Practice, Practice, Practice - Confidence Matters 08-07-06

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August 7th, 2006

Confidence Matters

Good Morning,

The baby of the family starts pre-school this fall. He’s excited, but also scared. He’s constantly asking questions about it and coming up with doomsday predictions. He wants us to come up with solutions to every possible bad thing that could happen so that he’ll feel more secure about going. He decided yesterday that I should just go to pre-school with him each day and we’ll share the experiences together.

My other two children were not afraid of going to school so I don’t have any pre-rehearsed answers for him. It’s been interesting taking all of these self-confidence building exercises that I share with adults and trying to redesign them into something that will make sense to him.

Yesterday, I bought him some new Spider Man shoes and he’s feeling faster, stronger, and “jumpier”… quite full of himself now! So maybe I should write an article for adults about the power of new shoes????

take care,

Skye Thomas

Tomorrow's Edge

...inspiring leaps of faith

www.TomorrowsEdge.net

Long Live the American Dream!

Quote of the Week:

“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.” -- Anthony Robbins

“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.” -- Napoleon Hill

This Week’s News of Interest:

Personal One-on-One Help is Available

A life coach just might be able to help you to create a game plan as to how you would like to go about conquering whatever fears and doubts are holding you back from accomplishing your goals and dreams. It’s best to pick someone that you trust, but who also will tell you the truth and won’t sugarcoat things so as not to hurt your feelings. You want to know that your coach is really going to help you make those positive changes and NOT just teach you new ways to make excuses when you give up and quit.

Feature Article of the Week:

Practice, Practice, Practice

It may sound silly but the key to self-confidence and building more self-esteem is through practice. Practice what it is you want to feel more confident about and eventually, the confidence will show itself. That makes sense if we are talking about a skill like playing the piano. With enough practice, you naturally begin to get good at it and then you feel more confident. But what about tougher things like public speaking or meeting new people? How do you practice something that you are terrified to do in the first place?

If you have extreme self-esteem issues then you might want to seek professional help, but if you have determined that is not necessary, I would suggest that you start out by finding something that you genuinely love to do. Other than maybe reading books or doing crossword puzzles over coffee, most hobbies are a good place to start. Do you love to paint? Do you love to play a musical instrument? Do you love athletics? Find something that you love to do or that you think you would love to do. It’s not important what it is other than that it would bring you into contact with people on a tiny level. Unless you are living in a cave somewhere, somebody is going to see your artwork, hear your music, or see you running around practicing your sport. You do not have to pick a big team oriented thing, just something that fascinates you and will be noticeable. Then do it. Learn to draw, take music lessons, start playing basketball in your own driveway, whatever… just start doing something that you can really enjoy.

Keep doing it until you get really good at it. It does not have to necessarily become your new career, but that would be fun for you if it does. Practice often and with complete joy. Lose yourself in it. That’s part of overcoming self-confidence issues is forgetting to think about yourself. Swim laps at the pool until you forget to care how you look. Get lost in something other than analyzing yourself. Fall in love with some hobby that takes your mind away from what others might think of you. Just keep practicing something you love until you get really good at it. It’s your hobby and your love, so don’t make any judgments over whether or not it’s stupid to like doing whatever it is that you like doing. Just get on with it.

When you’re in the moment -- writing music or designing websites or whatever it is you have chosen, take a moment to reflect on how far you’ve come. At some point, you are going to realize that you are not too bad. At another point, you will even think, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this.” Someday, you will look up and notice that you are an expert or at the very least awesome at what you have chosen to do. Take that growing self-confidence that is connected to your hobby and begin channeling it into other areas. Depending on how much of a self-esteem problem you started out with it could be a matter of months or years before you are able to really see yourself in a new light. It is one thing to say that everyone has their unique and special talent. It is quite another to find and embrace your own.

Your talent will not be something you hate doing. Sure, I am really very good at scrubbing the bathroom. You can conduct a white glove inspection when I am done, but that is not my special talent. That is not my special gift to the world. And it sure as heck never built an ounce of self-confidence for me. No, you have to really truly deeply love what it is you are doing or the talent won’t show itself. You have to forget to think and lose all track of time while zoning out in the flow of creating, building, stretching, and growing with the hobby. Get to the point that when you look up and notice what you have done, that you are impressed with yourself. Practice until you get to that point where you forget to judge yourself. You could very well end up making it into your career if there is a market for it. If there isn’t… no harm done. You have got to build a can-do attitude around your ability to do something well.

Once you have learned something that well, you can begin stretching beyond your comfort zone and trying other things like public speaking. Okay so that might not happen right away, but once you have really mastered something, then you can always remind yourself that you are capable of success and you are capable of learning something new. Once you know that you can practice and learn new things, then the fear of new things isn’t nearly so immobilizing. You can step beyond your fears knowing that with enough practice you can master almost anything you set your mind to. At that point, you won’t actually have a self-esteem problem anymore.

The point is that by playing around with something you love until you are very good at it, you will gain self-esteem and that is going to make it possible for you to hold your head high and to bravely step into other more frightening areas of life. Start out by practicing at something you love until you’re good at it, and then move on to the other things that don’t sound like much fun at all. You will know deep down that there is nothing to be afraid of. It all comes down to whether or not you believe that you are capable of learning something new. That’s all. Self-confident people reassure themselves when walking into unknown territory by saying, “Well, I’ll just have to wing it until I learn how to do it right. I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon enough.” That comes from experiencing the positive effects of having practiced and learned something new. So go learn something new -- start with something fun.

Tomorrow's Edge

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Long Live the American Dream!

Skye Thomas is the CEO of Tomorrow’s Edge, an Internet leader in inspiring leaps of faith. She became a writer in 1999 after twenty years of studying personal growth, motivation, soulmates, self-esteem, parenting, spirituality, metaphysics, family dynamics, dating, and astrology. Her books, articles, and astrological forecasts have inspired people of all ages and faiths to recommit themselves to the pursuit of happiness. To read more of her articles, previews of her books, and her astrology forecasts, go to www.TomorrowsEdge.net. To read more about Skye and to sign up to receive her free weekly newsletter, go to www.SkyeThomas.com.

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