Want to know how to increase your self confidence and reach your full potential? Keep reading…
For the first article from a guest contributor, it is a great pleasure to welcome Jean-Pierre De Villiers who has been a close friend of Matt’s for many years. JP is a peak performance coach, motivational speaker, martial artist and author and has been deemed one of the most inspiring people in London. In this article, we get a sneak peek at JP’s latest book ‘self-confidence’, a wonderfully enlightening guide on how to find your self-confidence and harness it, exploring everything from psychological theories to game plans.
So if you’re ready to improve your self confidence and change your life, read this blog and then head over to Amazon to snap up your copy!
Looking Back.
We need to do both. High performers do both. They look forward and backwards.
But let’s talk about looking back.
I created a process for my clients called the Evidences List. They are required to get a journal and, every day, add to their evidence list. You do the same. But evidence list of what?
Evidence lists remind you of who you really are. Everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve achieved, every award you’ve won, the birth of your child or children, every breakthrough you’ve had, every break-up, every breakdown – all of these are evidence that I can.
The word can is a permissive verb. It means you gave yourself permission. Give yourself permission.
And that’s what self-efficacy and self-confidence are: it’s having a resounding feeling of I can… based on the knowledge that I did! Based on the fact that you already have. That you do have a track record of coping, overcoming setbacks and failures and succeeding.
You coped. But you did more than just cope. You succeeded.
Evidence might include:
• I can go after my goals. Why? How do I know this? (Now find the evidence from your past) • I can cope with this challenge. Why? How do I know this?
• I can make this thing happen. Why?
• I can overcome this.
• I can cope.
• I can…
• I can…
• I can…
Collect all the evidence that you can. Write it down. Collect the evidence that YOU CAN.
I had a client that wrote me a long I can’t letter. I’ve had a terrible week. I can’t… A long, long I can’t manifesto. Line after line of I can’t stuff.
I wrote back, “Where’s your evidence that you can? Remember the evidence list? Have you checked back in with that?”
He wrote back one line of text: Fair enough.
Most people know what to do, but don’t do what they know – like keep an Evidences list.
I helped him remember. I supported him moving forward by looking back. That’s why it’s important to have support. People that are average genuinely think that they should do it on their own. People that achieve the extraordinary genuinely think they should have people having their back.
They deserve support.
It makes sense to ask for help. It’s OK to get the help you need.
The greatest boxers have someone in their corner. The greatest athletes have a coach on the sideline. The greatest business people have mentors, coaches and advisers. Or friends and family that support them and hold them accountable when they’re not being truthful with others or allowing others to be untruthful with them, or they’re not being true to themselves.
You do too. Don’t tell me you don’t. Look.
Looking Forward
Now looking forward.
Constantly set goals that allow you to feel good. Goals that unlock a positive, healthy future. But you may need to change your perspective. Change your mindset.
When I was building my first (fitness) coaching business in my twenties. I needed to shift from being an average personal trainer to an elite personal trainer. Entrepreneur (and now my good friend), Daniel Priestley said to me, “If you think fitness is about fitness, you’ve seriously missed the point.”
That one sentence shifted my whole perspective.
You might write that sentence down somewhere and adapt it to your situation. To your business. To your life. Replace the word fitness and put in whatever it is that you do. Call it X. Whatever your X is. X is the process that we sell, right?
If you think x is about x, you’ve seriously missed the point.
Let’s say your X is beauty treatments. People aren’t coming to you for the beauty treatment. They’re coming for the result. And it’s very important in marketing to speak to the result, not the process. Let’s say you sell spa days. Do you still think the spa day is about having a spa day?
If you think beauty treatments are about beauty treatments, you’ve missed the point. It’s really about…
I invite you to think: what is this X really about?
So I always say fitness isn’t about fitness; fitness is about how you feel… afterwards.
• You have more certainty.
• You have more energy.
• You have more passion.
• You have more purpose.
• More personal power.
• You have more obsession to go after what you want.
Have you ever been stuck in one area and then you go do a good workout and that reminds you of who you want to be? And your mindset changes?
Fitness is not about fitness.
Seriously!
If you do think it is, you have seriously missed the point. And that’s probably why you’ve never stuck to it.
It’s about self-love and compassion.
It’s about self-confidence.
Self-care is the highest expression of self-love. How can you say you love yourself if you don’t care for yourself? It doesn’t make sense. And when you learn to love yourself more, you accept less BS in your life.
When you love yourself more you accept less average. And when you love yourself more – and you free yourself from the things that are holding you back – you give yourself permission to become more.
What am I saying? It’s not the thing. It’s the thing about the thing.
What goal can you set yourself that is not about the goal itself, but rather, the person you will (need to) become in the process of achieving that goal?
Author: Jean-Pierre De Villiers
Excerpt from his book ‘Self Confidence’ (available on Amazon)
