Mar 29

In my last articled titled Confidence Vs Experience I briefly touched on some aspects about confidence and I thought I would take that avenue and explore it further, to give you some methods of creating bags of confidence, that you can carry with you wherever you go and use for whatever you wish.

I’m not an expert in this area, but I do have some ideas on how I feel titanium like confidence can be forged so I will be putting these into practise for myself. I’ll be explaining some of the EDTA’s (Essential Daily Thoughts & Actions) that I will also be employing on a day to day basis to make me more confident in all area’s of my life. It’s important to remember that confidence and arrogance are two totally separate traits. They cannot be exhibited at the same time. Arrogance is not confidence and confidence is not arrogance.

So why does it seem like some people are born with confidence and others are as timid as kittens?

Let me use the example of a guy who I see as having all the confidence in the world when it comes to approaching women and talking to them. Lets call this person guy A. Then there’s the other type of guy who gets sweaty palms, they start stammering and totally turn the whole thing into a dogs dinner! We’ll call this guy B.

What is the difference between these two types of guys? Did A inherit his super confidence from his parents? Did he go on a course? Was he blessed with this talent from God? Was he born with it? Is it part of his genes? Did guy B miss out on the confidence gene? Was it because of a bad past experience? Was it because his parents were unconfident and he learned from them? I’m sure that all of these factors have had an impact although to a minisucle degree! But it’s very simple, it’s their psychology!! It’s what they’re thinking in the moments before they actually take action and approach the beautiful lady across the room that makes the difference between A and B going home with that girl or going home alone.

I guarantee that guy A tries and fails a hundred times more than guy B but the way that guy A and B interpret the information from those failures is completely different. Guy A will take that failure, figure out what worked and what didn’t work and use those learnings for the next time. Whereas guy B, the perfectionist who expects way too much of himself, wasn’t successful, feels that he is a failure in that area of life and decides that he’s no good at approaching women and decides feels that any future attempts will be futile.

Confidence is inner belief manifested through action. You may have already noticed that whatever you are thinking when undertaking any task it going to have a huge impact on the outcome of a task. For example: When I play badminton, I’ve often noticed that if I’m winning a game, I have trouble in converting those points into an actual win and closing out the match. Why? Because near the end of the game I start worrying about what mistakes I might make. It is me, thinking about all the mistakes I could possibly make and then doing exactly that.

Before I go any further, let me ask you, are you truly commited to changing your old ways and converting it into the confidence of a stallion? You must understand it takes work, it takes commitment but the changes and rewards will be well worth it if you choose to put in the time.

From here on out I’m assuming that you are 100% commited to being more confident and will follow these steps to go through the process of change

Step 1 - Be honest!

In my example earlier I talked about some of the challenges guys face when approaching women. That’s one of many examples but the principles to apply are exactly the same. So firstly what areas of your life would you like to gain greater confidence in? I’m going to be completely honest here and tell you my three….i always pretend to be more confident than I am but here are my three:

1) I want to be more confident in approaching women
2) I want to be more confident in my skills, more specifically, badminton, but in one or two additional areas
3) I want to be more confident in my skills and abilities to produce results as a Life Coach

So go on, what are your 3?

Step 2 - Notice the patterns

As with every shift in mindset you must first start to notice the patterns of your own thinking. Remember that your habitual way of thinking is unconsciously determining the outcome of many aspects of your life. Take one of your three above and look closely at the way you think. If you cannot see where your thinking is letting you down perhaps get a close friend to look at this with you. Write down the dialougue of your thought pattern. What words are you saying to yourself, what pictures are you seeing? What sounds are you hearing? What are you feeling? Take special care not to pollute this what you would like to have in your mind or be feeling. We’ll get to that part later, for now, as honestly as possible, make notes on those points.

Step 3 - Interrupt the patterns

Once you become aware of your patterns the next step becomes easy! Lets say for example, that you’re not very confident around other people and that you often put yourself down. You now have a much clearer understanding of what it is that’s causing your behaviour. You have it right in front of you the patterns of destruction that you’ve been doing so often that have led you to think that you’re not worthy or don’t have as much as everyone else to offer. Now that you know, it’s time to change it. As soon as you notice yourself doing it, you’re going to change it. You’re going to change it not by fighting it and trying to install a new pattern of thinking. You’re going to Interrupt it by thinking of something that makes you feel good. In my case, I’m going to think of the James Brown Song: “I Feel Good.” I’m litereally gonna sing that song in my head and imagine myself doing some James Brown style funky moves! I’m going to keep doing this enough until I’ve interrupted the old pattern enough that I just can do that pattern of thinking anymore, I automatically begin to think of James Brown instead.

