Coaching Confidence

As I sat down to write this post our latest rescued cat arrived in the room popped her 2 front paws on my knee with a distinct and determined mew. Now this is a new signal and not her normal – my dish is empty, I had to work out what it is that she wanted.

As I was listening to her signals and then interpreting them it reminded me of an often overlooked part of confidence.

The dictionary definition of confidence is

1. Firm trust

2. A feeling of certainty, self-reliance, boldness.

3. Something told confidentially

You’ll notice the inclusion of the word trust in that definition and something told confidentially. Would you be inclined to trust someone who didn’t listen when you told them something confidentially? Most people, when they really think about that, answers no.

How often do you really listen to what you really want? I’m not talking about listening to self criticism here, but actual inner signals? Not only is this integral to confidence but also knowing what it is that you want to take your life to the next level. Maybe it’s a feeling in your stomach when you’re tired and opt to stay out longer, maybe when you look back at a past relationship you had a feeling that it was over before it actually was.

It is not unusual for people to be used to ignoring these inner signals or over-riding them because you think that you “should” be doing something else. Generally the more that you listen to these authentic signals the easier it is to hear them and the clearer the messages will be. It is also far easier to trust ourselves if we listen to those inner signals.

This months exercise is based on a kenisology technique. I invite you to play with the following as a way to start listening to those inner signals and to grow your own trust in yourself.

We are going to set up a definite yes and no response for you to play with. A fellow trainer taught this during lunch a few months back to some of our delegates. One participant went down the desert menu asking herself for each item if she wanted that sweet. The pudding that came back with a yes signal surprised her and she said that she would never normal consider that option. However, she was up for playing with the concept and ordered it anyway. When the dish arrived it looked gorgeous and it was perfectly obvious by the look on her face as she tasted it she adored it!

This is not designed to be a deep therapeutic exercise so if you have any major life changing decisions to make please use your own judgement and use a lighter topic such as what you are going to pick for lunch.

1. Lightly rub the tip of your finger over your thumbnail while mentally excitedly and confidently repeating, “Yes! Yes! Yes” to yourself.
2. Stop
3. Rub the tip of your finger over your thumbnail again, this time determinedly and confidently repeating “No! No! No!”
4. Notice the difference between when you said “Yes!” and when you said “No!”

If you would like a stronger difference either 

• Mentally ask for a stronger signal and repeat steps 1 – 3 being even more enthusiastic with your Yes’s and No’s.
• Change hands and use your other thumb and fingers to repeat steps 1 – 3.
• Instead of rubbing your thumbnail rub the tip of your thumb and the tip of your finger together. Repeat steps 1 – 3.

Most people report that the no signal is “sticky” while the yes signal runs

smoother, however these are your signals so if you have something else then use yours

5. Test the signals you have set up with some easy questions that you definitely know if the answer is yes or no. For example, Is my name ( ) ?

If the signals are coming back confused then go back and repeat steps 1-4 again.

6. Once you are getting strong signals through pick something light hearted to play with – such as what to have for tea or which dvd to watch from a list.

Enjoy playing with this and listening to your own inner signals.

As always, feel free to share your comments on this message with me

Have a fantastic and confident week

Jen

This week I go even further back in my back catalogue to a time when I sent monthly and not weekly messages.

“Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you; be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you.”

(Nicholai Velimirovic)

One of the definitions I like about confidence is being comfortable in your own skin. There are things that you are good at, and things which sometimes you may not shine as much doing. To me, it’s all part of being human, nobody is perfect (remember even supermodels are airbrushed in photos). The difference is that you don’t have to feel bad about the things you may not yet shine at.

So often people have accepted the bits that they do not shine at but are unwilling to recognise or accept that there are other things where they excel. I have lost count the number of times when somebody has told me something that seems amazing to me but they don’t see it as anything special. I was talking to someone recently who told me that they were able to talk two languages fluently which to me is a fantastic achievement. Somebody else who suddenly mentioned that they had wrote a book but didn’t think that was noteworthy, not to mention being told by a third person that they are “just” a parent. It was only when these individuals started paying attention and allowing themselves to consider the possibility that just because they found something easy it did not make it any less special.

This month I invite you to play with paying attention to where and when you shine, as well as when you don’t. You don’t have to do anything with this information – just notice what is different and what happens.

