for their recommendation. 3. You can narrow down your options based on foods and flavor combinations that you know have appealed to you in the past. 4. You can ask someone else who knows you well to choose for you. 5. You pick the first option on the menu that sounds good. And so on. There’s a number of different ways that you can make that decision, but none of them will guarantee that you’ve picked the perfect meal for you. In fact, even if you’ve eaten at that restaurant before and liked a particular dish, a number of variables, such as a different cook, may make it taste differently this time.

“You don’t have to have all the answers to make a good decision.”

The more you think about it, the harder it becomes to make any decision at all! This is why abandoning your expectation of making a “perfect” decision is an important first step. You’re not always going to make the best decision given the options, period. Luckily, you can usually live with the consequences of most decisions. Picking a dinner choice that ends up leaving you unsatisfied isn’t the end of the world. If your dinner isn’t that great, so what? You can still enjoy having a great time with your dinner companions and the other elements (drinks, dessert) of the meal. Very few of our decisions are really that devastating. Even making a bad business decision can often be corrected or turned to one’s advantage. Knowing that you can live with the consequences of your decision, no matter how things turn out, is the second step towards being more comfortable making decisions. For Jonathon, this was a biggie. By focusing on his role in the decision-making process, he forgot about the other checks and balances within the company. It would be highly unlikely for him to cause major financial harm to the company because, as a new manager, his activity would be monitored by his boss. Incorrect decisions would still be reviewed in time to be corrected. Jonathon slowly came to see that a decision is not like a test that you either pass or fail. Instead, a decision is more like a call to action. It tells you what you are going

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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to do about a particular situation. It doesn’t guarantee the solution of the situation, but it’s a good place to start!

Making Good Decisions Learning how to make good decisions is a skill like any other. Here are five qualities that you should aim at as you start learning to make better decisions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The decision is made in a timely manner. The decision addresses the real problem. The decision has been well-researched. All alternatives have been considered. The decision includes a concrete call to action.

 TIMELY MANNER Procrastination leads to more bad decisionmaking than any other reason. When decisions are left to the last minute, then there is no time to research the situation, consider all alternatives, examine whether the decision really addresses the root of the situation, etc.

“The more you think about it, the harder it becomes to make any decision at all!”

The decision-making process can take some time, so it is good to start thinking about the decision well in advance so that you have time to modify it if any changes arise.  ADDRESSES REAL PROBLEM Decisions need to address the SOURCE of the problem. Often, you may make a decision that you think will address the problem, but it merely masks an underlying problem. For example, if you treat a disease by treating its symptoms, the symptoms may go away but the disease will still be there. Spend some time thinking about the real problem so that you can sure you’re not being mislead by its more obvious symptoms.

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 WELL-RESEARCHED The more you know about a subject, the better you’ll be able to make good decisions. Figure out what you need to know to make your decision. Ask people questions. Find out how things work. Learn how your possible choices might impact everything involved.  ALTERNATIVES CONSIDERED For me, this is one of the most crucial aspects of the decision-making process. Often, people believe they are limited to an either-or choice, such as Yes or No, Option A or Option B, when in reality there are alternatives they haven’t considered. Talking through a decision can help you think of aspects or alternatives you haven’t considered, so don’t feel as if the decision-making process must rest 100% on your shoulders. Sometimes just explaining the situation to others can make an elegant solution more apparent.  CALL TO ACTION Lastly, your decision must be concrete and include a call to action, e.g., what you are going to do about it. It’s all very well to decide, for example, that you want a career in journalism, but what are you going to do to get it? Concrete decisions like, “I am going to apply for a journalism course starting in the spring at my local community college,” are much more effective than vague, abstract decisions.  GUT FEELING Although I didn’t include this component of decision making above, I want to briefly discuss it here. Good-decision making requires a combination of analytical and creative skills. Your logical mind will be of use to you when it comes to researching and understanding the consequences of your decisions. However, the logical mind can also paralyze you by introducing so many factors into your decision-making process that you become overwhelmed. If you think too much, you can find it impossible to make any decision at all! The answer is not to avoid thinking logically about your decision. Rather, it’s to enlist another part of your brain: the creative, intuitive side. When it comes to brainstorming alternatives, creativity can be more useful than reason. If you can learn to free yourself to imagine a rainbow of alternatives, no All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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matter how illogical, you may plant a seed that will grow into the answer you’re looking for. That creative, intuitive side of your brain has wisdom that the logical, analytical side doesn’t have access to. If you come to a logical decision that still seems wrong to you, don’t discount your gut feeling. It’s usually onto something! There may be an alternative you haven’t considered or a consequence that you can’t see. The subconscious can process information much more quickly than the conscious mind, so developing your intuitive decision-making abilities will help you make faster, more accurate decisions in the future.

Feeling Comfortable with Your Decisions Once you’ve become more confident in your decision-making process, it’s time to lay to rest that niggling fear: “What if I made the wrong decision?” I’ve talked to many married individuals who were struck by the fear of having married the wrong person. Although it all seemed so right when they got engaged, fear strikes them the night before the wedding. Should they be going through with this? Fear is natural when it comes to major commitments like getting married. But, as I mentioned in the earlier section on worrying, you are not your thoughts! Such fear is often just a knee-jerk reaction. Notice it and forget about it. Trust in your own decision-making process. Why would you doubt your own decisions? Here are some reasons. • You may know in your gut that you didn’t do everything you needed to do to make it a good decision. You may have taken the first alternative you saw or made a rushed decision without doing enough research. • You are presented with new evidence that changes the situation and requires the decision to be modified. • The consequences of making the wrong decision are grave. • You’re not seeing any positive results yet. • The problem isn’t the decision: it’s the way you feel about yourself. Take as much time as is necessary for you to make a good decision; then, once you make your decision, focus on what it takes to put your decision into action. Don’t All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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waste time second-guessing yourself. The decision has been made, so there’s no use obsessing over what might have happened if you’d made a different decision. Sometimes, sticking with a decision that you know wasn’t the best one for you at the time can actually produce unexpected positive outcomes. When you commit to seeing an uncomfortable situation through, you learn new skills and gain valuable experience that you may not have gotten if the situation went smoothly. Don’t be afraid to make the wrong decision. A confident person knows that they’ll be wrong sometimes, and they’re not afraid to face the facts and do what it takes to correct their mistake.

What Happened to Jonathon For Jonathon, this was just the information he needed to free himself from his fears. “It was such a relief to learn that if I make the wrong decision, it’s not the end of the world,” he said. “I was just putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect. Now I know that I don’t need to be ‘right’ all the time: I just have to stay focused on what needs to be done and the best way to get there.” Jonathon has since gone on to a successful career in management, and he’ll never forget the lessons he learned in decision-making. As YOU learn to make better decisions and commit to seeing them through, you will discover that this decisiveness starts to impact other areas of your life. You’ll find it easier to achieve your goals, find solutions to problems, and lead teams. You’ll even find it easier to say yes or no to social invitations, pick which line to stand in at the supermarket, and select which product to buy among a range of options. Stop self-doubt by trusting in your decision-making process … and stop worrying about “what ifs.”

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Significant Life Event Have you ever been in this situation? You experience a major shakeup in your life: a relationship ends, a close friend dies, or your job gets made redundant. Suddenly, you begin to question everything in your life. You can’t seem to bounce back. You wonder if you’re a failure. Kevin was in this situation. His wife left him for another man, and two weeks later he was sitting in his boss’ office being reprimanded for his poor job performance. He came to my office with dark circles under his eyes. He’d been unable to eat, unable to sleep, and he was at his wit’s end. “Nothing I do ever turns out right,” he told me. Kevin was suffering a confidence crisis brought on by significant life events. Anything from a robbery to a near-accident can shake your personal confidence and start you questioning yourself. Suddenly, tasks that once were easy are now hard. You start making mistakes you never made before. You can’t even trust yourself. If you’re usually a confident person but have suffered a confidence crisis as a result of a traumatic event, be assured that your experience is completely normal. Usually, this loss of confidence is usually just temporary. You WILL bounce back.

Be Kind to Yourself The best way to recover is to be kind to yourself. Give yourself time to grieve and forgive yourself for any temporary insanity. Temporarily lower your expectations where possible. It’s okay if you take some time off and don’t perform to the standards you’re used to.

Share Your Feelings To speed up the healing process, talk to a trusted counselor, pastor, family member or friend. Keeping your fears and emotions trapped inside will just make you feel worse. There is something about verbalizing your feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment that makes them less painful and shameful.

Seek Help You may wish to seek help in the form of counseling or treatment for depression. Treatment can provide the extra edge to get you back on the road to recovery much more quickly. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Reframe the Experience: From Failure to Opportunity Regaining your confidence after a significant life event will take time, but one superb tool for hastening the process is reframing. When Kevin came to me, all he could see were the perceived failures in his life. He and his wife had been unable to have children, and he blamed their marriage falling apart on that. He felt impotent in more ways than one, as he felt unable to express work concerns to his boss and trapped in the same town he’d grown up in. For Kevin to regain his confidence, he needed to be able to see his “failure” as an opportunity. I asked Kevin to look at the situation objectively. Imagine that this same life event had befallen a friend, and that friend had told him exactly what he had told me. What sort of advice would Kevin give? (This technique can be a great way to get “outside” an emotionally messy situation and decide on a course of action objectively!) Kevin laughed and said, “I’d tell him, ‘Lucky you.’” Their marriage had not, indeed, been the best one. Because his wife was the one taking the fault for the marriage’s end, Kevin didn’t have to feel guilty about being released from an unhappy situation. His family and friends were highly supportive. “What new opportunities are available to you now that weren’t before?” I asked next. One of the greatest sayings in the world is:

“When one door closes, another door opens.” From every failure, loss, or ending, arises a new possibility or opportunity that couldn’t have existed before. But, to take advantage of the opportunity, you have to shift your attention from dwelling on your loss. You have to look up and open your eyes. When I asked Kevin this, he thought for a moment, and answered, “I can quit my job.” He’d been unable to change jobs before, because he’d been tied to a certain income All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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in order to support the family he and his wife were planning to raise. Now, with the money from the sale of their house, he was free to move to a new city and look for a profession that suited him better.

What Happened to Kevin Kevin left my office feeling much more confident about his life and his ability to cope with this negative life event. He had reframed his experience from one that shamed him as a man to one that freed him to go out and experience a more exciting life. As a result, he no longer had to dwell on what other people thought of him as a man who’d been cheated on: he had his future to plan. You can feel that way, too. All you have to do is: 1. See the situation from an objective point of view. Imagine that a friend in the same situation came to you looking for advice. How would you respond? 2. Look for the opportunity hidden within. What new possibilities exist for you that weren’t possible before?

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Getting Angry At Yourself “The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.” Sonya Friedman

One of the most common characteristics I see in people who want to improve their self-confidence is that they often get angry at themselves. They have expectations of themselves that they’re unable to meet. Rather than focusing on what they do well, they focus on what they do wrong. Instead of saying, “I’ll learn,” they say, “I’m no good at that.” “I feel so stupid all the time,” confided Sarah, an attractive 32-year-old who works at a fitness center in sunny Miami. “I get so mad at myself when I say something dumb. I wish I could just say what I think and get on with it, but instead I find myself going over and over a situation in my mind and judging myself on how I ‘performed.’” Sarah’s life was one trial after another as she evaluated herself based on everything she did. If she had friends over for dinner, the meal and table settings had to be just so. If she tried a new hobby, she had to be competent at it or she’d give up. She was constantly worried that other people would see what a fraud she was beneath the attractive, successful surface. “I sometimes don’t even know why I still have friends,” she confessed. “I totally know all the places where I fall short. I don’t call them enough, I get stressed out, I’m not the life of the party….” Sarah had a detailed list of areas in her life that she wanted to improve, and she was ready to get started right away. But it pulled her up short when I told her that I wanted to start with something that wasn’t on her list. “We’re going to start with learning how to be kind to yourself.”

Why Self-Confidence Isn’t About Succeeding Sarah was angry at herself that she didn’t have more self-confidence, and the way she thought she’d get it was to get really good in all the areas that she judged herself as being bad in. You can’t become more self-confident by getting mad at yourself. Let me repeat that. You can’t become more self-confident by getting mad at yourself. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Intuitively, you know this. Running towards a reward will get you there faster than running away from punishment. Self-berating is the opposite of self-acceptance. You need to learn to love yourself before you can develop the confidence that comes from knowing your true capabilities. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Self-confident people aren’t perfect. They haven’t gained their confidence by doing everything right. Rather, they’ve gained their confidence by knowing that whatever happens, they’ll handle it. If you’re serious about tackling your self-confidence, there’s no book I can recommend more highly than Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. She tells us: “At the bottom of every one of your fears is simply the fear that you can’t handle whatever life may bring you.” (p.15) The way you learn to handle life is by meeting challenges and making it through them to the other side. It’s not by being good at everything. Truly confident people are confident regardless of whether they’re “succeeding” or “failing.” They know that what really matters is their ability to get stuck into something and dedicate themselves to it until they get the results they want. Learning isn’t easy. Growing can be hard. But the benefit of putting yourself out there and taking risks is that you discover resources you never knew you had. You learn that most situations, no matter how horrible and humiliating, won’t kill you. And you grow in confidence as a result. Sarah needed to stop focusing on success or failure and instead focus on her own learning process.

Winning in the Game of Life It’s a rare person who is 100% at ease with themselves. Most people, no matter how successful, harbor some kernel of self-doubt. No matter how many achievements they rack up, they still feel as if their worldly success has been some kind of mistake.

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If you base how you feel about yourself on whether you’re “good” or “successful,” then you’ll find that your mood will go up and down as you have good years and bad years. Self-confidence needs to be based on something more stable than achievements. Sarah saw her life in terms of worldly success: she wanted to be popular, make a lot of money, and lead an exciting lifestyle. When she was unable to reach those goals, she felt like there was something wrong with her. There was nothing wrong with Sarah. She wasn’t born with some deficiency that made her less than everyone else. In fact, from an outsider’s gaze, she was doing incredibly well for herself.

“The way you learn to handle life is by meeting challenges and making it through them to the other side.”

Sarah’s only “problem” was that she valued achievements more than she valued her own growth as a person. To win in the game of life, you don’t need to come in first every time. You simply need to be the person who is most committed to improving yourself, until you reach an excellence that’s far beyond the reach of those who were given success without trying. If you truly want to be confident, then stop measuring yourself against others and start seeing your mistakes or “failures” as valuable learning experiences … even more valuable than achievements. If you have the choice to choose between an activity that you’re sure to be successful in and an activity that will be difficult for you, be the person who goes for the difficult activity. Easy tasks don’t help you get better. Although you may feel good when you complete them with excellence, you won’t have learned anything from the process. Keeping yourself challenged, on the other hand, will keep you on a continual path of growth. Very few people stay committed to growth throughout their lifetime. Instead, they prefer the taste of success. It’s more psychologically pleasing to stick with what they’re good at, with what they know they can win. But the minute they start losing, they also lose their confidence … and many never recover. Sarah could achieve the kind of results she was hoping for only if she was willing to forget about getting somewhere and instead focus on being someone. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Be Kind to Yourself My first task for Sarah was to be the observer of her own thoughts about herself for a week. I asked her to make note of how many negative thoughts she had about herself and how many positive. When she came back to me, she was horrified. She’d done the exercise studiously and had found that she hadn’t had a single positive thought about herself all week. She’d had lots of negative thoughts, however, ranging from how she looked to how well she was liked by her colleagues. Her next goal was to counter each negative thought about herself with a positive one. For example, if she thought, “My arms look so flabby,” she had to compliment another part of herself, such as, “My hair looks fantastic today.” She found this exercise incredibly difficult. “I didn’t realize until you asked me to compliment myself how self-deprecating I was.” She went on to explain, “Saying anything positive about myself felt wrong, like I was being arrogant. I think it comes down to how I was raised. You weren’t supposed to boast or talk about yourself unless you were putting yourself down.” Even if you’re not used to saying nice things about yourself, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn. You have to be your own best friend, as the quote at the beginning of this chapter indicates. Most of us find it easier to compliment others than to compliment ourselves, but, if you’re not supportive of yourself, who will be? Sarah’s next goal was to learn to support, accept, and love ALL parts of her being, not just those that she approved of. For Week 3, she was asked to counter each negative thought she had about herself with a loving thought about that very same trait. For example, if she thought, “My arms look so flabby,” she was to reframe her perspective with something like, “My arms look so strong and powerful.” This time, she was beginning to get the hang of it. She came back to me with a big smile on her face. “Now that I’m aware of my negative thoughts, I don’t have so many!” she told me. Although it was still difficult for her to think positively about certain areas of her life, she understood the necessity of bringing love and acceptance to all parts of her being, the dark and the light.

“To win in the game of life, you don’t need to come in first every time.”

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What Happened to Sarah Sarah left my office feeling as if she’d just won the biggest trophy of her career. “I didn’t realize how good it felt to love myself rather than depend on some award before I could feel good about myself,” she said. “It really is more rewarding when it comes from within!” I hope that you, too, can experience the same elation as Sarah. If you’re waiting for success and achievements before you think you can achieve self-confidence, then you’ll be waiting forever. Give yourself the same appreciation and encouragement you’d give to others. Loving yourself won’t lead to arrogance; rather, it will lead to greater understanding and acceptance of ALL people. We’ll never be perfect, but we can stay committed to growing and being better people throughout our lifetime. If you’re interested in more information on this subject, I strongly recommend M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled.

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Depending Too Much on Other People’s Approval “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt Comparison kills. The quickest way to make you feel bad about yourself is to compare yourself to others. And that was a technique that Janie had mastered. “I look around at everyone else, and they seem so confident. I feel like I’m just missing some essential gene that everyone else has.” Janie was a petite brunette who worked at the school library, and children loved her. She always knew exactly what book would appeal to each child, and she had a knack for making reading exciting. The reason that Janie had chosen to become a librarian was not as simple as a love of books. She found it difficult to assert herself around others. One harsh word could crush her. Janie came to me because she wanted to break out of her shell. “I feel like every choice I’ve made in my life has been based on protecting myself from everybody and everything. But there’s so much out there that I haven’t experienced because I’m too scared.” Janie wanted to feel more confident in herself so that she could be more outgoing and not care so much about what other people think. She knew that changing a lifetime of being timid was going to be hard, but she was ready to take that risk.

Why We Care About What Other People Think Why do we care about what other people think, anyway? Human beings are social creatures. From our ancient trial origins, we depended on social groups for safety and protection. Being cast out of the tribe was the ultimate punishment, because it almost guaranteed death. Today, being rejected or left out doesn’t carry the same life-threatening consequences, but it feels as if it does. You may know consciously that not being part of the “in” crowd won’t hurt you, but emotionally your whole being yearns for social inclusion. A sense of belonging is so important to human beings that Maslow included it as the third tier of his Hierarchy of Needs. We ALL have the need to feel socially accepted and part of interconnected social groups, such as the family. That need is as real as the need for food and water. Social connections matter. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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So the answer for Janie was not simply to “not care about what other people think.” It wasn’t a matter of being more independent or developing a thicker skin. Instead, her first task was to learn to increase her sense of empathy and connection to others, such that she no longer took their comments or opinions personally.

Walk in Someone Else’s Shoes Most of us make a great number of assumptions about the people we encounter in our lives. We look at their surface characteristics – their clothes, how they act, what they say – and construct beliefs about their lives. A person who is not self-confident might believe that others are always more confident, attractive, intelligent, and accomplished than them. Unconfident people often tell me, “If only I were smarter…. If only I were more attractive … then I’d be as confident as they are.” But that’s just wishful thinking. By comparison, someone else’s life will always seem better than your own! The grass is always greener. And the likelihood is that the most confident-appearing people you’ve ever met have more than a kernel of selfdoubt. You have to break the habit of comparing yourself to others, because any comparison will simply make you feel worse. Even comparisons that are supposed to make you feel better can actually backfire. I’m sure that people have already told you things like, “Why would you want to be like Andrea? She may be thin and live in a big house, but her parents are terrors/she has to put up with those awful neighbors/she has so much pressure to live up to.” Although saying things like this may make you feel better temporarily, feeling better about your situation by picking out the flaws or shortcomings in the people you look up to is NOT a solution. This is where well-meaning friends can actually harm your self-confidence. They may tell you that the best way to stop caring what people think is to put them down, e.g., “Why should you care about what Jeremy thinks? Everyone knows he’s just a dumb jock.” Devaluing other people’s opinions is NOT an effective means of becoming more self-confident.

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You CANNOT become more self-confident by putting others down or seeing yourself as “better” than them. I’ve seen so many supposedly “confident” people who only feel confidence when they’re around people they consider beneath them. Take them out of that safe environment, and their “confidence” crumbles. Another unhelpful bit of advice that friends may give you is that you should realize that you’re special because you have something that no one else does. For example, a friend might say, “Just remember that you have a higher degree/are a nicer person/have a better job than they do.” Although this is supposed to reassure you that you’re just as good as everyone else, what it really does is limit you so that you ONLY feel self-confident when you have that “special something.” SUPREME self-confidence is completely independent of anyone and everything. It’s a confidence that comes from knowing yourself, being committed to growth, and being unafraid of vulnerability. So how do you get that feeling? Learn how to walk in other people’s shoes without judging them. Instead of setting yourself apart from others (e.g., “I’m better than they are, so why should I care what THEY think”), your goal is to understand that the way people behave reflects WHO they are and WHERE they are at that time.

“Even comparisons that are supposed to make you feel better can actually backfire.”

The way people behave towards you is a reflection of how they feel about themselves. If they’re insecure, then they may say something meant to you so that they feel better about themselves. If they’re having a bad day, they may be short with you. But it really has nothing to do with you. It has more to do with how they’re feeling at that moment about themselves. Understand where a person is coming from, and you’ll see that their hurtful comment or behavior wasn’t about you at all. It was about their bad feelings. (For more insight into this concept, I recommend Debbie Ford’s The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, which will teach you how people project their own repressed dark side onto you.) All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Once you master this insight, you can react to negative behavior with empathy and understanding, rather than taking offense.

Making Criticism Work to Your Advantage For Janie, the next problem was how she responded to criticism. Whenever anyone was the slightest bit abrupt with her, ignored her, or made any sarcastic comment, she felt crushed. “The worst thing is,” she said, “I know they’re right!” My goal was to teach Janie to respond to criticism in a healthy, self-confident way. We did this by developing a plan. The next time anyone said something critical to Janie, she was to do the following: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Observe your non-verbal reactions. Clarify the intent behind the criticism. Respond neutrally. Reframe the criticism.

Here’s what I mean.  OBSERVE NON-VERBAL REACTIONS

“Learn how to walk in other people’s shoes without judging them.”

Criticism can be as devastating as a physical attack, so it’s no wonder that our first reaction is often physical. We freeze, our muscles tense, a sick feeling strikes our gut, our cheeks redden, our heartbeat quickens, and we drop our gaze. These reactions are characteristic of the fight or flight response. Although Janie knew that she felt paralyzed when anyone said something harsh to her, she’d never really thought about the specific ways she responded. “I can’t look at anyone afterwards,” she noted. “I hate the fact that what I’m feeling is so obvious. I just can’t control it.” The goal isn’t to control these non-verbal reactions: rather, it’s to observe them from a neutral place. Notice how your body is reacting. Don’t judge yourself for blushing or feeling panicky. Simply become an observer of your own body. As you become more comfortable in that place of neutral observation, you’ll be better able to deal with the criticism rationally rather than emotionally.

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 CLARIFY INTENT Was the person truly asking you to change, or were they just blowing off steam? Did they want an apology, or were they feeling guilty and trying to pin the blame on you? Did they want a discussion, or were they just looking to pick a fight? Taking a moment to think about why a person has just criticized you can help you decide how to respond. If someone has just criticized you in a belligerent way, the chances are that ANY response will just wind them up even further. If, on the other hand, the criticism came from your boss or teacher, they’re probably expecting some sort of response out of you … ideally a promise to work on whatever they’ve criticized.  RESPOND NEUTRALLY Once you think you understand why the person is saying what they’re saying, deal with the comment as neutrally as possible. If they’re just looking for a fight or blowing off steam, then no response is needed. If the criticism contained merit, then ask more questions, find out what the person wants you to do about the criticism, and acknowledge any truth in it. The worst thing you can do in response to criticism is to get defensive or make excuses. If the person is trying to make you upset, then getting upset will simply show them that they’ve succeeded. If the person genuinely wants you to apologize or behave differently in the future, then remove the personal sting by being as solution-oriented as possible. Ask them what they want you to do. Personally, I refuse to have any discussion on an abstract level like, “Be more studious/ quiet/responsible,” because these words are so vague as to be almost meaningless. However, I can certainly promise to spend one hour a night studying/turn down the radio/call if I’m going to be late coming home. Those are specific actions with measurable criteria.  REFRAME CRITICISM The biggest problem with criticism is not what other people say about us. It’s what we interpret it to mean.

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For example, a person lacking in self-confidence might think: “You got a C on the test.”  “You’re stupid.” “That’s an interesting outfit you’ve got on today.”  “You look ugly.” “I wish you would have called first.”  “You’re thoughtless.”



The experience of being criticized is bad enough, but replaying it over and over again in our minds is even worse. We’ll often link a specific person’s criticism to all the other bad feelings about ourselves. We’ll get so caught up with our pity party that the original incident will be blown all out of proportion. Neutralize the negative feeling of being criticized by reframing the experience. Explain it to yourself in a way that takes the sting out of it. For example, if you’ve been criticized by your boss or a teacher, tell yourself something like, “It’s good that they pointed out that I need to work on X. This will be a great skill for me to learn.” If you’ve been criticized by someone who was just trying to be mean, tell yourself something like, “I can understand how bad they must be feeling to say that. They’ve got a lot of pressure on them at the moment, and I guess I was just the closest person to take it out on.” You may think that it doesn’t show much spine to understand and forgive those who attack you, but by extending compassion to critical people, you can actually disarm them, so that their angry façade drops away. Of course, with others, their negative nature is so built-in that there’s not much you can do aside from understand that’s just the way they are, and it has nothing to do with you personally. In summary, by using this four-step method… 1. 2. 3. 4.

Observe your non-verbal reactions. Clarify the intent behind the criticism. Respond neutrally. Reframe the criticism.

…you don’t have to fear criticism any longer. You can actually become comfortable with criticism and learn to use it to your advantage, on your own personal path towards self-growth.

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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What Happened to Janie Janie had avoided confrontational situations for so long that it took some time for her to practice using these techniques. Each week, she reported to me new observations she was making into how children behaved with one another. They seemed to be able to yell insults to one another without taking it personally. “I’d never realized that criticism could not be personal,” she said. “For some of these kids, it’s almost like a form of having fun.” At her next job performance meeting, Janie was elated to inform me that she had handled the situation with aplomb. Whereas, in the past, she’d cringed at every constructive comment, seeing it as an indictment of her personally, this time she was able to see past those feelings to the genuinely helpful intentions of her supervisor. “I want to be better at my job and a better person,” she said, “and I guess I never really realized that criticism could actually help me do that. I always thought it meant that I wasn’t any good.” With her newfound confidence, Janie felt better able to express herself and take away the positive from any situation. You can, too. Just practice changing you perspective. Shift your focus from how someone else’s words make you feel, to understanding why they’re saying what they are.

All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Feeling Helpless “Whether you think you can or think you can’t - you are right.” Henry Ford

Sam held his cup of coffee as if his life depended on it. “Sometimes I don’t even want to try to do anything new, because I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. I don’t even feel like I can change my own life. I’ve tried to feel more self-confident, but it doesn’t seem to work.” Confessing this to me was difficult for him. Sam had never admitted to feeling helpless in his life. It just wasn’t done in his family. Being helpless meant that you couldn’t do things for yourself, which meant that you were “no good,” according to his father. In fact, it was the recent death of his father that brought him to me. Finally, in the absence of his father’s shadow, he was ready to admit what he had never talked about to anyone. Sam was forty-three and had been a mechanic for nearly three decades. He was very good with his hands and practical-minded. If there was anyone who could do anything, it was Sam. But all of his years and expertise hadn’t given him the one thing he craved more than anything else: the ability to feel confident as a father to his children. “They scare me,” he said. “I can teach them what I’m good at, but then they come to me with things that I don’t know anything about. I feel helpless, and I’m not used to feeling that way. It’s like the world is changing faster than I am, and I can’t keep up.” An important part of confidence is feeling empowered. Confident people don’t perceive themselves as being at the mercy of uncontrollable forces; rather, they believe that they create their universe. By accepting personal responsibility for what shows up in their life, they feel certain that their actions will create the change they desire.

