subject: Keep Control Of Your Own Power [print this page] One of the main ways that you can build and develop your own self confidence and esteem is by making sure that you own the power in your life.
When I was a young single guy I had a group of friends that I used to go to parties and clubs with. Most of us used to go home alone but one guy always seemed to manage to leave with a girl..
It wasn't that he was the best looking guy in the place, or even of our group of friends. he wasn't a particularly good dancer, he wasn't rich and famous, he wasn't even the best talker in the group. It wasn't like he had a Mercedes outside.
None of us could work out how he managed it.
I can look back now, review what he did and how he behaved, and it's not such a secret anymore, in fact it's pretty obvious. While most of us would spend time building up our nerve to 'chat up' one girl, or maybe two, he would just keep on asking until one of them said yes.
A lot of us would get a polite "thanks, but no" or maybe even a not so polite "get lost". After a couple of those we would normally end up back at the bar drowning our feelings of rejection..
The thing with Mark was, if one girl said no he just moved on and asked another. It was as if he didn't care about being rejected.
With the benefit of hindsight, plus the experience and training of the years in between,. His secret wasn't that he didn't care about being rejected, it was that he didn't view a girl saying no as being a rejection.
If you're thinking this is just a story about how to 'pick up' girls (or guys) then you're wrong.
It's about self confidence
How do you measure your success in life?
How do you know you are happy?
What has to happen for you to feel loved?
How do you know that you are empowered?
Everyone has different ways to decide how they feel about everything in their lives. But here is the main thing I have observed when working with the most successful people I know.
They don't rely on other peoples reactions, feedback or advice to decide how they feel.
I'd like you to imagine that you are holding a big glowing ball of energy and power. This is the power to feel good. The power to feel happy. The power to feel successful.
To illustrate, have a go at answering the following questions.
"How do I know when I am successful?"
"How do I know when I am loved?"
"How do I know when I am significant?"
"How do I know when I am doing a good job?"
Go on it's a good idea to actually write your answers down so why not get a piece of paper and a pen.
Now back to that ball of power.
Look at your answers.
How many of your answers refer to someone else telling you something or doing something? or doing something? or behaving in a certain way? or not doing something? or not saying something? or not behaving in a certain way?
If you allow another persons reactions to an event to control how you feel, who has the power in your life? If you do this a lot, or even all of the time, how much of your life is n the control of other people?. That's surrendering that ball of power.
Now imagine that only your opinion really matters. The most important person to get feedback from is you. You don;t really need it from anyone else.
If you want to feel happy then you can decide what has to happen for you to feel happy. the same applies for anything else, like feeling loved, or successful.
That glowing ball of power is firmly back in your control, and that's the safest place for it. After all who has a better motivation to protect it than you?
If you can start to look within yourself for the validations for how you feel then you can start to set the rules that make it easy, really easy, to feel good about yourself, and to remove the fear of failure and rejection that is one of the key reasons for low self confidence. When they start to create new internal validations, and start to get rid of the old external ones, my clients report that they can actually feel their confidence building.