1. Divide a piece of paper into 4 equal sections
2. In the first section write all the things that you are terrible at. This could be a list that you are used to focusing on and that’s ok. Everyone has something that will go in this section – possibly because you’ve not chosen to spend any time perfecting it or because you really don’t like doing it in the first place 
3. In the next section list things that you are OK at but you wouldn’t say that you are good at.
4. In the third section list all the things that you are good at.
5. Section 4 is the one where you write the things that you are brilliant at. What is it that you find so easy to do that you can’t understand why others don’t too? (like speaking 2 languages)

Be aware that this is your list nobody else has to read it unless you want them to.

6. Sometimes people’s self-perception of what is brilliant and good for a particular thing is different to how they would define and apply it to someone else. Quite frankly, on this exercise that’s cheating, so starting in the first section take one thing from on your list and ask yourself “if I was watching someone else do this, how would I know that they were OK at it?” and “What behaviours would I see or hear?”

So, if you had written “giving presentations” in the first section, a definition of being ok could be that no-one ran out of the room crying. As a speaker they may have stumbled over a few things, but they made it to the end without causing a major life-threatening crisis (obviously this is far more likely in some roles than others – hostage negotiation for example in comparison to just a small team meeting).

Having defined what OK in that area is, check how you behave in relation to that. You’ll get more out of playing with this if you are actually honest with yourself. A definition of humility that I like is that “humility is being willing to accept that things may be other than the way you think they are.” So just for the purposes of this exercise I ask that you are humble enough to consider that you may just be better then you initially thought.

7. Repeat step 6 for everything in your first section.

Move anything into the second section that needs to be moved.

Repeat steps 6 and 7 with each of the following sections. So take what is in your OK section and check to make sure it doesn’t actually live in the good section. Make sure that the good section hasn’t got hidden brilliance in there.

Re-read your lists and add anything else on as they come to you throughout the month.

Bonus Tip:

This month notice how you respond when someone gives you a compliment – do you say thank you or do you try and deflect the attention. “This top? Oh I’ve had it years”, “It’s just part of being a Mum”, “I’m used to doing that with work”. If you catch yourself doing the latter that’s ok, stop and just say thank you.

“Next in importance to having a good aim is to recognize when to pull the trigger.”
(David Letterman)

My sister works with children and when I spent some time with her this last weekend she had the remainders of a bumper pack of sweets they had used as an end of term treat. The majority of these sweets I didn’t even know they still made and had great recollections of them from my childhood.

Just one taste seemed to transport us back to a school disco, or the excitement of a birthday.

You may have noticed that specific smells can immediately have an effect on how you feel because of what you associate with them. Perhaps every time you smell a particular perfume or aftershave you grin because of who it reminds you of, or maybe it has the opposite effect.

Then off course you may have a particular piece of music – I found myself grinning the other day because of an old TV jingle was being played. There are the tunes that you feel great when you hear them because of what you associate with them. Maybe there are also songs that have the opposite effect if you connected them with an old unpleasant experience.

These associations or connections between a trigger and a feeling are often set up without any conscious deliberate thought. What I’m going to invite you to play with this week is a way to give you a deliberate way to set up a trigger so that you can use it to your benefit.

You can do this with any feeling you want though I suggest something positive that you can then use. Maybe you want to play with confidence and use it when speaking in public. Perhaps you’d like to pick relaxation and fire it off before a job interview. It’s up to you what you pick.

You’ll get most benefit from playing with this if you pick a time when you are not going to get disturbed. This will allow you to easily set up a lovely strong feeling without anything else getting in the way. Initially imagining a state of relaxation before you set up a trigger for example is much easier without 100 kids screaming, the phone ringing and the dog running around you

1. Having picked the feeling you want to have at your beck and call, vividly imagine what that feeling is like. By all means close your eyes if that is easier, and remember a time or a place where you felt that strongly – notice what you saw, the colours, people, etc, become aware of what you heard, the noises, tones etc.

As that feeling intensifies make it a full sensory experience by noticing if there are any aromas, perhaps there are tastes to savour.

2. Take as long as you like to really get a strong and powerful sense of this feeling. When you have a full sense of that strong feeling squeeze together your thumb and little finger.

3. Repeat this process several times, remembering to get a really strong feeling before squeezing your thumb and finger together. (I’m sorry, you’ll just have to feel that good feeling again )

4. Squeeze your thumb and finger together on it’s own and notice how that good feeling automatically follows. You have created a trigger, or anchor for you to fire off when ever you want to.

Have a week full of great feelings

Love

Jen

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com

“Thought is free.”

(William Shakespear)

This week I thought I would revist a piece I wrote a couple of years ago:

For the last few days I’ve had a couple of lines of music stuck in my head. It started when I heard a brief clip of it on the TV and after that it went round and round so I found myself absentmindedly humming it throughout the day.

What was irritating was that it was only 2 lines – no more, it was uncompleted. In fact as soon as I realised that, I had the solution – listen to the complete tune and the previous irritating 2 lines were stuck no more.

It’s just like when people say to me that they keep saying or asking themselves the same question over and over. It’s often some form of “who do you think you are?” “I’m not worthy/ good/beautiful / (insert relevant word for you) enough.”

Often its because something is missing so that the question or statement is not completed and just like with a piece of tune, it goes round and round in your head.

So what’s missing? This week’s message will give some
categories that may give you ideas. As always be gentle with yourself, if you feel it is more appropriate that you work through this with a trained professional than please do find a coach, therapist, counsillor etc. that you are comfortable working with.

“It’s not what you said it’s how you said it”

You have probably seen instances where somebody has caused offence to another person not by what they said but by they way they said it. So first let’s play with how you are saying these things to yourself. It’s not unusual for these unfinished bits to be heard in your head as a sneer or said viciously.

Imagine what it would be like if that was said softly and gently, or asked with a genuine curiosity.

What would it feel like to say the same words to yourself with different emphasis?

I had one client who admitted that for as long as she could remember she had had this sneering voice say scornfully “who do you think you are?” whenever she thought of something new.

By asking herself that question in a gentle, loving and curious way – while changing the way she stressed the words, she had an entirely different experience. She changed the entire meaning of the question to her, and felt very differently about it.

She found that now she wasn’t hearing it as an insult and a put down, that she actually had loads of answers coming to her about what she wanted to be doing with a new career. In her case what was missing was an answer to the question – largely due to the fact she had never heard it as a question before.

What’s the other half of the question or statement?

Get specific, what precisely is it you are not good enough, worthy enough etc. to do? Sometimes just getting specific can be enough to realise that it’s an old outdated comment that really doesn’t matter any more. For example – I’m not good enough … “to make the school sports team” really doesn’t have the same importance to me now as it did at age 9!

Compared to who or what?

Sometimes we unconsciously compare ourselves to other people or an image that we have created for ourselves as perfection. It can be worth doing a reality to check here – is it a useful and realistic comparison to make?

For example, if you are not beautiful enough and you realise that your image of perfection involves you being 6 ft 2″ when in reality you are 4 ft 8″ you are setting yourself up to feel bad (unless you know some secret trick to grow that tall).

It may be that you realise that you are comparing yourself to someone with 30 years expertise when you’ve had 10 lessons – realistically, could that comparison be considered fair? It may be enough to realise that the comparison is laughable and you’ll find the question and statement is completed and no longer has that same power it had over you before.

Recap

1) Pick something that you keep asking yourself or saying to yourself.

2)Play with how you are saying it to yourself – just for 5
minutes, if you really want to go back to the old way of
saying it after that you can!

Notice what’s different when you say it differently and stress different words.

3)What specifically is missing from the question/ statement for it to have more detail?

Some questions to help give you some ideas:
To do what?
Then what?
About what?
Who says?

Notice the difference including the missing bit to make it more specific makes. Is it still relevant to your life today?

4)What or who are you comparing yourself to?
Is this a realistic benchmark for you to have? If so, if you really must compare yourself to something, what could you pick instead?
(Bonus tip – you could compare yourself to how far that you have come.)

Most people report that by using tricks like the above, the questions and statements that used to have so much power no longer has the same effect over them.

Have a week full of completions

Love

Jen

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com

Another post from my back catalogue from a time when I sent monthly, not weekly messages.

I thought today I would give you a method to give you an immediate boost to your feeling of confidence.

This month I have tweaked a muscle in my back so I have been particularly aware of the position that I held my body in. This increase in my consciousness reminded me of a the importance that our physiology can have on how we feel.