The Law of Attraction You may have heard of the popular book, The Secret. Metaphysicians have long known of the concept described therein as “The Law of Attraction.” It’s the idea that your thoughts are creative energy that attract what you think about to you.

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For example, if you focus your thoughts on an uncontrollable world where unfortunate events just happen to you, you’ll continue to feel more and more powerless. If, on the other hand, you focus on what you desire most – such as more wealth, a thinner body, etc – you can be certain that you will eventually attain your heart’s desire. To put this in more practical terms, what Sam was focusing on was the extent to which his children’s world differed from his. They were growing up in an environment completely foreign to him, where chatting online, portable technology, and MySpace profiles were the norm. He’d spent his childhood tinkering under a car’s hood listening to cassettes on his boombox. How could he be a decent father to his children when he didn’t even understand what they were talking about half the time? It was time for Sam to focus on where he could connect with his children, rather than focusing on where he could not.

Focus on What You Can Control If you focus on your feelings of helplessness, you’ll only magnify them. It may be true that you’re limited in certain ways, but there is an infinite range of possibilities available to you right now that you can’t see because you’re so focused on your limitations. People with supreme self-confidence are effort-oriented, not results-oriented. This means that they don’t spend time obsessing over the uncontrollable factors in a situation, like the weather, or how other people will react. Instead, they focus their attention on those factors they CAN control. Let’s look at an example, like a test. Imagine that you’re facing your final-year exams, and that your entire grade will be based on whether you pass or fail. You have no idea what’s going to be on the test. You know that it’s humanly impossible to review everything you’ve learned over the course of the year. What do you do? Some people prefer not to think about it until the night before, cram all night, and then rely on luck to get the right answers. This isn’t an example of focusing on what you can control! Others start studying well in advance, but, each evening they study, they get more and more discouraged. There’s just too much information. How can they ever remember it all? And, when test time comes, they’re often proven right. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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You can focus on how impossible doing well on the exam is and stress yourself out about the consequences of failing, but is that really going to help you? Confident people will focus on the factors they can control, like ways to improve the quality of their study time (such as joining a study group), familiarizing themselves with the test layout well in advance, and making sure to get a good night’s sleep and a solid breakfast beforehand. Then, when the test-taking time comes, they can feel certain that they are as prepared as they can possibly be. How well will they do? Not even they know until the results come in. But they try to think about it as little as possible. They’ve done their best, and that’s all they can control.

Forget About the Fear Remember that idea I talked about before, that you are not your thoughts? This is another situation where it bears repeating. Even though you may feel helpless, that’s just a feeling. If you put your mind to it, you’ll quickly find out that you’re not helpless. The truth is that you actually have quite a lot of power in the now. But you have to exercise it. Even if you feel scared, helpless, shy, nervous, and all the rest, you don’t have to pay much attention to your feelings. Those feelings don’t mean anything. A scared person can go on stage and perform as well as a relaxed person. In fact, sometimes fear can lend an edge to a performance that takes it out of the ballpark! For Sam, his feelings of helplessness around his children didn’t actually mean that he was helpless as a father. His children looked up to him, and he actually did have a great deal of influence over them.

“Instead, they focus their attention on those factors they CAN control.”

But by assuming that they weren’t interested, Sam was making his own role as a father a powerless one. I couldn’t sum it up any better than Sam when he explained what he’d learned thusly: “It’s not that a self-confident person doesn’t get scared or feel shy. Rather, it’s that they don’t let those feelings get in the way of doing what they want to do. So don’t let your feelings affect your course of action.”

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What Happened to Sam I didn’t see Sam again for a long time. A while back, I needed to take my car in for a tune-up, and who should come out of the shop but Sam. He was smiling widely, and he shook my hand. “I’ve been meaning to get around to writing you a letter,” he said. “I want to thank you for all the help you gave me.” Sam’s children were now teenagers, and his son begun to help him in the shop after work. Spending time with his family was now the greatest joy in his life, because, after so many years, he’d finally learned to feel comfortable contributing in his own way. “Every time things get to be too much, I just think about what you said about focusing on the things you can control. It took me some time to figure one that out. I finally realized that I can’t do much about when my kids are at school, but I can make sure to spend some quality time with them when they’re at home. I sure would have missed out if I hadn’t learned that lesson.” Is there something in YOUR life that’s worrying you, because you feel completely helpless? If so, then take the next step towards greater confidence by making a list of the things you CAN control … and what you can do about them. You may find that you control more of your life than you think.

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How Do I Become More Personally Confident TODAY? It’s time for your first Confidence Challenge! In this section of the chapter, I’m going to ask you to review what you’ve learned, select five things that you can do RIGHT NOW to increase your personal confidence, and set some goals for the future.

Personal Confidence Review How to Stop a Worrying Mind • • • • • •

Become conscious of your mental dialogue. Write down your fears (journaling). Schedule a limited amount of worry time. Create an action plan to addresses your worries. Focus on the now. Develop a quieter mind through meditation.

How to Be More Decisive and Less Doubtful • Realize there is no “perfect” decision. • Trust your decision-making process. • Learn how to recognize a good decision. How to Recover after a Significant Life Event • • • •

Be kind to yourself. Share your feelings. Seek help. Reframe the experience by looking for the opportunity hidden within.

How to Stop Getting Angry at Yourself • Stop focusing on success or failure, and start focusing on the learning process. • Become aware of your negative self-dialogue. • Learn to compliment and praise yourself. How to Stop Depending Too Much on Other People’s Approval • Stop comparing yourself to others. • Don’t take things personally. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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• Develop a plan to deal with criticism. • Reframe negative experiences in neutral language. How to Stop Feeling Helpless • • • •

Accept personal responsibility for what is going on in your life. Focus on what you can control. Become effort-oriented, not results-oriented. Don’t let your feelings get in the way of what you want to do.

Personal Confidence Challenge Taking some ideas from the list above or adding your own, write down 5 things that you are going to do to become more personally confident today. 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Personal Confidence Goals As you become more personally confident, what do you hope to be able to do in 2 weeks, 1 month, and 1 year from now? Two Weeks Goal:

One Month Goal:

One Year Goal:

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Social Confidence “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.” Anne Keller One of the keys to developing supreme self-confidence is in knowing how to react and adapt in varying social situations. You have seen it before: walking into a crowded room, scanning the room desperately for someone you recognize that you can latch on to. The fear that grips you as you are watched, as you introduce yourself, as people evaluate you and talk with you, is paralyzing. Your goal isn’t to be noticed. It’s to enter the room and blend in with as little fuss as possible. Keep your head down and survive, that’s the trick. You look in awe at the popular people, mingling and making small talk, smiling and enjoying themselves. They make it look so easy as they take control of the room. Their personalities are magnetic, and people are drawn to them. They know who they are, they have aspirations and are high-achievers, and everything they touch appears to turn to gold. They are exciting people to be around and interesting people to talk to. Socially, they are highly-evolved beings and they never run out of things to say. To an observer, they seem to have it all! Don’t you wish you could be more like that?

Why People Lack Social Confidence There are a number of reasons we can’t all be like that, the smooth-talking magnetic personalities that shine at parties. Not all of us have the necessary skills. The important thing to remember here is that this is a skill. Confidence is not something you are born with. It’s something you learn by exposing yourself to situations, learning from parents, siblings, friends and colleagues. It’s a social skill that evolves as you do, and the mastery of confidence in social situation will have spillover effects into many other aspects of your life. Some call a lack of confidence a social handicap. I choose not to see it that way. If you are self-conscious and have confidence issues around other people, it demonstrates that you are letting your fears overcome you. Socially underdeveloped is a good phrase to use, because it underlines your ability to develop and grow, moving upwards in your understanding and confidence.

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Your lack of social confidence is a learned behavior. It’s a pattern of behavior you fall into, kind of like a programmed reaction in order to survive the fear or awkwardness that you feel. What you are going to learn is ways to unlearn your past behaviors and unlock the potential within you by developing new strategies for developing a social identity, self-confidence in the way you look and feel about yourself, the art of making and holding conversation with anyone you meet, and tips for handling and overcoming any embarrassing situations that you encounter along the way. Your home life, relationships, friendships, your job, all of these things demand a level of necessary confidence if you are going to succeed and achieve your personal and professional goals. Others may have more social skills than you and feel more comfortable talking to large groups of people, but with training and perseverance, you too can develop your skills to become a confident socialite, always knowing what to say and how to handle any social situation. You can develop supreme social confidence!

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Social Identity and Life Direction “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” Henry David Thoreau Lloyd suffered from low self-confidence, and it affected almost every aspect of his life. He was technically brilliant, a straight “A” student, super intelligent, and appeared to have it all. But beneath this veneer of success and brilliance, he found his success in life was limited. “I don’t really know what I want to do with my life,” he explained, “When I was at college, my decisions were pretty much made for me, but now I’m in the workforce, everything seems so much harder.” Part of self-confidence comes from knowing what your direction is in life and that it is a powerful one. But how do you know you are making the right choice. Is the career path you choose now going to lead to a lifetime of success, or is it going to end in failure? With so many choices to make in life, how do you know which one to choose, and which one guarantees you success? The first step to achieving any type of direction in life is choosing a path and sticking with it. There are no guarantees in life, and avoiding making a decision about your future is not going to protect you from the failure that you fear. In fact, avoiding making a decision at all guarantees that your fears will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Avoid the temptation to delay or ignore the necessary decisions because you are scared of change. One of the brutal realities of life is that nothing stays constant, and those that achieve are the ones that are continually on the cusp of another life decision. A number of people with confidence issues avoid making decisions in the fervent hope that staying in their comfort zone will shelter them from needing to change. And that’s great in the short-term, but my concern for people like this is that life overtakes you while you avoid evolution and change. The security you feel in your comfort zone is an illusion. Ignoring your need for change won’t make the need go away. It may be less visible for a while, but the time will come in your life where decisions are made for you as a result of your inaction. It may also mean that the choices available to you are more limited than they first were. If you are frightened by the decisions and the responsibilities that adulthood brings, take comfort that there is a small part of that fear living inside of each of us.

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Some call it fear or trepidation, others call it cold feet, others call it stepping outside your comfort zone, while more still call it an adrenaline rush. Everyone who strives to achieve success risks failure.

Life Coaching That’s where a life coach can help. Life coaches are personal motivators who can help you realize and unlock the potential that is hidden within every one of us. Do you have skills that are unrealized? Do you have dreams and ambitions about your future but don’t know where to start? Are you at a crossroads in your life where you have a number of different paths to take and you don’t know which one holds the most success for you? The role of a life coach is to assist you in determining and achieving your personal goals. A good life coach will use a variety of methods tailored to you and your situation to help move you through the goal setting and achieving process. It’s important to make the distinction here between life coaching and therapy. Life coaches are not therapists. The key to successful coaching is to help unlock the process of determining, setting, and achieving goals, and helping you become an active participant in this process of growth.

Emotive Responses Another step in the process to developing social identity is learning to identify and respond to your emotive processes in a positive way. Let’s face it, we are all emotive beings, some more than others, and how we choose to react to the emotions and hormones flooding through our body can have quite an impact not only on our own lives, but the lives of those around us. How do you react when things don’t fall into place in your life? How do you react when you don’t get your own way? Do you get angry and frustrated? The key to developing an appropriate emotive response is in recognizing the limit of your control over what is happening around you. Change the things you can, accept the things you can’t, and have the wisdom to know the difference. I want you to examine your emotions and moods. Are your responses to situations appropriate given the level of control you have over the outcome? Next time you are in a crisis situation or in the position where you are choosing a response to an outside influence, consider the cause. Consider the outcome. Is getting angry going to make the outcome any better? Is your response related to the cause? Does your response have any influence over the pattern of events going All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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on around you? Is worrying about the outcome going to have any influence on the resulting pattern of events? Each step of the way I want you to examine your mood and response. Why is your action an appropriate one? How does your reaction contribute to a successful outcome? Is there more than one way of doing something correctly? Consider the role your response plays: • • • •

Happiness Anger Worry Regret

Part of being invited into a process of growth asks that you account for your actions and reactions. Nobody makes you feel what you feel. Your reaction, your feeling, however you choose to respond, is your response. Sure, external factors may have an influence on how you feel, but the course of action that you choose is your choice alone. Being invited into examining your emotive responses asks that you examine your reactions to external influences, and determine if your reaction is the best approach to the situation that is unfolding around you. Picture this scenario: You walk into a room where you are meeting someone for the very first time. You may feel nervous at the thought of meeting someone new, and you are keen to create a good first impression. You are introduced to a group, and in conversation you made a comment that was taken out of context and caused the group to laugh. Now the response you choose here is your choice. You may feel that their laughing made you angry, which justified your response, therefore placing the blame on them. If they hadn’t laughed, you wouldn’t have got angry, so the responsibility for the outburst lays with them for provoking you through their laughter.

“How do you react when you don’t get your own way? “

Now I want you to consider it from a different point of view. You had the choice of how you decided to react. You could have seen your comments in the light of the context in which it was taken, and laughed along with the group, seeing the comment in the humorous context in which it was received. Or you could have corrected yourself, at the same time acknowledging the humorous context of your comment. Or you could have let the humor embarrass you, therefore feeling that the group was laughing at you personally rather than the comment. This may All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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have reminded you of times in your past when you were mocked or bullied, which elicited an angry or defensive response from you. Either way, you had four choices: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Laugh along with the group Correct yourself and acknowledge the humor in the misplaced context. Become embarrassed and apologized Become defensive and angry at the group.

The point to remember here is that nobody “makes” you mad. The choice to be mad is yours. Similarly, any of the four choices outlined above are choices for you to make. In the same way that your comments can be misinterpreted and taken out of context, have you considered how people’s actions can sometimes be misinterpreted and taken out of context by you? Before being tempted to take offence, get embarrassed, or lash out, consider the other person’s actions. Are their actions motivated by humor, empathy, interest, or do you really believe their intentions are malicious? Is a negative response appropriate if you aren’t entirely sure of their motivations or intentions? No matter what you may believe, people act and react to situations according to their belief system, morals, or values. For every action and reaction that you witness in life, every person will have a reason for behaving that way. The important thing for you is that your reason or your justification is based on fact, not on assumptions or misinterpretation. That way you will always be thought of as a person of integrity, and one that has the confidence to stand up for themselves as well as take a joke. It’s all part of being the best person you can be.

Demonstrating Social Awareness Further to the point I made above about us all being emotive beings, it’s important to remember that as part of society we need to keep our emotions in check when it is appropriate. Let’s take a look at our feelings: • • • • • • • •

Happiness Sadness Anger Lust Confident Shy Trusting Nervous All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Being aware of these feelings and acknowledging them is one thing, but how we choose to express them determines whether we are socially appropriate or not. Does your expression of your feeling embarrass you? Does the expression of your feelings embarrass others? Does it impact upon others in a negative way? One easy way of keeping your emotional expression in check is giving yourself time to acknowledge the emotion before you act. The people that act the moment they feel something are the ones that live with regrets and apologies. Save yourself the need for an apology by giving yourself time. Count to ten. Feeling better? Where possible, give yourself a few hours or a day to get used to your emotion, and time to consider the consequences and develop a socially appropriate response. Demonstrating your social awareness in a positive way takes into account your own feelings and response, as well as taking into account the feelings of those around you. Social awareness is about more than just you. It’s about considering the consequences of your emotive response and expression, and being as positive as you can possibly be. That is the difference between confident people that are remembered for good reasons, and those confident people that are remembered for the wrong reasons. It’s your choice which one of those people you want to be.

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Appearance “It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.” Sally Field The way we dress and carry ourselves tells us and others a lot about what we think of ourselves. Anyone can wear a nice suit, but fewer can look good in it. Why is that? Those that look good in a suit, for example, do so because along with the nice clothes, they have the confidence and body language to carry it and look comfortable. They believe they look good, and this comes across clearly in their body language and posture. Similarly, it’s not all about wearing suits or nice clothes. You can achieve the same level of comfort and confidence wearing jeans and a t-shirt, as long as you have the attitude and body language that comes with it. So how do you achieve confidence with whatever you wear? It’s about being comfortable in who you are, and believing in yourself. If you leave the house thinking your jeans are too tight, or your shirt is an unattractive shade, this lack of confidence in yourself will come across clearly in your body language. It doesn’t matter if your shoes aren’t like what everyone else is wearing. It doesn’t matter if your shirt sticks out in a crowd. Pick up artists like Neil Strauss and David DeAngelo talk about wearing clothes that make you stand out from the crowd, and call this “peacocking.” It’s not about the clothes you are wearing; it’s about how you wear them. You have a choice: you can go out wearing what you have and believe in yourself, or you can go out wearing what you have and have a miserable time. Let me ask you, does feeling self-conscious actually help when it comes to being more confident or attracting others? Wear your clothes with pride. The difference between fashion and style is that fashion is easy to replicate. You can buy or adopt a look from a clothing store, and you are sorted. Or you can create your own style or flair. Taking something and making it your own, and wearing it believing that you look good is going to make you different.

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Resist the temptation to blend in with the crowd. The danger in blending in too much is that people struggle to notice you. Fashion is about blending in. Style is about standing out and being confident in doing so. As long as you believe in yourself and what you are wearing, you will inspire others with your style and passion. So which one are you?

Dressing to Impress Building on what we have talked about above, and the differences between style and fashion, how you choose to dress in different social circumstances will either build your social status or decrease it. If you have the confidence in yourself to believe in what you are wearing, then half the battle is over. The next part is dressing in such a way that it conveys confidence and power, and dressing to impress. The key to dressing to impress is in having knowledge of your body type and what style of clothing works for you. This is about much more than just knowing when and where you can wear shorts and a t-shirt; it’s about knowing what style of clothing is flattering to your shape, and what cut and color conveys to others in terms of power, attractiveness, sexiness, and other emotive responses. Now I’m not going to go into detail about what specific style best suits you. Let’s leave that to the style consultants and shop assistants. The stuff I am teaching you here is the basics. For men and women, if you are looking to convey power, colors such as dark blues or blacks will portray an air of authority and presence. If you are looking for something more subtle for example, such as a night out at a club, a party, or a bar, you may want to consider what subliminal signals the colors you are wearing are giving off: • Red signifies passion and sexuality, desire and love. • Pink signifies love, romance, and friendship. • Orange is associated with joy, sunshine, and creativity. • Yellow is the color of sunshine and is often associated with joy, happiness, and energy. • Green is the color of nature, and symbolizes growth, freshness, and fertility. It also has an association with safety, stability, and endurance.

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• Blue is another nature color, and symbolizes trust, loyalty, and wisdom. Dark blue is also a power color. • Purple is a color associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, luxury, and ambition, and can also convey wealth and extravagance. It’s also associated with creativity, mystery, and magic. • White is considered to be the color of perfection, and is associated with light, goodness, innocence, and purity, and cleanliness. • Black is another powerful color, and is associated with power, elegance, formality, sometimes evil, and mystery. It denotes strength and authority. An added benefit is that wearing black is also slimming, since it makes you look thinner!

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Making Conversation “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” W.C. Fields

It’s assumed that by the time you reach a certain age your peers, parents, and mentors would have taught you all you need to know about life, interaction, the world we live in, and how to work with it to achieve success. Despite this, a number of people still find it hard to make conversation with someone for the first time. It’s not like it is with your friends, where you can go straight into a conversation about your day, the people in your life, the dramas and everyday occurrences that surround you, or the gossip that you pick up along the way. Meeting a stranger is different. Your conversation has no context to begin with, and while you are beginning a conversation you are learning about each other. For many, making small conversation and getting to know a stranger is daunting. Not necessarily because they are scary people, but because there is so much you don’t know about this person and subsequently there is a lot to learn. Do they like you? What is their first impression of you? Do you like them? Do you have anything in common? Are you going to say something that might inadvertently offend them? How do you know they will be interesting? How do you know you will be interesting? These are common thoughts that run through your mind as you start a conversation with someone you have never met before, and it’s easy to let your internal voice talk you out of meeting people. For those of you that freeze at the thought of starting a conversation with a stranger, it’s about re-framing that internal monologue or inner voice. This isn’t an opportunity for you to make a fool of yourself. This is an opportunity to expand your social circle. Think of it as an opportunity to meet and learn something new about someone you haven’t met before. This is an opportunity for you to connect with someone new and share with them something about yourself. Most importantly, you need to view this as a connection with another person. Our lives are not measured by our material wealth as much as they are by the strength of our connections with other people, and that stranger standing in front of you is another opportunity to connect. That’s something to be celebrated, not something to be nervous about! You don’t have to be the suave intellectual. You don’t have to be the expert on foreign affairs or a sports commentator. You simply have to be you. Be interesting. Be friendly. Be fun. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Reading Non-Verbal Signals The wonderful thing about physical contact and conversation is the fact that you can pick up on connotations, inflection, shades of meaning, and non-verbal cues. Emails, text messages, phone conversations, and online chat are a very poor substitute for the strength and quality of connection that you can make with another person through one-on-one contact. The first is eye contact. If the person you are talking to is making eye contact, this tells you they are receptive to what you are saying, and are attentive. Their focus and interest is on you. If they are looking away, not making eye contact at all, or looking at their watch, their glass, or anything else in the room, they may be disinterested or distracted. Eye contact is a clear indication that their attention or interest is focused on you. Eyes are perhaps the most important single factor when you are making conversation with someone for the first time, because your eyes are able to convey so much more meaning than words alone. Try smiling with your eyes. Notice how it feels different to just smiling with your mouth. Do you notice how it feels more genuine and friendly? The next thing to evaluate is their body language. Are their arms at their sides, one hand casually in their pocket, arms gesturing or helping emphasize a point, or are they crossed? Where their arms are can tell you a lot about how they feel about you. Are they open and willing, or closed and protective? Is their body facing you? If their shoulders and hips are squared and facing you, then this is another indication that their body language is open. If their shoulders or hips are facing away, however, this may indicate a number of things. The look back over the shoulder, the crossed leg, the profile they are offering you. Does it indicate interest or seductiveness, or does it clearly tell you that they don’t want to talk to you? When talking to someone for the first time, one technique I recommend if the other person’s body language is open and receptive, is to copy it. Notice how the other person is standing, notice their posture, even noticing something as simple as what hand they are holding their glass in and if they have a hand in a pocket. Where possible, casually imitate it without mimicking it. If the other person is sitting with one leg crossed casually over the other, try doing the same. If the other person is leaning back in a relaxed manner, do the same. If they are sitting up or leaning forward, match their stance so your body languages are compatible. Are they smiling? One of the simplest ways of communicating non-verbally is in smiling. If someone is smiling at you, they are open, receptive, and interested in talking with you. Similarly, don’t forget to smile yourself! All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Conversation Routines Once you have established that their body language and non-verbal cues are positive, actually making conversation is going to be necessary! This is the bit where people with low self-confidence encounter their first problem. After you have introduced yourself, what do you say? Beyond the introductions, how do you maintain the conversation in a way that keeps them interested? The key to good conversation is in having a balance between talking about yourself and talking about the other person. Nobody likes being in conversations where someone talks about themselves for hours on end, but at the same time you don’t want it to sound like an interview, firing out one open-ended question after another. Good conversation is about creating a balance of both talking about yourself as well as inviting the other person into sharing as well. Topics of conversation may include • • • • • • • • • •

talking about your job family funny things that have happened to you opinions on topical things such as music movies sports teams books you may have read places you have visited countries you have been to if you are at a party, ask them how they know the host

“Try smiling with your eyes.”

You may also want to ask questions around the same topics to invite the other person into the conversation. If you are going to develop a conversation routine, or a few stories that you can fall back on if you are running out of things to say, it’s important to have a few to choose from to suit the situation you are in. It’s also important to tailor your conversation around topics that you think the other person might be interested. If you are a guy approaching a girl that you have never met, she may not be as interested in the local baseball team or your World of Warcraft best score as you are! If you have a few stories to choose from, be sure that they are appropriate, lighthearted, and if they are funny, that’s a bonus! It might not be a good time to tell

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a stranger how your pet dog Ralph got run over when you were five years old. Similarly, you might not want to regale her or him with the sordid events of a mate’s stag do or the one-night stand you had at the office Christmas party. To create the ultimate repertoire of fall-back conversations, choose from: • • • • • •

one funny story from your childhood one story about a car-ride with a friend one story about your job one story about a book you read that changed your life one story about a memory you have from playing a favorite music album perhaps a story about the area in which you live or the area where you are right now • a favorite holiday, and why • a story about what you want to have achieved 10 years from now Write them down, practice them, memorize them, and test them on your friends. Ask your friends if they have any favorite stories or conversations that you have shared with them. You may recall some memorable conversations you have had with others. See if you can remember the details and if it is worth developing into your repertoire.

Keeping Conversation Flowing When talking to (and LISTENING to) someone you have just met, it’s always a good idea to ask open-ended questions. This works. You want to give the other person a chance to run with your questions, and take them in whatever direction they want to. Think of a tennis match. Whenever there is a rally there is a nice rhythm and it’s pleasing to watch. A dialogue is like a rally in tennis. You have to hit decent shots in order to keep it going. Closed questions close off conversations. For example: You say, “What did you do this afternoon?” She says, “Nothing really.” Or, best case scenario, she says something like, “I ate lunch then I brushed my teeth.” That’s not so good. To go back to the tennis analogy, this is not like hitting a winning shot; it’s more like not even getting it over the net. It kills the conversation after her response AND makes her look boring when she might actually not be. Remember, you want to give her an opportunity to show you that she’s not. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Open-ended questions, by contrast, can lift your conversation to unimaginable heights. For example: You say, “So how do you feel about Republicans?” Demographically speaking, there’s a less than fifty percent chance she will say, “I’m a Republican.” But even if she is one, or you are for that matter, it doesn’t matter, you’ve managed to start an open topic that promises to yield some entertaining dialogue. If you play it right (that is, with a smile), then you’ve got a great open-ended conversation starter. Men talk in facts and women talk in feelings, or so it goes, so have that in the back of your mind as you are bantering with your new friend. Ok, so there’s one exception. Never use this open-ended question, or anything similar to it: “Tell me something interesting about yourself…” This is *too* open-ended. It puts too much pressure on the other person. It puts them on the spot. After all, if they can’t think of anything, does that mean they aren’t interesting? No! Of course not. It means that they are as yet unwilling to open up to you and are not willing to commit to revealing what are truly the most interesting things about themselves. You’ll have to work for those details. Here’s one way to test yourself: How would you respond or even react to the same or similar question asked by a relative stranger? Let that thought guide your conversation and see how far the banter and exchange of conversation can go.

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Embarrassing Social Situations “The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.” Hasidic Saying Alex always felt nervous at the thought of going to parties, cocktail functions, meetings, or social gatherings. He always felt as though he would do or say something and embarrass himself. In fact, he would avoid being noticed at all costs. Some would call him an observer, the guy in the group that holds his glass, nods, and agrees with everything that is said. Alex would never contribute to a conversation for fear that he would say something wrong, or look stupid. Safer to blend in and avoid the limelight than be noticed and possibly make a fool of yourself, he believed. The problem with this is that nobody noticed Alex. He struggled to make friends easily, and people found it hard to initiate and hold a conversation with him. At times, he felt as though he was invisible, which in some aspects was exactly what he was trying to achieve, but at the same time he felt lonely. The difference between being one that blends in to the crowd and avoids all attention, and one of the people that mingles and socializes with ease, is less than you may think. Sure, it may feel as though the two of you are poles apart, but both of you can encounter the same experience at the beginning of the evening.

“Closed questions close off conversations.”

The difference is how you choose to react to the situation. The people who have supreme self confidence take control of their fears and make a conscious decision to enjoy themselves, where others less confident, like Alex, may let their fears dictate or influence some of their behavior. I’m not saying that you need to make a grand entrance or needlessly draw attention to yourself, but there are ways to enter a room with style and panache without compromising yourself or pretending to be something that you aren’t. The first is in holding your head high. Straightening your back and holding your head high increases your profile, increases your lung capacity, and enables others to see you.

