Human Development Archives

Building self confidence is easy but making it stick…not so much

by David

There’s something I know about you that may shock you.

It’s something that is so crazy and off-the-wall strange that you might refuse to believe it.

And I wouldn’t blame you at all.

I hope you’re sitting down because here it is:

You have an extra brain.

Remember, I told you it was crazy? When I first heard of it I thought it was too. Until, that is, I found scientific evidence from a doctor that backed it up.

But what on earth has this to do with building my self-confidence?

Good question. Glad you asked.

Let’s start with discussing what exactly we’re talking about when we talk about self-confidence.

According to Wikipedia “Self Confidence” is described as:

Confidence comes from a Latin word ‘fidere’ which means “to trust”; therefore, having self-confidence is having trust in one’s self.

Trust is a huge factor in building self-confidence and I’ll have more to say about it in a minute. But first let’s be clear on what we’re talking about.

In my view there are two kinds of self confidence:

Work Mastery – This is confidence that comes from having a high degree of proficiency at a task. This could be anything from playing a musical instrument to being an expert at landscaping. Most people who have been at a job, profession, or doing any particular thing for a long time have this type of confidence.
Social Serenity – This is when you feel comfortable when communicating, working, or just being around other people. You have a comfort level that draws people toward you because you seem sure of yourself and what you stand for. This is generally the most sought after type of confidence.

Obviously the first type of confidence, Work Mastery, is the most common so for our purposes here we’ll be referencing the second type, Social Serenity, whenever the word “confidence” is mentioned.

If you go online you’ll find a number of remedies for low self esteem or lack of confidence. You’ll see free tips to get you started on building your self confidence. Almost all of them will tell you that it will take persistence to get the job done. In other words, their message is: It will be a long long road.

So, you might see results after you’ve completed the course, read the books, attended the seminar, and contemplated your existence while sitting quietly in a lotus position on a mat by yourself for twenty minutes a day over six weeks or so.

But here’s the good news:

feeling good about yourself
having a sustained self esteem
finding the strength that you can trust yourself
feeling confident in your abilities

All the above becomes quickly possible, or not, depending if you are

Aware that you have a second brain in your gut that can be optimized to work with the one brain you’re familiar with, AND
That both of these different brains can be optimized to work together to give you more pronounced insights.

Remember you have not just one but two very different brains in your body.

As a human being you do two things everyday all day: you think things and you feel things.

And now we know you have a separate brain for each of those two tasks. The one in your head is a thinking brain but it can’t feel anything. There are no pain receptors in the cortex at all.

The other one is in your gut. It’s much smaller but it’s not designed for thinking much. It’s a feeling brain. It feels everything from your greatest joys to your deepest sorrows… and everything in between.

It’s extremely sensitive to pressure. Which is how it does it’s job of managing the complicated work of the digestion process so incredibly well. Of course, that’s not all it does.

If you want to speed up the process to building self-trust and be blessed with an immutable confidence on an ongoing basis your second brain (AKA: your gut brain) is the place to go.

Now, in case your wondering, we’re not going to abandon the head brain. Certainly not. We need both brains working in concert to be able to think and feel at the same time. That way we can experience the good vibes of the gut brain and use that to suppress the noise that the head brain is in the habit of creating. That way we can check the decisions we’re thinking about while, at the same time, see how we feel about them before we put them into action. I call this…

Collaborative Intelligence

But why do we need this?

One big reason is to distance yourself from all the negative self talk that’s holding you back. Remember, it’s critical that you need to see that you can trust yourself. That you’re worthy of success. To arrive there means that you must first build a rock-solid self belief. If you can do this your self confidence will soar.

The big question, of course, is how?

The key is to know the truth. The truth that you have been successful your entire life. That kind of truth is powerful stuff. But it’s only found by examining the one thing that backed your success in any achievement you’ve ever had. It’s called your GRIT (better known as the gut drive of persistence).

I have two acronyms that I want you to remember from now on.

GRIT — Gut Recall Increases Traction
GRIT — Gut R ecognizes Internal Truth

Why are these important? Because of a critical finding made by researchers over forty years ago and reported in a book which sold over three million copies back in 1978. It was titled “In Search of Excellence”. It appears that the old adage ‘Nothing succeeds like success’ turns out to have a sound scientific base…

Researchers studying motivation find that the prime factor is simply the self perception among motivated subjects that they are in fact doing well.