Step 4 - Install the new pattern

This is where it can vary slightly from situation to situation but again the underlying principle is the same. Just a few minutes a day is all this takes and this step will transform your results for the rest of your life. Create some time to sit and visualise the perfect scenario. Wipe clean that slate of images of failure that you may have created in the past and start making the internal visual rehersals of the ideal outcome that you want for any given situation. Imagine yourself making all the right moves, say all the right things, have the perfect body language, oozing with confidence at every step. When you do this on a regular basis you’ll find you’ll automatically begin to do these things when the situation arises. These rehersals will automatically repattern you into doing the things that you feel represent the ideal outcomes and results for any given situation.

If in the past you used to create small faded images of having a drink thrown over you by a woman, then instead create large bright images of the woman being completely interested in what you’re saying and laughing at your jokes! Your imagination is the limit!

Step 5 - Do your homework!

Whatever area you want to boost your confidence in, do your homework! Research those who are the masters of their trade! If you want to become more funny and be more confident in telling your jokes, then study the master comedians and have some material always in your mind that you can draw from to make people laugh! :lol:

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I will be putting this actions into practise myself and so I will be working with you on this all the way. If you want any help with this, feel free to leave me a comment or just email me on amit@unlimitedchoice.org and I’ll assist you with in anyway that I can. ;)

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Mar 22

ConfidenceIn a world where experience is valued so highly and confidence is given a bit of a bad rap in comparison, I aim to examine this mindset and find the answer to the question about which is more valuabe to you. That’s not to say that either has more power than the other, but when you know where each comes from and the value that it has you can then utilise that to maximum effect. Anyone who’s ever been for a job interview for example, will know that you are a hundred times out of a hundred going to be asked the question: “What experience do you have?” While I personally do value experience highly, I believe it in many ways to be a lesser tool in creating the life you ideally want to choose.

Since I do Life Coaching, lets take this as an example. If you wanted to find a Life Coach that was perfectly suited to your needs, what would be the first thing you would search for in your Life Coach? What qualities would you search for? I’m guessing that you would probably scour the net and search for one with a great website that grabs your attention! Marketing aside, when actually making your final selection what would you be looking for? Experience? Qualifications? Confidence? Recommendations? Testimonials? What would be the deciding factor for you? When I picked my Life Coach, it had nothing to do with her experience, and everything to do with her confidence. We met completely by accident on the internet and she isn’t even a trained Life Coach by profession. But I saw straight away that she had amazing confidence and that grabbed me the most and I decided that I wanted her and no one else as my Life Coach.

How highly do you value your own experience in whatever it is that you do and do you feel that it’s been the most important factor in you getting to where you are, or are wanting to be? The danger with constantly looking at our own experience is that we can restrict or deny ourselves from persuing our dreams just because: “I don’t have enough experience!” I can’t think of a worse way to live life because if it wasn’t for my confidence and persuit of my dream 8 years ago, I would never have gotten my first I.T. Job for the one of the worlds largest investment banks with no qualifications, no degree and barely any experience!

Experience can often hold you back from doing the things you’re capable of doing just because someone has said to you: “you don’t have enough experience!” Anytime anyone has said those words to me I wanted to tell them where to go in the nicest spiritual way possible but in my head I always end up swearing however I won’t share that here as there maybe women and children present! :lol:

Yes, experience is extremely important, but where you lack experience, you must make up for it with confidence! Confidence will be the driving force that will make your dreams come true. So you might ask: “How do I gain confidence or How do I become confident at something I’ve never done or have no experience of?” Those are all good questions and there are several ways of building your confidence to a degree where your confidence will determine your moving forward, not your experience.

Before I move onto those it’s important for me to mention that whatever experience you do have, can be elicited for any other task you choose to apply it too. Your experience should never ever be discounted but it also should never be the deciding factor for you. If you truly want to do something, experience or not, your levels of self belief are priceless. I also want to make it clear that confidence and arrogance cannot occupy the same space or time! They are not the same thing, they’re not even similar or close! Someone with confidence would never be arrogant as arrogance stems from insecurity. It is a result of lack of self belief manifesting an attiude of: “I am better than you.” Someone with true confidence would never need to think that and in fact would use their confidence to assist others in building theirs.

