Develop a confidence mindset
Hey, it’s Graham here again and today you’re going to learn another confidence building activity, and this time I’m going to talk to you about cataloging your strengths. When we lack self-confidence, we often spend a lot of time on our weaknesses. We might spend a lot of time working on our weaknesses or simply dwelling on our weaknesses and noticing how we don’t feel the way that we’d like to feel all the time.
It’s Mental Health Week here in Australia, and I’m very pleased to see many organisations and individuals talking about the topic of mental health in order to provide hope for healing and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness in our community. I’m also a little anxious because the issue is close to my heart. There are many people who suffer from mental illness in my extended family and I know we still have a long way to go as a community in tackling the problems underlying the recent rapid increase in mental illness.
Having suffered from debilitating panic attacks, social phobia, generalised anxiety, depression and chronic fatigue myself, I know that these are real biological conditions which you can’t just “snap yourself out of” or simply wish away with positive thinking or well-intentioned affirmations alone.
Make A Move Towards Better Mental Health
Especially for men.
Destigmatising mental illness is certainly a step in the right direction, but if we want to help people living with mental illness to free themselves from their suffering, we need to go a step deeper and destigmatise the emotions behind it too.
Let’s face it: Men have feelings, and it’s time we stopped holding them in.
Rates of mental illness are rapidly increasing in the Western world. Depression and anxiety have become common place, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg compared to more severe mental illnesses such as bipolar, schizophrenia and so-called personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder. (more…)
You’re feeling excited about a project and keen to move forward, and then the evil gremlins in your mind rise up and strike a blow that stops you in your tracks. Or perhaps you feel stuck in your tracks unsure even which way to move in the first place. If so, there’s a good chance you’re being held back by self-doubt.
I know the feeling all too well. The fear of failure, the procrastination, the voice in my head that says “nobody will read that article”, “nobody will come to your gig”, or “you’re gonna fuck it up in front of everybody!”. It all comes down to self-doubt and the fear of failure that lurks beneath.
So how do you overcome this evil gremlin?
Here’s what I tell myself when self-doubt strikes:
I want to talk about an issue most men don’t talk to other men about.
Most of us are too ashamed to talk about it, let alone seek any help for it.
Yet it affects a staggering number of us guys.
So I’ll cut to the chase: I’m talking about depression.
Maybe you’ve sought help and been diagnosed by a professional, or perhaps you just know deep down that you’re unhappy. Something is wrong with your life but you’re not sure what. Perhaps you feel hopeless for no good reason, or you just can’t get motivated, or the light has simply gone out of your life.
It’s a painful place to be.
Psychiatrists will tell you that depression is a “chemical imbalance in the brain”, and they’re right.
But that’s only half the story. The obvious question to ask is: what causes the chemical imbalance? (more…)
Having a vision for your ideal future allows your inner creativity to start moving you towards fulfilling that vision in your life. The first step of the online course is to create a vision for your future. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to resonate with you.
Having A Future Vision To Aim For Makes You A More Confident Man
For inspiration, here’s mine:
I routinely give myself permission to have the life that I desire without requiring other people’s approval. I am willing to experiment and have the freedom to fuck things up and get it wrong from time to time, knowing that the more I am willing to get it wrong the more things will also go right. I am fully comfortable with failure and simply see it as a learning experience. I have healed all the wounds of the past so that I can be free to be my true self, fully expressed in the world.
I have many close female friends and feel very comfortable being myself around them sexually, emotionally and intellectually. I have a rich and fulfilling sex life with as many women as I desire. I feel comfortable expressing my sexuality around attractive women, and they feel grateful and appreciative of the opportunity to connect with me.… Continue reading…
I have a little voice in my head that’s capable of creating almost unlimited amounts of self-doubt. Actually it’s not so little. It’s the voice that shouts “It’s not going to work!” when I try something new that’s really important to me, “You’re going to screw it up!” when I’m playing music for other people, or “She won’t want to talk to you!” when I see a woman I find really attractive. And fuck it’s been pissing me off lately.
After years of personal development, workshops, counseling courses, life coach training courses, and just plain good old procrastination, I’ve finally decided to offer one-on-one coaching to other men via Skype. I am way qualified for this by now; most of my life coach friends have far less training and counseling experience than I do, yet they started coaching ages ago. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be doing the same.
Listening to Our Inner Critic can lead to Self-Doubt
Well, there is according to my inner critic. No sooner have I hit the “order” button on the business cards calling myself a Confidence Coach than that shitty little voice in my head says: “Nobody’s going to pay you to coach them!… Continue reading…
Dealing with “rejection” is one of the hardest things for many of us to learn, especially when we lack deep inner confidence. It’s taken a long time for me to get a handle on, but I’m definitely getting better at handling rejection these days.
At a recent Love, Intimacy and Sexuality workshop run by The Human Awareness Institute, I found myself dealing with rejection right from the word go. Our very first task was to choose a buddy for the weekend, and I immediately found myself drawn to the most attractive woman in the room.
Problem was, so was another guy. And she chose him over me.
Ouch!
Before I knew it, that story was running in my head about other guys being better than me in some way: more attractive, sexier, more desirable. But the good thing was that the voice telling the story wasn’t as loud as it used to be, and the unpleasant feeling it created in me wasn’t as overwhelming. I’d been “rejected” in favor of another guy, but I was doing OK.
The very next exercise involved picking a partner, and again the same woman sprang straight to mind. I knew if I didn’t act immediately, that voice in my head would start making up a big dramatic story about how she’d already rejected me once and so she obviously didn’t like me.… Continue reading…
Cool people are, well, cool to hang around. They are relaxed in who they are and stay cool in any situation. If you want to be more confident, more popular, have more friends, attract more women, or just get along more easily with other people then it’s worth developing some cool traits.
Here are some ideas on how to be cool:
The quintessential element underlying coolness is that you don’t care what other people think of you. It’s none of your business. You retain a cool detachment from other people’s judgments of you at all times, and this allows you to relax and let your true personality shine through. Whether other people like you or not is of no concern to you. Cool people don’t get lonely very much because they’ve got plenty of friends, and they know there are always people to hang out with. They are non-needy. Since they don’t need more friends, they attract them easily.
This trait of being unconcerned with what other people think of you underlies everything else about being cool. It also distinguishes genuinely cool people with superficial people who are trying to fake it until they make it.… Continue reading…
What are you living in the shadow of?
In the backyard of my sister’s holiday house where I’m currently staying is this palm tree on the right of and growing very close to a larger gum tree. The palm is living it’s life in the shadow of the other tree and you can see that it’s not as big or as luscious as palm trees usually are. In fact, it looks mangy and emaciated. Not flourishing. The leaves are small, few and far between. They fall off easily. This palm tree is not exactly fulfilling its full potential.
That’s because the shadow from the other tree blocks the sunlight, and they’re so close to each other that their root systems have got to be entangled and choking each other. It’s probably fair to say that as a result the slightly larger tree isn’t growing to its full potential either.
Now I’m sure that my sister’s septic system is glad these two trees aren’t growing gangbusters, because they’d be sending their roots down into it. Or at least, it would be glad if septic systems had feelings; which I’m pretty sure they don’t. They’d be pretty cranky at all the crap they have to put up with.… Continue reading…