…mere association with past personal success apparently leads to more persistence, higher motivation, or something that makes us do better.

Ya, “something that makes us do better”. I love that. They didn’t have a clue as to what that “something” was but today, after all this time, the answer to that question is coming into focus. And you my friend are going to reap the greatest rewards because of it. That is because you now know about that extra brain in your gut. Knowing this can make a big difference in how you can develop a self confidence that never leaves you.

More power to you.

David

PS: Want to know more about how you can use your dual-brain system to acquire a through-the-roof confidence and a rock solid self-belief that never leaves you?

Then go here and learn more about the HERO Tour now.

How your inner-critic makes you a rope-a-dope

by David

We drink the poison our inner-critic pours for us.

The following anecdote about this boxing match, from which I refer to in this post, was from a brilliantly-written/voice-recorded post by one of my favourite pod-casters Terry O’Reilly.

Our inner-critic can be very manipulative. It can make us fall for what it says to us especially if it is allowed to do endlessly. The story I’m referring to in this post is, in an oblique way, illustrative of what happens inside our heads when certain suggestions get the best of us.

On October 30, 1974 the famous boxing match known as the “Rumble in the Jungle” in what was then Zaire Africa took place. It had been called “arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century“. The two fighters were the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world
George Foreman against challenger Muhammad Ali, a former heavyweight champion.

At the time Ali was the long-shot. A seasoned boxer for sure but already at 32 years old this title fight was not going to be easy on him. Foreman, a younger and way more muscular fighter, was just 25. He was already boxing legend. This was going to be a professional boxing bonanza for the winner. Both boxers knew it was a make-or-break bout.

In Ali’s dressing room prior to the fight all were unusually quiet. They knew about the punishing force from an opponent like Foreman. His powerful haymakers could be more than damaging to a guy like Ali who had hopes of becoming a world champion once more.

They actually feared for Ali’s life.

But as the fight wore on something changed. By the second round of the bout Ali had come up with a secret plan for Foreman. He realized early on that he could not go toe-to-toe with Foreman’s powerful blows. If he was to get him knocked out he would have to get really creative. And quickly.

So he changes his tactics and goes with something that would later be famously known as the “rope-a-dope”.

Staying close to the ropes and protecting himself by blocking Foreman’s punches all Ali had to do was survive long enough to tire Foreman out. He did this round after round letting Foreman do all the punching onto Ali’s body. It was almost like he was sparring with him. But he kept it up and the tactic worked like magic.

Ali Applies The Secret Sauce

Meanwhile people close to ringside noticed something. Ali was whispering into foreman’s ear. No one knew it until later what he was saying. It turns out that he was taunting Foreman over and over and over by asking him why was he always using his right. And then adding that he must not have much of a left.

After doing this for several rounds the now enraged Foreman finally bit at the challenge and changed hands from his right to his left. This bought Ali some time to get the feeling
back in his left arm as it was numbed-out from Foreman’s powerful right blows. Then, in the 8th round Ali saw a way opening up.

As the exhausted Foreman tried to pin Ali against the ropes Ali came back with a combination that forced Foreman’s head up in position for a right punch to the face.

Foreman stumbled and then fell to the canvas. The referee counted and then stopped the fight as Foreman was rising. But it was done.

Ali had accomplished what almost no one expected to see. He had beaten the fearsome George Foreman in an 8th round knockout. But he did it, not only with his fists, but with a subtle whispered suggestion.

How Your Inner-Critic Does It

You may not have noticed, but this is the kind of quiet coaxing that something in your head brain, your inner-critic, is constantly whispering into your own inner-ear.

You might of heard of, and eventually believed in, things like this:

“What are you doing? You always keep messing things up.”
“You can’t handle this stuff. Who do you think you are?”
“You’re not good enough for this. Get outta here!”
“Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you? Quit now while you still can.”
“You’re way too old (too young) to be any good at this.”

And on and on it goes. It want’s to make us all into rope-a-dopes.

I’ve heard it said that the best way to clear muddy water is to just leave it alone. But where else can you go that’s outside your own head?

Science has the right answer. Sort of.