Here are some ways of raising your confidence and self-belief so that you can utilise it in a variety of situations whether that be to do with career, relationships, business, sports, etc, these tools apply to all.

1) I’ve already mentioned before the principle of ghosting. Ghosting is a tool to physically and mentally practise your actions and steps without being in a live situation. In the example of sport, lets take the game of squash, you would be on a squash court, practise your strokes and moves with an imaginary opponent but in your mind you imgine that you’re in a real game! You can do the same for any situation. You can pretend you’re in an interview and are being asked questions and you give outstanding answers. You can practise your body language, gesticulation, any aspect of it you wish! If you’re a young guy like me and you want to practise asking a young lady on a date, ghost or rehearse it first. Do it in front of a mirror, check your stance, your posture, your demeanor, practise what you’re going to say, all of these methods will boost your confidence 100 fold!

2) In point 1 I briefly touched upon body language. I only touched upon it but it probably one of the biggest factors in devoloping your confidence to superhuman levels. Your body is your largest communication device. Every thing you do with your body sends out a message. For example, you’re listening to someone speak but you yawn or your eyes keep wandering or you keep looking at the time. What message does that send? You MUST learn to know what your body is communicating at any given moment! If you need to practise in front of a mirror, that’s perfectly alright. I’m sure in the privacy of your own home you will always have the opportunity to do that. The secret is, imagine yourself as confident in whatever you do, and as you look at yourself in the mirror, see clearly how your body is behaving. Observe what confidence looks like. Find a role model who exudes confidence and mimmick their body! I say it again! YOUR BODY IS YOUR BIGGEST COMMUNICATION DEVICE! Learn how it talks and you will truly find your confidence levels soaring through this one step alone!

3) The third and final tool for enhancing your confidence is literally, get good at things! If you’re good at nothing, try taking up something new, maybe a sudoku puzzle, chess, a sport, running. What are you good at? Write a list of the things you’re very good at and think about how you became good at it and how you exhibit your confidence while you’re doing it! Maybe you’re great at computer games! Maybe you’re great at public speaking! If anyone says to me that they’re not good at anything, I would turn around and say: “Thats not true, you’re a great liar as everyone is good at something!!” :P You have a talent, bring it to the surface and ask yourself what it is that gives you that talent and how does your confidence show?

There we have it. Your confidence is probably the biggest gun in your arsenal, it supersedes your experience because it will be the thing that puts all your experience in combined form to good use and help you to make your dreams come true!

Be confident! :)

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Mar 15

InfluenceNot everyone would agree that we are under the influence of some force or another pretty much 24 hours a day. Whether the influencing force be television, radio, newspapers, books, sounds, other people, etc, our 5 senses are taking in so much information that it is no wonder that there is so much confusion in the world today. In NLP it is said that we take in 2million bits of information every second but we filter that down to approximately 134 bits.

In this article, it is not my intention to blame all these forces, and neither should you, but when you begin to realise how much certain things do influence us, then you more consciously and proactively begin to choose your biggest spheres of influence.

On Tuesday morning, I went out for my morning walk as usual and for some strange reason I had severe trouble focussing my thoughts. “The Force” was not strong within me that day! :P I had read a particular article which was not a very nice article and was very critical of a particular belief system. Normally these things don’t get to me but for some reason this particular article did. While I was walking my thoughts were racing everywhere! I was angry, I wanted retribution, and lets just say that totally destroyed the purpose of my morning walk. By the time I got back I was totally drained which is in contrast to how I usually feel because quite simply being focussed on something so negative totally drained me. Then, I got even more frustrated and angry with myself because I’d wasted those 45 minutes in a non productive way…what a vicious cycle to fall into! :lol:

Because I found it quite difficult to shift my attention to anything else I decided that before I got ready for work I was going to read something positive. (It was without the intention to shift my focus, but when I realised how much it did, it only strenghtened my belief in this subject even more so!)

