One of the greatest obstacles in the way of self confidence and a successful life style is fear. Take the letters from the word fear and you have the acronym False Evidence Appearing Real. We fear things because we do not have the self confidence to believe we can achieve. Somewhere in our lives, something has gone wrong and further evidence supports the notion that we cannot possibly achieve a certain goal.
Fear is a terrific blinker, obscuring our view to the truth and the light that can shine on the path to success. Fear can fill our lives with darkness.
What type of things do we fear?
We fear rejection. We fear that somebody may actually say no.
We fear looking foolish. We fear taking on a project in case we fail and all our peers say "we knew that wouldn't work".
We fear the unknown. We won't take risks or step outside our comfort zone for fear of failing and where finance is involved, we fear the consequences of losing vast sums of money and the subsequence pressure that puts us under.
Let's look at each issue separately.
- The fear of rejection.
Rejection is a state of mind. In the wrong state of mind it can severely hamper self confidence and self esteem. But it is a state of mind that can be altered and is necessary if you seriously want to improve your self confidence and achieve success. If you are after that perfect relationship or achieving your sales target, you have to accept that what you have to offer is not right for everybody. You will probably have a great many people saying "no thank you" (you're obviously approaching all the polite people), but what you have to offer is right for a few out there. Keep persevering and eventually somebody will say "yes". Consider this a sorting out process, finding the people who say "no" and the people who say "yes". You are only interested in those that say "yes" and the sooner you sift through the "no" category the sooner you will find the interested ones. Don't think that you have to turn a "no" into a "yes", just concentrate on the "yes" people. By developing the mindset that the answer "no" is actually a positive thing will do wonders for your self confidence.
Do you understand this, "yes" or "No" ?
- We fear looking foolish
By worrying about how other people see us is putting other peoples thought before are own. This shows a lack of self confidence and belief in ourselves, thinking that other people know better. Do successful people concern themselves with how they may appear if they fail? Of course not; their overriding priority is to see a project through to a successful conclusion and stop at nothing until they succeed.
Just think how we will look when we do achieve success. And even then there will probably be somebody who will knock our achievements. We will never satisfy all our peers so why even bother trying?
We must have the self confidence to go for what we want, because despite worrying about how other people may view us they are probably not that concerned about how we see them.
- A fear of the unknown.
So many times we have probably shied away from taking on a project or a task that we don't know exactly how to complete. We may lack the self confidence to see it through to the end. It may be that we are reluctant to invest money into the project for fear of losing that money and then not having enough for a rainy day. It seems that at this point we are concentrating on the lack of something rather than the abundance that we can have when things go right. We must concern ourselves with what we want rather than what we don't want and then achievement will surely follow.
We need the self confidence in ourselves to believe that our project will be successful. Yes, it is important to try and think of the obstacles that may occur along the way, but it is impossible to visualise them all; something will crop up along the way that we didn't account for. We then need the belief that we will overcome it and determinedly progress towards our goal.
Stepping into the dark provides so many people with fear. One of the most inspirational songs to me is Gerry and the Pacemakers "You'll Never Walk Alone".
Not because I am an ardent football fan and this is the "football anthem". The words just have so much meaning. As I don't want to break any copyright laws I won't quote the lyrics verbatim, but the fact that we shouldn't be afraid of the dark, a promise of golden skies at the end of a storm and to walk on with hope in your heart gives me a tremendous lift whenever I hear these words. I strongly recommend listening to this song again and really hear the words.
Self confidence can really be destroyed by fear if we let it. A concentration on our dreams and what we truly desire will overcome our fears. Have that self confidence and belief that we can walk through the dark and eventual experience the golden skies.
Terry Norrington
www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/index#terryn1
http://terryn.simpleonlinesystem.com
www.getselfconfident.com
