FACT: You will only do what you are confident that you can do.
FACT: You will only accomplish what you are confident you can accomplish….and…
FACT: You can accomplish a great deal as long as you have unshakable confidence.
STOP.
Most people out there have this bizarro idea of what confidence is.
They think that if they can talk themselves into believing that they can do something that they can.
That isn’t confidence.
It’s a smokescreen.
Confidence is this:
“I’m going to get that book/article/website/project done before Friday.”
And….it is done before Friday.
NOTHING would get in the way because you have trained yourself that real world certainty comes from accomplishing what you say you are going to do.
THEN, when someone says, “are you confident you can handle this?”
Either:
A) “Heck no, but I’ll bust my butt trying, working overtime off the clock until shown it’s not possible.”
(that’s a good rock solid answer)
B) “No, I can’t – give it to someone else.”
(that’s a good rock solid answer too. UNDERSTANDING YOUR LIMITATIONS is a GODSEND to the world)
C) “It will be done before you get here Friday.”
Those are the three answers.
There is no, “Oh yes, I can do that,” and then it doesn’t get done.
That person needs to get fired….yesterday.
Confidence is a CRUCIAL factor in success and achievement.
A baseball player will get a hit about 25% of his attempts. He can tell you, “oh yes, I’ll get four hits today”, but the fact is that the chances of his getting four hits are 4 to the fourth power, or 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 256. He’ll go 4 for 4 once every 256 games he comes to bat four times. Twice per season if he plays every day.
So, I don’t want to hear, “I’m going 4 for 4 today.”
You want your business plan and your INCOME this year based on a 1/256 chance?
Me too neither.
No.
The answer is, “I’m feeling good. I’m going to go bust, make every pitch count, swing at the good pitches and hustle running the second every ball is hit.”
or
“No. My leg is screwed up and Johnson will do a heck of a lot better job than I will today.”
REAL confidence is obviously weighted with honesty, certainty, and reality-based-thinking (RBT).
“But Kevin, shouldn’t people just say they are confident so ….fill in the blank with a stupid reason….and a result they want here….”
NO.
“Hi Kev, I’m your pilot today. Those three drinks I just had at the bar will help me fly better. I’m sure of it.”
No thanks, there is a clear and distinct line between confidence and abject stupidity.
But you wouldn’t believe how many people think it’s OK to totally B.S. yourself and others in the name of being “confident” or “the Secret” or whatever.
No.
That’s not confidence.
Strategies to Boost Confidence
I want to show you a couple of powerful strategies that will boost your confidence permanently….
227 pounds. February 3, 2004.
It was scary one week later when I saw the videotape of the presentation I gave. The presentation was stellar…really.
The focal point in the frame was not.
I had gained 30 pounds in 2003. I paid no attention to my weight.
I was back into size 40 pants.
I was disgusted, disappointed, disoriented and every other “d” word you can think of.
For me, and actually for most people, my body weight is all about the volume of what I eat (calories) and keeping track of those calories in advance of what I’m going to eat.
I’m not a “work out” kind of guy. My idea of a workout is typing or talking faster…
(OK, I do take a walk every day, cut the lawn every week in the summer, shovel in the winter and do gardening and the YUK shrubs….hell of a lot better workout than weights and leg presses…and stuff gets done.)
There is only one way I can lose weight, and it’s precisely how I first did it in 1997 when I was 225 pounds and within one year dropped to 188.
I knew I had to do something where I would be accountable to my toughest critic.
Me.
Each day I would write down the calories/food I was going to eat before I ate. I would record faithfully, every day…for a long, long, long time. I didn’t know if I could do it in 1997…until I did it.
I have a voracious appetite. Weight loss was never something that I had successfully dealt with…but this worked.
Each day I wrote down the number of calories I was going to eat before anything went in my mouth.
Never in arrears.
That’s how Enron went broke and fat people get fatter. I knew I had to take responsibility in advance. Be honest to myself. It would be a long journey. And one year later, I was at 188. I took 37 pounds off the body and I was in 34 pants.
Then about six months after hitting 188, I thought, “Hey, I don’t have to keep these daily logs any more…” And then 18 months later I was back in the 210 range…again.
…and once again found my “Achilles heel”…in the mirror…
It’s so easy to put food in your mouth. It takes a bit of accountability to keep it out of your mouth. So, February 11, I began …again. 227 pounds.
I’ll never forget that day when I was 227….four years ago…
I told my daughter the doc wanted me to drop weight or suffer the consequences.
She stood up next to me, took her left hand, put it on my chest and then brought it down like a knife when it hit my stomach. The hand stopped right there.
Four years ago and I remember it…vividly.
“You’re fat, Dad.”
“Thanks Honey.”
I raised her to always be honest and have integrity. (Sigh.)
So…I grabbed the pen and paper. Not only did I write down how many calories I would eat before doing so, I would collect the week’s total and write the average daily consumption down on the next sheet I would use. It proved I did it last week…I could do it this week…
211 days later. My weight was exactly 193. Now, that was only a-pound-per-week…… But hey in 211 days to get 34 pounds off this body….I was happy.
Today, I know that when I slack off and don’t keep track, that I have the capability to get it together. It will happen because …..it will happen. No visualization, no imagination, it just IS.