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The second step to making a stylish and confident entrance is in meeting people’s eyes. Connecting with people through eye contact, even without conversation, is a powerful means of connection with others. Considering you may not even talk to most of the people you see, there is nothing to fear in making eye contact. An important thing to remember is that the other people in the room are just that, people, just like you. The differences may seem striking to you as you nervously glance around the room, but underneath it all the similarities that bind us all together are much stronger. The only discernible difference between yourself and the confident socialites in the room is that they have decided to take control of their own enjoyment. Sure, they have anxieties just like the rest of us, but the benefit of swallowing them down for a moment and approaching someone in conversation outweighs the thought of a night spent looking at your watch, avoiding being noticed, and waiting impatiently for the night to end. Take a deep breath, hold it for five seconds, and then exhale slowly. Do this a few times if necessary. Smile. Loosen the muscles in your shoulders and relax. Notice how relaxing this feels, and how this changes your mood almost immediately. Smiling with your eyes as well as your mouth gives people a more genuine impression of your approachability and friendliness.

What Happened To Alex? After years of being fed up of being ignored or feeling invisible at parties, Alex realized he was perpetuating the myth by allowing his fears to dictate his behavior. He realized that his dislike of being invisible outweighed his fears, which led him to be more approachable and make conversations with people. All it took was one night of doing the opposite to what his fears told him, a small victory over his fears, and it paid dividends. Every occasion after this got easier, after that first brave step to go outside his perceived comfort zone. Alex’s comfort zone was no longer a prison.

Learning to Laugh Most people with social confidence issues are paralyzed by the thought of being in a situation where they may be embarrassed. Stammering, blushing, and having people laugh, is the single biggest fear, and knowing what to do in these circumstances is central to them overcoming their fears.

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Let’s face it: we can’t control every facet of our lives, especially when it comes to meeting other people, going to parties, going on dates, or presenting a good first impression. We can do our best to control it, but inevitably there will be times when, due to circumstances outside of our control, we will be embarrassed.

“Smile. Loosen the muscles in your shoulders and relax.”

When people find themselves in this situation, the first thing I tell them to do is laugh. Laugh at the preposterousness of the situation, laugh at the misunderstanding, and most importantly, laugh at yourself. Accepting and acknowledging the fact that you are imperfect and make mistakes immediately relaxes people, and tells others that you don’t take yourself too seriously. Resist the temptation to hide your embarrassment or make excuses for it. Instead, indulge it. Laugh. Be embarrassed. Tell the person you are with that you have made a mistake and that you are embarrassed, but that you find it funny. Make a joke of it. Accepting your embarrassment and imperfections don’t make you less of a person, in fact, they make you more human. The ultimate in self-acceptance is your ability to laugh at your own mistakes. Try it, make a joke of it, relax and laugh. It may be the difference between an awkward date and a casual and relaxed one. Be yourself, and enjoy being yourself, that’s the key.

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Overcoming Shyness “We are made strong by the difficulties we face, not by those we evade.” Source Unknown What’s the one thing holding you back from meeting new people, making new friends, and having a fantastic social life? Is it that you don’t know what to say? Are you self-conscious? Are you worried that they’ll reject you? If you answered “yes” to all three questions, you may be shy. Shyness is one of the biggest barriers to achieving the kind of social life you dream of. Guys want to approach girls but can’t get up the courage to do so. Girls want to talk back to cute guys but find themselves tongue-tied and embarrassed at the attention. Fortunately, shyness is one of those traits that most people grow out of. That’s because almost everyone is shy at a certain point in their life, especially when they’re young. If you haven’t had a lot of experience in many social situations, being shy is a natural response to being unfamiliar with the “rules” for the situation. You’re not sure how you’re supposed to act, so you end up being quiet, feeling awkward, and being highly conscious of being out of your depth. As most people get older, they gain confidence as they interact with more people. Having a job that requires a lot of customer interaction, or moving to a new town or university where you don’t know anyone, will help you get over your shyness, because they force a person to learn socializing skills quickly. However, for some people, shyness is a more serious matter. The seriously shy feel terrified at the prospect of having to interact with someone they don’t know. Even the idea of exchanging words with a clerk at a grocery store can cause sweaty palms and the shakes. As a result, these shy people live life with their heads down, avoiding anyone’s eyes and avoiding any human contact that might require them to speak. In this section, I’m going to explain exactly what shyness is and what it isn’t. I’ll explain how others perceive shy people—the findings may surprise you. Finally, I’ll review some of the most common solutions for overcoming shyness.

What is Shyness? Have you ever wondered where being shy comes from? Were you born to be shy from the start, or was it something you developed as you were growing up? All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Amazingly enough, researchers have found that there is a genetic component to shyness. Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan studied groups of children to see whether or not they displayed “shy” or “bold” character traits. He found that even babies as young as four months old displayed distinct character types. Some were bold, while others were timid. In his study of two-year-olds, roughly a quarter of the children fell into the “bold” category while one-fifth were categorized as “timid.” As these children grew up, the shy ones tended to play alone while the bolder children tended to play in groups. However, this research doesn’t mean that if you’re shy now, you were born to be shy. Being outgoing and socially confident are learned behaviors that you can acquire just as you would any other skill. Nor does this research mean that if you were bold as a child, you won’t end up being shy in later life. Only one third of severely shy children in Kagan’s research had any genetic predisposition. Quite simply, for some people shyness is harder to overcome than others. This does not mean that it’s impossible, however. If you find it difficult to make small talk, you can improve your conversational skills by taking an interpersonal communication class or by educating yourself so that you know a little bit about a lot of topics (the key to being a great conversationalist). If you’re not sure what to do in a social situation, you can ask people you trust or find books on the topic (like dating guides). I’ll give you some more solutions for overcoming shyness a bit later. Right now, I’d like to address some of the many misconceptions about shyness.

Shyness as a Label Many children, when they’re young, get stigmatized by being labeled as “shy.” Because their parents and teachers have told them that they’re shy, they start to believe it. They revert even deeper into shy behavior because they have an excuse: their “shyness.” Worse of all, their shyness becomes part of their self-identity. They’re shy, they’ll always be shy, and the confident person they wish they were will always be out of reach. Shyness is not something permanent that you either “are” or “are not.” There are many people who are confident in most situations but act shy when they’re put in a situation that they don’t feel comfortable in. Other people are quite outgoing among their friends but revert to shy behavior around strangers. That’s because shyness is a response. It’s a way of behaving. Depending on the situation you’re in and the people you’re around, you may act shy or you may act confident—it all depends.

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Most importantly, shyness is natural. What would happen if you boldly charged into every situation, even if you didn’t know the social rules? You’d probably end up making a fool of yourself or offending someone. It’s good to keep quiet, hold back, and observe until you get a handle on the situation. In fact, in many situations it’s better to be timid at first rather than confidently rush ahead and get yourself into trouble.

“Most importantly, shyness is natural.”

Now that we’ve established that shyness is a behavior that can actually be good in some circumstances, what about people whose first instinct is always to hold back, stay quiet, and look down at their feet? For many people, shyness becomes a habit. That’s because it’s comfortable. Shy behavior keeps them from engaging in a situation and putting themselves at risk of rejection or saying something stupid. When shyness becomes a habit, life starts passing you by

Shyness is only a problem when it interferes with you getting on with the life you want. And unfortunately, for many shy people, their shyness interferes with them getting to know members of the opposite sex. They find it hard to make a lot of friends. They don’t want to be shy anymore. And guess what? That’s half the steps required to get over shyness. You have to want to stop being shy. Once you’re committed to overcoming your shyness, your next step will be to start changing your shy behavior. I’ll tell you more how to do this in a later chapter.

Being Shy Doesn’t Mean You Have Low Self-Esteem One common misconception about shyness is that shy people have very poor selfesteem which keeps them from feeling confident in their interactions with others. This isn’t true. Shy people have no higher rate of poor self-esteem than anyone else. In fact, if anything, shyness may make people feel inadequate when it comes to social situations, actually causing the feelings of low self-esteem. This means that someone telling you to “get over it” and “believe in yourself” doesn’t understand shyness very well. Shyness isn’t something that you can get over by just being more self-confident. The only way to start overcoming your shyness is by improving specific skills, such as communication. And, as anyone knows, learning a new skill—like music, say, or painting—requires a multi-pronged approach of education, practice, refining your technique, and more practice. So don’t let people tell you that the solution is just to “feel” more confident!

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Being Shy Doesn’t Mean You Don’t Like People Sometimes, people get labeled as “introverts” because they’re shy. Because shy people feel nervous about meeting new people and experience anxiety in social situations, they often end up with a smaller social network than outgoing people. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that shy people don’t want to have just as many friends as more outgoing people. Most shy people I know love having friends and love being with people they trust. They end up socially isolated only because they have a difficult time reaching out to make new friends. Introverts, on the other hand, prefer solitude and the inner life to being with other people. Many famous scientists and artists were introverts, wholly focused on their own creative life and projects to the expense of their social engagements.

“When shyness becomes a habit, life starts passing you by”

It is quite possible to be a shy introvert … but it’s also possible to be a shy extrovert. People like Carol Burnett, John Travolta, and Johnny Carson all considered themselves shy even though they were actors and public figures. (If you’re shy, you’re in good company!) You can seem gregarious and extroverted to people around you but still feel social anxiety on the inside.

How Shy People are Perceived Some people—especially other shy people—consider shyness a positive character trait. They believe that shy people are more empathetic, kinder, and more loyal. Shy people are often better team players and put more effort into their relationships. They’re even perceived as being better listeners and more thoughtful—mainly because they talk less! Although shy people have many positive traits, shyness on its own is widely considered a negative trait—one that often overpowers a person’s other positive traits. The reason for this is simple: if a person is shy, they’re harder to get to know. The harder they are to get to know, the less likely it is that others will discover the many fine traits hidden beneath the shy exterior. The simple truth is that shy people are not as easily or widely liked as outgoing people. If you look at the most popular guy or girl in any social environment, you can almost instantly assume that they’re outgoing. Shy people tend to feel more comfortable sticking to the corner of a room where they’re less likely to bump into All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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many people, while outgoing people naturally seek the center. As a result, the outgoing person meets many new people and forms new friendships at every turn, while the shy person instinctively minimizes his or her chances of meeting anyone. There’s nothing at all wrong with being shy, but being shy does cause other people to treat you differently. Some people assume that because you don’t have much to say, you’re boring or dull. Other people assume that if you’re silent, you don’t want to talk to anyone. Other people will even think that you’re stuck up, cold, or aloof because you don’t hang out with them or join in conversation their group. They think that your behavior is a choice, rather than simply the only way you know how to cope with social situations. When you’re seriously shy, you often don’t let people get to know you. People feel an invisible barrier around you, almost as if you’re sending out “Don’t Approach Me” signals. They see how awkward you become when other people get too close or when a social situation seems imminent. As a result, they simply assume that you’re not a friendly person and pass you by for people who are more willing and eager to engage in conversation. You may feel that people are judging you without really getting to know you, but people do this all the time. There are so many people out there to meet that we have to use some criteria to decide whom to approach. A guy scanning the dance floor for a girl to ask to dance will probably choose someone whom he can easily approach, who is smiling, and who seems friendly and outgoing. He won’t even notice the girl who is sitting by the wall in the shadows, feeling nervous and terrified that a guy will ask her to dance (even though she actually does want this to happen). That’s because everybody tends to take the easy route. To gauge how approachable you are, ask yourself the following questions.  Do you smile often?  Do you keep your arms loose as opposed to crossed?  Do you keep your head up?  Do you stand up straight as opposed to slouching?  Do you meet someone’s eyes easily?  Do you position yourself to maximize the chance of people passing by you?  Do you mind other people seeing you?  Do you usually notice when someone says something to you?  Do you say “hi” back to most people?  When you’re talking with someone, do you think more about them or about yourself?  Do you turn down invitations often?

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Often, shy people can feel very self-conscious in social situations. They can worry whether or not they’re doing the right thing and spend most of a conversation desperately trying to think of what to say next. As a result, their conversation partner picks up on their nervousness and thinks that it’s because of them. For example, John approached Katie, a shy girl at a dance. When he was talking with her, he noticed that she wasn’t meeting his eyes. Instead, she seemed really nervous. She kept making fidgety gestures, playing with the strap on her purse. All her responses were short and left awkward silences. He assumed that she felt uncomfortable around him because she didn’t like him, so he ended the conversation and left. Next, John approached Anna, an outgoing girl. She smiled at him warmly. When he spoke, Anna kept her head up and looked at him so that he really felt she was listening. He noticed how brightly her eyes sparkled. Even when there was a silence in the conversation, it felt comfortable because he could sense that Anna was relaxed. After a few minutes, he asked Anna to dance. He felt that they really enjoyed one another’s company. Unfortunately, people may assume from your shy behavior that you simply don’t like being around them. They pick up on your discomfort. They may end up becoming quite negative towards you as a result, because they think that you’ve rejected them first—when in reality you just didn’t know what to say or do.

Your Shyness Makes Others Shy One fact that surprises a lot of people is that shyness is actually “contagious.” If an outgoing person tries to have a conversation with a very shy person, the outgoing person will start to feel themselves at a loss for words. Unfamiliar feelings of awkwardness and uneasiness will trip up their tongue. In little time, the outgoing person will soon find themselves acting just as “shy” as the shy person! That’s because the outgoing person is used to getting feedback from a conversation. The outgoing person needs a response to what he or she says—whether a smile, a comment, whatever—in order to formulate the next thing to say, and so on. But a super shy person provides none of this feedback. The outgoing person can’t understand why the shy person is so quiet. The outgoing person isn’t used to being in this situation, so they start to feel uncomfortable. As a result, many outgoing people may actually avoid conversation with shy people, because they don’t like feeling shyness themselves.

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Shyness Solutions Now that you understand some possible causes and effects of shyness, how do you overcome the social barriers that your shyness has created for yourself? First of all, avoid self-defeating thoughts. Just because you have behaved in a shy way in the past doesn’t mean that you are a “shy person” by nature. All you have to do is learn new skills to change your behavior. In this section I’ll give you some tips on making small talk, on controlling sweaty palms or a thudding heart, on increasing your approachability, and on additional techniques like visualization and self-hypnosis that may help.

“You may feel that people are judging you without really getting to know you”

Learning to act in a confident, outgoing, and friendly way is a process that will take education, practice, and making plenty of mistakes over time before you master it. Don’t expect change to happen overnight. Once you leave your safe cocoon of shyness, you’ll find yourself feeling vulnerable and exposed to rejection. This is a risk that you’re going to have to accept. If you never make the attempt to meet another person, you’ll never end up getting rejected—but do you really want to live like that? For me personally, it’s better to have approached 10 people, 9 of whom end up rejecting me, to find that one person who ends up becoming a great friend.

What Doesn’t Work: Alcohol Some people try to overcome their shyness with alcohol or drugs. When they’re drunk or high, they lose the paralyzing self-consciousness that keeps them from interacting with others. As a result, they feel more successful socially. However, neither alcohol nor drugs really help in overcoming shyness. You can’t spend your life drunk or high. If you’re really going to get rid of your shyness for good, you have to do it on your own terms. You need to make sure that shyness doesn’t keep you back from going the places you want to go, talking to the people you want to talk about, or advancing at work. (Shyness actually makes you less likely to get promoted—a good reason to tackle it now!) Not only does relying on alcohol or drugs create a chemical dependency, it also doesn’t work. Alcohol and drugs create a false sense of social success. You may feel as if you’re less inhibited, but you’re also less conscious of what you’re actually doing. Research shows that just two alcoholic drinks can negatively affect your ability to hold a conversation. That’s right: negatively. And four drinks will seriously inhibit All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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your conversational skills. You may feel as if you’re becoming silver-tongued after four or five drinks, but ask the sober people around you. Chances are that you’ll find your perception of your conversational dexterity differs greatly from an independent observer’s. The myth of alcohol as a social lubricant is a dangerous one for shy people to believe, because studies show alcohol can actually increase nervousness—not relax the drinker. There are better ways to relax and feel comfortable around people. Don’t use alcohol as a way to avoid facing your shyness.

Jumping Off the Deep End Some people give shy people the advice that it’s best to plunge right in. The only way to get over shyness is to throw yourself into social situations and do that which you fear the most.

“...neither alcohol nor drugs really help in overcoming shyness”

The method can work for some, but for others it can have the opposite of its intended effect. Seriously shy people can be so traumatized by the experience that they retreat further into their original behavior. Do yourself a favor: ease in gradually. Start with situations that cause you small amounts of anxiety (like asking for information, making small talk as your purchase is rung up, or calling someone you don’t know), then slowly build your way up to situations which cause you more and more anxiety.

Set yourself small goals. It may just be to say hello to the cashier, or smile at one stranger, or catch someone’s eye. It may be to talk to someone waiting in line with you. Practice with strangers or people you’ll never see again. The stakes are much higher when it comes to people that you already know or want to become friends with. When you hone your skills on complete strangers, you’ll feel secure that even if you make a mistake, you’ll never see that person again. One guy I know actually drove to a suburb or distant part of the city each weekend so that he could practice his skills picking up women in an environment where he was certain he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. He told me that the change in scene made him feel like he could pretend to be a different person. No one knew him, so no one knew that he was actually quite a shy person in his daily life. Do whatever it takes to keep pressing your boundaries. The more comfortable you become interacting with people in everyday circumstances, the more natural it will feel to strike up conversations with people in social situations like a party or club. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Surround yourself with confident people so that their confidence rubs off. Friends can also be great motivators when you share your goals with them, so make sure they know that you’re trying to overcome your shyness.

Techniques for Small Talk One of the most important skills you have for achieving social success is the ability to make small talk. It will serve you well whether you’re at work, at a party, or in line at the store. Striking up conversations with strangers can be immensely satisfying, because it helps pass the time and is a pleasant way to connect with one of the hundreds of people who pass us anonymously every day. The best way to improve your conversational skills is to educate yourself. Read the newspaper, watch the news, and pay attention to any interesting news items or current debates. Stay current; know what is playing at the movie theater, keep up on interesting local events, and be familiar with the latest bands. The more you know about a range of topics, the more likely it will be that you will be able to offer an opinion or further information about any given topic of conversation. Also, be aware when things that happen in your daily life would make a great topic of conversation. If something interesting, funny, or scary happens to you, imagine how you would describe it to someone else. Your own experiences are full of great conversation material. Come prepared. If it helps, brainstorm and write down a list of conversation topics for times when conversation runs dry. This is especially effective when you know the person you’ll be talking with (e.g., a first date). Some people spend hours thinking of great opening tactics they can use to approach women, or quirky conversational tidbits that they can drop in a conversation. There’s no shame in being well prepared. Ask questions. When conversation runs dry, don’t let it fall into awkward silence. Ask the other person a question. If you don’t understand something (say they just said they were into vexillology, and you had no clue what it was), then simply ask, “Could you explain that to me?” (By the way, vexillology is the study of flags.) You can ask any number of questions, but make sure that it doesn’t sound like you’re interviewing the person. Add encouraging comments like, “That’s interesting,” “I always wished I could do something like that,” or, “You know, that really makes sense to me because…” If they don’t seem keen to answer, or if they answer with monosyllabic responses (like a grunt or a curt “yes” or “no”), then abandon your line of questioning. They clearly don’t feel comfortable with it.

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Make observations. Often, one way to spark a great conversation is simply to make an observation. Point out something in your immediate environment, or mention something you saw on television or read in the news or heard from someone else. The great thing about this conversational tactic is that you don’t have to express your opinion. You just throw an observation out there and see where the other person takes it. Remember people’s names. Always get a person’s name when you’re talking with them. As you’re talking, drop their name in a few times, e.g. “You know, Mike, I have to say that this is the slowest night I’ve seen in this bar…” or, “Jenny, you are so right. I completely agree with that.” Using a person’s name in conversation makes them feel flattered. Paraphrase. Make sure that you understood by repeating what the other person just said in your own words. “So you mean that you actually think that Hampson would make a better mayor than Gordon Thomas?”

“Striking up conversations with strangers can be immensely satisfying.”

Be interested in them. People who are curious about the people around them have a natural warmth and empathy that attracts others. When you’re interested in the person you’re talking with, they feel flattered. Best of all, it takes the pressure off from you. The more you focus on the person you’re talking with, the less you’re focusing on yourself, and the less self-conscious you’ll feel.

Practice active listening. One problem many shy people have is thinking of what they’re going to say next during the whole time that the other person is talking. As a result, they often miss some important information. If someone is talking to you, really listen to them. Lean forward, keep your eyes on them, and ask for clarification. Don’t feel pressured to respond immediately when they stop speaking. Take some time to think about what you want to say. Remember what they said. Once you’ve talked to a person one time, it will be easier to talk to them the next time, because you’ll already have some information about them to go by. Bring up a topic you discussed previously or something that you remember them saying. People feel impressed and flattered when you remember part of a previous conversation and integrate it into a current conversation.

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Controlling Nervousness If you’re really shy, you may find that you feel physically paralyzed at the thought of striking up a conversation with a stranger. You may feel as if the person is evaluating and judging you with every word you speak. Most of your anxiousness at social situations is self-generated. When you meet someone for the first time, that person may not be particularly thinking of you. However, at that very instant you are meeting them, their opinion of you may feel like the only thing on this earth that matters. You imagine the thoughts running through their head. You hold your breath until you see either the light of approval or scowl of rejection on their face. To get over your anxiety at meeting people, you need to do two things. First, you have to remind yourself of the relative unimportance of any single person’s response to you. The most outgoing people meet tons of people that they don’t particularly click with, but because outgoing individuals meet sooo many people, they’re always meeting one or two people they do click with. You’re not going to achieve any better statistics. So stop being concerned about that particular person’s response to you and start looking for some more people to meet. Second, you need to recognize that the majority of negative thoughts running through your mind (e.g., that the other person won’t like you, that they’ll think you look strange, that they’re looking for reasons to get out of the conversation) are actually your own thoughts and do NOT reflect what the other person is thinking at all. As a result, you may assume that the other person isn’t enjoying the conversation with you and end it abruptly … when, in actuality, the other person was enjoying talking with you. Everybody has a stream of thoughts running through their head at any single moment in time. For example, take a simple act: a woman reaching out her hand to shake the hand of her date. While she’s doing so, she may suddenly wonder whether or not her skin is soft enough (did she put on moisturizer?), whether her hand is moist (oh no, nervous sweating), and whether he’ll like the perfume she daubed on her wrist. Notice what all these questions have in common? They all introduce an element of self-doubt. Often, when we’re with someone, the running monologue in our head keeps questioning and second-guessing ourselves to try to answer the endless question: Does he or she like me? We’re our own worst critics. We think that if only we can get all of the numerous details right (say the right thing, wear the right clothes, look the right way, drive the right car), then people will like us. As a result, in the background of all our interactions with people, we see ourselves hovering like critics, shouting, “Don’t say All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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that, stupid!” “How could you be so dumb? He’s going to hate you now,” or, “I’ll bet you’ve got food stuck in your teeth, that’s why she’s staring. Check a mirror now!” The best thing you can do for your own shyness is to silence your inner critic. That’s right. Tell that critic to shut up, and you’ll take things from here, thank you very much. Do all that you can do before meeting someone to ensure that your appearance is up to standard, then forget about what you look like. Enjoy your conversation, and if you happen to say something that sounds wrong, let it slide. Forget about it and keep on with the conversation. Try to focus as much in the moment, with the person you’re with, as you can. Try as hard as possible not to think about yourself or anything you might be doing wrong. Once you gain a measure of control over your shyness, you’ll be able to maintain some selfawareness in situations and correct mistakes before you make them.

“Try to focus as much in the moment, with the person you’re with, as you can.”

As you focus on being in the moment, relax. Notice when your heart is beating fast, or when you’re talking faster or in a higher-pitched voice than normal, and calm down. Take deep breaths. Avoid clenching your hand, gritting your teeth, or tightening any part of your body. Let your hands hang loosely. Change your eye focus away from the person you’re talking to and look at something else for a minute if you find yourself getting super-nervous. You don’t have to maintain eye contact with the person you’re talking to while you’re doing the talking. The person who’s listening should always be looking at the person who’s talking. If you need to, look elsewhere while you’re talking, but when you finish make sure to make eye contact again before the other person speaks. If you find yourself getting really nervous, to the point that you feel you’re about to do something stupid, then excuse yourself. There’s nothing wrong with ending a conversation at a high point. Just make sure to ask for the person’s phone number or email address before you do.

Visualization One way that you can increase your chances of successfully meeting someone new is through using a technique called visualization. In this technique, you visualize yourself in a perfect encounter with someone from start to finish. One way that you can increase your chances of successfully meeting someone new is through using a technique called visualization. In this technique, you visualize yourself in a perfect encounter with someone from start to finish. You basically practice overcoming your shyness in your head before actually doing it in real life. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Make sure that you’re in a relaxed mood, in a place “Try imagining where you feel comfortable and won’t be disturbed. Try imagining yourself in a social situation that you often yourself in a encounter, or a situation that is coming up. Visualize social situation the scene as clearly as you can, with particular people. Envision yourself responding to them in a witty, that you often confident way. Make sure that you’re realistic with encounter” your visualization. Don’t see yourself as being the life of the party if you’re usually on the sidelines. Instead, see yourself at the center of a group, or mingling through a crowd, or talking to someone you’ve never talked to before. Take yourself through an entire conversation, from start to finish. Envision how you will exit the situation. Practice visualization techniques often. When you find yourself in a similar situation in real life, you should be able to recall that feeling of relaxation that you experienced while visualizing the scene. Because you’ve already mentally experienced the situation before, you’ll feel confident in your ability to handle it. This technique can be particularly effective for men wanting to pick up women.

Self-Hypnosis Self-hypnosis is another strategy that has been used with some success to overcome shyness. In self-hypnosis, you open your mind to suggestions that reflect the desired attitudes or behaviors you wish to have. Basically, you unlearn the negative scripts that mentally trip you up in social situations. You replace them with powerful, affirming statements that are then reflected in more socially confident behavior. You can use the bonus audio track that comes with this book, “Master Your Confidence through Overcoming Shyness”! This 30-minute hypnosis track will enable you to reprogram your mind, eliminating negative thoughts and affirming your new confident self. To use this audio track, simply sit or lie down in a comfortable place where you can listen to the program without being disturbed. Do NOT listen to this track while driving or operating machinery, as you will be asked to close your eyes. You will remain fully awake and conscious throughout the entire experience. Please note that self-hypnosis is not suitable for individuals with a history of epilepsy or mental illness. You can listen to this audio program as often as you like to motivate and encourage you to overcome your shyness!

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How Do I Become More Socially Confident TODAY? It’s time for your second Confidence Challenge! Review the points below, then decide on 5 concrete steps you can take to improve your social confidence.

Social Confidence Review Develop Your Social Identity and Life Direction • • • •

Stop avoiding decisions: choose a path and stick with it. Seek the services of a life coach to help clarify your life goals. Understand and accept accountability for your own emotional responses. Demonstrate social awareness through developing appropriate emotional responses.

Dress to Impress • Understand your body type and what styles work best on you. • Consider the subliminal signals of your color choices. Develop Conversational Skills • • • •

Read non-verbal signals including eye contact and body language. Balance talking about yourself and the other person. Practice a range of light-hearted personal stories. Learn to ask open-ended questions.

Deal with Embarrassing Social Situations with Ease • • • • • •

Hold your head high. Meet people’s eyes. Look for your similarities with other people. Learn to take a deep breath, relax, and smile. Be willing to laugh at yourself. Accept and acknowledge that you’re not perfect and that you make mistakes. • Don’t hide your embarrassment or make excuses. • See the humor in embarrassing situations.

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Overcome Shyness • Stop identifying as “shy” and learn to treat shyness like any other learned behavior. • Stop feeling embarrassed about being shy and see where it might give you an advantage. • Make a commitment to overcoming your shyness and taking social risks. • Learn to see yourself as other people see you. • Make yourself more approachable. • Avoid using alcohol or drugs as a crutch to overcome shyness. • Accept that overcoming shyness will involve exposing yourself to rejection ... and learn to feel comfortable with that. • Set yourself small goals such as saying hello to a cashier, smiling at a stranger, or commenting about the weather to a fellow passenger. • Practice your conversational skills on strangers or people you’ll never see again. • Surround yourself with confident people. • Enlist the support of friends. • Learn how to make small talk by keeping on top of current events, imagining how you’d describe an exciting event in your own life to a stranger, or simply becoming a better observer. • Remember people’s names. • Deal with nervousness by putting a situation in perspective. • Silence your inner critic. • Relax into the NOW and put your worries aside. • End conversations if necessary. • Utilize visualization or self-hypnosis.

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Social Confidence Challenge Taking some ideas from the list above or adding your own, write down 5 things that you are going to do to become more socially confident today. 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Social Confidence Goals As you become more socially confident, what do you hope to be able to do in 2 weeks, 1 month, or 1 year? Two Weeks Goal:

One Month Goal:

One Year Goal:

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Professional Confidence “I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott

Work and Self-Confidence We spend a huge amount of time at work, so it makes sense that the events which transpire there (and the impressions that those events leave upon our conscious and subconscious minds) have a lot of say in how good we feel about ourselves. The things that happen at work can – and do - impact our self-esteem, our sense of selfworth and value, and our self-confidence levels both personal and professional. It may sound odd that your personal self-confidence levels could be affected by something that happens in a professional environment – but, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If you feel as though you’re struggling at work (somewhere you spend most of your waking hours), this sense of fruitlessness will seep through into your personal life. You’ll probably catch yourself thinking about work in your own time: perhaps rehashing situations you think you should have handled differently, worrying about your productivity, or maybe just plain dreading it.

When You’re at Work, You’re on a Different Planet The environment at any job is a very controlled, limited one. This means that confidence issues strike many people at work -even those people who don’t think of themselves as confidence-crises “types”. Why? Because most people make the mistake of basing their professional confidence on the things they achieve and how well they do at work. This is a major contributing factor as far as the likelihood of developing a professional confidence crisis goes, simply because, if you base your self confidence on things (like achievements) rather than your mindset (you have confidence in your own ability to adapt to different situations),it’s actually pretty easy to shake that confidence.

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After all, as soon as the work environment changes (for example, if your job description’s altered, or if you have to seek a new position), your whole basis for your belief in your own abilities has vanished along with your ability to perform those tasks included in your original job description! Ideally, your sense of confidence at work will be based on an innate sense of comfortableness with your own abilities to handle the outcomes of the decisions that you make: not because you get them right all the time (or even necessarily most of the time), but because you know that whatever happens, you can turn it into a positive, learning experience – and hopefully use that experience to get it right the next time you’re called upon to handle that type of situation!

Confidence Outside of Work Doesn’t Mean Confidence At Work Many people who consider themselves confident in personal and social situations struggle to bring those personality traits to their professional life, simply because the work environment is so intensely separate from - and, some might say, completely irrelevant to - the environment outside work. When you’re at work, suddenly everything’s different. The rules and regulations of social interaction have changed (suddenly it’s considered inappropriate to greet and interact with people as you would in your own time); you’re in a high-pressure situation (things are expected of you, usually within a certain timeframe; your abilities are being evaluated; you need to perform); your outward appearance is a lot more important, and is often dictated by other people (you’re probably expected to dress a certain way – often in a way that doesn’t reflect your own personality or comfort levels) .... the work environment really is an entirely separate world! To sum it up, the reason that it’s difficult for a lot of people who are self-confident on a personal level to feel – and act – that same way at work is because the boundaries of what’s expected and required of them are so radically different from the expectations placed upon them in a personal setting. When your environment changes, the demands it places upon you change too. It’s only natural that your response to those demands changes - and with it, your perception of your own ability to meet those demands. This is where professional self-confidence levels are often an unwelcome surprise to normally-confident people: suddenly, they feel unsure of themselves, and doubt their own abilities.

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The Stressors that Target You and Your Self-Confidence In addition to the more general stresses at work that we’ve just looked at (unusual demands on you, a sense of general discomfort brought on by professional formalities like dress codes and “appropriate” interactions, frequent high-pressure situations) which can affect self-confidence in a roundabout, undefined sort of way, there are often stresses present in that same environment which specifically impact your selfconfidence. Maybe you’ve got impossible deadlines; maybe your job description has changed, and now you’re not sure that you can meet those new expectations; maybe your boss is fond of making less-than-constructive comments about your abilities; or maybe you’ve been promoted and are struggling to cope with the added responsibility and workload. These things can make us feel as though we’re struggling, alone, with a huge burden. These issues are different from the more generalized aspects of work, because they specifically affect us, not anyone else: unlike the more generalized issues (like the dress code, etc) you’re the only one who’s worried about whether you can get that assignment turned in before deadline, make the word-count, or meet your boss’s ever-increasing demands.

Why Work Stresses Affect Your Self-Confidence When you’re confronted with stresses like these, day in and day out, it’s easy to see why work is such a major cause of self-confidence issues in so many people. When the situation is starting to feel beyond your control – like when you feel overworked, or when you feel like your skill-set isn’t up to the tasks at hand - those feelings of powerlessness can create a downwards spiral of anxiety and self-doubt. This is hardly conducive to rock-solid self-confidence! But what can you do about it? It’s called choosing your own response.

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Choose Your Own Response The thing to bear in mind here is that it’s not about the circumstances: it’s about your response to those circumstances. You can’t hold luck, fate, your workload, or your boss’s moods responsible for your own state of mind: to get the best of a work-related confidence crisis, you need to take responsibility for your own emotions and your own mindset. This can be as simple as just taking one or two steps to turn a negative situation into a positive/productive one. Let’s look at the case of Jo, a client of mine. Jo was finding her job very difficult. Her boss was very critical of her, and even though she was meeting all his demands, and technically was meeting all the criteria of her job description, she never received any positive feedback. As a result of this, her confidence at work was starting to stagger a bit. The stream of constant criticism and demands, coupled with a failure on her boss’s behalf to recognize when previous demands were met, was eroding her sense of stability and professional confidence: her decision-making ability was beginning to suffer, because she was always double-guessing herself. When Jo came to see me, she was keeping it together – just - but the cracks were beginning to show. “I don’t need to be told that I’m fantastic every day,” she said, “but it sure would be nice to feel like I’m doing something right once in a while.” She told me that she’d been worried about being passed over for promotion for some time now, and that she was even starting to be concerned about being replaced – not because she felt that she wasn’t doing her job right, but because – without some constructive feedback from her superiors – she was unsure of her position in the workplace, and was unsure of how to improve her standing. Her confusion and anxiety were beginning to cripple her. “I can never seem to make a decision any more,” she told me. “I used to be a great decision-maker, but now I feel like I’m always second-guessing myself. And once I’ve made a decision, I can’t just relax and let events unfold: I always agonize over it. If things don’t turn out perfectly, I kind of beat myself up about it too – because I know my boss is going to!”

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Jo and I had a long talk about the problems she was having at work. Among other things, I told her that she is responsible for her own reaction to the situation: that it was up to her to turn the course of events round, and to create a scenario for herself where she felt comfortable. To do this, I suggested that she create for herself a list of all the things that were making her uncomfortable at work. I told her not to let herself critique this list too early on in the process – it was important that she just jot down everything before thinking about whether the problems she listed actually had any merit to them or not.

“Her confusion and anxiety were beginning to cripple her.“

Then, when she had a list of everything that was bothering her, she could consider the relative importance of each one, and decide which problems needed to be tackled and which could be overlooked or handled at a later date. The next week, Jo came back to me with a big smile on her face. I asked her how things had gone at work; she told me that she’d made the list, as planned, and had decided after completing it that the major problems that she had which were impacting her professional confidence were: 1. An undefined job description. Jo had been hired for a certain role, but over the years as other staff came and went, her responsibilities expanded to take on various aspects of other jobs as well. But she’d never had a talk with her boss about this being a permanent thing – it had just worked out that way. As a result, she was never completely sure what exactly she was responsible for, and so was experiencing a lot of worry as to whether she was meeting expectations. 2. A lack of positive feedback from her boss, coupled with a great deal of unconstructive criticism For the record, unconstructive criticism doesn’t give the recipient – or perhaps ‘target’ would be a more appropriate word - any real idea of how to improve: for example, “Be more productive!” instead of “I need you to get this report finished by 5 pm, and I need it to be at least 3,000 words”. Jo told me that she’d planned out what she wanted to say, and had decided on the attitude most likely to get her what she wanted (her boss agreeing to adjust his attitude without getting upset) before tackling the subject. She said that she’d kept things as informal as possible by requesting a “quick chat” with him, and – over coffee – had started off the meeting by acknowledging her awareness that she hadn’t been as productive lately as she normally was.

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Starting off the meeting by acknowledging her own responsibility for the current situation was a good idea: it defused any potential tension, and made it much easier for her boss (clearly not an easy man to handle!) to acknowledge his part in the dilemma. Next, Jo explained that the lack of guidance that she was receiving, as well as the relative unspecificity of her task load, was the cause of her recent performance drop; and explained that it would be in the company’s best interests to offer her constructive criticism when necessary. On top of this, she pointed out to him the value of letting her know when she’d done something right (as opposed to just picking up on the times when she hadn’t done something right). Instead of framing her viewpoint in a purely personal way (“I need positive feedback so I feel good about myself and don’t worry about work all the time”) she significantly increased her chances of getting her boss to accede to her request by making it worth his while. She did this by pointing out that positive feedback would enable her to repeat the desired behavior more often (“If I don’t know when I’m doing something right, how will I know to do it more often?” is what she told me that she’d said.) Jo told me that her boss laughed, applauded her guts in tackling the situation headon, and agreed with her straight away that more guidance was clearly needed - and he would see to it that her instructions were clearly phrased, and that they were both specific and measurable – i.e., “I need so and so done by a certain time, to these specific standards” rather than “Make sure you get that project in on time!”. This is a classic example of somebody taking responsibility for their own reaction. By choosing to react in a calm, controlled, and productive manner, Jo successfully turned a potentially very negative situation into a positive one: she’d got what she needed to both do her job better and feel better about herself while at work; and she’d impressed her boss with her self-control and assertiveness at the same time. When you make a conscious decision to choose your reaction to a situation, it’s incredibly liberating. Suddenly, your ability to remain calm and in control is no longer at the mercy of outside events – it’s completely within your own hands! It’s easy to just go with the flow and react instinctively. If your boss criticizes you, it’s easy to get defensive and resentful, or worried and anxious; if deadlines are getting on top of you, it’s easy to become stressed and jittery.

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These reactions serve no purpose at all. There’s no benefit to getting upset or worried; it consumes valuable time and energy (and, come on – it’s hardly fun to feel that way, is it?!) In fact, you’ll feel a lot better (both about yourself and your own abilities to cope, as well as about the situation that you’re worried about) if you make a conscious decision to react in the most productive way possible. With a little bit of effort, you can avoid those negative feelings (and the negative effect they have on your self-confidence!)

“This is a classic example of somebody taking responsibility for their own reaction.”

But how can you do this? Obviously, every situation is different. Jo’s situation may have no bearing whatsoever on the situation that you’re concerned about. The trick is to intervene before your emotions take over. When things take a turn for the worse, it’s necessary for you to take a step back (emotionally and psychologically) and consider, rationally if possible, all the different ways that you could react. This is a situation where writing your thoughts down is likely to have an extremely beneficial effect: if you write down all the different ways that you could react to the problematic situation, it acts like a clarifying agent. It soothes you – and it helps you to choose the reaction that most suits yourself and the situation, and is likely to have the most beneficial, productive outcome. For example, let’s say your car breaks down. You don’t have any money to get it fixed, but you really need that car: it takes you to work in the morning, you use it to visit friends with in your own time, you need it to bring groceries home with, and so on. Before getting upset (angry, worried, stressed out, starting to cry, etc) take that necessary step back. Reach for your pencil and a piece of paper: what are all the different ways that you could react here? Let’s make a sample list: 1. You could give in to your feelings and have a good wallow. 2. You could call your mom/spouse/partner/friend and ask for a loan.

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3. You could try to do without your car: use your bike to get around, use the bus, or call a cab when you need to get somewhere. 4. You could try to fix it yourself. 5. You could call the bank and ask for a loan, which you could pay off a little bit at a time over the next six months. Well, number one clearly isn’t going to help: there’s no outcome to that one which is going to aid the situation at all. Number two might be doable, but you might not be comfortable borrowing money off someone who you know personally: they might not have a lot of spare money, or perhaps you value your independence too much to resort to financial support from somebody that you know! Number three probably isn’t that practical, since it’ll be time-consuming (and maybe you don’t have a bike, or you live too far from work, or there are no buses in your area .... and taxi-cabs cost an arm and a leg to get anywhere in on a regular basis!) Number four is really only going to be helpful if you know a lot about cars – in which case you probably wouldn’t be that upset in the first place (since you’d know how to get yourself out of this jam) .... So really – by a simple process of elimination – it looks as if number five is your best bet. And now you know what to do: pick up the phone, call the bank, and make an appointment to see your bank manager. There! Simple, isn’t it? By taking just ten or fifteen minutes to figure out a list of viable solutions to the problem, you’ve saved yourself the hassle of getting all emotionally wound up, and have proved to yourself that you’re perfectly capable of handling what could be thought of as a relatively major crisis in your life in a manner that’s calm, in control, assertive – in fact, downright confident.

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Disassociate Yourself from Results “Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control.” Richard Kline Let’s say you’re about to give a speech. You’re going to be speaking to a room full of people – it’s a board meeting at work, maybe. In the minutes preceding your turn at the lectern, you become increasingly anxious. You’ve put together a pretty good speech (you spent upwards of an hour preparing in your own time last night), you’re wearing your best suit, and you’ve got a handful of cue cards just waiting to help you stay on track: but all of a sudden, you’re terrified. Here are some of the thoughts running through your head: If you don’t get the message across clearly, you might confuse everyone present. Worse, they could laugh at you. Your colleagues would lose their respect for you, professionally speaking; your boss, who’s present, will probably take the outcome of today’s presentation into account when your performance review comes up in a couple of months. You might lose out on a pay rise; you might get passed over for promotion. If you do really badly, you could even be demoted! Now, all of these things are, technically, true. If you don’t perform well – or even adequately – your colleagues probably will lose a little respect for you; and yes, it might affect your boss’s opinion of you in a negative way. But here’s the thing: confident people have to go through these periods of intense self-doubt, too. They’re human, too! But they don’t let it get on top of them, and prevent them from doing a good job. How do they stop themselves from dissolving into a puddle of sticky-palmed sweat? It’s really quite simple: they don’t think about the possible outcomes of their current situation. In a high-profile, high-pressure situation (such as giving a speech; attending a job interview; sitting an exam; taking your driver’s test; and so on), if you take up valuable time and energy thinking about how important it is that you do well, how terrible your life will be if you don’t do well, and listing all the ways in which your life will

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spiral rapidly downhill if you fail to live up to expectations, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Thinking about all that stuff isn’t just counterproductive: it’s utterly paralyzing! In a situation where there’s so much at stake, if you give the possible outcome of that situation even a moment’s consideration, it’ll compromise your ability to make good decisions and actually attain the outcome that you want so badly. Look at it from the perspective of a high-wire walker. Now, there’s somebody with a lot at stake! In the days before circuses had their own unions and their own employee regulations and rights, high-wire acts used to be performed without a safety-net. The performers would practice with a net, but when it came time to don those sparkly tights and put on an act under the big top, they’d do it with nothing beneath them but a thin layer of hard-packed sawdust ... and the ground underneath it. The funny thing is, the performers fell less often during a practice session than they did when everyone was watching. You’d probably expect them to fall much more often when they were just practicing, right? They were still getting limbered up, still getting into the right mindset, and hadn’t had all the practice required to make a really good performance. So you’d expect more mistakes to be made during the preparation period for the actual act itself. But it’s a statistical fact that, when the pressure was on and there was no safety-net underneath, more high wire performers fell: simply because they psyched themselves out. All the elements were in their favor (you’d think, logically at least): they’d had months and months of practice; they’d had a long time to prepare themselves mentally; there were no other acts going on underneath them (as there would be during a practice session) to distract them; and of course, there was what you might think of as the Ultimate Motivation: nothing underneath them but rows of upturned faces and the hard, hard ground. But instead of motivating them to do well, this pressure just paralyzed them. All the pressure was, in fact, exactly what caused a higher percentage of falls. The performers simply out-thought themselves. There was so much at stake – they couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand, which – by this time – was really old hat to them. They’d walked that wire thousands of times, with much less at stake: it should have been a cakewalk. But it was the presence of all that pressure that caused them to fall! All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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The exact same principle applies to modern-day life. When you’re in a high-pressure situation, you simply CANNOT devote any mental energy to the potential outcomes of that situation – or else, just like the high wire performers, you’ll stumble and fall. It’s not because you’re inept or incompetent. It’s simple human nature. And it’s the same for everyone. When you really, really want something, often the only way to get it is to pretend to yourself that you don’t really care that much about it – because if you let yourself wallow in your desire for it, and in your panic and dread of what might happen if you don’t get it, you’re compromising your ability to achieve your goal.

“You’re essentially attracting a negative outcome towards you by thinking about it!”

You’re essentially attracting a negative outcome towards you by thinking about it! And I don’t mean that in the fashionable, modern-day sense (“By thinking about things, the karmic energy generated through that force of thought attracts those things through the cosmic flow of the universe towards ourselves ...”). I mean it in a simple, literal sense: you’re psyching yourself out.

You become so nervous, worried, twisted up inside, tense, and just plain anxious that your self confidence gets shredded. And how could it not? There’s so much at stake! If you don’t do well, the whole world will come crashing down around you!! It’s imperative that you do really, really well!!! .... And so on. But these thoughts don’t motivate you; they’re utterly, completely counteractive to motivation. The stress produced by those thoughts detracts energy from what you should really be focusing on, which is what’s happening in the present moment.

What to Do in a High-Pressure Situation When you’re in one of those situations – where the pressure’s on, where you really need to perform well and meet expectations (in fact, surpass them!) - you need to shut your mind off. You can’t afford to think about the possible outcome, and how it will affect you: you need to rely on the preparation that you’ve done.

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Preparation is the Key It makes perfect sense. When you know there’s a situation coming up which you care deeply about, and which has the potential to profoundly impact your life, you’re going to prepare for it, right? (And if the answer’s “no”, I think you should shut this book right now and put it away, because I don’t think I can help you!) Preparation is absolutely essential. If you’re giving a speech, you’ll spend time thinking about the topic, listing the facts that are relevant to your point, researching issues that pertain to your topic, drafting a speech, editing it, making cue cards, practicing in front of a mirror. If you’ve got an exam, you study for weeks (sometimes months) in advance – you might even attend a tutorial or help-group on how to study more effectively. You’d equip yourself with the necessary resources to do well in your studying (pens, pencils, lined paper, a computer, access to the Internet, a library membership ...), and wouldn’t fail to use those resources. If you were going out on a date, you’d take some extra time to make sure that you looked attractive. You might spend a little time thinking about some conversation topics that you think would interest the other person. You’d brush your teeth and suck a breath mint before leaving the house. .... And so on. For every situation that’s a) important to you, and b) foreseeable, there are things you can do to prepare for it. But there’s a reasonable limit to the amount and type of preparation that you can do: in any given situation, there are guaranteed to be variables beyond your control. These are the things that happen without warning, that you couldn’t possibly have foreseen or prepared for. Well, technically you could have made a list of just about every single thing that could possibly have occurred in your upcoming Stressful Event, but that would hardly constitute smart use of your available time, would it? You’d be far better off to concentrate on preparing for the things that you’re pretty sure are actually going to happen, rather than spending a very small amount of time on the millions of possible variables that could occur!)

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So what you need to do is: 1. Accept that there are definitely going to be things that happen that are out of your control. 2. Make a list before the event of all the things that you can control. 3. Prepare for those things as much as you possibly can. 4. Let everything else go! That way, when the time comes for you to participate in your Stressful Event, you can focus on the things you did prepare for - you’ll be safe in the knowledge that you did everything you possibly could to prepare yourself for those things – and, if and when the unexpected happens, it won’t affect your state of mind, because there really wasn’t anything you could have done to prepare for those things.

“Preparation is absolutely essential.”

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Set Your Own Standards for Professional Value by Valuing Yourself “Too many people overvalue what they are not & undervalue what they are” Malcolm S. Forbes

I’m Just Not Worth That Much! So there you are, in the job interview. You think things have been going pretty well – you’ve answered all the questions with flair, you’ve smiled a lot, you’ve received smiles in return (always a good sign!) and, overall, you’re feeling pretty good. Your prospective boss looks up at you from her scratch pad and taps her pen against her teeth. “So,” she says. “What kind of a salary would you be expecting to get?” Instantly, you tense up. Your palms become moist. You clench your fists, fidget with your pen, adjust your socks. This is a hard question to answer for you. The job market’s pretty tight: you’re reasonably sure that corresponding positions in this industry pay about $40, 000 per year, but you’re not 100% sure, so you don’t know whether you should use whether you should use that figure as a basis for your estimation or not. You’re worried that if you say too much, she might discount you as an applicant because she’s not willing to pay that much money! “Ummm .... well, it’s hard to say, really,” you hedge. “I guess – maybe - $30,000?” She looks at you neutrally. “Thirty thou .... okayyyyyyy ....” she says, writing something down on her pad. You can sense that the atmosphere in the room has changed – but why? Surely, making things easy for her by not being too demanding is the right thing to do – right? Actually, that’s not right. Not at all. And here’s why. When you undervalue yourself to other people, you’re telling them how much you think of yourself. How much you think you’re worth.

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And if you don’t think you’re worth that much, how can you possibly expect them to think you’re worth any more than that? This is a common phenomenon. In a nutshell, you’re the one setting a precedent for how you expect to be treated – whether you’re aware of it or not! And this doesn’t just happen when you’re talking about money: it applies to all sorts of situations. If your boss wants you to work the weekend, for example (without getting paid overtime rates!) and you meekly agree because it’s easier than standing up for yourself.... Or if your partner wants you to sacrifice a planned night out with friends to come have dinner with their parents on the spur of the moment, and you cave in without even trying to explain that you’d really been looking forward to some time with your pals.... Or if, like the hypothetical “you” did in the situation detailed above, you’re in a job interview and you’re asked to place a direct monetary value on your own abilities and contributions.... These are all symptoms of the same condition: undervaluing yourself. When you don’t act as though you value yourself, your opinions, your time, or your abilities, you’re telling other people that it’s OK to follow your lead. Your attitude rubs off on other people: they take their cues from you. Let’s use the job interview example from before to demonstrate how the interview might have been handled more productively. If you’d made the conscious choice to be confident and to get the kind of job and salary that reflects your own opinion of yourself, you would likely have: •

Set time aside the night before the interview to prepare. This would have enabled you to research typical salary ranges for just such a job, so you’d know without a shadow of a doubt what kind of salary range you’d be expecting – and could base your answer accordingly. If you felt that your skills were pretty much in line with what’s typically on offer, you could have kept it at the standard salary; if you felt you were above-averagely skilled or qualified, you could have tipped the scale at the higher end.

•

When your prospective new boss asked the question, you would have had the information to give a solid answer: you could respond confidently. For example, seeing as the “you” in the job interview felt that things were going pretty well in the interview, you could have chosen to build on that success by All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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listing a figure slightly above the average wage. For example, if your research had yielded figures around $40,000, you might choose to say something along the lines of: “Well, normally I’d be comfortable with a salary around the $45,000 mark.” This is realistic: it’s still within sight of the typical salary for such a job, but the fact that it’s slightly more than the average rate indicates that you value yourself and your skills pretty highly. •

“These are all symptoms of the same condition: undervaluing yourself. “

Your potential boss would then have based her estimation of you more highly. Because you are confident enough in your own ability to perform the job well – well enough to earn more than the average wage – she would have used your self-confidence as a base for her own, developing opinion of you.

How to Stop Undervaluing Yourself It’s all well and good to hear about how terrible it is when not enough value is placed on your own abilities and talents. But how can you stop undervaluing yourself? After all, it’s not always easy to get up the nerve to ask for more than you feel you deserve – especially if you feel that doing so might jeopardize a prospect close to your heart (like that hypothetical job!) When I talk about undervaluing yourself, I don’t necessarily mean that you think you’re no good (although this is frequently the case). You’ll have noticed that even the person in the job-interview situation felt that they were doing pretty well. What I’m also talking about is lacking the confidence to believe that your abilities are anything out of the ordinary. A lot of unconfident people make the mistake of assuming that, just because they’re good at something, doesn’t mean that that talent is anything special: that if something is easy for them to do, it must be pretty easy to be good at that particular thing ... so therefore everyone must be able to do it. In other words, the things that they’re good at - their talents and abilities - are mundane and pretty everyday. What could possibly be more demoralizing than this viewpoint?! It’s a peculiarly effective way of demoralizing yourself: if you think like this, then you just can’t win. Even the things you’re good at are completely valueless, because

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– according to that way of thinking – everyone can do them; and by definition, if everyone can do something, it can’t really be special. This is actually a surprisingly commonplace mode of thinking. The best way to get around it is – as I’ve already mentioned earlier on in this book – to be kind to yourself. Would you tell a friend of yours that something they were good at was “nothing special”? Of course not. You’d probably also be pretty shocked and indignant if somebody vocalized those thoughts to you, wouldn’t you? For example, if you’d just given a piano recital, and somebody came up to you afterwards and told you they thought your performance was pretty mediocre and that most people could probably play the piano just as well as you with half the effort (or something along those lines), I’m willing to bet you’d stand up for yourself, wouldn’t you?

Stand Up to the Inner Critic You need to stand up to that inner critic (yes, I’ve already talked about this, too) and value your own skills ... so that other people will follow your lead and value you too! Often, this is as simple as reminding yourself that, just because it’s easy for you to do something, doesn’t mean – by any stretch of the imagination - that it’s easy for everyone to do that at all. On the contrary, finding something easy to be good at is a very good sign – it just means that you’re good enough at that particular talent for it to come naturally to you! (Now that’s something that we’d all like to be able to say about at least one talent or skill of our own!)

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Success and Failure: Why Taking Risks is Worth the Effort Risk-taking always sounds so nice and easy, doesn’t it? Someone tells you that you should take more risks – sure, why not? It sounds almost logical. But when the time comes to actually commit yourself to that risk – to venture out on a limb and potentially sacrifice something dear to you, in the hopes of making life better for yourself – it’s pretty easy to get cold feet. Maybe it’s easier to just leave the status quo alone. You might not have whatever it is you were considering taking a risk for, but on the other hand it’s so nice and cosy where you are right now! You don’t have to fear the unexpected; you don’t need to worry about ridicule, dealing with new situations, or possibly losing something that you cherish (a pay-rise ... your self-respect .... the admiration of your friends/colleagues ... and so forth). In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word risk is defined as exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance. But that definition leaves out something that’s absolutely crucial to the whole concept of taking a risk: yes, you do expose yourself to the chance of a negative outcome; but you’re doing that for a reason. And a lot of times, that reason is pretty worthwhile; it’s just easy to push that motivation to one side when you’re confronted with the unavoidable, inherent scariness of risktaking! Something you may not currently be aware of: confidence it is NOT about having everything turn out perfect all the time. That’s right! Confidence isn’t just some magical ability that you’re born with, or that you suddenly acquire because you’re so blessed that everything you touch turns to gold. Not at all! I’ll say it again: confident people don’t have everything turn out right all the time any more than you or me. A truly confident person is able to take risks, because they know that – whatever happens – they’re prepared to deal with it. That’s not to say that confident people are totally bullet-proof, because nobody is. Even being self-confident is no magical shield against the insecurities and doubts that are part and parcel of being human.

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But a confident person will accept the fact of their own trepidation, and take the risk anyway. Here’s the mindset of a confident person: “If things work out for the best, then fantastic – and if not, then I know that I can take the outcome of the situation, and turn it into a positive learning experience.” But how can this be applied to real life? As an example, let’s look at what happened with Ana, a client of mine who was having some troubles at work. Ana’s troubles stemmed directly from her lack of confidence: she felt she deserved a pay rise, but she had been passed over repeatedly for one and was afraid to initiate a discussion about it with her boss because she was terrified of rejection.

“Confidence it is NOT about having everything turn out perfect all the time.”

“If he thought I deserved a pay rise, he’d just give me one,” she reasoned. “I can’t stand the thought of bringing the issue up with him, because I can’t bear for him to list all the reasons that I don’t deserve a pay rise.” “But you clearly think you deserve a pay rise,” I said, “and presumably you have a reason for that belief, so why do you think your boss feels any differently?”

There was a silence while Ana thought about it. “I guess I’m just afraid he’ll turn me down,” she said. “It would be really awkward for me, and I kind of suspect that he might think less of my abilities than I do; and it would be really uncomfortable for me to have that suspicion actually confirmed. It’s one thing to wonder whether he thinks that about me, but another to know that he does. I’m not sure I could handle it.” I suggested to Ana that she make a list of the reasons why she believes that she deserves a pay rise: to list her major achievements, the things she’s good at, as well as all the qualities that make her a good employ which aren’t necessarily achievements (qualities like punctuality, creativity, reliability, and so on.) “That way,” I said, “whether he turns you down or not, you can explain to him the reasons that you think you do deserve a pay rise; and even if, afterwards, he still doesn’t agree with you, you’ll have handled the situation with dignity and maturity, and he’ll know exactly where you stand on the matter. That can only be a good thing. And he might say ‘yes’ straight away – imagine that!”

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Ana and I agreed that this was the most direct and realistic route to achieving her end goal (a pay rise), as it would immediately enlighten her boss to her own opinion on the matter “And,” said Ana, “I think I’ll respect myself quite a bit more if I can pull this off. I think it sounds like a very grown-up way to handle things.” So off she went, with an appointment to return in a fortnight and give me an update on how it went. In two weeks, she came back, and – as planned – told me how things had gone. Ana told me that she’d gone home and compiled her list of achievements and commendable qualities that very night, and (“before I lost my nerve”) approached her boss that very next morning. In their meeting together, she’d requested first of all that she be allowed to finish her little presentation to him without being interrupted. I thought this was a very good idea: since she was so nervous, being interrupted would just have thrown her off, and could possibly have jeopardized her entire preprepared speech; therefore it was definitely worthwhile taking this small effort to prevent the issue from arising in the first place. She told him that she felt that she’d been passed over for a pay rise several times now when, in fact, she deserved one (taking pains to make it clear that this wasn’t a personal attack on her boss for passing her over!), and then listed all the reasons that she felt deserving of one. Ana told me that when she finished, her boss had a big grin on his face. “Actually,” he said, “I was ready to agree right at the start of your presentation, because you reminded me that I have been passing you over for one when I do, in fact, think you deserve one; but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise because you made me promise not to interrupt!”

“Being self-confident is no magical shield against the insecurities and doubts.”

This is a great example of a risk-taking situation which turned out happily; but I’d like to just call your attention to the fact that it isn’t the outcome which made this a worthwhile undertaking (although it was clearly very gratifying for Ana to finally have material proof that she was appreciated at work!) What was really important is that this was a great self-confidence building experience for Ana. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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She really surprised herself with her own ability to handle the situation: •

She’d prepared adequately for the likely outcomes of the situation she’d created (i.e., she wrote a list of what she needed to talk about, narrowed the issues down to the ones requiring her immediate attention, and thought about what she wanted to say in the meeting)

•

She preempted the likeliest problems to arise (by asking her boss to please not interrupt her until she’d finished what she had to say)

•

She gained the respect of her boss (by showing that she wasn’t afraid to tackle a difficult situation, and that she had the self-possession and confidence to assert herself in a timely and appropriate manner).

All of these things added up to significantly boost Ana’s belief in her own abilities to handle life’s curve balls. Suddenly, she felt less at the mercy of outside forces, and more able to take control of situations and steer her life on the course that she chose – rather than having her emotions and self-worth manipulated by people and events over which she had no control.

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How Do I Become More Professionally Confident TODAY? It’s time for your third confidence challenge! Review the points below, then select at least five steps that you can take NOW to become more professionally confident.

Professional Confidence Review Here’s what we’ve covered in this chapter: Choose Your Own Response • Don’t base your professional confidence on tangibles (things you’ve done and goals you’ve achieved): base it on your ability to adapt to new situations. • Learn to choose your response to stressful situations, and intervene with that decision before your emotions take over. • Write down the things that are making the situation stressful for you, and use this list to decide which factors require your attention. • Take action on the list you’ve made to resolve the situation. • Why taking action helps you to gain self-confidence. Dissociate Yourself from Results • Learn to close your mind to the outcome of an event. • Remember that there will always be variables beyond your control in any given situation. • Preparation is key! Make a list of all the things you can prepare for, and let everything else go. Set Your Own Standards for Professional Value by Valuing Yourself • Undervaluing yourself not only makes you feel bad, but it sets a precedent for your treatment from others. • People will always follow your lead: treat yourself well, value yourself highly, and they will do the same. • Be kind to yourself. • Stand up to your inner critic. • Recognize and value your talents and abilities.

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Take Risks and Learn from the Outcome • Confidence is not about having everything turn out perfect all the time. • Confident people turn a negative risk-outcome into a positive one by learning from it. • Why risk-taking builds self-confidence, regardless of the outcome. • It’s not the outcome of the situation that makes risk-taking worthwhile.

Professional Confidence Challenge Basing your ideas on the list above, or creating your own, write down 5 things you’re going to do to become more professionally confident today. Remember to make your goals specific and measurable. It’s not enough to say, “Be more professionally confident” - we’re trying to break it down to how you can be more professionally confident! 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Professional Confidence Goals As you become more professionally confident, what do you hope to be able to do in 2 weeks, 1 month, or 1 year? Two Weeks Goal:

One Month Goal:

One Year Goal:

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Sexual Confidence “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” Robert Frost Sexual confidence … without it, you can’t fully enjoy the pleasure of being a man or a woman. Your sexual confidence includes how you feel about your body, how you imagine other people perceive you, and whether or not you feel attractive to the opposite sex. If you feel utterly fantastic and irresistibly desirable, you’ve got sexual confidence sorted! If, on the other hand, you feel shy about revealing your body to others (such as at the beach), or feel so unattractive that you can’t imagine anyone ever being attracted to you, then your sexual confidence needs some work. Luckily, sexual confidence does not require a particular kind of body or shape. Any woman or man can be sexually confident. Sean Stephenson, for example, is a motivational speaker who has inspired men, women and children across the world with his personal story. Sean is only three feet tall due to a rare bone disorder that has confined him to a wheelchair since he was a child. Nevertheless, Sean enjoys incredible success with the opposite sex. He could have let his physical appearance deter him from dating, but instead he has realized that there are no excuses in life. His philosophy is to “get off your ‘BUT’ and ‘STAND.’” He advises everyone to stop saying, “But I can’t … but it won’t make a difference … but I don’t have the advantages everyone else has,” and start taking a stand for what you want in life. Sean wanted to enjoy a healthy dating life, and he has – without letting his physical appearance get in the way. You can learn more about this true story by visiting Sean’s website, TimeToStand.com. So there are NO excuses. No matter what you think is standing in the way of you developing greater sexual confidence, you CAN become irresistibly attractive to the opposite sex. I’ve always thought Sophia Loren had it right when she said, “Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got.” You may not be able to do much with what you were born with, but you can certainly develop greater sexual confidence so that other people BELIEVE that you’ve got something special. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Why People Lack Sexual Confidence “If you’re one of those people who can’t even look in the mirror when you’re naked, you need to get used to it. Maybe you need to start with lingerie. Maybe you need to begin with a snowsuit and work down from there.” Dr. Phil If you’re not sexually confident, you’re not alone. Television, movies, and advertising present us with so many airbrushed images of physically perfect beings that any ordinary human being will always fall short. These days, it seems like a person can only claim sexual confidence if they’re superattractive, wear the latest clothes/cosmetics, and consume all those brand-specific products that claim to make a person irresistibly attractive to the opposite sex. Take it from me: sexual confidence doesn’t have to do with what brand of beverage you drink, how expensive your clothing is, or your waist-hip ratio. It has to do with how much you enjoy being in the body you’re in.

What Doesn’t Work: Comparing Yourself to Others If you try to get sexual confidence by comparing yourself to others, you’ll always fall short in some area. Someone always has a better body than us, better clothes than us, better hair than us, and so forth. You can’t get sexual confidence by comparing yourself positively to others, either. Supermodels have the same body issues that everyone else does – usually even more so due to the demands of their job. Too, feeling more attractive than your “competition” only works when your competition is around to make you feel good about yourself. When you’re alone standing naked in front of a mirror, it’s just between you and your reflection. There’s no one else there to act as a buffer. So comparison will never help get you more confidence. At most, it will provide a temporary injection of arrogance. You deserve a better basis for your self-confidence … and your wallet isn’t the answer, either.

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What Doesn’t Work: Spending Money Going back to the analogy of standing in front of a mirror, it’s clear that you can’t rely on clothes, makeup, the right brand of beer, what you drive, etc., as a basis for your sexual confidence. When it comes right down to it, the moment you’re in the bedroom with someone, there’s nothing between you and them but the body you’re in. There’s nothing you can BUY that will keep you feeling attractive when the lights are off and it’s just you and them alone together in the dark. You can’t take your car into the bedroom with someone. You can’t keep your clothes on forever. At some point, you have to allow the other person to see you as you are in your natural state, with hair mussed, morning breath, and bleary eyes. Are you confident that they’ll still see you as attractive?

Sexual Confidence Comes from Self-Knowledge I bet that you know someone that you think is only so-so when it comes to their looks, but who seems to attract amazing members of the opposite sex.

“...there are NO excuses.”

Have you ever wondered why that is? Looks matter less than sexual confidence. People only make a big deal about appearances when they lack sexual confidence. It gives them a false sense of desirability when, in fact, what they look like is less important than how they feel about themselves. A sexually confident person feels so comfortable in their own skin that it doesn’t matter if they’ve just woken up, feel sweaty and gross, or are dressed in their oldest, ugliest clothing. They know that underneath it all, they’re still the same fantastic person. How do YOU feel about yourself? Do you feel sexually desirable? If your answer is, “No, I’m too fat/short/wrinkled/unattractive,” then I have something All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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I want to share with you. Have you ever looked at an average-looking couple and wondered, “What do they see in one another?” Everyone is attractive to someone. This isn’t just my opinion: look at the facts. The vast majority of people will end up getting married at least once in their lifetimes. That leads me to conclude that, no matter what YOU might think…. ...You ARE sexually desirable. Someone, someday, somewhere, will find you so infinitely attractive that they’ll want to kiss you, touch you, and have a relationship with you. And, knowing this, you can develop your sexual confidence based on the FACT that you are desirable. Period.

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The Path to Greater Sexual Confidence Now, what does it mean to be desirable? It means that a member of the opposite sex finds themselves aroused by being around you. You know, desirability isn’t something that takes place on a rational level. No one thinks, “That person will be a good husband/wife; therefore I’ll be attracted to them.” Rather, desire and attraction are gut-level reactions to being in the presence of a member of the opposite sex. Or, as popular dating expert David DeAngelo says, “Attraction is not a choice.” So you can’t convince someone to be attracted to you by telling them what a great mate you’d make. However, what you can do is use the single most powerful trigger that exists for attracting what you want in life. You can model the very behaviors and feelings you want to attract. In other words, if you want other people to love you, love yourself. If you want other people to respect you, respect yourself. If you want other people to see you as sexually desirable, then see yourself as sexually desirable. In fact, the more you understand your own sexuality – your masculine or feminine essence, that wonderful potential that your body has for pleasure, and how your body moves and smells and feels – the more you’ll attract members of the opposite sex who are interested in you sexually. Now, you might think that this sounds easy. Forget about all those complicated instructions about how to dress or how to groom or how to act, and just focus on seeing yourself as attractive? Easy-peasy! If only that were the case… Too many of us have complicated and mixed emotions about our sexual selves. We feel that our sexual response is dirty, or we don’t like certain parts of our body. Maybe we’ve had negative past experiences that have

“You can model the very behaviors and feelings you want to attract.”

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programmed us to reject ourselves before a member of the opposite sex can reject us. We even suppress our own masculinity or femininity because of the belief that it’s somehow politically incorrect. To be quite frank, very few people like and admire their sexual selves. I want to make sure you understand the point I just made very clearly, so I’m going to say it again. Gaining sexual confidence is a process of learning more about what it is to be a man or to be a woman so that you can enjoy being who you are in the body you’re in. Not trying to disguise your appearance with clothes or cosmetics. Not trying to act like someone you think will be more popular than the “real” you. Not trying to hide parts of yourself you’re embarrassed about. In fact, the moment you feel ashamed or embarrassed about something (like your flabby belly, your penchant for video games, or your ignorance of wines), you KNOW that it’s something you need to work on accepting. As I’ve mentioned before, you don’t get confidence in any area of your life by being perfect or expecting perfection.

“In other words, if you want other people to love you, love yourself.”

You gain confidence through accepting and loving all parts of yourself, including your “dark side” or flaws. Flaws make a person interesting. Imperfections give you character. A touch of “naughtiness” makes you exciting. Best of all, when you accept your imperfections and don’t judge yourself for not getting everything right, you actually make other people much more comfortable around you, because they intuitively sense that you won’t judge them either.

Now, I want to take you step-by-step through building greater sexual confidence over the next few sections. First, you’ll learn how to break any old habits that are sabotaging your sexual confidence, such as your fear of rejection. Then, you’ll learn how to unleash your sexual energy by delving into your masculine essence if you’re a man, or your female essence if you’re a woman. Finally, you’ll put this self-assurance into practice in dating and relationships, by learning what it means to take a confident stance on your romantic expectations and standards. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Breaking Old Habits that Sabotage Your Sexual Confidence Remember back when you had your first girlfriend or boyfriend? Remember how amazing it felt? How everything was new for the first time? The beautiful thing about innocence is that it often goes hand in hand with a wonderful kind of naïve confidence. Without the burden of negative past experiences, a person can try new experiences with a much greater sense of fun, enjoyment, and anticipation. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t so lucky to have a “clean slate” when it comes to dating and relationships. Whether we realize it or not, we base our feelings of sexual confidence on how well we did in the past. Thirty-two-year-old financial accountant and avid mountain biking enthusiast Cody knew that it was his past experiences keeping him from feeling confident with the opposite sex. “The first time I tried to kiss a girl, oh my god… I was hopeless. I’m surprised she didn’t try to slap me. And things didn’t get much better from there.” A hopeless romantic, Cody had spent his high school years pining away and writing unsent love letters to a girl who didn’t even know he existed. He had his first girlfriend in his early twenties, and, although it didn’t last long, its breakup put Cody off relationships for a long time. “The worst thing was that I was basically using her when she was really into me. So all the things she said when we broke up were right; I was a bastard. So I figured I wasn’t going to have a relationship again until I knew what I was doing and could put the proper effort into it.” Somehow, that time never came. College finished, and a demanding career kept Cody from even thinking about his lack of a relationship. By the time he came to me, Cody was so worried about his lack of experience that he considered himself a hopeless case. “I work too much, I have no clue what women really want, I have never really been into a woman since that girl back in school, and I don’t know even if I could be a good partner, with my life how it is.”

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Cody lacked sexual confidence, and it would take breaking his past conditioning before he could get started on the road to confidence again.

Break Your Fear of Rejection Every experience we have leaves its imprint in our minds. We remember experiences associated with strong memories – whether painful or happy – most easily. It’s unfortunate that one bad dating experience can color how you feel about dating more than a dozen moderately successful dates, but that’s simply how the mind works. I can’t tell you how many men I’ve talked to who say the same thing: one painful rejection by a girl kept them from dating for years afterwards. Being humiliated was a powerful punishment for exposing their feelings, and they weren’t keen to let it happen again.

“...get started on the road to confidence again.”

Whether you’ve had one or several negative past experiences where you felt rejected, unattractive, or undesirable, it’s time to take a look at those experiences with the benefit of hindsight and understand what you can learn from them. You see, being rejected is a valuable learning experience. Does that surprise you? We don’t normally think of rejection like that. Rejection is something painful that we want to avoid, not something we go out of our way to court. But the wonderful thing about rejection is that it’s like a bucket of cold water in our face that forces us to wake up. It forces us to look clearly at who we are, at how we relate to others, and at what we hope to achieve out of a given relationship. Here’s what I mean. According to clinical psychologist Richard Wheeler, all conflict is an invitation to grow. We don’t grow as human beings when we are safe, secure and content. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Although we may not like to suffer, being uncomfortable forces us to look at how we may need to change. We’re asked to look at ourselves differently, in ways that we may not always like. Most importantly, as we get through difficult situations, we grow in confidence. We feel like we can handle the worst of what gets thrown at us. Rejection works in a similar way. When you are rejected by a member of the opposite sex, you are startled out of your comfort zone. Now, if you act defensive and blow them off as not being worth your interest, you’ve taken the coward’s way out. Instead, take the opportunity for a cold hard look at yourself … and why you were attracted to them in the first place. Did what they said about you have any merit? Is there anything you can learn from the situation? Were you actually incompatible after all? The answers can provide a valuable opportunity for personal growth. Once you survive one rejection, you’ll be able to survive another. Through personal experience, you can come to understand that rejection won’t kill you. Rejection can actually be a valuable teaching tool to help you become fearless. In fact, some dating courses start men off by making them go through the most humiliating, painful rejections possible, in order to break them of the fear of rejection. The idea is: get rejected enough times, and it will cease to matter.

What Happened to Cody Cody had never thought of rejection like that. Instead, he’d seen his rejection by the girl he liked the most as proof that he wasn’t an attractive or desirable person. If the girl whose opinion he respected more than any in the world didn’t find him to be desirable, then he must not be … or so he’d thought.

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I asked Cody to imagine what would happen if he ran into that girl again. Did he think that they would be compatible? Would he want a relationship with her? It was a tough question that he didn’t know the answer to at first. He said he’d think on it.

“Once you survive one rejection, you’ll be able to survive another.”

The next day, he called me, and I could tell from the sense of wonder in his voice that he’d made an important realization. He wouldn’t want a relationship with that girl, even if he met her again today and they were both single. Why? Because he had moved on. His life was so different now from what it was. He couldn’t even really remember details about her, only the way he’d felt when he was around her. He didn’t even know why he’d felt so rejected back then, as he was the one who hadn’t made a move; she hadn’t even known he existed. There had even been something good about that experience. Falling for her had taught him what it was like to have those emotions for someone. She’d awakened him to a part of himself he hadn’t known before. By the time he finished thinking about it, he felt grateful rather than resentful for an experience that taught him much about the ways of the human heart. That was a new beginning for Cody. One rejection a long time ago didn’t have to limit him for the rest of his life. Instead, he was able to look back at an experience that he’d remembered as being unbearably painful and find hope in it. If memories of rejection are keeping YOU from feeling sexually confident, then it’s time for YOU to take a little trip down memory lane. If there’s a particular experience that negatively impacted your sexual confidence, then I invite you to take another look at that experience from the perspective of greater understanding that you have now. See if there was anything positive in the experience. • Did it teach you anything about yourself? • Did you discover anything that helped you make better decisions in the future? • Is there anything you can be grateful for?

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And never forget that: An experience that was painful at the time does not have to be painful for always. All negative experiences have a silver lining, although it takes courage to find it. Be one of those gutsy people who don’t let painful memories of past experiences be a reason to stop seeking love and connection. Be proud of what you’ve survived, let go the anger, and remember the lesson.

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Unleash Your Sexual Energy You know, if you were to believe the ads, you’d think that being “sexy” is as easy as buying particular brands of clothing and driving particular kinds of cars. Marketing banks on the fact that people always want to be desired by the opposite sex. But marketing aside, you can’t find sexual confidence in things. Sexual confidence is located inside oneself and isn’t dependent on anything material. It’s not about what you have or who you hang out with or where you’re seen. So how can you become confident in your own desirability, if it’s not through anything external? You unleash your sexual confidence through developing your masculinity if you’re a man, or your femininity if you’re a woman.

Masculinity and Femininity: The Keys to Attraction There are so many folk theories about what is attractive to the opposite sex that the basics get ignored. I believe in keeping things simple. In Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein points out that the first and most important criterion for deciding who we want to date is that they’re of the appropriate gender. It seems so simple and obvious. Men want to date women. Women want to date men. Yet the implications are profound. If you’re a man who’s not in touch with your masculine essence, or if you’re a woman who’s not in touch with your feminine essence, you may not be sending out the right signals to the opposite sex. David Deida, author of The Way of the Superior Man, explains that sexual polarity is crucial for attraction to occur. He compares masculine and the feminine energies to the two poles of a magnet. Put two of the same charges together – masculine with masculine, or feminine with feminine – and they repel each other. Put a weak masculine charge next to a weak feminine charge, and you’ll barely get a current. But put a strong masculine charge next to a strong feminine charge, and the sparks will fly. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Now, don’t get confused here. When I refer to masculinity and femininity, I’m referring to a person’s sexual energy, not their sex or gender. There are masculine women and feminine men. A masculine man may do tasks traditionally performed by women without compromising his masculinity. A feminine woman can be feminine without being sexual or slutty. The same person can be masculine in one situation and feminine in another. If you’re uncomfortable with those terms, you might prefer to think of masculinity and femininity as groups of related qualities or traits that exist along a continuum.

Why are these concepts so confusing to us? The reason we’ve lost touch with these concepts, I believe, is because masculinity and femininity have been buried under fifty years of political warfare and confused with terms like patriarchy and matriarchy. Some thinkers even believe that “manly men” are the reason we still have wars, while “girly girls” are the reason women remained powerless throughout much of history. As a result, the politics of being a man or a woman has obscured our ability to simply enjoy who and what we are. It seems to me that political correctness has resulted in a world where men aren’t that comfortable with being masculine, women aren’t that comfortable with being feminine, and we’re encouraged to be gender neutral wherever possible. Does this seem true to you? If you’re a man, are you comfortable with being a guy and expressing your masculine side without fear of being seen as coarse or rude? If you’re a woman, are you comfortable with being feminine and expressing your femininity without fear of being seen as weak or superficial? You have to get in touch with your masculine side if you’re a man, or your feminine side if you’re a woman, if you’re going to attract members of the opposite sex. Why? Well, why do you love the opposite sex? Is it not because of the word “opposite”?

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A man loves all that is feminine about a woman. He loves her curves, her softness, the way she laughs, and the way she curls up into his arms. A woman loves all that is masculine about a man. She loves his strength, his protectiveness, his direction, the hard planes of his body. We adore the opposite sex precisely because the opposite sex is so different from us. Men are mystified and fascinated with what goes on inside a woman’s mind. Women are always trying to figure out what goes on inside a man’s mind. We are attracted precisely because of our differences. So what men love about women is that they’re women, and what women love about men is that they’re men. It’s really that simple. This is why I believe that although sexual equality is essential in the workforce and the voting booth, androgyny fails in the bedroom. If you truly understand this, then you can already guess what I’m going to suggest next.

“We are attracted precisely because of our differences.”

In order to develop your sexual confidence, you need to delve into what it means to be a member of your particular gender. If you’re a man, you need to explore and set free your masculinity. If you’re a woman, you need to explore and set free your femininity.

For Men: Unleashing Your Masculine Self It wasn’t long ago that there were representatives of “manly men” everywhere. Magnum P.I. sent women swooning, while Rambo and Arnie slashed their way across our movie screens. Being a “real man” was something you didn’t need to apologize about. But twenty years on, the world looks a lot different. Sensitive New Age Guys (SNAGs) are trying to deliver what women want by getting in touch with their feminine side. More and more men are becoming single dads and taking on the cooking, cleaning and washing. Even our favorite action heroes are appearing in gentler, more comedic roles, and the old-fashioned “manly men” get mocked for being behind the times. What’s a guy supposed to do?

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A lot of men feel trapped between a rock and a hard place. If a man acts like a “guy,” he gets condemned by women. But if he acts like a SNAG, women want to just be friends. It’s a no-win situation. We need a new model of masculinity to overcome the challenges in reconciling the old male model to the demands of a gender-neutral society … and that’s exactly what author and spiritual teacher David Deida offers. Deida encourages men to get in touch with their masculine essence, which is a range of qualities and traits that represent the highest gifts that men can offer this world. You see, being a man is not about football, girls and beer. It’s not about burping, being a slob, or refusing to do “women’s work.” Being a man is about understanding your life purpose and harnessing your masculine energy to achieve it. The masculine gift is an energy that is directional. It focuses on achieving goals and overcoming obstacles to break its way through to freedom. It is purposeful, energetic, single-minded, and ambitious. It loves abstractions, lists, theories, one-liners, and simple reductions of the chaos and messiness of life. Its main enemy is bliss: the bliss of zoning out, drinking beer, and being lazy. As a man gets in touch with what it means to him to be a man, and develops the highest gifts he has to offer, he radiates a stronger sexual charge. Women find themselves attracted to him and can’t explain why. The masculine man is the perfect complement to the feminine woman, and together their sexual chemistry is explosive.

“Being a man is about understanding your life purpose and harnessing your masculine energy to achieve it. “

Guys might worry that being a masculine man in the modern world is a recipe for disaster. The masculine man is excellent in business but may get labeled as blunt and insensitive by women. Strangely enough, this isn’t a bad thing. Taming the masculine man and putting him in touch with his feelings is a common theme of romance novels. Women like to imagine that they can be the one to conquer the rude, insensitive beast. And if you’ve ever wondered why women prefer bad boys, you can find part of the answer here. Women actually prefer men who have developed their masculine traits to an exaggerated degree – fearless, reckless, powerful, one-track-minded – to those gentler men who’ve worked on bringing out their feminine, sensitive side. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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So how does a man develop these traits for himself? Unleashing the masculine self isn’t as easy as beating drums in the forest. In ancient times, rites of passage taught boys what it meant to be a man and symbolized the transition from childhood to adulthood. However, modern men lack such rites of passage … and it shows in the number of thirty-something boys who love playing with their toys more than they love fearless leadership. Women don’t want to marry boys. They want to be with men who have direction, who know who they are and what they stand for, and who are fearless in pursuing what they want out of life. Actually, the very best tip I can give men who are searching for comprehensive information on how to be a man in politically correct times is to go out and get David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man. But if you can’t wait that long, here are 10 things that men can do right now to reconnect with their masculine essence, that sexual charge that will draw women to them like moths to flame.

For Men: 10 Tips to Become More Attractive to Women 1. Know who you are and what you stand for. Standing for anything is highly attractive to women. If there’s an issue you feel strongly about, see how you can contribute to it. If there’s a dream you’ve always wanted to pursue, then do something about it. Don’t compromise yourself because you think that women won’t like who you really are. Trust me, she doesn’t want a cookiecutter Ken doll. Instead, develop character. Create a one-line summary of who you are. You might even try to create an online dating profile, as it’s a fantastic exercise for you to really put in words the complex being that is you. 2. Become an expert on one or two topics. I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the kinds of obscure things that people know. If a woman sees you as an expert on something, no matter how obscure, then she feels that she can learn from you and trust your direction. Teaching a woman something new (although be careful not to come across as patronizing or boring) can be an amazing turn-on for her.

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3. Practice leadership. Nothing is sexier than a leader, whether it’s in business in or in a community. Why? Because leadership denotes status, and women are drawn to men with high social status. So join organizations, start a club, or become a mentor. 4. Have a higher goal in your life than relationships. Yes, there’s more to life than girls. One mistake that so many guys make is they focus all their time and energy on getting a girlfriend, then wonder why, the harder they pursue women, the less interested women become. Women don’t want a man who’s good at relationships; they want a man who’s trainable. I’m making a generalization, obviously, but you get my meaning. Women are great at relationships; they’ve got that covered. They’re going to respect you more if you have worthwhile goals in your life that you’re pursuing. I’m not talking about generic goals like, “Make more money,” or material goals like, “Buy a new car.” Rather, I’m talking about specific goals like, “Finish graduate school and become a doctor,” or “Travel to Nepal,” or, “Compete in a triathlon.” Goals show a woman that you have direction in your life and allow her to imagine what her life would be like if she joined your journey. 5. Be impeccable with your grooming but have more to your life than your appearance. Modern advertising has convinced many men that women are only attracted to metrosexuals – men who spend as much time on personal grooming and shopping as they do. Although this may be true for some women, spending that much time on your appearance also implies that you don’t have better things to do. A masculine man sticks to the basics and relies on one or two clincher details – like his watch and his shoes – to show that he knows what he’s doing. 6. Take up space. Go back through old movies and check out how the male heroes moved. Confident, masculine men take up space and are not embarrassed of doing it. They keep their head up, shoulders back, and bodies relaxed. Think of a boxer: size, power, and finesse. 7. Take care of your body. Eat your veggies, brush your teeth, get 20 minutes of sunlight a day, exercise, and quit smoking. A healthy man is superbly attractive – much more so than a muscle-bound behemoth on steroids. 8. Lower your voice. Women love men with deep voices, and it’s little wonder. A deep voice is the result of higher testosterone levels. Does your voice pass muster? Develop a slower, more decisive speaking voice, by recording your voice and playing it back to yourself to hear how it REALLY sounds.

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9. Don’t apologize for yourself. It’s unfortunate that we’re bombarded with such high expectations of perfection that we think we have to hide any place where we feel we fall short. Hey, if you’ve got a beer gut, suck at dancing, or used to have an imaginary friend, stop feeling embarrassed about it and start seeing it as one of your many quirks! No one’s perfect. Chances are, she’s not even going to care. But if YOU feel ashamed and try to hide something, no matter how small something is, she’s going to think that you’re not being completely honest and transparent with her. Stop making excuses for your life, stop apologizing, and get interested in your REALITY. If there’s something about you that sucks, either change it or accept it. There are no excuses. 10. Stop caring what women think and start respecting yourself. This is the single most important tip I can give you. A masculine man does what he has to do, according to his own sense of personal honor. It’s true that sometimes a woman might not agree with him, but she’ll respect him for holding fast to his principles. Be the kind of man who is flexible on what doesn’t matter much but firm on what really matters. In other words, don’t compromise your highest values, but be easy on everything else. If you focus on what really matters, you’ll find that some unknown woman’s opinion of you isn’t very high on that list. Isn’t it more important that you respect yourself than that some woman likes you?

For Women: Unleashing Your Feminine Self Women have had a different experience to men over the past fifty years. While men have been encouraged to develop their sensitive, nurturing side, women have been encouraged to adopt masculine models in the workforce. They’ve excelled at becoming hard-nosed, focused, competitive businesswomen. As a result, they’ve added considerably to the economic output of the global economy … but their transformation has not been without personal consequences. A woman who excels in her career may think that she simply has to apply the same tactics that made her successful in business to her personal quest to find love, e.g., decide on her goal (like a husband or partner), break down the steps needed to complete that goal, and take action. Although books like Dating, Inc: Recruit, Select, and Retain the Right Man for the Relationship have excellent suggestions for applying business skills to relationships, most career women aren’t that lucky. The career woman who applies her professional skills to her personal life often finds herself coming up an inexplicable brick wall. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Dates seem to go well, but she’s never asked out again. Men start off interested but seem to go cold. She ends up being friends with many but lovers with few … and even then, her romantic life seems to lack passion. The career woman concludes that men are afraid of strong, independent women, and that her success intimidates them. There’s nothing she can do but focus on her own life as a single woman and create her own happiness … an aim that seems admirable but doesn’t help her get any closer to understanding why she’s not attracting men. Now, if you’re a woman that’s proud of not being a “girly girl,” or if you believe that “feminine” is a dirty word, I have something I want you to hear. Femininity is your gift as a woman. Unleashing your femininity will not make you less powerful or take away the success you’ve already experienced in your career. On the contrary, getting in touch with your feminine self will make you feel more powerful as you discover your own unique powers as a woman: the power to create life, channel joy, and embody love. Why are so many women so proud of being just as good as men, but not proud of what makes them unique as women? I believe that it’s because of a mistaken sense of what femininity is.

“Femininity is your gift as a woman.”

Femininity is not about wearing pink, obsessing over shoes, or gossiping about boys. It’s not about speaking in a highpitched voice, drawing hearts, or blowing kisses. Rather, femininity is about the way you radiate when you’re happy … the way you adorn your home and your person with beautiful things … the way you dance and move your body in utter abandon.

It’s about your playfulness, your quickly changing moods, your ability to trust and let go, and your ability to nurture and care for others. It’s the way you’re so in touch with your intuition, your emotions, and the feelings of others. All those qualities are your feminine gifts that you can harness to create joy, beauty, and new life.

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Unleash your feminine side, and you’ll find strong men irresistibly attracted to you. A truly feminine woman inspires men and draws out their masculine characteristics: their strength, fearlessness, and leadership. In return, a masculine man wants to cuddle, cherish, protect and honor a feminine woman. So, do you want to meet a man who’s truly your match? If so, then it’s time to learn to love, cherish, and enjoy the wonderfully female body you’re in. Here are 10 things that any woman can do right now to nurture her feminine essence and ignite attraction in the men in her life.

For Women: 10 Tips to Become More Attractive to Men 1. Be playful and tease. One of the greatest turnoffs for men and women is being too serious. Seriousness is appropriate for the business world, but leave it behind when you leave work. A light-hearted woman who loves laughing is a joy for a man to be around. 2. Embrace your feminine curves. No matter what the current fashions on the catwalk are, the most attractive female silhouette from a man’s point of view is still the hourglass shape. Men love the female form: its softness, its curves. Dress in a way that shows off your beautiful shape rather than drowning in baggy or boxy clothes. Choose touchable fabrics that allow a tantalizing glimpse of skin but no more. Exchange your habitual jeans or pantsuit for a dress or a skirt. If you show off the features that make your body so different from a man’s, men won’t be able to take their eyes off you. 3. Speak softly. A soft, low voice is incredibly sexy. Unfortunately, when a woman or man gets nervous or excited, their vocal tone becomes harsher, and they may speak in a higher voice or more quickly than usual. Don’t be misled by the term “soft.” A soft voice can have steel in it. 4. Indulge the senses. One of the things that utterly fascinates men about women is the powders and perfumes, lotions and potions, that they use to beautify themselves. Although men may make fun of a woman’s need for a hundred and one different kinds of soap, scents, and cosmetics, they’re secretly reassured that their woman loves to make herself look, feel, and smell beautiful. So enjoy the luxury of rich moisturizing lotions, scented shampoos, and flavored lip gloss. Your sensual nature is one of the reason men love you. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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5. Touch him lightly. Women tend to be much more comfortable with touching strangers than men. Part of this is social convention: unlike men, woman can hug a stranger or offer a comforting rub of the shoulders without being accused of sexual harassment. Men want to touch and be touched as much as women, but they often feel like they need to be given “permission” first by a woman. So touch a man lightly in a nonsexual place, like the arm or the shoulder. He’ll feel like he’s been given permission to make a move. 6. Allow him to lead. Allowing a man to lead does not give away your power. It does not make you a “weak” woman, and it will certainly not cause him to lose his respect for you. On the contrary! When you allow a man to lead, you’re giving him a chance to prove himself to you. You are able to see how much you can trust him, whether his choices are compatible with your tastes, and what sort of man he truly is. When you allow a man to lead, even if it’s only something as simple as organizing a dinner date, he feels trusted and more invested in the experience … which will make him feel more connected to you. 7. Allow yourself to fully and appropriately express your emotions. For men, reining in their emotions is the only way they have learned to deal with situations that make them uncomfortable. Fathers teach their sons to stop crying, toughen up, and “be a man.” As a result, men grow up repressing their emotions and secretly envying women, who seem so in touch with their feelings. When you allow yourself full access to the entire range of your emotions – your moodiness, your emotionally overflows, your tears and your joy – you model for men the feelings they have buried so long inside. This may make a man uncomfortable (which is why I encourage you to express your emotions appropriately), but it is also a good experience for him. Don’t repress your emotions simply because they make him uncomfortable; anger and passion are often two sides of the same coin. One metaphor that is particularly apt comes from The Way of the Superior Man, in which David Deida who describes a woman’s moods as the sea and her ideal partner as the boat which can ride the waves easily until the storm calms. 8. Enjoy socializing with and caring for other people. This may seem like strange advice: why would a man care if you socialize with other people? There are several reasons. First, think back to the beginning of human society, in which men sought mates who would be able to bear healthy children, and women sought mates who would be able to provide and stay committed to the family until the child became self-sufficient. A woman who shows her nurturing and caretaking abilities through caring for those around her would All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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have an advantage over other women, because she would be less likely to abandon her offspring. Second, a woman who has a strong support network that she maintains whether or not she’s in a relationship will be less likely to be needy. Third, having a network of good friends demonstrates social status. A woman who makes friends easily is likely to be popular and sought-after. 9. Move your body gracefully, playfully, and joyfully. It’s little wonder that one of the sexiest activities a woman can engage in is dance. Men fall in love watching women dance at clubs. For a man, dancing with a woman is one of the most intimate activities possible in public. Body awareness, grace, and control can be learned through a number of different disciplines, from dance to yoga to surfing. The most important point to remember is to simply keep your body moving. You don’t even have to be particularly physically fit to enjoy the beauty benefits of moving your body. 10. Smile at men. Men are just waiting for you to smile at them. Your smile is an invitation for them to come up and start talking to you. Most men are scared to death of approaching a woman – especially if she’s attractive. Scot McKay of DeserveWhatYouWant.com says that he was astounded when he first learned that women think that men don’t approach them because they’re not interested. “It’s a good thing that 95% of men have approach anxiety, because otherwise attractive women would be bombarded by guys!” According to Scot, all that men are looking for is some sign that women won’t bite their heads off. In other words, try to look friendly! Even if some dating books claim that you should act like an “ice princess,” be aware that the woman who looks unattainable will attract the most inveterate players but scare off all the genuine men.

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Become Sexually Confident in Dating Whole books have been written on this topic, so I don’t want to repeat things you’ve already heard before here. Instead, I want to focus on how a sexually confident person acts at each stage of the dating process: selecting a potential mate, approaching that person, attracting that person, dating that person, and establishing a committed relationship with that person. By seeing how you would act if you were completely sexually confident, you can “fake it ‘til you make it.” You can act confident even if you don’t feel confident. Actors use this technique all the time. For example, an actor who’s playing a sad person will engage in “sad” behaviors until he or she actually starts to feel that emotion. You can make yourself feel certain ways, even if it feels fake at first. For example, have you ever tried to have a good time? Smile enough, and join in other people’s laughter enough, and, sure enough, you’ll start to feel like you’re having a good time. So here’s a glimpse of what a sexually confident person’s life might look like … and how you can achieve it for yourself.

Who Should I Be Interested In? Selecting a Potential Mate If you watch movies or listen to the radio, you’d start to believe pretty quickly that you have to be in love to have a fulfilling life. Finding, attracting, and keeping the “One” is the greatest challenge of our lifetimes … or so it would seem. Not all cultures are as romance-centered as our own. Marrying for love is quite a new phenomenon in human history. In the past, couples united more often for political or economic reasons. The function of a marriage was much more practical than uniting two couples in eternal love. Rather, a marriage was about joining resources, sharing the basic tasks of survival, and raising children. You may believe that it’s your destiny to meet the “One” and live happily ever after, but your belief is just that – a belief. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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It’s not something supported by science. It’s not supported by facts or statistics. In fact, the notion that there is one person out there who is perfect for you (and only one) seems incredibly unlikely given the high number of divorces and remarriages in our society. We have the ability to love many other people during our lifetime. But it is our choice whether we exercise this ability or not. Just because you have the potential to grow muscles, for example, doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically be physically fit. Just because you have the potential to fall in love with several people over your lifetime doesn’t mean that you will.

“People can feel it when you’re evaluating them, even if you’re just doing it from the privacy of your own mind.”

But if you choose to exercise this ability, just like choosing to exercise your muscles, I can promise that you’ll find it easier and easier to have satisfying relationships with the opposite sex. A person who believes that there is more than one person out there who could be his or her ideal mate will actually experience more success at dating than someone who believes in “the One.” Let me explain how this works.

Imagine that you’re at a party. All around you are attractive singles. Who are you going to decide to approach? If you believe in the “One,” then you’ll only be interested in finding the very best match for you according to your mental checklist of what you want in a mate. You’ll be looking at everyone in the room and evaluating them based on your own criteria. “Average … average … looks interesting … wow!” Before you even approach someone, you’ll probably have made a mental note of where they rank (in your mind) compared to everyone else in the room. I want to share an important tip with you: people can feel it when you’re evaluating them, even if you’re just doing it from the privacy of your own mind. And people don’t like being judged. They can feel your expectations on a subconscious level as a form of feeling uncomfortable or ever-so-slightly tense around you. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Even if they’re being judged favorably, they still will feel that discomfort. None of us likes being put on a pedestal any more than we like being passed over for someone more attractive. You certainly have the right to decide in your head that someone is the most attractive person in the room, but you’re just making it even more likely that Mr. or Miss Perfect will feel ever so slightly awkward with you. You’re also making it more likely that you’ll freeze up or become anxious around them. You see, if you believe that the person you’re attracted to just might be the “One,” you put enormous pressure on yourself to “perform” so that they’ll like you. You become anxious that you’ll have blown it if they don’t feel the same attraction towards you. To be quite frank, putting all your hopes in one basket is just setting yourself up for failure. If you approach that person that you hope will be the “One,” and they reject you, you’ll feel like you completely blew it. You had one chance, and the ideal person didn’t want to be with you. What a blow! Who could feel confident in that scenario? Making a decision that someone is the perfect mate for you before you have even dated them for a while is one of the best ways ever to set yourself up for failure. I want to emphasize this, because it’s so important. You cannot develop true sexual confidence if your primary romantic goal is to “score with 10s” or “marry the One.” A sexually confident person knows that there are many amazing relationship opportunities, and, no matter what happens, they’ll be able to enjoy and learn from each. Now, let’s look at a person who knows that there is more than one fantastic possible mate out there for them. When looking over a crowd of people, they realize that any one of those people could be a fantastic match for them. There could be five Mr/Miss Rights in the room, ten, or none at all. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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The sexually confident person also understands that they may not always recognize the best partner for them right off the bat. Sometimes, the man or woman they think is perfect is actually incompatible with them, while someone that they didn’t pay much attention to is actually a better match for them than they could have even guessed. That’s because you don’t have to be “perfect” to create a perfect relationship. Two imperfect people can be “perfectly imperfect” for each other, while two seemingly “perfect people” (movie stars are a great example) can have a disastrous relationship.

“You can’t force sexual chemistry”

So getting rid of the notion that there’s a perfect person out there for you helps you be less judgmental, which makes people more comfortable around you and more likely to enjoy your company. The sexually confident person doesn’t make a beeline for the most attractive person in the room. They haven’t made any assumptions about how compatible they’d be with anyone else. They’re simply looking to meet people, enjoy making new friends, have a laugh, and see if chemistry sparks with anyone. And that’s where the sexually confident person is miles ahead. The sexually confident person actually waits to see if they have chemistry with someone before deciding to continue on to the attraction phase. I can’t emphasize this enough. When you don’t have expectations about another person … when you simply enjoy their company and see what happens … you create the optimal conditions for sexual chemistry to be spontaneously generated by your interaction. You can’t force sexual chemistry. You can’t make attraction occur when it isn’t there. But you can give it the best chance possible of happening. And the way you do that is by not worrying so much about whether you are attracted to someone. You know that feeling attracted to someone is quite a superficial thing, after all. What is more important is how you feel when you’re interacting with one another. Do you feel at ease with one another? Does the other person make you laugh, and vice versa? Do you feel like you’ve known each other for ages? Can you talk about anything? Does your body feel warm and tingly just by being near them? That is a much more important gauge of someone’s compatibility with you than their appearance or outward qualifications. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Meeting and Approaching Someone New By now, you know that approaching someone you think you’d like to get to know better shouldn’t faze you. You’re just interested in seeing if they’re fun to hang out with and if you have anything in common. There is nothing that should intimidate you about approaching someone you don’t know. It really doesn’t matter if they’re super-attractive, a lot younger than you, etc. That’s because what really matters is what starts to happen the moment you start talking to one another. If there’s no chemistry, there’s no chemistry, no matter how attractive the other person is. When you don’t put any pressure on yourself to make the other person like you, and when you have no other thoughts in your head than seeing if you have a good time with this other person, you create a wonderfully warm, friendly, open atmosphere that is highly conducive to flirting. You see, the single biggest thing that kills any chance of sexual chemistry igniting naturally is nervousness. Why do people become nervous? Because they put pressure on themselves … because they sense that the other person has already formed an opinion of them (whether that’s positive or negative) … and/ or because they already have formed some opinion about the other person. Having any sort of expectation about how an encounter will turn out will kill spontaneity and natural chemistry from occurring. A sexually confident person knows that trying to make anything happen will just ensure that it won’t. Because the sexually confident person doesn’t have any preconceived ideas about the person they’re talking to, they’re also better able to sense whether that person is really right for them. You know, your mind is not much of a help when it comes to dating. That’s because your mind gets caught up in thinking about a situation, which paralyzes you and prevents you from acting naturally. In fact, some men operate by the “Three Second Rule” to keep their minds from doing just that. The moment they see an attractive woman, they give themselves All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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three seconds to approach her – no more. They’ve learned that if they wait longer than three seconds, they start to psyche themselves out. Recognize that your mind isn’t going to be much of a help when it comes to meeting members of the opposite sex. Learn to see all its thoughts, fears, opinions, expectations, and endless babble as an unimportant monologue that isn’t half as interesting as the situation you’re experiencing at the moment. Instead, focus on where you are, who you’re with, and what you’re doing. Put your attention in the now – which is where everything happens – and realize that the urge to analyze everything as it is happening will only sabotage your experience. To put it even more simply… …Don’t think too much! Just be with that person. Respond to them and not to your thoughts. Listen to what they say rather than thinking about what you’ll say next. Relax and enjoy the experience. Feel what it is to be a man talking to a woman, or a woman talking to a man. Enjoy the feeling of being attracted to someone and let yourself express it in whatever way that seems natural, like touching their arm, giving them a compliment, or meeting their eyes with a smile. As you get deeper and deeper into the moment with a person, you enter that timeless zone where it just feels like you and the other person are the only people on the planet. You’re completely absorbed. You’re enjoying yourself so much. And that’s precisely why you’re talking to them – you’re doing it for you, and not for anything you hope to make them feel.

“Focus on where you are, who you’re with, and what you’re doing.”

The moment you give up expecting to get something out of someone else, you separate yourself from 99% of the other guys/girls who’s approached them that night. No one likes it when they can tell someone’s talking to them just because they hope to get a phone number or a date. Give up trying to control the results of any encounter, and let what happens happen. The only thing that should matter to you is your own enjoyment. If you’re enjoying yourself, stay. If you stop enjoying talking to that person, politely excuse yourself All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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– no matter how attractive they are or how much of a chance you think you have with them. You’ll find that meeting new people, chatting with them, and flirting with them is so much more fun and easy when your mind doesn’t get in the way.

How to Ignite Attraction We often think that we have to do things to make a person be attracted to us. Men memorize routines, magic tricks, palm reading, and all sorts of gimmicky party tricks in order to catch a girl’s attention for long enough to start a conversation. Women wear short skirts and clingy tops, toss their hair back, or act seductively to get a man to approach. All of this posing and posturing is great fun and wonderful entertainment, but does it really help to ignite genuine attraction? What do YOU think? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that the harder you try to do anything, the more likely it is that what you want will elude you. Which means that the best way to ignite attraction is not to force it. It’s simply to have a great time. What a strange concept! Isn’t dating all about showing someone you’d make a great mate? Proving yourself to them? Catching their eye with some attention-getting move? Getting to know them so that you know whether or not they’d be suitable as a partner? Being someone’s “trophy” aside, the best way to attract the person who is RIGHT for you is to focus on having a great time together, and let whatever comes from that happen naturally. You see, people love being with people they have a good time with. Having a good time with someone ensures that they’ll want to see you again. The more comfortable you feel with someone, the more natural it will be to call one another up, hang out together, and so forth. Joseph Matthews calls this “building rapport,” and it’s the foundation of his seduction system.

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Having a good time together is about more than drinking together, dancing and cracking hilarious jokes. Part of having a good time with someone is feeling like you’re on the same wavelength. There’s nothing more powerful than another person understanding you completely. So establish a connection with the person you’re attracted to. Find out what you connect over (whether it’s music, movies or beer), and use that to build rapport. One quick way to establish a connection is to find out what you have in common. Compare your favorite bands, television programs, movies or books. Find out if you know any of the same people or have any similar hobbies. You can build attraction further by moving conversation from a superficial level to a deeper level. Ask questions that stir emotions. For example, you might want to ask the other person about their role models or mentors, their goals in life, or what they liked best about their childhood. A person can feel like they know you very deeply – even if you just met a few hours ago – if you’ve just shared that kind of deep personal information.

 Flirting Teasing or bantering is another way of building a connection. Normally, you only tease people you know well, such as your friends. Teasing someone that you don’t know about their outfit, their taste in beer, or their funny nose might seem too forward, especially if they’re someone you think is attractive, but it’s actually a form of flirting. Have you ever watched little kids on a playground? The boys run around and chase the little girls or pull their pigtails to show that they like them. Teasing was a way of inviting another person to play. Adults aren’t that different. The best flirting is done in a playful spirit that is much like the teasing children engage in. You can flirt with someone in so many ways. You might try being so obviously overthe-top with compliments that the person can’t stop laughing (old-fashioned pickup lines ONLY work if done in this self-mocking, OTT style). You might try “negging,” or pointing out something that a person is clearly proud of and making fun of it (e.g., “That’s a great watch: is it a real Rolex or did you buy it off that guy in the raincoat in the alley?”). Humor and flirtation go hand in hand. The most important thing about flirting and teasing is to know when to pull back or cut it short. Sometimes, excessive flirting or teasing becomes annoying.

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Do what the best comics do: end on a high note and leave them wanting more.

 Be Alone Together When you’re in a group, it’s easy to be the life of the party. You can hang back and relax if everyone else is talking and talk to anyone you like. For all those reasons, it’s very difficult to create a strong rapport if you spend all your time in social groups. Engaging in a “private” conversation with someone, whether it’s simply going outside for some fresh air or retiring to a private table, is essential if you’re going to build a sense of connection and attraction. Look for some reason to be “alone” together. Maybe you have a secret you want to tell them. Maybe you need them to go with you to the bar to carry drinks. Maybe there’s something on the other side of the room – a jukebox, a pinball machine – that you both want to check out.

 Don’t Just Talk The attraction stage is often one of the most uncomfortable stages, because you’re putting yourself out there, vulnerable and exposed, for a complete stranger to reject. Keeping a conversation lively and effortless over a period of time is difficult for anyone, no matter how much dating skill they have! So don’t put all your effort into talking with the other person. Do something! Go dancing. Explore the venue. Suggest going to get some food. Go for a walk. Anything to eliminate the awkward pressure of making conversation. One advantage of going to multiple venues (e.g., going from a bar to a restaurant to get some food to a café for dessert) is that the person will feel like they’ve actually known you longer than if you’d just stayed in one place. Three different venues are like three separate dates: each presents a different atmosphere, different experience, and different feelings.

 Nonsexual Touch One of the most challenging parts of dating for men is going in for that first kiss. Not only do men need encouragement so that they know it’s all right to try to kiss you, but women also need some sort of forewarning before a man tries to land a wet one on her lips. The best way to pave the path towards that first kiss is to become comfortable with nonsexual touching first.

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Touch the other person’s arm, or rub their shoulders. Give them a platonic hug. If you’re a man, place your arm on the woman’s back to guide her to her seat or through the crowd. Brush a stray bit of hair out of the way. The first time you touch anyone will usually cause them to tense up. It’s an automatic reaction: we’re simply not used to strangers touching us, and it can startle us, even if we enjoy it.

“The first time you touch anyone will usually cause them to tense up”

That’s why you want to make sure the first time you touch comes long before that first kiss. (Which is one reason why dancing is so popular!) Initiating any kind of playful touching or nonsexual physical contact is a great way of gauging another person’s interest in you and building your comfort levels.

Dating: The “Real You” Emerges If you’re a superficially confident person, the first three stages I discussed – deciding who to approach, approaching them, and igniting attraction – will be easy. Most men and women can do quite well with the beginning stages of attraction, because it’s easy to put on a self-confident façade even if you don’t actually feel that confident. The next stage increases the difficulty level: it’s about taking your mutual attraction that step further. When you’re dating someone, it’s nearly impossible to hide the “real” you or mask any insecurities. You’re almost guaranteed to say stupid things, make mistakes, or look less than your best at times. This is the stage where a lot of people get their feelings hurt. The other person stops calling. A second date invitation is rejected. After sleeping together for the first time, the other person changes completely. Unpleasant facets of the other person’s personality are revealed. How do you become more sexually confident in this stage? Position yourself as the chooser. In other words, don’t worry about whether the other person likes you. Instead, continually ask yourself, “Is this working for me?” and, if it’s not, end it.

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That may sound harsh, but, if you truly believe that there is more than one person out there who will make a great mate for you, there’s no reason to stick with a less than fulfilling relationship or settle just because you’re afraid you won’t find anyone better. People who fail in the dating stage do so because they don’t understand what dating is about. Dating is a process of finding more about your compatibility as a couple. As a result, dating someone usually does NOT imply a commitment of any kind. You’re simply feeling each other out, enjoying one another’s company, and seeing if it goes anywhere. Furthermore, if someone goes on a date with you and then decides to stop seeing you, or stops calling, then you know one thing for certain: You weren’t compatible as a couple. When someone stops seeing you in the dating stage, it does not mean that you’re unattractive or undesirable. It simply means you weren’t a good fit. In fact, you could even be grateful to that person for seeing your incompatibility in time for you to keep yourself from wasting much time with them! So your goal in dating is not to make someone like you. It’s to be yourself – 100% honestly and genuinely – and see if the other person is compatible. How do you know if a person is compatible? By paying attention to how you feel around them. The right person should feel like your best friend. They should be supportive of you, enjoy your company even when you’re not at your best, and care about the parts of your life that matter most to you. Ask yourself: • Do I feel any pressure to be anyone different around them? • Do I feel happy and at ease when I am around them? • Do I feel just as good about myself when I am NOT with them? (This is a crucial point.)

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If you feel like you have to change yourself to be better liked by the person you’re with, or if that person asks you to change, then you’re not with the right person. Remember: the perfect couple is not made up of two identical twins. If a person is right for you, then disagreeing on something won’t make you like one another less. In fact, in an ideal relationship, both parties are able to be individuals and pursue separate interests as well as have interests they pursue as a couple. And, of course, the best indicator as to whether you’re compatible as a couple is whether you continue to spend time together. Asking for a “date” doesn’t have to be a dramatic thing. The best way to ask someone out is to have a specific activity planned and ask them to come along. For example, “I’m heading out to this cool concert on Saturday. Want to come along?” When you tell a person that you’re already going, then that person won’t feel any pressure to answer one way or the other, because they know you’ll go and have a good time anyway. (Just make sure, if you DO use this method and tell the person you’re doing something, that you end up doing it even if they decide not to come along!) And if you’re calling someone to ask them on a date, remember to ask them once and then wait for them to make the next move. Don’t wait by the phone, and don’t call them again if they don’t call you. If someone is really keen on you, nothing will keep them from contacting you again. Remember Greg Behrendt’s book He’s Just Not That Into You? But if someone is just vaguely interested, or they’re not interested at all, they’ll have a dozen and one excuses as to why they couldn’t call back. Accept their excuses for what they are – excuses – and move on. The most important thing of all is not to blame the other person for not showing the kind of interest you’d hoped from them. You have other options. Pursue them! If you show a person that you’re not the type of person to be waiting around for them, they’ll get the message quickly that you’re someone to be treated with respect.

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From Commitment to Relationship and Beyond Okay, so you’re in a relationship. Things might not be particularly stable yet, perhaps you’re not quite sure where it’s all headed, but you do know one thing: you want this guy or gal to stick around. Hopefully, they’re feeling the same way about you; but it can be hard to tell. Both men and women alike know that showing their cards too soon can scare the other person off, so they may be holding back their feelings until they feel more certain about yours. So how can you make sure that things are going to continue down the path of (currently, semi-committed) bliss – and hopefully develop into the real, long-term deal? You need to do just two things. First of all, keep doing what you’re doing at the moment, because clearly you’re doing something right! Secondly, stay away from those three things that guys and gals alike often do to get their partner to commit.

1. Clinginess and the “She’s Turning Into Me!” Phenomenon A lot of people undergo a dramatic personality metamorphosis when they meet someone they really like. Effectively, they lose their personalities – everything that they used to be defined by, their habits, hobbies, interests and pastimes (in short, everything that attracted him to her in the first place) becomes subsumed by the Copycat Syndrome: they become unable to make up their own mind, looking instead to their new partner to make all the decisions. This is a lot more common than you might think – and it’s horribly easy to do! When you find someone you’re really interested in, you want to please them. And, to a lot of us, that means not making any waves. Just going along with whatever one’s new love interest wants to do is guaranteed to please them, right? So you leave it all up to them to decide where you’re going to go, what you’re going to do, when you’re going to eat, and so on. This is not attractive. Here are some other characteristics of somebody suffering from Copycat Syndrome: they’ll require lots of feedback and advice and won’t be able to make up their own mind any more. Questions like, “Well, what do you think?” “You decide,” “I don’t mind,” and “What would you do?” become commonplace. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Asking for feedback is utterly fine; metamorphosing into a spineless jellyfish with no decision-making capabilities, no opinions, and no distinct personality, is emphatically not! Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to avoid the trap of the Copycat. All you have to do is remember who you are! You have an opinion on things, so speak up. If there’s something you want to do, suggest it. If a particular restaurant or movie looks tempting, tell your love interest that you want to go. Men and women alike are attracted to intelligent people who know their own minds. Even if your love interest doesn’t personally agree with your taste, they’ll still respect you – and be far more interested than if you’d just kept mum and made no waves.

