We all want to improve our performance, whether it be at work, on the football pitch, or around the house. With the help of Andy Austin, an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) expert, this article will help you to use NLP to change the way you think about yourself and how you perform in certain situations, then give you some practical steps to help you become the very best you can.
- Make use of the circle of excellence. Imagine an invisible circle on the floor. In your imagination, make it about 3 feet in diameter and 2 feet in front of you, something large enough to walk into. You can draw chalk on the floor, or draw a circle on paper if you like when you are first training to master this mental technique.
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Visualize. Go inside the circle and imagine that you are wonderful at what you want to be doing. For example, if you are a golfer and want to have a perfect put, imagine yourself as that person. See yourself doing that. How would you stand? How do you look? What do you wear? Flood your body with the good feelings of your confident performance. Imagine yourself carrying out this task and watch yourself doing it as if you are watching yourself in a film.
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Wear somebody else’s shoes for a moment. In your mind, you can use visualization to step-into-the-shoes-of role of someone you admire to get into that state you want. Imagine Tiger Woods, for example, and build a representation in your mind of that person who can do what you want to do well.
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4Be aware that your brain cannot tell the difference between a real history and an imagined history or the history of others. All you have to do is emotionally capture that feeling of excellence using whatever role models or scenario playing that works for you. Go ahead, no one will know
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5Capture the moment. Step automatically into the powerful state you’ve created within the circle. Move into that circle of excellence. Step into the picture of yourself, imagine it’s as if you step into that person, that set of states, the whole of that experience
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Anchor this as a resource state so that you can bring it up at any time you require it. In other words, figure out how to draw upon this state at will by practicing it, and then associating some mental or physical link or cue with it to bring it back when needed. That might be tapping your fingers, holding your arms in a certain way, or whatever physical link you can easily and accurately repeat. Repeat with more experiences to enhance the power of the circle of excellence. Use this method whenever you feel you need to boost your performance.
Tips
NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming.
The most attractive attribute in a person is confidence. Even if you are not confident in yourself you can trick people into thinking that you are.
- Ask questions of any kind. Sometimes asking silly questions is the best way to boost confidence, and people greatly admire those who show no fear of being judged. You have nothing to prove to anyone; be silly, be spontaneous, have fun conversations. These are really good ways to prove to others that you are confident.
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Hold your head up high. Have tall, straight posture.
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Make eye contact. Don’t look down or from side to side.
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When shaking hands, have a firm grip, but not too firm!
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Speak loudly and clearly. Think before you speak so you have a clear idea of what to say. If you tend to jumble words in an attempt to rush through what you’re saying, slow down.
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Smile. Always show your pearly whites.
If you look like this (yes, it’s silly, but you get the idea), then people have no choice but to believe in you, because they know that you believe in yourself!
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Laugh. Make it look like you are always having fun. Laugh at your mistakes; you’ll seem more happy.
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Keep busy. Don’t just stand around. Meet new people. Share a funny joke, join clubs, do social things.
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Take compliments gracefully by always smiling and saying a simple “thank you.” If someone pays you a compliment, do not respond by putting yourself down. If possible, compliment the other person in your response (for instance, by saying something like “Oh, how sweet of you to notice” or “Oh, that’s nice of you to say that.”)
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Be honest. People like you more if they feel they’re able to trust you and you are able to trust yourself. If you make a mistake, make a full apology, without excuses.
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Appreciate yourself for who you are. Acting in a confident manner will make you appear to be more confident, but it’s also important to find value in yourself as an individual. This will give you real confidence. You are someone special, you have a beautiful smile, and you’re good at lots of things! Make a list of these things for yourself, and remind yourself often of your great qualities.
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Make sure you are not nervous when doing anything whether it will be singing, dancing, or taking the driving test, nervousness can ruin everything for you. if you are singing, you will sound awful, same thing with dancing and driving.
- Exercise: Working out will give you more confidence get your body looking good and you feeling good as well.
Tips:
- Don’t try to impress people. The best advice anyone can ever give you is to live your own life. The harder you try to impress people, the more unimpressed they’ll become. Nobody admires the kiss-up. Just go about your business and your social life will fall into place.
- Remember, even if you do not feel confident, no one else knows it. Fake it until you make it. Pretend to be confident and eventually you will become confident.
- Remember to always look your best and feel good. Taking good care of yourself is important to your well-being. Your hygiene, attire, and attitude are very important parts of who you are, and you should keep these things healthy. By taking care of yourself, these actions will tell your mind that you are special and valuable, and this, in turn, will truly make you confident in yourself.
- Act like you don’t care what other people think, even if you do. Acting like yourself will lead to full confidence.
- Remember that your honest concern, your innate convictions and the fountain of vitality within you always reach and enter the hearts of people. It is because of your own attachment to pettiness and superficial glamour and glitter that you underestimate yourself. So be sure that if you do soul-searching and act accordingly, people will surely think that you are confident. [Cf: Smiling Sun: Dr. Shriniwas Kashalikar]
- Sometimes when you act confident, people get jealous and try to do what you do. Take this as a tip that what you are doing is working.