Confidence = Commitment, plus plan, plus previous accomplishment, plus determination.
When you set a goal, decide on an outcome, predetermine your result, you must be accountable to yourself, the record and preferably to someone else…whose opinion matters. Someone who can praise you when you succeed and get on your case when you start to lose.
In fact, if you are going to be a little embarrassed when you tell the person you are accountable to…that you screwed up or “failed,” then you have the right person.
….and if you can’t tell that person that you “failed,” then you don’t need to start in the first place. Your commitment isn’t there.
Accountability is the Key
As soon as you decide to be accountable to any or all the above, you have made the first step toward experiencing unwavering self-confidence that IS commitment, plan, previous accomplishment, driven by determination.
Every week, people decide to go to the store and get groceries. They decide to put gas in the car. They decide to take a shower, go to work and do all kinds of things.
Then when it comes to something that they really want but has not yet become a ritual (like getting gas when the gas tank is empty)…they fail.
Why?
Because they aren’t accountable for the actions.
No groceries?
Kids get upset.
No gas?
Your boss gets upset.
You don’t get paid.
No shower?
No one you want near you…will go near you.
You are instantly accountable.
But starting your own business?
Doing something that will actually create a life you want to live?
There is no accountability. No one notices. No one knows you want something special for YOU.
So, you safely let it go. Safe from everyone else but not from yourself.
Your confidence shrinks. You don’t want to create a life. You want someone to give you a job.
…or you see the protester in the streets instead of at the job interview. You see the person “on strike” instead of in a class where they can learn to be responsible and accountable to themselves.
TAKE HOME FACT: Accountability is on the other side of the spectrum from entitlement.
The reason people want to believe they are entitled to something is because they have zero self-confidence to be accountable.
No accountability = Failure
People ask me all the time, “How do you create all those programs and write all those books?”
Answer: I read thousands of articles, books, monographs and experience life as well as “spectate it.”
“No, how do you DO it?”
“Oh. It’s like having lunch. You don’t think about it. You just do it. It’s like kissing your kids good night. You just do it. If you don’t, you’d feel terrible.”
“No, how do you do IT?”
“I don’t go to bed until IT is done.”
“What if you get writer’s block?”
“I don’t let myself get writer’s block….too much like constipation.”
“What if you run out of things to say?”
“That’s impossible. The fields I work in are evolving at light speed. The competition is sleeping and I’m moving at the speed of light with the field. I won’t put out rehashed work. It’s what is happening and working today…there is no other alternative. Be the best or why play?”
“But what about vacation??”
“I’m doing what I choose to do, where I want to do it. I refuse to do otherwise unless it is absolutely necessary (bookkeeping/paying taxes). Isn’t that what a vacation is?”
As soon as you come to the “great aha” that tells you that the gulf between your life today and your life tomorrow is the Rule of Accountability…and very little else, you begin to become the master of your life and develop Personal Mastery.
I’ve identified 12 of the life patterns which cause us to trip up – and make the same mistakes again and again. To discover which of the 12 patterns you have been the victim of and how to eliminate self-sabotage in your life (or those of your clients) you can pick up the program below.
Lifestorms: 12 Obstacles to Achievement: The Paradox of Overcoming Self Sabotage to Achieve Love, Power, Money and Happiness.
by Kevin Hogan
3 CDs in this program – and it comes with a BIG WORKBOOK! And now, get a free Lifestorms DVD presentation with your order!
Discover why life often brings you exactly what you don’t want…and how self sabotage can hide around every corner. Some people have guessed at the bizarre nature of self sabotage. Guess no more. Self sabotage is very real in everyone’s life. It is completely devastating and 100% resolvable!
- Do you ever know you should start on a project but don’t?
- Do you have projects that you have started but never finished?
- Do you ever say the one wrong thing at the wrong time?
- Have you ever had things going well in life only to have everything blow up in a day?
- Have you tried to be so careful not to make a mistake that you were shocked when you made a truly costly one?
- Have you ever promised yourself to stay out of trouble in some way only to find yourself in the same trouble or worse again?
Now you can discover your own life patterns so you can eliminate unconscious self sabotage immediately. This program will break the heavy chains that hold you from your dreams and your goals.
This program is the first program ever made public that shows you how to identify specific self sabotaging behaviors and negative life patterns. Better? You can ultimately erase those life patterns and rewrite new “schemas” into your brain that will allow you to meet your goals and experience fulfilling relationships.
Here is what you will learn:
- How to identify which of the 12 negative life patterns you live.
- How to find the triggers of the lifestorms that you just can’t believe you experience.
- How to change the self sabotage into success, happiness or something productive.
- How to remove almost all obstacles between you and your goals.
- How to understand those around you so you don’t push their buttons.
- How to predict your behavior and that of others.
- How to actually achieve your goals so they are more than just a dream.
No one anywhere has ever put such a program on CD. There is not one person anywhere who can’t utilize every minute of this insightful information. These three CD’s are packed with the most powerful tools for getting past life’s roadblocks and personal sabotage ever imagined. Anyone can utilize this information and I personally guarantee that if you follow the instructions you will not experience self sabotaging behavior anymore. Your goals become reality at speeds faster than you ever imagined.
