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.

What Do You Want?

by David

“The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.” – Ben Stein

To truly know what you want is not an easy question to answer correctly. Henry Ford once said that, in the beginning, if he had ever asked his prospects what they wanted they would have said “a faster horse”.

To know what you truly want is often tricky but it’s worth the effort to seek out an answer because it can reveal what you’re truly passionate about. That can set the path for how your entire life unfolds.

In my own experience my dad comes to mind. While just a teenager he saw a family member greatly relieved from excruciating pain by an osteopathic physician and he immediately knew what he wanted to do with his life from then on. After a successful 35-plus year career helping thousands of his patients get relief from pain he retired as doctor of osteopathy. Only one of two in our entire city.

He was one of the lucky ones.

Many wander through time “sheep-walking” as business blogger Seth Godin calls it, and never making the decision to end the cycle of getting a job, staying at it for a while, growing tired of it, then landing another, and then repeating. All the while never quite hitting that high note. Only to one day get past the point of no return. Always missing that point of critical realization and now too late to make a difference. Too late to ever know the answer to “What do I want?”.

I think that, like my dad, in a way I was one of the lucky ones too. I knew I wanted to become an entrepreneur. But I wanted to find something new and then offer it to the world. I did actually find something but, of course, I just never knew that it would take me to the age of retirement before I could finally see it being accomplished in any real degree of scale.

But now that it’s coming to fruition it’s my passion and my hope that it helps deliver many people to a place where a new self belief can thrive so that the great question is finally answered for them before too much time has passed.

That’s why I’m soon launching my next new project. I’m calling it “Human Potential 2.0”. It’s being positioned to re-tool what has become known as traditional self-help or personal growth. The original model, which began 100 years ago, was to help us realize our own human potential. But over the years it has lost it’s power to effect useful and lasting change that matters.

I intend to fix that by reassigning our focus to more authentic intrinsic elements. To foster a fundamental change that I’m convinced must come about in order to make better choices in how we view ourselves.

For example the fantastic but widely under-reported bio-medical discovery, now almost 20 years ago, that confirmed the fact that humans are dual-brained – one in the head which can think but not feel and a lesser known one in the gut that doesn’t think but feels everything.

With this project we’ll begin with another great quote, this time from Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Most of this instruction is not too difficult to grasp. The “Do what you can… where you are” parts are no great mystery. Most of us know how to work hard and most should know who they are. The tough part begs another great question…

What is it that you really have?

Answering that is in essence what Human Potential 2.0 is all about. Because if we can answer that question in a way that resonates with our own thinking/feeling dual-brained personage then that will lead us to refine what it means to know what our passion is. And knowing your true passion leads to a tremendous sense of hope for the future.

Watch this space for my upcoming posts on this subject and the accompanying video series that follows.

More power to you.

Getting down on the up-stuff fluff.

by David

Man standing on directional arrows pointing in three different ways — Has self-help lost it’s way?

It’s starting to show up.

The problem with people trying to help you with your mindset issues (other than giving the vaguest advice possible), is they fill your head with “one-liners”… things like…

“Repetition is the mother of skill!” — Tony Robbins

“Fall down 7 times, get up 8 times!” — Ancient Chinese proverb

“80% of life is just showing up!” — Woody Allen
And those things are helpful once or twice, but I know way too many people who have all the sayings
memorized, but they don’t follow them…

– Quote from a major internet marketer’s recent email.

I’ve waited a long time hoping to see it burst to the surface but now maybe it’s beginning to. Is traditional self-help loosing some of it’s footing?

For as long as I can recall, over the last three decades, no more than a handful have confided their true doubts in the lasting benefits offered by the self-helpers. I’ve been looking for people for years who might be open to admitting that, for the most part, they’re fed up with those who market personal development that costs a bundle but goes nowhere. Maybe now, because the stresses are so high, some brave and even well-known marketers (like the one I quoted above) are starting to call a spade a spade.

Napoleon Hill, for example, in all of his writings, talks about the importance of persistence and determination as being critical for success. But he never nailed it. Never actually told anyone what or where or how to locate these critical energy drives that are known to cause success in almost anything.

I’ve departed from the motivational conversations long ago. I don’t even see it as “motivational” any more since that is such a head-based thing. But these are not “head-based” energies. Persistence and determination are “gut-based” energies. I see it as much more advantageous to be more “immune-full” rather than “mindful”.

