Black In Business

Confidence is a good thing. My friend Twinsherry has a great post today on this topic. Many times we miss opportunity because we lack confidense. Please read and enjoy.

Monday, June 04, 2007
25 Real Confidence Habits For A Stronger You

Before we start, please keep one thing in mind; Confidence and arrogance are two totally different things. If you confuse the two, you will most certainly become a very unhappy person with very few real friends.

Arrogance is NOT a “quality” and it won’t help you reach your goals any faster.

Confidence in oneself, or the lack thereof is what stops people from getting tightly focused on what they want to achieve. That little voice telling them they can’t do something is their biggest UN-motivator. What can YOU do to gain confidence?

25 tips toward boosting your confidence and self esteem.

1. Love Yourself

This can take a bit of practice and looks really funny, but try it, it works. When you wake up, give yourself a great big hug. Do the same when it’s time for sleep.

You’ve heard this said a million times before: “How can you expect others to love you if you don’t love yourself?” It’s true. Practice the morning and evening hugs for 2 weeks, maybe 3 weeks if you’re the stubborn type, and you’ll see how well it works.

2. Look in the mirror

Every time you pass a mirror, look into it and flash your biggest and best smile at yourself. It might feel strange at first, but eventually it’ll make you feel brilliant about yourself. Tell yourself “Looking good!” or “Wow, I love me!” or similar phrases often enough to actually start believing it.

3. Do things that make you feel good

This can be anything from listening to music, trekking in the Andes, doing some volunteer work or even just taking a shower. Anything that gives you a positive feeling about yourself works for this one.

4. Listen to YOU

Face it. Nobody knows you better than you know yourself, no matter how many people try to tell you differently. So if your body, mind or gut is telling you something, then take notice of it, and don’t worry about what other people may possibly have to say about it.

5. Talk to YOU

In times of stress, take a time-out break. Wander into your own mind and have a conversation with yourself about anything at all. Tell yourself how lucky you are to be you, and praise yourself for every good and positive thing you can attribute to yourself.

6. