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Your top tips for becoming more
confident
Hi Brinley,
I understand that you are running a top tips for
confidence competition with the chance to win Kate’s and your book. I would
like to offer my top tip for confidence building. This one works particularly
well for presentations and making phone calls.
Often we all balk at making that call or
presentation because we don’t quite feel ‘on the money’ in terms of our
confidence. One thing that I do is to use a digital voice recorder and practise
what I’m going to say. I then listen to what I’ve recorded and give myself a
score out of 10 – if it’s not a 9 or 10 I re-record it and go through the same
process again. Eventually after about 15 goes (!) I get to a place where it
sounds good and I feel good about it. I usually know when I’m ‘ready’ because I
can hear the smile in my voice. Once I’ve got it set what I’m going to say I
keep rehearsing.
When I’m feeling brave enough I’ll test it out on a
friend or relative – someone I know who will be supportive and helpful.
When I’m in the flow of the actual presentation or
telephone call it just comes naturally and I feel more confident because I
already know what confident sounds and feels like – so I’m just repeating what
I’ve already done dozens of times.
My top tip is that to convince others you’re
confident you’ve first got to convince yourself. By listening to your own voice
you can quickly hear that confidence.
Hope this is the sort of thing you were looking for
and I look forward to receiving your newsletters.
Many thanks
Ro Gorell (Ascent2change.co.uk)
***
Dear Brinley and Kate,
For me the
single most skill to improve my confidence is to keep cool (or at least to
appear to keep cool) under pressure.
I am clear
about my purpose, but my body language and voice let me down under pressure.
Any tips?
Best wishes
Essam
***
Hi there,
I loved your tips for self-confidence, especially this one about taking your own
route and trusting
yourself.
I think that the key to self-confidence is LOVE and appreciation for your
unique, beautiful self.
Everyone is special and everyone is great. Imagine what would a person's life be
like if they could get up every morning and say in front of the mirror "I love
you. You are a wonderful, unique and precious person" and then go to sleep
saying and feeling the same. If you can truly believe that you are good and
lovable, you are going to be self-confident. You are going to act from this
place and your life will be glorious.
Also, people give us what we expect of them. So another tip - if you want people
to be good and loving towards you - expect them to be so. Think how good,
wonderful and lovable they are and this is what they are going to give you.
What really is helpful for me in gaining self-confidence is a little book by
Louise L. Hay "I can do it. How to use affirmations to change your life". She
advices to look in the mirror every day and say to yourself how much you love
yourself. Even if it's seems funny and silly at the beginning - it works. I can
say from experience. I've been doing that just for two weeks now and I already
feel like a much more confident person. I started being kinder and nicer to
myself, I am trying to feed my mind good positive thoughts, and I started to
look after my body appreciating it for all the hard work it does to keep me in
perfect health. I would highly recommend Louise Hay's books and affirmation
cards to everyone. For example - she says how to forgive others and yourself,
how not to blame anyone and yourself - both I think very useful in gaining
self-confidence.
Imagine that everyone believes they are good. Would we have any problems to
solve then? Do you know what children think about themselves? They think they
are great! They are more than self-confindent. They are happy! They are good!
Their lives are joyful! Because they love themselves. Till adults teach them
otherwise. Lets change it. Lets be "loving ourselves" adults. So we can show our
children that they are right :-) And then they can show to their children. And
then we can live in heaven on this planet :-)
Kind Regards,
Ewa
***
Hi Brin.
I believe that you (and Andy) were instrumental in helping me to regain my
confidence. The presentation course which you permitted me to attend helped
enormously. I was very worried about how others would perceive me, but decided
to give it a go – such opportunities are all to rare.
So what does it for me?
Preparation. You need to prepare in order to feel confident, especially
when speaking in front of a group. I was able to put this into practice when I
did a CSR presentation to Monsoon. A former work colleague who also attended the
presentation commented, “Wow, you really knew your stuff. That was a great
presentation. It really gave us a lot to think about.” Before September I would
not have been able to do that.
Passion. You need to feel deeply, to want it so much. Just getting back
in touch with the things that really matter in your life helps give you that
purpose you were talking about. In the course we had to talk for five minutes
about three things about which we were passionate. I hadn’t really thought about
it all that much, despite all the soul-searching that followed my redundancy.
The experience was empowering.
Fun. Find it. I could have said creativity, but so many people wrongly
believe that they are not creative. The only people who lack the ability to be
creative are those who never were children, and I haven’t met ANY of those.
Allowing yourself to be creative without any judgement is very liberating, quite
enlightening, and a strong catalyst to feeling good about yourself.
What better way to boost your confidence?
Kelly
RSVP -
Brinley & Kate
brinley.platts@btinternet.com
This
Confidence newsletter is sent each month to subscribers of
www.yourmostconfidentself.com from Kate Burton and Brinley Platts,
the authors of "Building
Self-Confidence for Dummies" and creators of the Your Most Confident Self
website.
Building Self-Confidence for Dummies by Kate Burton
and Brinley Platts
Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies by
Romilla Ready and Kate Burton
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