Imagine if you were to see someone sat slouched in a corner, shoulders hunched, head and eyes lowered, frowning – get the idea? Now just by that description – how do you think that person is feeling? Happy, joyful and confident? Now while the question itself asks for a certain amount of mind reading, you must have noticed at some stage that you can just tell by looking at someone if they are upset or happy – notice how actors in dramas utilise this to demonstrate their art and portray their character, I’d be surprised if you found anyone bounding onto screen like an excitable puppy, grinning from ear to ear during a tragic part of a film for their character!

So lets try a confident posture: Standing or sitting tall, check that your back is straight, your shoulders are back and your head is up.

Become aware of where you are looking and consciously move your eye-line so that you are now looking above the horizon.

Having done that, keeping that same posture and eye-line put a big cheesy grin on your face – you know the one, the one that if it was in toothpaste advert it would be accompanied by a *ping*!

Now, try not to feel confident in that posture – Go on, give it a proper try. If you notice that you are wavering feeling confident then just double check that you haven’t moved your posture.

Now, I don’t know in what sort of situations this will be helpful for you to remember, maybe before talking to a group or maybe before making a particular phone call. Whatever, the scenario is for you, I invite you to enjoy playing with this.

As always I would love to hear your experience playing with this technique.

“Don’t let him live rent free in your head.”

(Line from the TV show CSI episode If I had a hammer, spoken by the character “Brass”)

This week’s message is in response to a few queries and stories people have shared about how what others have said in the past effects your confidence. 

A couple of years ago I wrote the following in response to similar questions. The piece was very popular at the time so it felt appropriate to share it with you again.

As always you are the expert on you, I invite you to play with what’s written here and if you want modify any of it to see how it makes a difference for you.

I was co-delivering a training a few weeks ago and the theme that appeared throughout the day was that you only had to live through something once. 

It reminded me of a Zen story about two travelling monks, one was younger and less experienced who looked up to the older brother. On their travels they came across a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. The younger monk hesitated, as their order strictly forbid relations with females. The older monk quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed. 

As the monks continued on their way, the younger one was brooding and preoccupied. After several days and unable to hold his silence any longer, he spoke out. “Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!” 

The older monk looked surprised and then laughed, “Brother,” the second monk replied, “I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her.”

So how can you put down something you’ve been carrying around? Unless someone is in the room with you right now the actual event which made you feel unconfident has been and gone so it’s what we’re doing in our head that often keeps people stuck in one place. This week’s tip looks at one way in which, if you wanted to, you can play with that and alter your feelings towards an event.

There is a range of options you can control now when watching digital television, just by using your remote control:

Brightness 

volume 

The camera you watch events on, 

If you want commentary (or not) on sporting events etc. 

This technique literally hands you the control panel to your own memory.

I invite you to play with some event in the past that you would like to feel different about. Be gentle, I wouldn’t suggest picking anything traumatic, remember this is the first time that you’ve potentially done this.

You may find this easier if you note down your answers to this using a pen and paper.

1. Imagine you are sat about to watch this event on screen. 

Notice if you are watching this on TV, a normal cinema screen, a special panoramic screening or something else entirely.

How close to the screen are you sat and at what angle?

2. As the event begins to play on screen notice how the director has chosen to display this event:

Is it colour or black and white?

Is it bright or dim?

Is it moving or still (or a series of still photo’s)?

Is what you’re watching flat or 3d?

How big is the image your watching?

3. Once you have noted that, begin to play with what you have noticed – You become the director of the event and you can decide how you watch it. Feel the difference each change makes to the experience.

For example if you were sat close to the screen before what happens if you move the screen right to the horizon?

If you were watching something in colour before what happens if you use the control panel and drain the colour out so it’s black and white.

Bonus tip

4. As you notice which settings feel just right you may want to play with a combination of changes. You could also add a different soundtrack, or alter the speed or direction it’s being played at.

For example:

Option 1: A shrunken black and white image running backwards on the horizon with circus music in the background 

often feels very different to a 

Second option: A huge panoramic event with bright bold colours, a gospel choir and full orchestra playing as a soundtrack. 

Each representation can have its place, I invite you to play with what difference it makes for you. You can be the director of any movies or pictures playing in your own head.

Love 

Jen

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com