How to feel more confident

Confidence is a bit like air.

When you have it you tend not to think about it, when you don’t it can feel awful.

Social anxiety, performance anxiety and generalised anxiety can all be debilitating, reducing sufferers to people afraid to leave their own homes and with serious esteem issues.

The good news is that it can be overcome.

It takes work, and it’s not always easy, but you can do it.

My advice would be to get professional help – counsellors and therapists can work wonders in this area.

If you’re not ready to take that step, or think you can manage it yourself there are some things that you can do to move forward.

How to feel more confident.

1. Challenge your beliefs.

If you you believe that everyone at the party will hate you – challenge that.

Firstly, it’s very likely that most people at the party will barely notice you. Most of the time we are so wrapped up in our own thoughts and lives that we barely notice what anyone else is doing, wearing or thinking.

Secondly, it’s very unlikely that EVERYONE will have a bad opinion of you, whatever you do. Even serial killers get fan mail. Surely you’re not that bad!

Thirdly, I doubt very much anyone will HATE you. Hating takes a lot of energy. Think about it – do you HATE anyone? If so, were they someone you randomly met at a party?

2. Ask yourself – so what?

If you believe that you will not be very good at something, ask yourself, so what?

What if you’re not very good at it? What will it matter?

Maybe people won’t clap – so what? What if they don’t? Will you die? Will anyone else die? Will it cause you pain?

Maybe they won’t / will laugh (depending on whether or not you’re trying to be funny) – so what?

Maybe they won’t book you to do another gig?

Maybe people will talk about you for a bit?

So what? It really doesn’t matter.

3. Remind yourself that it’s OK not to be perfect.

Nobody is perfect. Let me say that again – Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes, we all get awkward sometimes, we all drop things, we all get nervous, we all say the wrong things sometimes – and that’s OK.

You are not perfect, and that’s OK.

4. The chances are that the person you are standing next to is feeling anxious too.

Have you ever been in a room, where nobody is talking and you are waiting for someone to make the first move and say something. Guess what, everyone else is waiting for the same thing.

Take the bull by the horns and say something. The relief on the other persons face will let you know that they were feeling the same way and that you have just shown yourself to be the most confident one there!

Check you out!

5. Work out whether you are feeling excited or nervous.

Sometimes when we are waiting for something we start to feel physically different. Maybe our heart starts beating a bit faster, our breathing becomes a bit more rapid, our palms may get a bit sweaty and our mouth goes dry…Am I describing feeling nervous or excited? They’re both pretty much the same, so how do you know you’re not just feeling excited?

Whether you decide to take these steps yourself or get someone to help you to feel more confident, I wish you and yours a happy, confident, fulfilling party season and a fantastic new year.

Go get ’em tiger!

24 Hours in a day

There are 24 hours in each and every day. Sometimes we could do with more, sometimes less.

I often hear people saying – Oh, I’d love to do ………….. but I just don’t have the time.

I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it.

If you really want something to happen, you make it happen – you prioritise it and you give it the energy it needs.

If you don’t want to do something, you make excuses. You may even believe them, but try to be honest with yourself and admit that they are just excuses – not real justifications.

Sometimes you do want something to happen, but you don’t want to make the effort to make it happen.

This is when your desire to stay the same is more than the desire to change.

If you want to lose weight you have to change your eating and exercise patterns.

If you want to get fit, you need to change what you do in your free time.

If you want to have better friendships you need to spend more time and energy being with your friends.

If you want to be a better cook you have to practice cooking food.

New year is only just over a month away. Did you make any new years resolutions this year? How have they gone?

There is still time to make them happen, or at least get started on them, so what are you waiting for?

Tomorrow is a new day, a new chance and it has 24 hours for you to make it happen.

Becoming Smoke Free

You might think that saying ‘becoming Smoke Free’ is a strange way of saying quitting smoking, but in my world, words are important.

I’m a hypnotist and this is a popular time of year for people to come and see me about getting out of addictive behaviours and bad patterns – the will power is starting to wear thin, the new years resolutions are looking impossible and they are looking for a boost to help them to the ‘New Them’ they promised themselves on the First of January.

So why ‘Smoke Free’ instead of ‘Quitting Smoking’ or ‘Stopping Smoking’.

Well, the answer lies in the way we communicate with our subconscious mind.

Firstly let me explain a little about your subconscious.

Some people are sceptical about it’s existence. If you are one of them, ask yourself when you last thought about your hormone levels, about how fast your heart should be beating, about your oxygen saturation in your blood. Your subconscious (literally part of consciousness that is not currently in focal awareness) is always going about these and many other tasks that you never give a seconds conscious thought to.

Next I want you to think about a time when you’ve tried to change a habit or a thought process – for example trying to eat healthily. Your conscious mind knows that it a good decision to eat better, avoid junk food, drink more water. Your subconscious may not be on the same page and it wants sugar, fat, salt and lots of it, so whilst you ‘know’ that you shouldn’t eat the cake, part of your mind is arguing with you that it would be ‘Oh so nice to just have a little treat’. That internal argument is where the hypnotist comes in. Our job is to get your subconscious on the same page, to think the same way as your rational conscious mind.

Now there are some tricks to communicating with your subconscious.

To start with it really helps if you are hypnotised.

Then it’s about using the right language. Your subconscious works best when it communicates with images, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations and emotions.

Try to make your mouth water – go on give it a go.

If you just think about your mouth watering, there is very little chance anything will happen.

However, imagine with all the clarity you can that you have in front of you a big juicy lemon, and you cut that lemon into wedges. Smell the zesty citrus aroma. Imagine picking up one of those wedges, feeling the waxy yellow skin on you finger tips, seeing a drop of juice form on the edge. Think about what it would taste like if you put that into your mouth and bit into it.

Is you mouth watering now?

So comes to mind when you think about the word FREE?

Hopefully lots of positive images.

How about when you think of the word STOP or QUIT?

Maybe they’re not so good.

Another thing about our subconscious mind is that it’s not very good at following negative instructions, ones like stop, quit or don’t. For example what do you think of when I tell you ‘Don’t think about Pink Elephants’?

Hmmm

So that’s why when people come to me I don’t get them to Quit Smoking – I help them become Smoke Free Forever!

Talk Therapies is based in Coventry, England.

If you would like to become Smoke Free and would like a one to one appointment feel free to call me on 07429 749936 or check out the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TalkTherapies

Out with the Old and In with the New

So it’s that time of year again.

The time for New Years resolutions.

Also known as the ‘to do’ list for the first week of January.

The time of year when we decide to actually do all the stuff we said we would do last year but didn’t.

 

So what’s going to be different this year?

It has been said that the definition of insanity is to do the the same thing yet expect a different result, so what are you going to do differently?

 

Don’t just think of the end goals you want to achieve – think about the steps that will get you there. Imagine where you want to be in a years time? Put yourself in that situation as realistically as you can. How do you look? What can you see around you? What are the sights, sounds and smells that you notice? Now imagine a line from that future you to where you are now. Along that line there are significant points – mini goals. What actions have you done in order to achieve these mini goals? Can you see yourself doing them? If so then what you want is achievable – If you believe it, then you can achieve it. If you can’t, maybe the goal you are setting yourself isn’t realistic at the moment.

 

There are many professionals out there who can help you achieve the goals you have in mind – Life coaches, fitness instructors, diet group leaders, therapists (and my own particular favourite Hypnotherapists ) but remember you are the one who will have to do things differently. Change only happens when our desire to change is greater than our desire to keep doing the things we are doing now.

 

So think differently,

Get help,

Achieve your goals in 2014

and Have a Great New Year