They tell us that we have, not just one, but a second brain and it’s in our gut. That’s about as far from the noisy head as it gets without actually leaving the body.

I love science but so far no scientist I’m aware of has stated this yet. I’ve been pointing it out for years: the head brain is a thinking brain but the gut brain is a feeling brain. We need both because humans do two basic things all day every day.

We think things and we feel things.

One dedicated brain for each of these two essential tasks. What a great thing.

It’s fantastically elegant in both design and function. But they must be properly optimized in harmony so we can operate in the world with more happiness and fulfillment and less stress. I mean that, in most cases, a person won’t even know that this extra brain exists so how can you make better use of something if you’re not aware it exists?

But that doesn’t belie the fact that we still need to fix our noisy head brain if we’re to escape becoming a rope-a-dope to our inner-critic. The big news is that it can be done by applying the calming power of our second brain to our noisy head.

And it’s quite doable in as little as one day if you have the right tool for the job.

I’ve spent decades building it, testing it, and then understanding what it means for your future.

Extend your hand and learn more about it here.

More power to you.

Mobiusman

How A Tedx Talk Almost Ate Me Alive

by David

David doing his TEDx talk Doing a TEDx talk was one of those extreme experiences for me. I hadn’t talked about my work in public for a good ten years before this.

Preparation, they say, is everything.

I’ve read that those who are selected for a TED talk could be practicing their presentations for up to six months before the big day. For some, that adds up to reciting it as much as four-hundred times!

But I had no such opportunity. It wasn’t till sometime in November that I got my acceptance notification from the event organizers. My stage time was slated for after lunch on Saturday February 27th, 2016. That’s less than four months, which wouldn’t have been that bad, except that I had volunteered my time to build out and maintain the TEDxChilliwack.com website. Of course, I still had to write my script and prepare the visuals for the slides.

Friday night at 8:30PM, before the big day, I was on my way home from the dress rehearsal. I decided to park under a street light and edit down my script even more than it was. I had to win back as many seconds as I could. It was the third major edit but was still a bit too long for me to remember it all and besides, they allotted me less delivery time on stage than I’d asked for.

Oh oh.

Going overtime is a big nono at a TEDx event.

Of course, with all these changes the flow of how it was supposed to be recited changed. So, tired as I was, I had to try to practice it right there alone in my car under the glare of a street light. I took out my script and began. It was raining outside. I’m not sure how long i was there but, after a while, I drove home and quickly ate something. Then I went into my home office to practice some more.

There is always a trade off between exhaustion and being able to perform. That last edit raised another level of difficulty in the final presentation itself. On the day of I had hoped to practice backstage until I’d be called up to go out. I didn’t have to speak till 1:30 pm so I had some wriggle room.

So, I sat in a chair and open my script which I had printed out with thumbnails of all the slides that went with it. Then suddenly and with a degree of panic one of the organizers came and got me.

“We need you NOW!” he said. There was a problem and they needed access to the website’s back office. As the volunteer webmaster for TEDxChilliwack.com I should have had that info but this day was important to me as far as my presentation was concerned and all else was put aside.

The plan of the tech team was to live-stream the event on YouTube. It went quite well for a time and then… it didn’t! YouTube shut us down because, between each group of 4 speakers, they planned to play a pre-recorded TED talk taken from the main TED Talk channel. Apparently, that’s in stark contrast to the laws of the YouTube algorithms. So, it shut us down for copyright infringement . The tech team scrambled to quickly set up another YouTube channel and then, once that was done, they wanted to switch out the embed code in the live feed page of the TEDxChilliwack.com site. That’s when they came to me to show them how to get into the site.

I tried to assist but my passwords are all kept in a password manager on my PC at my home office. Apparently, none of the organizers had theirs either. Finally Ray, the lead organizer, went home. as it was close by, and did it all from there. The feed was restored and from then on they turned it off during any of the other recorded TED talks. This prevented the banned notice that had popped up because YouYube had detected a violation of copyright. Everything seemed to work well after that.