That’s because I’ve discovered something that I call “mindset immunity” and I believe it’s more descriptive of what we need now than what more advice and lame feel-good sayings might deliver. It’s a system of healing from failure the degree of which mirrors what the physical immune system does for the body. Timely and automatically.

It’s not naturally quick though. Fact is, in most people, mindset immunity it’s so slow and subtle you’d think it’s not even there at all. That’s why so few get to be hugely successful, at least financially, then the other 98% of us. Yet most do recover from defeat and a host of other emotionally-charged life events all by themselves without any outside help.

The time-worn methods of self help, personal development, positive thinking, (whatever you want to call it) is finally beginning to hit the glass wall. Not everyone can be fooled all of the time now and they’re beginning to put a voice to that thorn in their side.

I knew it would happen but didn’t think it would be so long coming. Of course I see that we have some super-critical types out there. Nego-commentators in this field are a rarity and I sometimes see them as good for entertainment value but not much else. They typically provide arguments that wildly spear the credibility of the famous – and some not-so-famous – self-help leaders but fail to provide workable alternatives to what’s being offered. I find them interesting but overly-radical although they do have a point when it comes to telling it like it is concerning all the hype coming of the numerous self-help promotional machines.

I recognize that people everywhere are in trouble. They are looking for something real. I myself have in conversations not been kind to the self-helpers – that’s true. I’ll admit to that. But at least I do usually finish up by explaining what it is exactly that’s wrong with their approach (hint: what they’re offering is almost always a “cocktail” mix of already old worn-out head-brain methods that they spin together so they can then call it their own… but don’t get me started on that now okay?)

I always try to turn it around and offer something to replace the broken methodologies that they’re desperately trying to work into their hapless lives. I tell them that the biggest problem is that they’re placing the cart-before-the-horse. The energy of natural motivation comes from something bursting out from the gut area that then causes a success to happen. Not getting all hyped-up on someone’s story of achievement and then tying to duplicate that same success for yourself.

Sorry. It’s not attractive but it’s true. You need to fail and sometimes often before you’ll ever see success. And the timeline can be long. That’s just the way it is.

I was not one of those early achievers myself and good thing I wasn’t. Without as much failure as I’ve had over the years I don’t think I would have discovered anything as significant a game-changer as an immune system that takes care of failure effects if I’d been in the class with the high-rollers. I needed something myself so I was forced to examine the unexplainable. It was critical in order to continue down a difficult, seemingly endless road. It’s a road that I’d not recommend to anyone without a tolerance for frustration or a lac of endurance to be sure.

That’s why I ended up building something that’s natural, organic, and is a part of what people are already truly made of. Persistence and determination are very personal. I have mine and you have yours.

All my new innovation does is help you to root out the core source of it so that it’s more manifest, more visceral, and even more visible. It re-defines us by making us aware of a strength we didn’t think we had. Thus re-making our own self-belief more real, more believable, and absolutely non-negotiable.

It re-aligns the shape of the new self-belief you could soon have in yourself. I’m just hoping that more and more strangely self-confident people with immune-powered mindsets soon break to the surface.

We need more like that to help us move on.

More power to you my friend.

PS: I’m still looking for more people who may be starting to feel that their personal development journey is not as good as advertised. If you’re one of those I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment in the box below or connect with me on Skype: “DavidtheMobiusman”. Make sure you mention this post or I won’t recognize you.

Taking Care of Your rent

by David

Mobius Monday Minute

# 12 – Feb 14 , 2011 [display_podcast]

A rent is another word for a tear or rip in a fabric — Photo: Morgufile

Are you taking care of your rent?

No, not the stuff you’re compelled to fork out every month to your money-grubbing landlord. Not that rent.

I’m talking about the “tear” in your motivational fabric every time you have one of those events we all call a ‘failure’.

Of course I’m playing with words here because, in case you didn’t get the mildly insane insinuation, a “rent” is another word for “tear”. But this is not meant to be a lesson in etymology.

No, not at all. It’s a comment about what happens to our mindset after we experience something that we tried and that didn’t quite make the grade. The “f” word is of course almost always a reflection of how we judge our past actions that didn’t render the result we had in mind. It’s really nothing else.

Upon closer inspection we can even get some good learning juice out of it if we dare to look for it. He wasn’t alone in this but a guy by the name of (all things) Samuel Smiles the author of the classic 1882 book SELF HELP once said:

“It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.”