I ended up reading this article that totally changed my mindset for the entire day!! The wierd thing was, that the article was something that I wasn’t in total agreement with, but it got me buzzing with some new thoughts and ideas and suddenly, without even realising it, I’d totally forgotten about the other article and all I could think about was what I had just read. My whole body changed. I literally felt totally energised in a big way compared to how I was feeling 20 minutes earlier. While I was in the shower I came up with so many new ideas about the Universe, energy, and choice that I was almost ready to jump out in the middle and go write some of those ideas down.

What became more apparent to me than anything else was the contrasting effects that both those articles had on me. I knew that these things do influence us but I never realise that it was to this degree and intensity! I know that we are all unique and get influenced to varying degrees, but just imagine, if it had this level of impact on me, just these two articles, then how much do we get influenced all the tabloid media? How much do we get influenced by the the violence on T.V.? How much do we get influenced by glossy images in magazines? It may not be on a conscious level, but subconsciously, to what level are we being affected?

This is why it’s important to frame your mind with things that are empowering and uplifiting! Not just through reading or listening to positive material. But also through time spent with oneself in solitude to build that resistence to all the crap that get thrust upon us all time! All the negative rubbish that’s out there is almost like a disease but there’s no one particular vaccine that can prevent you from catching the disease but what you can do is strengthen your immunse system.

Takes your jabs regularly! :P

Related articles:

What is your biggest sphere of influence?

The Secret DVD

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Mar 10

The SecretHi All,

Just yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from a friend, out of the blue, who works for BBC radio. He called an asked if I would like to be on the radio to talk about The Secret as a proponent in light of the recent articles on the Newsweek website. He informed that I would be debating with someone who was not a fan of the teachings of The Secret. I was up for the challenge and I had no idea what to expect. In fact I completely forgot to ask him when it was likely to take place. My initial thought was that it may be a proper debate, an hour long or so, in the studio with a proper discussion on it.

After having a late night last night, I was still in bed at 8am this morning when my phone rang. It was the radio station informing me that they wanted me live on air within 10 minutes! My first thought was: “Oh dear God no, I’ve just woken up, I had a blocked nose and a sore throat, why today of all days?” But, I agreed and tryed to slap myself a few times to wake up! :P I got myself as awake and fresh as I could but my I so focused on trying to feel better that I completely forgot to prep myself on what I was going to say. So I had absolutely no preparation time whatsoever but I accepted the challenge of the curve ball just thrown at me by the Universe.

The phone rang again and it was about 6 minutes after the first phone call. I was still a little dazed but I’ve always had an incredible knack of being alert instantaneously out of sleep if my phone rang so I was as ready as I could’ve been!

The conversation was between myself and a psycologist by the name of Caroline. Unfortunately, my memory has never been too great at even the best of times but at some point I will try and obtain either a recording or transcript of the session rather than try and recall what was said but all in all I feel that it went as well as it could’ve with such short notice.

After seeing The Secret last April it had always been one of my intentions to be some sort of spokesperson for it in some capacity within the U.K. and I guess in many ways the intention came to fruition. However, I don’t want it to end there, my intention goes much greater still but I do see this as a stepping stone to become a kind of U.K. representitive of The Secret.

If you have yet to see The Secret, you can purchase it by clicking the link below and try for yourself on what The Secret can do for you. :) Let the results do the talking.

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UPDATE: You can download the clip here or alternately I can email it to you if you wish. :)
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The Secret DVD

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Mar 8

VisualiseOne of the things I’ve been taught, when it comes to sports, is to practise the art of ghosting. What is ghosting? Ghosting is where you practise the game or movements by yourself whilst imagining yourself to be in the live situation. So, if for example, you’re a squash player, you may book a squash court on your own and pretend to have a game. During that time, you’ll focus on your fitness, movement around the court, your pretend strokes of the ball, but your mindset must be that you’re actually playing a real match. In your mind you visualising the perfect shot and footwork every time, you’re pretending that your opponent is superior to you and yet you’re finding the perfect strokes and match play to equal their game.

In many ways it’s synonymous to shadow boxing, you as the boxer may not have an opponent but you pretend you have one and sparr just the same. It’s like you’re sparring against an imaginary opponent, you imagine the moves that your opponent would make. You visualise all the possible moves your phantom adversary would make, anticipate the moves and react accordingly. You train your muscles to react without the conscious mind taking up valuable proccessing time.