- Put your self out there. Join as many after-school activites, including sports that are to your interest. This can show that you’re not a loner, and that your confident enough to work with other people.
- There are many articles about improving confidence, and following pieces of each one will lead to confusion and disappointment. Set goals. Look up “The Strangest Secret” on Youtube and set goals you believe in. It will bring you more confidence than you can find by following an article. You will know you are unique because you are working towards a goal you desire, and you will find that other people’s opinions don’t matter. In addition you will have a better guide for making every day decisions, which means more assurance. :)
Warnings
- Do not be too loud, obnoxious or demanding. That is a turn-off for many people.
- Don’t cling to people and make them do all the leg work in a conversation. This will make them feel like you’re dispensable.
- Do not try arbitrarily to “make others think” that you are “confident”. That will make people think, feel, and confirm that you are ridiculous rather than confident.
- Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not good enough, because they’re not any better.
- Don’t overdo the smiling. Some people say you have to smile all the time, but that can come off as kind of creepy. Just do what comes naturally and smile at appropriate times.
- Don’t be discouraged if you can’t follow certain steps such as step #2 for instance. You don’t have to have perfect posture to be respected.
You might have already read and learned how to be confident, but what if you still don’t feel all that confident? Sometimes it takes your emotions a little bit of time to catch up with your thoughts, but here’s how to help the process along.
Emotions are involuntary. Hence feeling diffident is autonomic activity. But it can be overcome by certain steps. This article will tell you how to become more confident in yourself.
- Take a public speaking course. You might dread getting up in front of people, but there’s no better way to jump start your confidence than by assuring yourself that you’ve got something to say, and people are listening.
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Change up your look. Whether you’re male or female, getting a new outfit and haircut can make you feel fresh, cool and confident.
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Pretend that you are already confident. If you’ve ever wanted to be an actor, use that motivation now. You may know you’re capable and competent, yet you may feel rather insecure, but by pretending that you’re already confident, you might be able to convince yourself. Ask yourself, what would my confident alter ego do? How would they walk? How would they speak? Practice!
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Find some affirmations that will help you and repeat them often to yourself.
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Affirmations are very powerful and need to be spoken as though they have already happened. Say to yourself, “I am a very confident person, I can do anything if I put my mind to it.”
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Visualize yourself being congratulated on something you dream to achieve. Imagine the person shaking your hand and saying, “Well done.” Hold a picture of you being successful, and chances are, it’ll eventually become a reality.
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Every evening just before you go to bed, think to yourself at least ten times, “I am a confident person.” This leaves a positive frame of mind inside of you and will make you feel more confident the next day.
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Do something which you are afraid to do such as driving a car, speaking to public etc.. As Vincent Van Gogh had said “If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
Tips
- Smile and relax; there’s nothing that needs to be worried about.
- Don’t feel that your audience is expecting a lot from you.
- Assume yourself equal to everyone in the audience.
- Volunteer important works in your organization, this is how you can earn people’s respect and become more confident.
- ALWAYS be honest and believe in yourself. If you don’t no one else will.
- Don’t underestimate yourself just because you’re younger or smaller.
- If anybody puts you down or makes fun of you, think it through and how silly the comment is. Make it feel like it’s a joke and you won’t take the comment seriously.
- Not feeling confident is sometimes associated with a petty intellectual paradigm that stimulates our autonomic nervous activity which in turn affects our feelings of self-worth. This paradigm can be overcome and you can blossom from within by studying and re-evaluating yourself. [Cf: Smiling Sun: Dr. Shriniwas Kashalikar]
Warnings
- It is not correct to get obsessed and depressed by “Not feeling confident”. Anyone can gain confidence.
- Blind belief and fanatic disposition can make one feel confident. But that can be disasterous.
- Hence rather than making frantic efforts to “somehow feel confident” explore and care for your true self. Your true self is noble and dignified. Exploring and caring for your true self will ensure revitalization and the natural and full fledged emergence of feeling of confidence [Cf: Stress: Understanding and Management: Dr. Shriniwas Kashalikar]
- Don’t be mean and put other people down to grow your own confidence, afterall you wouldnt want to be put down yourself and people will start to dislike you.
- Be yourself! Nobody likes a poser dont try to be someone you’re not just bring out your inner confidence it is there and it is you! Don’t forget that!
To en-(or in-, as an intensifier) + lighten (i.e. get brighter or lighter) means: to increase available energy in a (i.e. any) living system. Energy increase happens when a problem is solved, and the energy invested in its resolution is released. Minor enlightenment is a frequent, everyday occurrence. Major enlightenment is rare. Full enlightenment is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
- Experience your current state fully. Activate a real problem or create an artificial problem, for instance, a game.
