‫I hope you worked through the exercises on self-confidence in Video three, and now welcome to video
‫for.
‫Self-confidence is such a big issue for people these days, I believe it would be worthwhile to develop
‫a whole video program for the subject.
‫I want to add to the previous material I have discussed with you already.
‫You know, some people think that self-confidence is like a long journey.
‫What they do is they assess where they are currently in the self-confidence, stakes, and then try
‫to work out what they need to do to reach the self-confidence arrival lounge.
‫The trouble with this is that some people may feel the journey is too long and arduous and there are
‫too many setbacks on the way so they don't bother making the journey.
‫Deciding to delay or cancel the journey does nothing for promoting positive self-esteem and creates
‫a negative and critical self talk that goes on in our heads, which further reinforces low self-esteem.
‫Self-confidence and self-esteem is not a destination.
‫It is an emotional state.
‫And because it's an emotional state, it can be accessed anytime you want.
‫This makes self-confidence a lot more accessible to you.
‫So the journey is neither arduous nor long, nor is it difficult, it is easy if you work through the
‫exercises and then double the power of these with my tips and further exercises to support you in managing
‫any performance anxiety.
‫We tend to find the people lack self-confidence because they fear meeting others and they don't know
‫what to say.
‫Ask someone to give a presentation or commit to a public speaking engagement, and many decide they
‫don't want to do it.
‫Consider the bridegroom and the day of his wedding.
‫He knows all the family and most of the guests, everyone's there to support him.
‫But what happens if he fails to deliver the rousing and witty speech expected at the wedding breakfast?
‫This further creates problems for the groom's man unless they have prepared their speech properly and
‫rehearsed it many times.
‫It does not have to be a big event for the tensions and performance anxiety to rise.
‫Recently I was working with a group of accountants and organized a networking event on their premises.
‫I was running a training workshop on leadership.
‫We had a group of 18 senior managers in attendance.
‫Each was representative of a different organization and was happy to meet with some of the partners
‫from the accountancy firm.
‫I've arranged a session where we would meet and mingle over lunch, and my ambition was to support the
‫accountancy firm in winning new clients and forming sound commercial relationships.
‫Three partners and two senior managers arrived and promptly formed a circle, took their sandwiches
‫from the lunch table and proceeded to talk to each other, ignoring everyone else in the room.
‫They were clearly uncomfortable having to talk to people they'd never met before, and we we see this
‫all the time where people have created a degree of social anxiety and find it very difficult to meet
‫others, especially for the first time.
‫The phrase I used earlier was you never get a second chance to create a great first impression.
‫Well, what can we do about this a lot?
‫It's relatively easy to deal with this issue and you'll need to rehearse the techniques I'm about to
‫teach you until you can do them automatically.
‫Rehearsal, I'm going to be really serious for a second, you know, many people buy books on self-confidence,
‫but 99 percent don't get past the first chapter.
‫People attend courses on self-confidence, yet fail to put what they've learned into practice.
‫All I can say is that that wouldn't work with driving a car, you have to practice or you don't pass
‫your driving test, you have to demonstrate a degree of mastery.
‫So much so that the driving instructor is confident that handing you a pass certificate will not result
‫in death on the road.
‫I want you to adopt exactly the same commitment to managing your self-confidence as you demonstrated
‫when you learned to drive your car.
‫If you're not a driver, you may learn to play an instrument or picked up a second language or learned
‫and played a sport to achieve some degree of excellence in all these activities requires a deep commitment
‫to practice and rehearse until you can do it.
‫If I have that commitment from you, I know that we can move on very swiftly.
‫I'm going to talk to you about managing performance anxiety, whether you experienced this one on one
‫in small groups or large groups and audiences.
‫I want you to be able to influence and demonstrate your confidence with people you know well, with
‫people you've never met before and people you've previously perceived as difficult or problematic.
‫I'll be talking you through preparing in advance, using your physiology or body language to project
‫your self-confidence and applying the best in anchoring, and that is preparing yourself mentally and
‫emotionally in advance of meeting people.
‫And finally, placing yourself in your circle of excellence.
‫So preparing in advance.
‫We'll cover this in more depth in the next video when we look at a methodology that will virtually guarantee
‫success in the influence stakes, I'll just make some general points here.
‫You really should never fly by the seat of your pants.
‫It's nice, it's great if you can do it, but please never, ever rely on thinking it will always work
‫for you.
‫If the wrong people turn up, circumstances change or you get a hostile audience for your mini presentation
‫or lack of preparation will only reflect on your professional standing and will lower your self-esteem.
‫The great learning that comes from being poorly prepared is you never want to experience it again,
‫even if you've arranged only a short meeting with someone to discuss quite trivial business matters,
‫always ensure that you've clearly defined the outcomes that you want to achieve.
‫Write these down in advance of your meeting.
‫And if it's a group meeting, it's even more important.
‫If you have to influence two or three people, they may have different agenda to you and you need to
‫work these out in advance and then assess how well your outcomes can be met.
‫There'll be a lot more of this in the next video, but please prepare your outcomes if it helps write
‫down your expected or desired outcomes and group them onto the next three words.
‫Most should and like you are prioritizing your outcomes.
‫These are your goals to support you in assessing your interpersonal competence.
‫Right, let's move on to physiology.
‫You're probably aware that we communicate using words, tonality and body language research has been
‫undertaken that tells us that effective communication between two or more parties is assessed.
‫Thus the words we use tonality and our body language, the words we use account for about seven to 10
‫percent of a moderately average business discussion.