Now, those 33 words alone may not help you completely recover from the battering you gave yourself after the fact, but at least you should feel a little bit better knowing that many others have ventured down this dark road before you.

I suppose that there is one thing I should add to this tidbit of information here. It’s this: The hurt you feel when bad things happen is like a bruise on an apple. Except being in the thinking it’s not a physical bruise like one in the meat. It’s an emotional or an ethereal one. These typically take way more time to mend. Maybe that’s why your mother may have advised: Sleep on it. It’ll look better in the morning.

Sure mom.

I don’t know about you but after a day of blowing it big time I never could sleep it off. It wasn’t till years later when I came upon the concept of mindset immunity something that took me down another interesting rabbit-hole, the understanding of which, has since become a huge part of my life’s work. Once I realized that there appears to be another immune system that does for the thinking what the other one does for the body I was hooked.

Makes a nice bookend for the fact that humans have two sets of brains – one that thinks but doesn’t feel, and one that feels but is not designed to think much at all.

This is sort the kind of things I like talking about on this blog. So if you have any questions or comments I’d love to see them. Just put whatever you’d like to say in the box below.

More power to you.

Don’t Take a bath

by David

rubber duck takes a bath — If you payed for head-based self-motivation you could end up taking a bath

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” -Zig Ziglar

Welcome to this edition of “Quotivations” for December 17, 2010.

Usually every Friday I choose quotes that I think are motivating or inspiring. But today I’m doing something a little different.

Rather than being motivating I found this quote, from one of the original key figures of modern day Self-help, to be a less then a subtle complaint about one of the biggest faults of his positive motivational product.

It doesn’t last.

Never has and never will.

Poor old Zig. He’s been at this self-help game since before the earth was done cooling. A defensive quote like this one appears to bring out the curmudgeon in him.

It’s total spin though.

But there is something I’ve got to give him credit for. He’s always been good at adding a touch poetry to make his message more memorable. Remember the famous line “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude”. Clever stuff like that sells well and it sure did for multi-millionaire Zig Ziglar.

But I still don’t buy it.

Want poetry? How about this: “Disable the fable about motivational spinners making you able”.

Ok, maybe it’s not as good as Zig can do it but, hey, I’m still working on it.

I believe that the real reason why motivation appears not to last very long is because of the type of motivation that’s being delivered.

What doesn’t last is the typical self-motivation injected toward your head-brain by clever artful dodgers like Zig.

Now, don’t get me wrong here, anyone who’s been at for over forty years, like Zig has, deserves some respect. I’m sure he’s helped some people along the path.

But we need some hard truth here.

The problem is that Zig, like all of his compadres today, did not and has not been able to recognize that there is another overriding motivational force that comes from the gut and powers through all the head-brain muddle causing a desired goal to be achieved despite all the great motivational sayings.

That energy, we refer to it sometimes as persistence and determination, cannot and does not originate in the head brain. It’s strictly a property of the gut brain (scientifically known as the enteric nervous system).

The problem with trying to change thoughts from negative to positive is that as humans we have a slight negativity bias to start with and the head-brain, which is always open to messages from the eyes and ears, can’t avoid reverting to and taking on the polarity of whatever has the greater amount.

In other words, there is a lot of negatively charged media fighting for attention with the positive stuff (poetry notwithstanding). It usually swings back to the negative side because that is often the default setting. Negative is also the polarity a lot of our perceptions happen to have about how our existence is treating us.

For example, you could be studying one of Zig’s great books and feeling very positive about your day. That’s until some jerk cuts you off in traffic or you get a flat tire on your way to work and suddenly bamm! just like that you’re back to where you started. You need to bathe your brain again in more positive juice.

The fundamental Problem…

It’s taken me a lot of years but I can now describe the fundamental problem with just three words: lack of immunity.

See the mindset is constantly under attack by our negative perceptions of our situation. But the body’s physical immune system is primarily a buffer against the attacks of pathogens and most of the time it works quite well.

But mindset immunity is another animal all together. It’s not physical it’s ethereal because thoughts are ethereal. The problem with it is that it’s too weak and too slow acting in most people to act like much of a buffer. But, here’s the good news:

I’ve found a way to fix that with this.

Not one of the best head-based motivators working today has ever thought of this approach before. If they did they’d have to change their whole business model to include one where they only deliver the result just once and it sticks.

Like I do.

They wouldn’t want to ever do that though. If they did their business could end up taking a bath… daily.

That’s it for today, consider yourself “quotivated”.

More power to you.