But with all that running around I had burned up a my last chance to practice. Not long after I was called up. So, with my script still in hand, the audio guy fitted me with the cordless microphone. At the last second I dropped my script on the table, swallowed hard, and then went out on stage and stood in front of a hundred strangers. I was the only one of all nineteen speakers who’s presentation included both props and slides. My talk was about a mystery brain. A complicated subject no one had ever heard of before. So I wanted to make it as clear and simple as I possibly could. I’m a visual artist so I used lots of slides with images. Both actual physical models of both head and gut brains as well as images projected on the wall behind me.

But this setup raised the level of difficulty up a few more notches on top of the notches I had already collected. Having never done a complete dry run of my talk made it all the more difficult to manage in front of a live audience. That was probably my biggest shortfall.

In addition to that, I was a bit startled as I began to speak. I had never heard my voice amplified before. The big speakers were right behind me. One on the left and another off to my right.

I was taken aback enough that the very first few words out of my mouth were never a even part of my script. I don’t know where they came from but, once they were out, I couldn’t take them back.

Of course, all this was being recorded and then eventually uploaded to the TED Talk YouTube channel for all the world to see.

But, no pressure.

In the end I persisted to move a mountain that day… and I didn’t die doing it. When I finished it felt very relieving to say the least. It took me several days to recover from the output of the previous weeks of late nights and very early mornings.

The takeaway I got from all this is: In a live TEDx talk, as in life, you learn that you can’t wait for the storm to pass so you might as well dance in the rain.

More power to you my friend.

Mobiusman

My TEDx Talk: ‘The brain that saves you’ is happening soon

by David

David Parsons talks at TEDx Chilliwack 2016 - "The Brain That Saves You" — David Parsons at TEDx Chilliwack Feb 27th 2016 Title: “The Brain That Saves You”

This just fell into my lap.

I had never anticipated that I’d ever do a TED talk about the gut brain. Now, don’t get me wrong, I not saying that I never wanted to – that would not be true.

I’ve been watching TED talks for years now and, admittedly, I have thought about how cool it would be to tell my story on a TEDx stage.

Then, through another volunteer organization that my wife Lorna and I are members of, we came to meet Rachel.

Turns out she and her partner Mike are two of the organizers for TEDx Chilliwack 2016. I was shocked to learn that a TEDx event was being planned for our little city.

It wasn’t long before I jumped at the chance they gave me. I learned that I was accepted sometime in November 2015. A red-letter day in my calendar.

It was a lot of work writing and editing and, since I’m a graphics guy who loves visuals I had to have a slide deck to go along with what I’m talking about.

So, now I have it all done. I’ve sent in my slides this morning. There’s no turning back now. No time for revisions. Hardly any time for committing to my foggy old memory what the heck I’m supposed to be saying.

It that’s not enough the whole thing will be livecast on the net and video recorded as well.

But enough is enough. With just four days left I’d better get to it.

It’s only going to be one of the most important days of my life, but… no pressure.

Wish me luck.

More power to me.

Mobiusman

Gut-Brain – New Research

by David

neuron closeup and head brain illustration — The head-brain/gut-brain duo

Jim, an astute online friend of mine recently sent me this article. It’s about the work of Elaine Hsiao a scientist at Cal Tech. He saw the words “gut-brain” were in the title and he thought I might be interested in it.

He was right too.

First, some quick background.

In 1996 I became aware of a new article written by a New York Times science writer. It was about new research that had re-discovered a long forgotten second brain in humans. This brain was not at all like the one we’re all familiar with. This brain was found in the linings of the digestive tract and it was such an important find that it sparked renewed interest in an obscure branch of scientific inquiry called ‘neurogastroenterology’. They also gave this brain a name: “The enteric nervous system”.

To me the real kicker was between the lines. This second brain is a doer not a thinker. It can act on it’s own and it feels… everything! Gut feelings are real things. This is contrasted by the brain in the head that thinks wonderfully but doesn’t feel much at all because there are no pain receptors in the From that I could visualize an elegant reciprocal dual-brain system no one has ever thought of before. It takes the shape of a mobius. One brain that thinks but doesn’t feel, and another brain that feels but doesn’t think. The head brain is a conceptualizer the gut brain is an action taker.

Two acting as one — beautiful.

But here’s my main point. I’m kind of a self-help heretic. I’m working to help people who are in the ‘self-help’ category yet I’ve been a fierce critic of the main methods of the industry for a long time. What bothers me the most is it’s way too head-brain centric. Not surprisingly of course, there was only one brain to deal with.

I’ve read leading self-help practitioners say things sort of like this: “The brain thinks mostly negative stuff and that impacts a person’s success so, let’s teach them to switch-out negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.”

That’s been the cutting edge of most self-help for the last 80 years or so. But wait; hang on a second. We now know there is a second brain that’s been found. But have we seen any training developed for the gut brain? TM maybe?

Nope.

TM requires a deep concentration of thought. Strictly head-brained stuff since you need a thinking brain for that. I was frustrated by all that same old same old, so instead I made this tool.

(End of background.)

The first thing I noticed when I read the article is that the words ‘gut brain’ are never actually used in the text. I did a [control + F] but nothing came up. Ms. Hsiao did talk a lot about digestion though and in the text it did mention the word “brain” twice but it was always in reference to the one in the head. So, I’m not entirely sure that she’s recognizing the fact that there’s actually a second brain located in the gut or not. The word ‘gut’ is found fourteen times since intestinal microbes are what her work is focusing on.

While the initial research carried out by Dr. Michael Gershon and published back in 1996 did show that the brain in the gut operates the various aspects of the digestion function on its own. Ms. Hsiao’s research added a new twist to it. She looked deeper into the workings of the microbiology of the ‘bugs’ in the gut and found connections to some of the pathology of autism in children. She and her team from Cal Tech have gone ahead and actually sequenced the entire DNA of these microbes and are now saying that, in all humans, there is another non-human genome – the “microbiome”.

Personally, I love the duality reference in all of that. I’m glad science has found something new here that helps people – in this case kids with autism. It’s been almost twenty years since Dr. Gershon ‘rediscovered’ the gut brain and I was wondering when new research would produce some more interesting results. The fact that we now have a dual-genomeinality (if that’s a word) is of particular interest to me. I’m always looking to make more sense of the duality of, and in, humans. This new finding helps me to better make the case for my theory of dual immunity – one physical and one ethereal. One that looks after the body (physical) and one that looks after the thinking (ethereal).

It’s basically this: If you as an individual can have two separate sets of brains and two vastly different genomes, then why not two unseen yet potentially active immune systems?

As you can probably tell my particular interest in the gut brain is in an area where scientists can’t ever go. Hobbled by the requirements of hard data and physical evidence science needs to ‘see’ real things. If they can’t it’s either not science or they tend to call it dark like “dark energy” or “dark’ matter”. Although those two terms are more for physicists not physicians.

What all this means is that investigating the unseen invisible ethereal properties of the gut-brain – the areas where the most potential exists – won’t ever be discovered by the experts in white coats.

But I’m not a scientist. So I’m not bound by such constructs. But I don’t see myself as a philosopher either so I’m not going to offer up just some flowery interpretations of what others have found. I’m going to investigate what’s going on down inside those rabbit holes that have driven better men than me totally nuts.

I know from experience that my work does bring forward real usable results in people who have used my tools. Massive beneficial behavioral changes in those whom I have worked with have attested to it. Things like a greater self confidence, a truer sense of their own life purpose, and the ability to set aside fear and worry and to power ahead with a reasonable amount of renewed vigor that seems to never peter-out.

And the beautiful part? I can now prove it to anyone as long as it’s done one-on-one. (Ready to try it? Let’s talk.)

By the way. This is not your mother’s personal development we’re talking about here so don’t even go there. This is different. I like to call it “Human Potential 2.0” because it’s a resetting of the old head-based paradigm to something that includes, in a big way, the gut brain as well.

Of course, it is my sincere hope that Ms. Hsiao, and other scientists like her, continue to uncover more of the mystery of our brain in the gut but first I’d really like them to clearly acknowledge that the gut-brain, which I see as one of the greatest biological discoveries of the last quarter-century, truly does exist.

I know it does, but surprisingly most everyone else hasn’t even heard of it yet. I guess I have my work cut out for me.

More power to you.

PS: I’m currently working on a new book “The Gut Brain Balm – How the strangest brain ever made saves us from death by stress”. If you’d like to see a sample chapter or two just leave a comment below and I’ll whisk it off to you as soon as it’s ready.

PPS: Need something more? Leave a comment in the box below and we’ll soon be in touch.