‫37 to 40 percent of effective communication is down to how we use our tonality.
‫What I mean here is the volume.
‫We talk at the speed fast or slow, the timber, the quality and the rhythm of our discussions.
‫This is critical in adding emotion to the words that we choose to use.
‫I know this might sound strange, but what if I said.
‫David.
‫Is a really vibrant team player and a pleasure to work with, would you believe me?
‫OK, is this more believable?
‫David is a really vibrant team player and a pleasure to work with.
‫See, the way we express ourselves can make it simple communication, much more passionate and give
‫more depth and meaning to the words we use.
‫Now, add this to the use of our physiology or body language to complete the formula.
‫About 50 percent plus of our communication comes down to how we use our bodies to express ourselves.
‫So now we're going to talk about how we can prepare our physiology and use our body language for best
‫effect.
‫You have to prepare yourself in advance, deep breathing helps breathe in and imagine breathing out
‫tension and breathing in relaxation.
‫You also know that when you breathe in relaxation, you also breathe in self-assured confidence.
‫Now it's time to visualize this.
‫So if you're going to meet those two or three colleagues and you have something that you need to present
‫to them, it's best to prepare yourself in advance.
‫You know your outcomes now you have to prepare yourself physically to have a relaxed self-confidence
‫and breathing is the fastest and most effective way to impact your emotional state for the better.
‫We are focused totally on putting you into the right emotional state when you want it.
‫So try this for yourself.
‫Stand firm if you are to sit at the table, sit upright but relaxed, don't slouch, breathe gently
‫and control your emotions.
‫Remember, use your vocal tonality to add pace, passion, emphasis and emotion to your ideas and your
‫proposals.
‫And now it's time to practice and rehearse for your event, so let's move on to anchoring.
‫Applying, anchoring, and that is preparing yourself mentally and emotionally in advance of meeting
‫people, anchoring is best described as assessing times and events.
‫When you've achieved success in whichever way you want to consider an end to practice using a physical
‫movement to trigger the emotion you felt, it's about creating a stimulus response relationship between
‫a physical trigger and the positive emotional response.
‫I want you to take your non dominant hand and press together your thumb and your middle finger.
‫That is that's going to be your trigger.
‫Now, release the tension.
‫What we're going to do is to mentally associate with a number of things that have led to success in
‫your life and then anchor this by squeezing your fingers together.
‫Choose anything, a relationship, passing an exam, going on vacation with a close friend, receiving
‫praise from a boss or your parents partner, brother or sister.
‫It could be getting a new job.
‫It could be within a contract.
‫It could be related to developing relationships or academic or sporting success.
‫Your task is when you think about these events, you build up the emotional energy.
‫That you felt at that time, what we're going to do is to ramp up the feelings, it might be a good
‫idea to close your eyes.
‫Now, imagine what's happening.
‫See the people involved, listen to what they say, focus on their faces and the intensity of the achievement.
‫Now ramp up this emotion, ramp this up again, and keep on doing this until you've achieved a passionate
‫and highly self-confident, emotional state.
‫And when you reach the intensity, squeeze your fingers together and do it again and again and make
‫that feeling real.
‫If you keep doing this exercise, you will stimulate your endorphins and promote the release of neurotransmitters
‫that will bathe your brain with supreme self-confidence.
‫Keep practicing this exercise and before you know it, you can create a high degree of achievement and
‫energy which will counter any lack of confidence or esteem.
‫Now it's time to move on to the circle of excellence.
‫Here we rely on similar events, but this time, instead of squeezing finger and thumb, you actually
‫physically step into the circle.
‫This is an active exercise where you imagine a circle on the floor in the circle is the culmination
‫of all the successful things you've done in your life.
‫Now, consider what's in the circle, you choose what you want to put into it, you might want to make
‫a few notes include, you know, what about those disasters that you turned around?
‫And there may be even small domestic disasters, but you made them work.
‫Think of academic success, you know, and including that the passing of your driving test times when
‫people thanked you for your help.
‫Kind words from people who respect and love you, events that you are proud of attending or contributing
‫towards.
‫Now, taking all those things, you might want to ramp up the emotion by closing your eyes and imagine
‫all the great things that you've achieved.
‫You decide the content in the circle.
‫Now concentrate on this imaginary circle and start to see what was said at those events or in those
‫activities, focus on people smiles and their encouragement.
‫What great things are they saying about you and your achievements?
‫What did people say?
‫Amplify the volume, make the sounds and the words exactly the way you want to hear them.
‫Go on, do it again and again.
‫Now, double that feeling now.
‫Treble it and double it again.
‫OK, let's come back down and step out of the circle, just breathe and relax, that's good.
‫That's very good.
‫So how did you feel at any time you could go on and ramp up the feelings and build up the intensity?
‫Imagine that circle is vibrating with positive energy, love and gratitude, success, clarity, calmness.
‫You can ramp up those feelings.
‫And then when the feelings are very intense as they are with anchoring, you step into that circle and
‫bathe yourself with the feelings, go on, ramp it up and feel those good things.
‫It feels good, doesn't it?
‫It really feels good.
‫If you want to rewind the video and do this several times, do so, the more you do it, the greater
‫the intensity and the stronger the feeling of self-confidence.
‫OK, stepping out of the circle, relax and breathe deeply and consider.
‫That if you use these techniques, what impact would they have on your ability to impress, negotiate
‫influence and persuade others?
‫You are investing in a process that would really impact your self-confidence and your life.
‫It's up to you now to practice these over and over again.
‫See you on the next video, well, I'll talk you through structure and methodology.