2. Love interest on the scene: life goes on hold When you meet an interesting new guy or gal, you usually want to spend all your time with them. You don’t feel like seeing your friends any more; after all, you can see them any old time. And you’re not really interested in a lot of the things that you were interested in before meeting the new Mr/Miss Right, either. Essentially, you vanish from the social scene and will only reemerge when your love interest has already got plans or when the relationship dissolves. This may seem natural to you, but it can be pretty scary for your love interest. It’s weird to have somebody devote so much free time to them: it makes them feel like maybe you like them just a little bit too much. And it’s a big responsibility for them too – shouldering such a social obligation can be a bit of a drag at times. On top of this, it really doesn’t make you look very good: it makes you look needy. Clingy. Suffocating. Keeping aside time to maintain your existing friendships is really important – not just for your poor friends, but for you (because you need to stay in touch with your roots) and for your new relationship, too. Without time apart, the conversation will grow stale. You need to have separate experiences to be able to inject a fresh note into the discussion! So maintain your own identity: have your own downtime, keep having nights out (and days) with your gang, and keep your independence!

3. Do you love me? Do you love me yet? Do you love me now? How about now? This is an issue that particularly affects women. Many women, when they feel a real connection with someone, want to vocalize their feelings – and not only that, but All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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get reassurance and a verbal commitment from the other person that they feel the same way, too. This often takes the form of commitment nagging. For example… “I love you.” Pauses. “So, how do you feel about me? Do you think this relationship is going anywhere? Would you say you’re committed to me? And did I mention that I love you?” All of this, of course, is angling for an “I love you, too” - but that’s simply not something that can be asked for. Of course, you could still go right ahead and ask your love interest to say it, but that’s like someone telling you what’s inside your Christmas presents ahead of the big day. It’s a supreme let-down. And, trust me, when your partner loves you, they’ll tell you – but you cannot rush them into it. Allowing love and a sense of commitment to build on their own, without a constant commentary and interrogation from you, is a sign of true maturity, respect for their feelings (and their right to some privacy about those feelings until they’re ready to share voluntarily), and security. I’m not saying that it’s not okay to be vulnerable around this person – you absolutely can be. That’s what a good relationship is all about: trusting that person to support you when your defenses are down. Of course you can tell them how you feel (exercising due caution and restraint, within reason: it’s generally considered a bad move to tell someone that you love them inside of a week!), but you can’t be manipulative about it. This means you have to be prepared for the possibility that your sentiments won’t be returned; and, if this does turn out to be the case, you don’t have any right to feel bad about it - expressing emotions is not an, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” situation! If you don’t feel like you’re comfortable with making a statement about your feelings without your love interest matching you in kind, then it’s better to keep quiet about how you feel than to get upset/start ‘emotional nagging’ if they don’t respond as you’d hoped. And trust me – when they’re good and ready to say it, they will; and they’ll do it without any help from you!

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The Best Mindset to Have Obviously, this is all ties into your self-confidence. If you were confident in your relationship, your attractiveness, the stability of your partner’s feelings for you, and your own loveability, you wouldn’t need to ask for reassurance all the time, try too hard to please, or concentrate all your efforts on your relationship to the exclusion of everything else in your life.

“The mindset you need to have is one of confidence.”

The mindset you need to have is one of confidence – the confidence to allow your relationship to ripen and mature on its own, without any needling or ‘helping’ from you. I know this is a big thing to ask. When you’re feeling insecure or needy, it’s really hard not to open up about it and try to force reassurance out of somebody. But the thing is, when you’re feeling that way, only a spontaneous show of affection or love will really help. Asking for it just doesn’t have the same zest – it just doesn’t work. When modifying your behavior, it’s easier to actively do something than it is to just not do something. So bear in mind that, when you refrain from asking for a statement of love or commitment, or when you refrain from allowing them to make all the decisions, you’re not just doing nothing: you’re making an active effort to improve your relationship and your chances together in the long run. Bear these words in mind when it comes to your relationship-oriented behavior: •

Independence. Remember who you are, speak your mind, and keep the traits that make you an individual!

•

Self-assurance. Your partner will still be there if you take a night off from each other to see your friends. Have the self-assurance to go back to your roots and maintain the boundaries of your social circle.

•

Affection. It’s great to be affectionate. Tell them how you feel about them as often as you like! Just remember, it is not quid pro quo: you can’t expect a matching statement of love and commitment from them, just because you’ve made one. Keep your mind free of expectation, and voicing your feelings will be a lot more satisfying – and prevent you from putting unnecessary pressure on yourself, on them, and on your budding relationship.

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3 Ways to Deepen Your Connection in a Relationship What is it that makes a relationship successful? Perhaps you have a really supportive relationship: you make each other feel good about yourselves, you can turn to each other for help and advice. When you have a rough day, your partner makes you feel better. Or perhaps you really know how to hit each other’s funnybone: being able to laugh together is a major part of what makes a relationship so rewarding. Maybe you’re both really good at effective, tears-free conflict resolution: conflict is an inevitable part of any relationship, but perhaps you know how to keep arguments at bay. To me, these things all make a relationship successful. They’re all ingredients for long-term commitment and stability together. But there’s always room for improvement. And generally, even when you have the most functional relationship in the world, there are things you can do to inject some fun back into your lives. Functional is good; functional and fun is even better! Without passion, even completely serviceable, smooth-running relationships can turn stale. It starts to feel like a business partnership: your lives are going well, but there’s not a lot of recreation or together-time leisure involved! It’s important to keep the passion alive – or, if you’ve got stuck in a passion rut, to fan those flames until they’re glowing. When you’ve been together with someone for awhile, though, in some cases familiarity starts to supersede passion. You come home from work, slip into your comfortable clothes, and relax with a book or the TV – which is fine, unless it starts to happen every night. If you’re starting to find your bed more attractive for sleeping purposes than romantic ones on a regular basis, check out these simple, easy tips for developing new levels of love and connection in your relationship: 1. Make a date night for you and your partner, and stick to it. I know a lot of people make the decision to try doing this, and they might even go ahead and do it once or twice – but then those other responsibilities come creeping back in, and before you know it, date night has gone out the window. Date night doesn’t have to be overly frequent; it all depends on your schedules. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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There’s no point in trying to relax and enjoy each other’s company if your minds are on all the chores and other tasks that you should be doing, so make your goal realistic. Once a week, once a fortnight, whenever – but set the bare minimum, and make sure you can stick to it (and this way, if you do get the time to do more, it’s a bonus!) 2. Give voice to your love for each other, and do it regularly. Many long-term couples hardly ever say those three magic words any more; they’ve got so used to each other that they take it for granted. It’s great to have that level of deep-down connection; but we all need to be told we’re loved. Say it at least once a day – and more if you like! Emphasize your meaning with a long, cozy hug, or a soft kiss to make it extra-meaningful. 3. Take vacations alone together. Spending a couple of hours together on date night is wonderful and does a lot to keep the spark alive, but for the opportunity to truly unwind together, you just can’t beat a vacation. It doesn’t have to be somewhere expensive; you can go as cheap as you like. The point of the holiday is not necessarily to spend a lot of money or go somewhere exotic, but to spend time with each other – and only each other. Break away from your daily routine and use the time to rediscover and revive each other. Just one week, once a year, is enough to see significant improvements in your relationship.

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How Do I Become More Sexually Confident TODAY? It’s time for your fifth Confidence Challenge! In this section of the chapter, we’re going to ask you to review what you’ve learned, select five things that you can do RIGHT NOW to increase your sexual confidence, and set some goals for the future.

Sexual Confidence Review Target REAL Sexual Confidence-Builders • Enjoy being in your body. • Stop comparing yourself to others in ANY way. • Don’t try to “buy” sexual confidence (e.g., through clothes or other status symbols). • Realize that YOU ARE SEXUALLY DESIRABLE. Period. No “but”s about it. Break Old Habits • Look back on your past dating experiences with the benefit of hindsight and see what you can learn from them. • Stop seeing rejection as punishment and reframe it as a valuable teaching tool to help you become more fearless. • Don’t let painful memories stop you from seeking love and connection. Unleash Your Sexual Energy • Understand how masculine and feminine energies interact in dating and courtship. • Get in touch with your own sexual energy. If you’re a man, learn to be comfortable being a man. If you’re a woman, learn to be comfortable being a woman. • For men: understand your life purpose and harness your masculine energy to achieve it. • For women: understand your feminine gifts and embrace your sensual, playful, joyous, loving, utterly feminine side.

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Become Sexually Confident in Dating • Act confident even if you don’t feel that way. • Stop evaluating potential partners based on how closely they resemble the picture you have made in your head of “The One.” • Recognize the numerous romantic opportunities around you. There’s more to life and love than meeting the “perfect 10” or “Mr. Right.” • Wait to see if you have chemistry with someone before moving on to the attraction phase. • Avoid placing expectations on a situation and let whatever happens, happen. • Focus on where you are, who you’re with, and what you’re doing rather than that annoying monologue of thoughts going on in your mind. • Enjoy yourself and have a great time! • Establish a connection with a potential date by finding out what you have in common. • Flirt, tease, or banter with a potential date. • Use private time to build a sense of connection. • Don’t just talk; DO something together! • Touch the other person in platonic, nonsexual ways BEFORE building up to the first kiss. • Position yourself as the chooser. • Understand what dating means: it’s a process of finding out whether you’re compatibility as a couple, NOT a win-lose situation. • Pay attention to how you FEEL around your partner. If you feel like you have to change yourself, you may not be with the right person. • Learn how to ask people along to activities you’re doing rather than formally asking them for a “date.” • Don’t blame someone for not being interested in you. Instead, recognize that you have other options and move on! • Stay away from commitment-killers like clinginess, putting your life on hold for your new partner, and engaging in “commitment nagging,” or asking for constant reassurance that your partner is attracted to you. • Allow your relationship to grow organically, on its own, without forcing it or constantly asking for reassurance. • Be affectionate without the need for your affection to be reciprocated. • Deepen your relationship connection by scheduling a date night, going away together (even if it’s just for a weekend), and regularly telling your partner how you feel about them.

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Sexual Confidence Challenge Taking some ideas from the list above or adding your own, write down 5 things that you are going to do to become more sexually confident today. 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Sexual Confidence Goals As you become more sexually confident, what do you hope to be able to do in 2 weeks, 1 month, or 1 year? Two Weeks Goal:

One Month Goal:

One Year Goal:

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Concrete Confidence-Building Techniques Okay, so we’ve been through a lot of attitude-adjusting tips now – from how to stop yourself worrying to overcoming shyness to unleashing your sexual confidence. But sometimes it helps to have some more general, hands-on, practical things to do as well – not just because it helps you in the long run to actually become more self-confident, but it’s pretty helpful in the short term, too. Everyone likes to feel proactive and as though they’re actively taking control of the situation. So that’s why I’ve included some concrete what-to-do’s on how to build your selfconfidence – starting right now. In this section, we’re going to look at a whole bunch of alternative therapies and methods that you can use to get a handle on your confidence issues. We’re going to look at: •

Stress: how it affects your confidence levels, and what you can do both physically and mentally to relax.

•

How to build specific, achievable goals, and why this is important.

•

SWOT analysis: a highly effective strategy for analyzing your own personal strengths and weaknesses, which will show you which parts of your character you can play up and which you might like to work on a bit more.

•

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a formal therapy for building your confidence levels.

•

Finally, we’ll take a look at how, by helping others, you really can help yourself – how volunteering can positively affect your confidence and esteem levels.

So let’s get started right now! First of all, let’s take a look at stress.

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Stress: How It Affects Your Confidence and What to Do About It Stress and low self confidence levels are inherently intertwined. Why? Because they’re both all about feeling bad about yourself. When you’re feeling stressed out, it means you’re feeling overwhelmed. Swamped under too many demands. You’re feeling unable to cope. A lack of confidence frequently stems from any and all of these feelings. If you’re feeling confident, do you feel like you can’t cope? No! Of course not. Not at all. Feeling confident is all about feeling like you can handle just about anything – that you’re up to the challenge. So when you’re feeling stressed out, the feelings you get are very similar to the ones you have when you’re stressed. In fact, you could say that one causes the other – or that the two are even interchangeable. Lack of confidence equals stress; stress is equal to lack of confidence. Are you starting to see the correlation yet? Hopefully I’m starting to make myself clear by now – that in order to feel confident and happy, you need to target your stress levels. How do I know you’re stressed? Quite simple – presumably, if you’re reading this book, you feel as though you could maybe do with a little help on your journey towards feeling tip-top confident. And, as I’ve just said, if you are feeling a lack of confidence, you’re almost certain to be feeling stressed out. Being unconfident isn’t fun – it’s actually pretty horrible at times!

“Lack of confidence equals stress; stress is equal to lack of confidence. “

Doubting yourself and worrying about your abilities to handle a situation with panache and aplomb – or even just plain adequately – is, by its very nature, stressful. So enough of this – I think I’ve made my point perfectly clear!

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Let’s look at some of the ways that you can destress yourself. I used to have a lot of stress in my job. Well – to be honest with you, I still do. There’s a lot to organize, a lot to think about, and a lot of people depend on me for sound, in-depth advice on how to improve their quality of life and how to feel better about themselves. To me, that’s a pretty big deal – and a pretty big responsibility. I owe my clients my full attention and the absolute best of what my abilities have to offer. Today, I feel pretty confident of my ability to consistently offer those things – and if I ever am stumped, I know what to do to get around the problem and solve it anyway. But, when I first started out in this profession, I didn’t always have such a good handle on things. I was nervous. I felt like a fraud. I kept expecting to be found out - for someone to stand up in their chair, point an accusatory finger at me, and shout “Ah-HA! You’ve been getting away with it all these years – but I’ve finally found you out! You’re a charlatan!” Hardly the picture of professional self-confidence, is it? Now, I know this book isn’t just about professional self confidence. I’ve covered all sorts of confidence issues within these pages, from personal to social to sexual to professional. But the beauty of the stress management techniques that I’m about to tell you about is that – even though I discovered many of them myself in my hunt for something that would help me to get my professional confidence crisis under control – they work for every type of confidence crisis. It doesn’t matter whether you’re worried about your ability to make a date, to please your partner sexually, to get your reports in on time at work, to do well in an exam – stress doesn’t differentiate between different causes. It’s still stress, and it still feels the same, no matter what part of your life you’re feeling stressed about. So these techniques will apply to you no matter what the cause of your stress is! Great news, huh? I haven’t tried all these techniques for myself – some of them I have, and some of them I haven’t. The ones that I haven’t tried I’ve had recommended to me by professional colleagues of mine, and I’ve had very positive feedback on those techniques from All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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clients of those colleagues – and clients of my own, whom I’ve recommended these techniques to. So first of all: let’s take a look at some ways to manage your stress.

A Quick Introduction to Stress Stress manifests itself in a variety of different ways – you might get a thumping headache, you might get blurry vision, you might develop sudden insomnia, you might lose your appetite. These are all physical manifestations of stress. Stress also manifests itself mentally: you might feel sad, upset, “on edge”, anxious, angry, or unhappy a lot. Sometimes stress appears in both sorts of symptoms – physical and mental. But let’s take a look at what stress actually is, first of all.

“...it’s just not possible to avoid stress. Stress is inherently part of our society.”

Over the years, there has been a lot of research conducted into the area of stress. The term “stress” used to be viewed as kind of a trendy, meaningless phrase – used by shammers and hypochondriacs to explain away a host of baffling symptoms and absences from work. If you claimed to be “suffering from stress” about thirty years ago (and, in some places, a lot more recently!) you’d be viewed with something approaching contempt. The attitude of most Westerners used to be, “Quit your complaining and get on with the job” - if you couldn’t see the problem, then clearly there wasn’t one. Today, we know a lot different. Stress is now recognized as the silent killer – responsible for a host of debilitating and even fatal diseases – such as cancer, heart disease, strokes, and hypertension, to name but a few. Less serious results of long-term stress include migraines, allergies, fatigue disorder, and chronic eczema. Not an attractive prospect, is it?

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Stress is now viewed almost universally as a “bad thing”, and something we should all try and stay away from as much as possible. Eating healthily, making an effort to maintain minimum exercise requirements, staying away from alcohol and cigarettes, trying to choose jobs and work environments that we like – these are all things that our doctors and psychiatrists implore us to do, in order to reduce our overall stress levels. But sometimes, these things just plain aren’t possible. The ugly truth is that many of us do have to work in jobs we hate, just to make ends meet. Sometimes we’re too busy to eat well, or to squeeze in that half-hour of exercise per day. We can’t always get 8 hours of sleep, every single night. Sometimes we’re too rushed to cook balanced, healthy, nutritious, and delicious meals for ourselves. Sometimes we have a few too many drinks, or reach for the cigarettes, or overindulge in rich, fatty, high-sugar foods. In short: it’s just not possible to avoid stress. Stress is inherently part of our society. And not just our society – in fact, stress is just part of being human! To avoid stress, you’d have to force yourself to do absolutely nothing (to avoid environmental stress) and see absolutely nobody (to avoid interpersonal and social stress) – and even then, you’d still get stressed out simply from doing nothing all the time! So there’s really not much you can do to avoid stress. It’s like I said before, in my chapter on professional confidence: you can’t control all the aspects of any given situation. Stress is just ‘one of those things’, it seems – an unavoidable fact of life. And how do most of us experience stress? With something called the fight or flight response. This is an instinctive response which all humans and all animals experience, in moments of shock or stress. It’s a purely physical response (although we experience it mentally too, since the chemicals dumped in our blood by our ‘stress glands’ affect our thought processes and emotions.) All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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It all goes back to when our world was pretty much a purely physical one – concerns were based around getting food, shelter, a mate, and avoiding predators/hostile humans. When a threat was perceived, it was usually a physical one: somebody might be trying to muscle in on your shelter, your berry patch, or your spouse. Or perhaps you’d spotted a saber-tooth tiger on the plain and needed to take quick evasive action! Whatever the cause, your body needed to be able to take action, fast – otherwise you wouldn’t survive (since you’d either be without shelter, which equaled sure death; without food, also equaling death; without a mate, which meant the death of your whole genetic line; or you’d be saber-tooth tiger food.) So to help you respond quicker and better, your endocrine system dumped a whole lot of adrenaline and cortisone (hormones) into your bloodstream. These hormones have a variety of effects on the body: the heart speeds up, pumping blood quickly around; you feel a sudden rush of intense, agitating energy; your pupils dilate, your breathing quickens. You start to sweat (keeping your body cool) and your blood rushes away from your skin, towards your vital organs – maximizing metabolic efficiency, and minimizing blood loss in case you’re injured. All of this came in very handy back in prehistoric times, when we actually needed to be able to respond quickly and physically to a tangible, palpable threat; but it doesn’t really apply in today’s world. If you’re in a dispute with a fellow employee/student/your spouse/a friend/the traffic warden, does it help you to have a racing heart and sweaty palms? No. If you need to give a public speech, does it help you to be hyperventilating, with enlarged pupils and clammy skin? No. If you’re on a date with someone you’re really attracted to, does it help that you can’t sit still, that you’re fidgeting around all over the place, and that you’re positively fizzing with uncomfortable, nervous energy? No! None of these things are helpful. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Even worse, it doesn’t just stop at physical side effects. Because of all these chemicals in your body that have nowhere to go, you develop side effects to the side effects. (Of course, you could get probably disperse those unwanted hormones and their effects by sprinting as fast as you can for 500 yards or so, or beating the living daylights out of a boxing bag, or screaming at the top of your lungs and launching yourself into a head-thrashing, heel-drumming tantrum .... but it’s not likely that any of those reactions would help your situation, either!) These side effects to the side effects include things like headaches/migraines, irritability, anger and agitation, and a lack of ability to make good decisions. We feel clouded, fuzzy-headed, and downright polluted by those chemicals rushing about so merrily in our bloodstream. But without making a sudden, radical (and usually, quite inappropriate to the current situation) effort to physically disperse those chemicals, they just stay right where they are: flowing through our bloodstream, negatively affecting us, our state of mind, our bodily health, our personal and professional relationships, and our general wellbeing, until our normal metabolic processes get rid of them (anywhere from fifteen minutes to several hours later)

“Even worse, it doesn’t just stop at physical side effects.“

.... By which time we’re left feeling burned out, exhausted, and just downright drained. That’s why it’s so important for us to avoid feeling those things in the first place. After all, if you could avoid feeling those things, and experiencing those side-effects, wouldn’t you want to? I bet you would. I know I do – and, ever since experiencing some of these stress-management tips that are to follow, I hardly ever get stressed any more. So now it’s time for me to share the knowledge with you .... read on to find out more! First of all, let’s take a look at physical relaxation techniques.

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Physical Relaxation Techniques For millennia, humans have been channeling conscious relaxation, reducing stress, and attaining a much-sought-after state of complete peace. How? Through accepting the body’s role as both the physical carriage for our intangible selves (the soul, spirit, mind, whatever you want to call it) and as a version of the self in its own right. Or (in plain English!), through recognizing that – in order to be happy, healthy, and stress-free – our bodies need to be free of stress as well as our minds. Tibetan monks, for example, would spend hours in one deliberate yoga posture in order to attain a state of austerity (where the mind is calm, detached, withdrawn, and purified from stress). And, while I’m not necessarily advocating the idea that you retreat to a cave high in the Himalayas and stand motionless with your body twisted into a demanding position for hours on end, I am advocating the idea that you use your body as a tool in the fight against stress. What do I mean by this – and how can you do it? It’s quite simple. For the first technique, you just need to use your lungs!

 Controlled Breathing Controlled breathing (or just plain deep breathing) is undervalued by many people, simply because the concept sounds so simplistic. “How can breathing deeply affect my mood?” they think. “That’s just ridiculous.” And, believing the whole thing to be nothing but a waste of time, they don’t bother to try it – and so never experience the benefits for themselves. Think of how much your breath is tied into your mood! When you’re at your absolute most calm and relaxed – like just before you fall asleep – your breathing is deep, regular, and even. When you’re angry, your stomach muscles are tense, and your breathing is short, irregular and harsh.

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And think how much our breathing helps us to express grief or sorrow! That characteristic series of short, gasping, jerky breaths and irregular, whooping inhalations that we call crying – it’s instantly recognizable as being an expression of deep emotion. Have you ever tried being angry when you’re breathing deeply and slowly? Give it a shot – it’s actually pretty hard. Or try falling asleep when you’re breathing quickly and shallowly. Or try crying with even breathing! It’s literally impossible. I’m trying to make it clear to you just how inherently our breath is tied up in our state of mind and our general stress levels. But if you don’t believe me, give it a shot for yourself – practice controlled breathing, and see what it does for your state of mind. It’s a very simple, but very effective, method of relaxation. All you have to do is sit in a comfortable chair – some people prefer lying on their beds, or on the floor. Dim the lights if you like; light some incense or an oil-burner if you find that to be relaxing. Of course, all of this is completely optional, and not really important to the technique itself at all. That’s part of the beauty of controlled breathing – you don’t need any equipment to do it, it doesn’t matter where you are, and nobody has to tell that that’s what you’re doing if you don’t want them to know! All you have to do is take a number of deep, slow breaths. Try to count to ten on each inhalation and exhalation, if possible. As you breathe in and out, focus on relaxing your body a little bit more with each exhalation. You can do controlled breathing for as long as you like: some people find just 10 breaths to be all they need, where others find it to be so addictively relaxing that they practice for 15 minutes and up at a time! It’s all up to you – whatever works with your lifestyle and personal preferences (and stress levels!)

“...practice controlled breathing, and see what it does for your state of mind.“

 Progressive Muscular Relaxation When you’re stressed out, your muscles tense up. Some of my clients tell me that by the end of a difficult day at work, their whole bodies are clenched up like a fist!

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If your body is limp and relaxed, it’s pretty difficult to feel stressed – stress (even though technically it’s a mental condition) is so bound up in the physical world that, often, if we treat the physical symptoms of stress, the mental aspects of it are significantly reduced. In some cases, they vanish completely! Next time you start to get stressed out, focus on relaxing your muscles. The best way to do this – although it sounds contradictory! - is to actually tense up a set of muscles before relaxing them. The idea behind this is that, by clenching a set of muscles, it gives you an idea of how they shouldn’t be feeling (i.e. tense). This undesired state of tension makes it easier for you to actually relax them – because you’ve got a better idea (by using your powers of opposition!) how they should be feeling. It helps to proceed logically: starting at your feet, clench all the muscles in your toes, arches, and ankles. Hold this for a second or two. Then let go .... and enjoy the contrast between how tight they were a moment ago, and how relaxed they are now! Then progress to your calves, thighs, glutes (your butt), your lower back and abs, and so on. By the time you’ve got to your shoulders and arms, you should be experiencing a much deeper state of relaxation than if you’d just tried to relax without clenching up first. I personally find it helpful, after I’ve progressed through all the major muscle groups of my body, to clench everything in my body all at once and hold it for a second or two – and then let go. Aaahh! If you do this, you’ll experience the meaning of deep relaxation. (It works even better if you can do it lying down! Some of my clients find this last bit so relaxing that, after I’ve taken them through it, they’ve actually fallen asleep in my offices!)

Mental Relaxation Techniques Okay, so we’ve dealt with physical relaxation, and how important it is to your stress levels to be able to relax on a physical level. Well, guess what! The converse is also true. Mental relaxation techniques work just as well as physical ones. It’s up to you when you want to use either – generally speaking, there are going to be situations where it’s more appropriate for you to relax and take deep breaths (for example, when you’re alone in your car and trying to deal with a traffic jam) and All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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times when you might prefer to use the more “private” techniques inside your own head (like when you’re waiting at the board table to make an important presentation, for example.) The first technique that we’re going to look at is called visualization.

 Visualization When we’re stressed out, sometimes we can take charge, and actively do something to positively adjust the immediate environment that’s causing us stress. If we’re having a fight with our spouse, we can cut it short and go for a brisk walk; if we’re having a rough morning in the office, we can take a quick break and have a cup of coffee. But sometimes we can’t get away from our immediate environment – we feel powerless to escape whatever it is that’s causing us stress. When this is the case, you don’t just have to sit there and take it. You can still take steps to manage and control your stress, even if outwardly you have to remain present in that situation. I’m talking about using your imagination to take yourself to another, more relaxing place! This is known as visualization: effectively, you use your powers of imagination to create a pleasurable, relaxing environment for yourself. You don’t have to limit yourself to just the visuals, either. Why restrict yourself? When you’re experiencing something pleasurable, you don’t just use your eyes to absorb and enjoy the scenario, do you? No, of course not. You use all five senses. So let’s say you want to imagine that you’re lying on the beach. Imagine that you can hear the rhythmic crashing of the surf. You can feel the sun warming your skin, the grains of sand underneath you. You can hear the seagulls crying, you can smell the salt air, and you can enjoy the beauty of the waves and the blue sky. Of course, there’s nothing to say that you have to imagine this specific scene at all – that’s just one of my own, personal ‘safe places’ that I use when I’m feeling overwhelmed. By sharing it with you, I’m not trying to tell you that you have to use it, too - I’m merely trying to illustrate the importance of using all five senses. The more realistic the mental experience for you, the more potent the relaxation will be for you. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Imagine whatever scene is best for you – whether it’s lying snuggled up in bed at home, listening to the rain pattering against the windows; perhaps it’s sitting down to a home-cooked meal at your mom’s house; choose whatever works for you! Please suspend your disbelief here. I know it’s hard to believe wholeheartedly in the effectiveness of something that sounds like such child’s play – but studies (using biofeedback devices which measure things like hormones, levels of stress chemicals in the blood, brain activity, etc) have shown that visualization actually reduces the levels of stress in the body; just as visualizing yourself in a stressful situation actually produces a stress reaction in your body! Visualization is also a useful tool to use in goal setting – which we’re going to talk about later in this chapter, as soon as we’ve dealt with one more mental relaxation technique: meditation.

 Meditation When you hear the word, ‘meditation’, a lot of people conjure up images of alternative, ‘mystical’ Eastern religions, and associate the term with chanting monks, the lotus position, and incense. I actually think that a lot of Westerners don’t really understand what meditation is, from a scientific perspective – what it means to meditate, how it’s done, and the benefits it has (whether you’re a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian, an agnostic, or an atheist!).

