Would you like self confidence that lasts?
Would your clients?
The Map Of You is something I created for you AND your clients.
I’m a huge believer in the need for coaches to have great self awareness – because it helps you to:
- Not get tangled up in your own ‘stuff’ when working with your clients.
- Understand how you work at your best and where you can add real value (your unique genius)
- Create confidence in your abilities that lasts.
And while we’re on the subject, just why IS it so difficult for us to really own our skills and accomplishments? Why do so many people (especially women) struggle to feel positive and confident about themselves?
I think this is partly due the messages we get as we’re growing up. “Don’t get too big for your boots…who do you think you are?…know your place…”
But there’s another reason too.
Our brains have a habit of tuning down our achievements, skills and successes and focusing in on mistakes, ‘failures’ and anything it perceives as a ‘threat’ (this can be to us physically, socially or emotionally.)
The thing you’ve got to realize is that the primary function of our brains is to keep us alive – NOT to make us happy, confident and successful. All of those things are a mighty poor second in the pecking order of keeping us alive and breathing.
So our brains are rigged with a negativity bias – in short, for every 1 good thing that happens, our brains will notice and remember between 3 and 5 ‘negative’ things.
So yes, there’s a reason it’s always easier to focus on the negative and remember the ‘development points’ over the achievements – your brain is set up that way.
Neuropsychologist and all round very clever person, Rick Hanson, Ph.D. explains it like this:
“As the brain evolved, it was critically important to learn from negative experiences – if one survived them! “Once burned, twice shy.” So the brain has specialized circuits that register negative experiences immediately in emotional memory. On the other hand, positive experiences – unless they are very novel or intense – have standard issue memory systems, and these require that something be held in awareness for many seconds in a row to transfer from short-term memory buffers to long-term storage. Since we rarely do this, most positive experiences flow through the brain like water through a sieve, while negative ones are caught every time.”
Creating Self Confidence That Lasts
So in order to move those positive things to our long-term memories, they need to be held in our awareness for a time.
That’s what The Map helps you to do – consciously focus on the positive attributes of yourself and holds them in your attention.
It’s a great way to turn your own confidence around, especially if you use it as an on-going tool. Add to it, review it, share it, get your favourite colleagues, clients and loved one’s to contribute to it too.
Get Creative With It
In a workshop setting I get participants to draw their Map’s on giant pieces of paper. There’s glue, stickers and usually glitter involved.
Pictures often express in ways that words can only touch on so don’t limit yourself to language.
Get as creative and expressive as you like – this is YOUR map and the more enjoyable, intense and conscious an experience you make it, the more you will be able to lock those positive things about yourself into your long term memory so that when you’re having the inevitable ‘why did I ever think I could do this?’ moment – you’ll have your answer ready and waiting.
Some serious inspiration!! I love it…
Thanks for putting this article together. I’ve learned that building self-confidence is a lifelong exercise, and must be done consistency.
Thanks Jo – this is a great reminder of the importance of documenting and sharing our achievements. I learned this lesson from a photographer I worked with on arts projects – having photographs that recorded the positives of creative projects became such a valuable learning tool – and created an excellent Map (and portfolio) – the photographic images became the things we remembered. Her website is http://www.justjaq.com/
There is nothing more attractive than true self confidence. You can see it and feel it when you meet someone who possesses this quality. I strive to work on mine daily!
I want self confidence that lasts. Thanks for this great post. I was just reminded that self confidence is loving and living who you are whether or not it is popular or accepted. I want to love who I am no matter what others think
This is AWESOME! I just signed up! Positive thoughts are crucial and now i see why the negative can take precedent. Did not know our brains were programmed this way, but it all makes sense now!
Self confidence is hard for a lot of people and people you won’t think suffered from this. Thank you for the uplifting information.
Images are so powerful to evoke a visceral response. I like this idea.
This is all true! Self Confidence is a process and it needs a step by step, with a good and positive friends by your side it will boost self esteem too. Thank you for the share!
Those of us in the “older” generation also were told by our parents to not brag about our accomplishments. That training is hard to break. Thanks for this great advice!
You’re right Laurel – it is hard to break an ingrained habit – but it can be done I promise