I do the same in badminton. When I’m waiting for a game to finish or waiting for a court to become available, I’ll use that time to ghost to train my muscles to move and react in the way that I choose. It’s always the shots that I consciously think about which are the ones that I get wrong. So if you can train your unconscious to do all the hard work, there is nothing left for your conscious mind to do. In badminton the shutttle can travel at speeds of up to 200MPH. In a fast paced game, if the opponent is attacking, you rarely have more than a quarter of a second to react to the oncoming shuttle, it’s all the work of the unconscious mind.

But ghosting doesn’t just apply to sports, you can apply to the same technique to whatever aspect of your life you choose. It’s not always practical, in all cases, to do ghosting with the physical movements. But you can ghost in your mind through visualising. I remember when I was at the Tony Robbins UPW seminar back in September. The first night, the Friday, was the day that we would be doing the firewalk. I was so nervous because I had bruised my foot quite badly the night before and could barely walk. But two hours prior to us doing the firewalk Tony began to train us on the mental preparation before walking across the glowing red hot coals. Instead of feeling the fear of being burnt, or falling, or doing something stupid in front of thousands of people (which is what most people were probably imagining at that point), he showed us that we could construct, in our minds, exactly how we wanted the walk to go. We created funny animations of the walk in our minds. We played it backwards, forwards, from different angles, with cartoon like actions, but we solely focused on the success, not the failure. The more whacky and vivid you ghost, the more successful you will be.

You can do the same too! Whether you have a big presenation to get ready for at work, a huge sporting event, or you’re just getting ready to tell someone how you feel. ;) Ghost the scenary in your mind. A while back I wrote an article called P.I.C.’s. Create some super P.I.C.’s in your mind and visulise that ultimate success coming through every action that you take!

No scary failure ghosties, only the kind succesful helpful ones please! :-)

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Mar 5

Hey Everyone! I know my blogging has been very slow as of late so I just wanted to share a few stories of the last couple of weeks.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent the previous weekend in Latvia with for a stag weekend. When we landed it was minus 22 degrees C. Needless to say, it was rather chilly! :P Upon arrival myself and the guys went paint balling where we had an fantastic time in temperatures of minus 15 degrees C and in about 10 inches of snow! Anyone who’s been paint balling knows that even in normal temperatures, being hit by a paint ball can be extremely painful, but when you get hit in those sorts of temperatures, the pain is excruciating!! 8O Luckily, I didn’t get hit too much but where I did get hit, I’ll have scars for many weeks to come, and sitting down is still painful! :lol:

This weekend just gone, I had the wonderful privilege of attending the Christopher Howard Break Through to Success seminar in the Excel center in the east of London. It began on the Friday at 9am and for the 3 days until Sunday at 6pm. I have to say that is Chris is a huge inspiration to me, I’ve loved his work for ages and it was definitely a pleasure to see him live. If you’ve never heard of him or seen him, he should be back in London later in the year you can obtain free tickets for the event. I made some wonderful friends over the weekend and because I decided to put my hand up for one of the segments it meant that I personally got some help from Chris in the area of my career and business, in doing so, I also had many offers of help from many people from audience later on too. It just showed me that sometimes unless you raise your hand and ask, you don’t always get.

On Sunday, this physical body turned 30 years old. On Saturday evening I was thrown a surprise party by my amazing friends and the surprise was kept so well, that when I saw some of friends at the restaurant, my initial thought was; “What a coincidence!” It was only when they shouted surprise that I realised it was a surprise birthday! :lol: We had an amazing time and one of my pressies was a turtle teddy which I will cherish for ever! (I love turtles by the way!) I was also splattered with cake in the face but funnily enough I found the cream on the cake to be very moisturising for my face! :P

I’ve had an amazing couple of weeks but now its back to the pleasure of bestowing my pearls of wisdom on a regular basis. :D

It’s on that note that I would like to say that it’s important to make sure that you notice the glorious moments of providence as they unfold in your life on a day to day basis. They are subtle things that will occur for you on a day to day basis, things you may see as coincidence, fate or destiny, but I like to think of those events as an emergence of the power of the human spirit at it’s best. The power of intention, the power of choice, the power of our desires manifesting and creating lasting ripples within our lives to jetison us towards our ultimate outcomes. These things are happening all the time and all we have to do is appreciate and acknowledge them when they occur.

Have a beautiful day.

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