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Invest maximum energy to define and solve the problem or win the game.
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Experience the energy surge or enlightenment, that results from problem solving and winning.
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Percolate the energy throughout your body and mind to lighten it up. If you can’t solve your problem, or win, plug into an external energy source.
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Refrain from dissipating your enlightenment as happiness. Reinvest it to solve an even more difficult problem or win a more advanced game.
Tips
- Perform all the steps completely.
- Fine-tune your capacity to experience even minimal enlightenment.
- If unsuccessful, simply pump in energy to generate a new energy high.
- Don’t forget belief, desire or expectancy of your success and you will find enlightenment far easier.
Warnings
- Enlightenment is not conserved. Don’t attach!
- Avoid energy suckers, those who tell you that you can’t do it.
- Investing your energy wholly in one particular actual problem is dangerous because it leaves other problems you need to solve under-energized.
- Investing your whole energy to solve an artificial problem is very risky, but fun.
- You can never stop being enlightened. If you didn’t reach your goal, don’t worry because that will pull you away. You’ll get there if you keep going.
What You need:
- A problem, real or invented
- The urge to feel free and happy
- Normal random access capacity
- Normal, albeit cleansed, observation capacity
- Normal, albeit unobstructed, analysis capacity
- Normal ability to decide/stop
- A full capacity to experience conciously
Awareness meditation is a relaxing and peaceful way to meditate and become more aware of the world around you and your place in it. Breathe deeply and prepare for your quiet and peaceful journey into relaxation and awareness.
- Sit down or stand still. Sitting in a lotus position is usually quite stressing on your legs unless you know how to do it very well.
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Rest your palms on your lap or knees. If you are standing, let your arms fall naturally at your sides. Just don’t collapse!
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Breathe slightly deeper than normal.
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Be aware of your breath.
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If you notice that you are thinking, acknowledge it. Then let it fade away.
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Return to awareness of your breath.
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Repeat steps 4-6. Once you are done with that, repeat this step. This step is an infinite loop.
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Stop your meditation any time if you want to.
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If you have back problems you may want to sit on a pillow.
Tips:
- The Benefits: You will become calmer; you may have insight; you can get along with people easily.
- If you count your breaths for the first few tries it will become easier to think of nothing. Beginners should try in for the count of 5 hold for 5 and out in 5. Get slower as you go but only up to 7.
- It is recommended that you obtain direct instruction from a meditation teacher.
- Meditation may be prayer, and you may believe in meditating, or praying, “through,” perhaps for hours to find, “peace” (a quiet place).
- Some believe in an unknown meditational language, “glossolalia” – lingua – tongue (or tone) with which the “Holy Spirit” may groan to the heavenly Father in “charmistic” meditations.
- Charisma has an attribute of the unseen leading of the Holy Spirit in personal relationship with the Father (discerning the Spirit).
- That word derives from the Greek charis (“grace”) and charizesthai (“to show favour”), connoting a spiritual grace for salvation granted by grace through faith for enabling good works.
- Charisma comes from the being comfortable with yourself, it comes from practicing meditation. From knowing and accepting the core human fallible and childlike part of you that connects you to all humanity. It comes from letting go of all the ‘chatter’ that we learn in our lives, of how we should be and what we should be. It is about being in the moment and letting go of all the external stuff.
- With meditation you can learn to let all the stuff that is other peoples frustrations and problems wash over you and stop affecting you because you are aware of the core central person you are, with all the strange feelings that this involves. These feelings are all about you being a human rather than because of external factors, it is about knowing yourself. Try to remember that others behave according to their internal stories and therefore it is not necessarily to do with you, even when it seems to be directed at you. Rise above it. do not engage in this tit for tat type stuff.you can be above it. Letting go of this is liberating and this is what meditation offers. Go for it no matter what you religious stand point is at the moment, its no other than learning about the central human self.
- When you meditate the goal is zoning out. To practically fall asleep while still staying aware or focusing on certain points. This allows your mind to revert to that relaxed, stress free mental state during stressful situations (IE taxes or work). So when you do a session, always pick really warm thoughts that help you zone out. You will go deeper when your more comfortable! After meditating you might feel some trouble with getting erections but don’t worry its normal!!
Warning:
- Don’t fall asleep, especially in a large crowd.
- Don’t collapse (if standing), especially in a large crowd.
- Make sure you have plenty of time. True meditation makes time seem to accelerate, and you might not notice the hours passing.
What you need:
- An open and calm mind
- A quiet or if you prefer noisy place
Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the conditioned, “thinking” mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. There are many different meditation methods.
At the core of meditation is the goal to focus and eventually quiet your mind. As you progress, you will find that you can meditate anywhere and at any time, accessing an inner calm no matter what’s going on around you. You will also find that you can better control your reactions to things as you become increasingly aware of your thoughts (letting go of anger, for example). But first, you have to learn to tame your mind.
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