What Is Meditation? Broadly speaking, meditation is what’s called an ‘alternative therapy’: a generalized description of it would be to say that any activity that keeps the mind calm and pleasantly focused in the present moment is, technically, meditation. There are several types of meditation, and – although it’s not necessarily a religious act – prayer is probably the most universally-recognized; there’s also Transcendental Meditation (TM), mindfulness meditation, Zen meditation, Buddhist meditation, and Taoist meditation. The one aspect that all of the different practices of meditation have in common is the focus on quieting the mind, and directing your concentration inwards. Meditation is all about calming the busy, stressed mind – the aim is to fill your mind with peace and calm. All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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For practical purposes, we’re going to be concentrating on basic, secular meditation – meaning that you don’t have to be part of an organized religion or adhere to a particular model of thought/belief to take part and enjoy the benefits. It doesn’t matter what your philosophy or religious belief is. Anybody can meditate.

Why Should I Meditate? After all, we all lead busy lives, right? Who’s got an extra twenty minutes to just sit around doing nothing? Well … that’s not quite what meditation is, first of all. When you meditate, you’re not doing nothing. It’s a form of active relaxation: you’re consciously allowing your mind to clear itself of all the myriad stresses and strains of your day, week, and life. This is one of the reasons why beginners often find meditation harder than they expected: their minds have been set to ‘full speed ahead’ for so long (their whole adult lives, usually!) that they need a chance to purge themselves of all that nervous energy and excess thought activity. So when you first start out meditating, you may well find it more difficult than you had originally anticipated to simply let your mind go …often, your mental activity levels will actually increase before they decrease. But it’s worth persisting, because there are some surprising benefits to meditation. Here are some of the big ones. 1. Your concentration and overall productivity will improve. Meditation clears the mind: clarity increases creativity and allows you to focus better throughout the rest of your day. 2. You gain some much-needed perspective. The opportunity to detach yourself from your troubles and worries helps you to stop sweating the small stuff: you can take a step back from it all and see the bigger picture. 3. You get in touch with your real self. Often, during meditation, unsuspected thoughts and feelings come floating to the surface. Decisions are often reached without a conscious effort to do so. A lot of people say that meditation helps them to gain a deeper understanding of their purpose in life.

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4. Meditation has profound neuropsychological effects. The production of stress hormones is drastically reduced during deep meditation, and your brain’s production of serotonin and endorphins (the ‘feel-good’ chemicals) goes into overdrive.

So How Do I Actually Do It? So enough about why meditation is good for you! Let’s talk about how to actually get on with it and start reaping those benefits first-hand. Fortunately, it’s pretty simple. (There are some more complicated, disciplined ways to meditate, but for now let’s just focus on the easy way – and the effects on your stress levels and overall sense of wellbeing will be much the same, regardless of the ‘type’ of meditation that you do!) 5. First: find yourself a calm, peaceful spot. Most people choose a room at home where there are as few distractions as possible: no TV, no radio, no people running around and interrupting you. You may wish to turn the phone off and put your cellphone onto ‘silent’. 6. Sit with a straight spine. You can sit in a chair, propped against a wall, or ‘freesit’ (where you sit on the floor and use no external supports for your back – this is actually pretty challenging after about five or ten minutes, but give it a shot if you feel like it!) The lotus posture isn’t necessary: all you have to do is ensure that you feel comfortable and that your body is well-aligned and symmetrical (no crossed legs or folded arms, for instance). 7. If you’re in a rush, or if time is an issue, set an alarm to alert you when your preferred ‘meditation time’ allotment is over (fifteen minutes is great, but even just five minutes will do wonders for your stress levels. Don’t force yourself to try more than you can realistically manage). This will allow you to truly relax during your session, instead of keeping a corner of your mind active and wondering whether you should check the clock. 8. It’s best to meditate on an empty stomach, if possible - if you wait until after you’ve eaten a heavy meal, you’ll feel lethargic, which gets right in the way of the dynamic mental clarity that meditation helps you achieve! 9. You may wish to shower before you meditate. It feels a lot better to relax in body and mind when you’re physically clean and your skin is soft; as well, a shower often helps you to unwind and relax a little bit, which is a great starting point for meditation.

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10. Shut your eyes and relax your muscles. Don’t fall asleep - although this can take practice at first! A lot of us are unable to disassociate the sensation of being relaxed with sleeping – usually, the people who only ever relax when they’re asleep! 11. The aim of meditation is to focus you mind on one thing (as opposed to halffocusing on a million different thoughts, instincts, needs, and desires at once). You don’t have to try and force your thoughts away or ‘block them out’ – this is an effort in itself. Try to just observe your thoughts as they come and go – watch them, like you’d watch water pass under a bridge. 12. Beginners often find it helpful to concentrate on their breath when they’re first starting off with meditation practice (although I still do that now – I find it to be incredibly soothing, and really helps me to get into the ‘flow’ of my mental relaxation). Breathe in through your nostrils and out through your mouth – keep your breaths long, slow, and even. Your belly should rise and fall with each breath. 13. When you’re ready to stop, gently flex the muscles in your legs and arms. If your eyes were shut, open them slowly. Roll your head around a little on your neck to get your blood flowing again. Don’t expect to return to normal straight away: during meditation, your brain goes into a state of relaxed concentration which it doesn’t experience during the course of a normal day (almost like being asleep, except that your mind is still alert and focused). Give yourself a few moments to return to normalcy before getting up and resuming your schedule. Through meditation, you attain a kind of detachment from yourself which enables you to gain true clarity over your thoughts and your life. The good news is that there’s no ‘technique’ involved or anything to master. The one thing that you may have difficulty with at first is disciplining yourself enough to embrace quietness of mind: it feels almost sinful sometimes to spend any time relaxing and focusing on ourselves! Stick with it, though – it will take a little practice before you’re completely comfortable with meditation. Some days it will come to you easily, and other times it may be more of a struggle. This isn’t anything to be worried about: simply relax and go with it.

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Setting Goals: Why It’s Important and How to Do It Goal-setting is an important part of the self-confidence building process. As you set and achieve goals, your confidence naturally grows – because with each goal that you achieve, you’re proving your own abilities and competence to yourself. On top of that, goal-setting is a necessary part of living a happy, contented life. Many people feel as a pervasive yet undefined sense of discontent with their lives, but they don’t know why. “I just feel as though something’s not quite right,” they say. “I didn’t really expect my life to follow this path. I guess there’s nothing really wrong with it, but somehow it’s just not what I was hoping for.” This is a common refrain among people who haven’t set themselves goals – they don’t really know what it is that they want, but they’re still not happy. And this is hardly surprising! When you’ve got no way of measuring whether you’ve achieved the things that you want to achieve – when you’ve got no real, definable sense of what you want to achieve in the first place! - then how can you ever expect to be truly happy? How can you ever sit back, relax, and enjoy the knowledge that you’ve got where you wanted to go, done what you wanted to do, if you never knew where it was you wanted to go or what you wanted to do in the first place?

“Goal-setting is an important part of the selfconfidence building process. “

Setting goals does take a little bit of effort, but it’s well worth your time. When I talk about goal-setting, I’m not talking about saying to yourself, “I want to be happier”, or “I want a better house”, or “I want a better relationship”. None of these goals are any good – not because they’re not worthwhile, but because they’re just too unstructured. With goals like those, you’d never have any idea of when they were achieved – or even if they’d been achieved at all! A better goal would be to say, “I want to spend more time doing fun things: I want to take at least three weeks’ holiday every year, I want each holiday to be in a warm and tropical climate, and I’m going to take my first holiday within the next three months.”

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Or, “I want a new house, and I want it to be four bedrooms, one of which with an ensuite; a large section of at least a quarter-acre; and a view looking out over either mountains or the ocean. I want to have enough money for a down-payment on a house like this within 3 years.” Or, “I want to improve my relationship: I want my partner and I to figure out a way of handling conflict productively. I want us to spend at least one night a week together doing something we both enjoy, and I want us to go away on a romantic weekend trip once a month.” What do all these goals have in common? I’ll tell you: they’re all SMART goals.

Setting SMART Goals SMART isn’t just an adequate adjective to describe these goals; it’s also an acronym: − − − − −

S pecific M easurable A chievable R ealistic T imely

Sticking to this simple formula will make both setting and achieving your goals a lot easier – you’ll be more motivated (because you know exactly what you want and when you want it by – which means you can easily monitor your progress towards achieving that goal) ... and, when you’ve attained your goal, you’ll be a lot more satisfied (because you’ll actually know when you have achieved it – and can bask in your own sense of success and accomplishment!) Let’s take a more detailed look at the SMART acronym, and how you can use it to set useful, attainable goals which will better your quality of life - and improve your self-confidence as you go.

 Specific First of all, the goal needs to be specific. It should be focused on exactly what you want to achieve: WHAT do you want to do? WHY is this important to you – what will achieving this goal ultimately accomplish for you? HOW are you going to do it – what steps do you need to take to attain this All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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goal? And WHEN do you want to have achieved this goal by? For example, let’s say you want to be a doctor: that’s the what taken care of. Why do you want to be a doctor? Well, it’s important to you for several reasons: because you want to earn a good salary; you want a job that allows you to help people, so you feel good about yourself and your contribution to the world; and because becoming a doctor would represent the fulfillment of a childhood dream (you’ve always wanted to be a doctor) which would be really satisfying for you. How are you going to realize this dream? You’re going to become a doctor by getting the right qualifications – which means you’ll need to dig out your high-school transcript, do an online search to look at medical schools which suit your location and requirements, and then apply to study at those schools. And when do you want to be a doctor by? Well, as soon as possible – which means you’ll need to look up when the medical-school applications close for enrolment, and figure out when you need to get your application in by; when the first semester starts; and when you’ll be graduating by. And there you go! That is exactly the kind of goal you need to be setting for yourself: something that details exactly what you want, why you want it, what you need to do to achieve that goal, and when you want to have achieved it by. Ensuring that the goals you set are specific and clear helps you to focus your efforts, and clearly define what you’re going to do.

 Measurable You need to choose a goal with measurable progress – if you can’t monitor your progress towards your accomplishments, how will you manage your efforts? How will you know whether you’ve succeeded or not? Setting vague goals is not really very constructive, because there’s no way for you to tell when you’ve achieved those goals. So “I want to be fit” isn’t a very measurable goal; but “In six months I want to be fit enough to be able to run three miles without needing to stop and catch my breath” lets you know what your specific target is – and enables you to monitor whether you’re on track for attainment of that target or not.

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 Achievable Setting goals can be pretty exhilarating – making a decision to improve your quality of life is an exciting challenge. But when you get caught up in the moment, it’s easy to set goals that are actually too far out of your reach – and when you know, deep down, that your goal isn’’t realistic, you’re essentially setting yourself up for failure. Who wants to invest effort in a losing cause? It’s much more effective to set goals that you know you can achieve. If your goal was weight loss, then aiming to lose thirty pounds in two weeks simply isn’t possible. It’s an unrealistic, unachievable goal – which means you’re not going to give it your best shot (because if you know you’re going to fail, why bother at all?) But if you set yourself a goal to lose one pound in one week, and then another pound the next week, that’s much better: you can actually achieve that goal, which means you’ll give it a good shot; and when you reach that goal, you’ll be able to enjoy your sense of achievement. Success is motivating! Use this fact to your best advantage, and aim for realistic success. Goals should be challenging, but not too much so – enough for you to feel that you’ve really accomplished something when you’ve done it, but not so much that you doubt your ability to attain it.

 Realistic Setting a realistic goal doesn’t mean setting easy, non-challenging goals. By all means, challenge yourself – but don’t make it impossible! Keep your own limitations in mind. For example, if you’re trying to eat healthier, it might not be realistic to say that you’re going to become a complete vegetarian from now on and never eat meat or junk food again. Setting a goal like this is admirable, but not necessarily realistic: you have to take your own abilities and lifestyle into account. Your goals should get you to stretch yourself a little bit, but not make you feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall in the process! Something a bit more realistic might be to say that you’re going to limit yourself to three items of junk food per week; that you’re going to start each day with a glass of

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freshly-squeezed orange juice; and that you’re going to eat a salad with your main course at dinnertime on every second day from now on. See the difference? The first goal was completely unrealistic – it would be too much of a challenge, and the stress and strain of trying to achieve it wouldn’t add to your quality of life at all (remember, that’s why we make goals in the first place – to improve things for ourselves!) The second goal was much better: you’re still aiming to achieve something, and it’ll still be an effort, but a realistic, sustainable effort.

 Timely Setting a timescale for yourself to achieve each goal is a great way to motivate yourself. When can you realistically achieve this goal, without putting too much pressure on yourself – but, at the same time, keeping up a consistent and sustained effort? Do you want to have achieved it in a week? In three months? A year? By your 30th birthday? Putting an end point on your goal gives you something to work towards: knowing there’s an end in sight allows you to concentrate your efforts, and really commit to the amount of time you have available. Without a timeframe, the goal will be too vague: the fact that you want it to take place at some point in the future just isn’t good enough, because there’s no imperative to take action! Make your time limits realistic, achievable, and specific.

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Using Self-Analysis (SWOT) to Recognize Your Strong Points A SWOT analysis is something that’s traditionally used by marketing teams to evaluate the viability of a business: it originally evolved for use in commerce. However, it’s also a great way to take full advantage of all your skills, talents, and abilities – which means it’s a really effective way to develop self confidence. A lot of the time, our confidence issues are linked to a lack of self-understanding. It’s easy to focus on the things we’re not so good at: we all know the areas we’d like to improve in. But people often don’t pay any attention to the things they’re good at, which means they’re missing out on a valuable self-esteem raising tool; as well as the opportunities that come with consciousness of your own strong points!

What Is a SWOT Analysis? A SWOT analysis is a self-evaluation: you’re going to write down your key characteristics and how you can put those to use to achieve your goals and benefit yourself. SWOT stands for: S trengths W eaknesses O pportunities T hreats To complete a SWOT analysis, take a normal sheet of paper. Using a pen, divide it into four equal quarters. Label the top left-hand corner ‘strengths’, the top right hand corner ‘weaknesses’, the bottom left hand corner ‘opportunities’, and the bottom right-hand corner ‘threats’. Because the points that you’ll be considering can encompass so much information, SWOT analyses are usually best done in tandem with a particular, specific goal: for example, a career goal (maybe you want to get a pay rise or a promotion), a personal goal (maybe you want to go on more dates or find a long-term partner), or something like that. Filling out just one SWOT analysis for all your goals will result in a confusing sheet of information by the end: there will be no coherent train of thought and, without a clear purpose for all that data, you’ll be all over the place. It’s best if you limit yourself to one SWOT analysis per goal.

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How to Fill Out a SWOT Analysis  Strengths The things that you’re going to list in the area marked ‘strengths’ are all your personal strong points: all the things you do well, your talents and abilities which are likely to assist you in achieving your goal. Some points to include in your considerations: • What are your skills and capabilities? What are you good at in this area? • What areas do you do particularly well in? • Do you have any qualifications, awards, or tributes from organizations or people? • What do you think other people see your strengths as? • In what ways do you stand out from others?

 Weaknesses This is the part where you list the areas you think you could use some improvement on. • What are the things that are holding you back? • What capabilities and talents do you need to work on? • What difficulties are standing in the way of the goal you want to reach?

 Opportunities Opportunities are all the external good things and benefits that exist in your life at the moment: anything you can think of that could have a beneficial impact on yourself and your life. • Are there any opportunities currently available to you? • What about future opportunities: is there anything happening in the future that you can take advantage of? • What opportunities can you organize that will help you attain success with this goal? • Who do you include in your personal support network (family, friends, relatives, colleagues, etc) who could assist you in achieving this goals? All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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 Threats • What is standing in the way of your success? • What obstacles do you face? • What could conceivably go wrong that will hinder your achievement of this goal? • Are there any people standing in your way?

What to Do with the End Result The aim of a SWOT analysis is to highlight areas of yourself and your aims which may not have been evident before. It supplies you with a detailed look at yourself, and helps you to identify what you need to do to increase your chances of success in a particular area (whichever goal you chose to fill out that particular SWOT analysis in tandem with) and what advantages you might actually be overlooking. Use your SWOT analysis as a tool in your goal-achieving strategy. When your actions are based on a solid foundation of self-knowledge and awareness, they’re likely to be much more effective, and will result in efficient goal-getting - which, as we’ve already discussed, can only increase your confidence in your own abilities!

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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Changing Your Thoughts to Increase Your Confidence Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that’s based on the concept that it is our thoughts that cause our reactions and behaviors, not external influences and events. It emphasizes the role of our thought processes in our feelings and actions. CBT is widely used, both formally and informally, to treat various emotional and psychological problems like self-confidence issues, anxiety, and depression. Many professional psychotherapists use CBT in their treatment of clients, but there are plenty of techniques used in the therapy which can be adapted to informal use – so you can reap the benefits from the comfort and privacy of your own home. Some example of this would be: • Keep a diary of significant events that are linked to your confidence issues. When you have a crisis of confidence, for example, write down what happened: where you were, what it was that caused the crisis, the thoughts and feelings that you experienced immediately prior to, during, and after the event. This is a really useful analytical tool: when you read over your diary, a pattern of thoughts and resulting behavior usually comes to light. Knowledge of such thought patterns is extremely handy when it comes to breaking those patterns – when you start to feel those familiar emotions washing over you, it’s possible to take a step back, remember that you’ve experienced those feelings before – and that they usually result in an unfavorable reaction – and think about whether it’s productive to maintain the same thinking patterns. Often, a simple knowledge of your typical reaction is enough to motivate a conscious change in how you think about the events and happenstances that usually spark a confidence crisis. • If you don’t like to write these things down, a fantastic alternative to diarizing is to discuss the situation with a trusted support person: somebody who’s close to you who you feel comfortable articulating your thoughts to. Getting independent feedback on unproductive thoughts and assumptions supplies you with a fresh perspective and a whole new way of looking at things. • If your self-confidence issues are preventing you from doing some of the things you want to do (like attending parties, public speaking, participating in work conferences and board meetings), the method that CBT employs to overcome these difficulties is to face them gradually. For example, if it’s All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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important to you that you begin to participate actively in meetings and talkback sessions at work, there’s no need to ‘bite the bullet’ and take a starring role; CBT therapists advocate taking baby steps. Step one might simply be to sit quietly in the meeting, taking coherent notes and practicing formulating your own thoughts and opinions into a coherent structure: just keeping yourself calm and in a clear, productive mindset in a situation that might traditionally have sent you into a bit of a tailspin. Step two might be just to take an informal role in the procedure: interject a few of your opinions into the discussion, but don’t try to radically alter the course of discussion or anything like that. The focus here is on accustoming yourself, step by step, to making changes in your reactions to stressful situations. • Adapt new strategies for your reactions to stressful, confidence-crisis-inspiring situations. For example, if in the past, you’ve been stopped from attending social functions by yourself because arriving solo makes you feel awkward and ill at ease, you could try a new approach: perhaps making the decision to go, but setting a time limit on how long you’ll stay. You could decide to give yourself 30 minutes from the time you walk in the door, and make a deliberate effort to introduce yourself to two new people inside of that timeframe. If, by the time 30 minutes is up, you’re still not having any fun, you can leave without feeling bad: because even though it didn’t work out, it wasn’t through lack of trying. Not allowing confidence issues to interfere with the life that you want to live is a really big step in breaking those same confidence issues down – when you remain in charge of your own life and what you do with your time and yourself, you’re validating your belief in your own abilities. The main thing to remember here is that the strategies used in cognitive-behavioral therapy are not an overnight ‘cure.’ The focus of CBT is on changing your core beliefs, which takes time and persistence. You can’t expect to change the way you think in a couple of weeks! If you decide to give any of these approaches a try, remember to be patient, persistent, and consistent. One of the best parts of using CBT to counteract unproductive habits is that you’re not required to make any drastic, lifealtering changes to your lifestyle: it’s easily adaptable to your own thoughts and ways of life. The trick is to pace yourself and to make a sustained and gradual effort: and, over the course of a couple of months, you’ll begin to notice positive changes in your thinking patterns, innermost beliefs, and self-confidence levels.

“It emphasizes the role of our thought processes in our feelings and actions.”

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Volunteering: How Helping Others Impacts Your Self-Esteem Volunteers are involved in just about every aspect of society: health, education, leisure work, therapy, counseling, youth, sports and recreation, the environment, animal life, the arts, and culture. Why am I talking about volunteer work as a means of improving your self confidence? That’s a pretty fair question. When most people think of volunteer work, they think of ‘free work’ – that is, work for which they receive no monetary compensation. Well, this is true: you don’t get paid in money for volunteer work. But you get a host of other benefits - which I’ll go into shortly - and one of them is the simple, documented fact that volunteering improves your self-esteem and self-confidence. How does it do this? Well, it’s quite simple really. A lack of confidence is linked inextricably to a lack of belief in your own abilities. My clients who tell me that they have no confidence always say the same thing – they either feel like they aren’t good at anything, or they feel like other people think they aren’t good at anything. Volunteering is the perfect antidote to either of these beliefs. When you volunteer, you’re doing something to help other people: you’re needed and important. Frequently, people depend on you for the support you give and the skills that you have (and those that you develop on the job). When you’re so clearly valued, it’s pretty hard not to feel good about yourself – and increased self-esteem leads directly and naturally to increased self-confidence. Furthermore, volunteering directly improves your self-confidence by either honing the skills that you already have, or enabling you to discover new ones. It depends on the field that you choose to volunteer in (whether you want to try something out of your comfort zone, or stick with the areas that you’re familiar with), but there are manifold opportunities to increase your skills and abilities in a huge variety of services and programs. So last time we talked about this you mentioned that maybe you’d prefer to just take a few days off altogether, as opposed to a week or two.

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Benefits of Volunteering Volunteering isn’t just about self-improvement: there are opportunities to have fun, better your career, and meet like-minded people, too. Here are a few examples of some of the benefits on offer through volunteer work: • Discover new hobbies, talents, skills, and interests • Feel needed, valued, and important • Give back to the community: contribute directly to the state of affairs in the neighborhood and city that you live in • Beef up your resume (nothing shines more brightly than a citation of volunteer work on a CV or college application!) • Explore new career possibilities • Develop communication skills in public speaking, writing, conducting meetings, public relations • Gain interpersonal skills: how to understand people better, how to motivate others, learn to deal with difficult situations • Travel the country or the world

What’s Involved in Volunteer Work It’s easy to find a volunteer opportunity that suits your needs. Simply check out one of the (literally hundreds of!) volunteer referral services – most of these have comprehensive, user-friendly websites – and take a look at the areas that interest you. There’s a huge range of services, programs, and organizations that desperately need help, from wildlife sanctuaries to community-care programs to youth and health services. You don’t need to think locally: plenty of organizations (like the Peace Corps and Freedom Corps, to name two) send their volunteers all over the world: from Malawi to Egypt to Ecuador. If none of these ideas appeal, you can go for more low-key volunteer - for example, maintenance of civic beauty spots and national parks; manning help desks at local events; working as a camp counselor for Scout groups or summer camps. You don’t even need to leave your house to volunteer: there’s plenty of opportunity to work as a ‘virtual volunteer’ through the Internet or via the phone. The amount of time you contribute is entirely up to you, too. Volunteer work can take up as much or as little of your time as you want – some people spend just one All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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or two hours a month in volunteer work, and others choose to get really involved and spend a couple of full days can be as little as just one or two hours a month, Volunteer work isn’t what it used to be – there are so many different opportunities to get involved, in so many different areas of the society, your neighborhood, your town, your country, and the world at large that it pays to spend a little time deciding which areas you might be interested in!

Deciding What Type of Volunteer Work Suits You Best To help you decide how you’d like to involve yourself as a volunteer, you just need to ask yourself a couple of quick questions aimed at clarifying your areas of interest: • How do I like to spend my leisure time (it makes sense to volunteer in a pastime or service that’s linked to what you do for fun anyway!) • How physically active do I like to be? • What professions would I like to end up in (since volunteer work is a really useful tool for climbing the career ladder)? • What skills and talents do I have to offer? • What experiences would I like to explore? • Are there any parts of the city, the country, or the world that I’d like to see?

Where to Start Looking Here are a couple of good websites to get you started with volunteering. I’ve tried to include sites from all ranges of volunteer work, to give you a good idea of the sorts of possibilities out there. All of these sites are pretty comprehensive, and are full of information about the entire volunteering process as well as the benefits, frequently-asked questions, and how to apply. If none of these sites float your boat, don’t limit yourself to my suggestions: this is just a quick list! All you have to do to get more information is to perform a quick Internet search on finding volunteer work and reference centers in your area.

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A couple of sites to start with are: • www.volunteermatch.org (which is a vast portal for all types of volunteer work) • www.bigbrotherbigsister.org (which handles mentoring and youth work) • www.peacecorps.gov : the Peace Corps sends volunteers to locations all over the globe, and deals with a diverse range of services from AIDS awareness to literacy programs to community-support projects. • www.conservatorscenter.org This is a wildlife conservation organization which handles environmental and endangered-species issues.

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How Do I Become More Confident TODAY? It’s time for your last Confidence Challenge! In this final exercise, I’d like you to think back over the past chapter and the book as a whole. • • • • •

Were there any particular sections that resonated with you? Did any of the strategies discussed really hit home? Was there anything that surprised you? Were you inspired to change your thinking or behaviors in any way? Do you think that you CAN improve your self-confidence?

I hope the answer to that last question was “Yes!” Remember that confidence isn’t just a matter of learning to think differently about yourself and your ability to achieve what you want in life. It’s something that you have to put into PRACTICE by taking risks, stepping outside of your comfort zone, and seeing that what you previously considered as “mistakes” or “failures” aren’t so scary after all! Although you may not feel that any of the strategies discussed in this section particularly interested you, I want to challenge you to choose one and give it a go. One of the wonderful things about confidence is that it means you can be openminded and try new things without knowing how good you’ll be at doing them! So let’s review the techniques I discussed.

Confidence Techniques Review Stress Management • • • •

Controlled breathing Progressive muscular relaxation Visualization Meditation

Set Better Goals • Reflect on what you really want most out of life. • Learn to set goals that motivate you to go after it. • Apply the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) criteria to your personal goals All Rights Reserved (c) 2007 MeetYourSweet.com

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Increase Self-Awareness • Use a SWOT analysis to highlight personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats Change Self-Defeating Thoughts • Keep a diary of significant events related to your confidence so that you can identify common thought patterns and how you react to certain kinds of situations. • Discuss your desire to improve your confidence with a trusted support person who will encourage you and give you objective feedback. • Take baby steps towards larger goals. • Think of alternate strategies for managing stressful situations rather than avoiding them completely. • See a therapist who specializes in CBT. Volunteer • Do something to help other people. You’ll feel needed and important. • Develop new skills through donating your time to causes you care about. • Explore new career possibilities through volunteering your time to an organization that interests you. • Recognize the variety of volunteer opportunities available. • Become a mentor and make a difference in your community.

Confidence Techniques Challenge Now, pick at least one of the concrete-building strategies above and learn more about it. For example, if you’re interested in visualization, look it up on the internet. If you’re interested in cognitive behavioral therapy, find out if there’s a therapist in your area. Learn enough about the strategy to be able to explain it to someone else. Sometimes, all it takes is learning more about something to feel like it’s something that is possible for you to do yourself.

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Best of Luck… If you’re feeling scared right now and a little overwhelmed because of the quantity of information in this book, then I want you to know something. Supreme self-confidence is a journey, not a destination. Along the way, there will be bumps and setbacks. There will be times when you feel your old, shy self re-emerging. But those bumpy times are there to show you just how far you’ve come, and how far you can still go. You shouldn’t feel like you have to eliminate ALL doubt or shyness from your life, because those feelings are often useful to help you act more cautiously or reassess what you’re doing. Yes, you can be supremely self-confident but feel scared sometimes. You can even doubt yourself at times. It’s okay. Supremely confident people know that their moments of self-doubt, shyness, and fear are nothing to be afraid of. They’re there for a reason: to teach us to become more compassionate and complete people. You see, confidence without compassion is called arrogance. An arrogant person won’t admit if they get scared or doubt themselves. And that’s not what real confidence is about. Real confidence is about having your faith in your ability to handle anything, even making a mistake or an embarrassing social blunder. So get out there and start enjoying life with the supreme self-confidence that you were born to have! All the best!

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Classic Confidence-Building Resources Covey, Stephen. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Fireside, 1989. Deida, David. The Way of the Superior Man. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 1997. Dyer, Wayne. How to Be a No-Limit Person. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Jeffers, Susan. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. New York: Fawcett Books, 1987. Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled. New York: Touchstone, 1978.

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