By Alan B. Densky, CH
In the last Chapter we decided that self-confidence is an attitude that is learned through experiences. When you experience success, you will tend to expect to be successful. And that expectation will cause you to have a feeling of confidence.
We also discussed how a trainer can help to build his Fighter’s self-confidence.Similarly, a young lady who is afraid of heights wants to learn to dive into a swimming pool from a high diving board. So she finds a diving coach who asks her to jump into the pool from the first step of the ladder up to the high board. The first step of the ladder isn’t very high, so the young lady feels no fear, and she jumps from that step, and lands in the water unharmed.
Next, the coach has her jump from the second step of the ladder, and so forth. I think that you are beginning to get the picture. With each additional step up the ladder, since the girl was successful on the previous step, and this next step is only slightly higher then the last, the fear factor is negligible, and the girl expects to be successful. When she jumps in and lands unharmed, the girl’s confidence grows, and her expectation of success on the next step up the ladder increases.
If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out.
Conversely, when a person who is weak in the self-confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Having true self-confidence doesn’t mean that you will be able to do everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are realistic. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.
People, who are not self-confident, tend to depend excessively on the approval of others in order to feel good about themselves. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They often put themselves down and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.
Does any of this sound like you?
But let me digress for a moment. Do you remember the Rubik’s Cube that we all had when we were kids? It’s a block that has a lot of little different colored cubes built into it. And you can twist and turn each cube so that each side of the block is either one solid color, or it looks like a checker board of different colors.
First you would twist the cubes so that each side of the block looked like a checker board of different colors. The challenge of the puzzle is to try to twist it all back so that each side of the block is one solid color again.
Do you remember how hard it was for you to solve the puzzle of the Rubik’s Cube? It seemed to be impossible. And yet, there are competitions, and some kids can solve the puzzle in a few seconds.
However, now here is the amazing thing, kids can solve these puzzles, but adults find it almost impossible. Now why do you think that is?
I think that it’s because kids don’t know that it’s impossible to solve the puzzle, so they can solve it. Maybe they don’t know it’s impossible because they haven’t had enough time in their short life to experience much failure. But by the time you are an adult, you have experienced failure at various complex puzzles many times, and so your EXPECTATIONS are very different from those of a child.
And since you get what you EXPECT . . .
MENTAL EXERCISE – CREATING EXPECTATIONS
Do you want to learn how to start expecting what you want so that you can actually get it? Then you will want to go back to the first newsletter that I sent you a few days ago and practice the mental exercise that I gave you. But this time, you will need make a slight addition to the exercise.
After you have watched the movie of yourself behaving and feeling like you have self-confidence, rewind the move and get inside of it so that the camera is inside of your head, and your eyes are the lenses of the camera. In other words, see what you would see, from the same perspective as actually being there. And you will want to hear what you would hear, and feel what you would feel if you were actually living inside of that movie.
Imagine how much better your life would be if you could feel confident. You could get the girl, or the guy, and have the house with the white picket fence. Or how great would you feel if you were able to get a better job, or start a business of your own? Picture what your life will be like when you feel completely confident.
One of the members of the gym that I belong to is always kidding around with me. He always asks me if he can hire me to do his workouts for him. And that gave me an idea. What if you could buy Self-Confidence? Would you? Because actually you can!
If you really want to change your life quickly and easily and get the girl, or the financial success, or the early retirement, then you’ll want to go online and order a copy of “Self-Confidence!” right now.
Well, that’s it for this installment. I’ll be writing again next Friday.
In the next chapter we’ll discuss more aspects of self-confidence, and how you can go about gaining a mountain of self-confidence.
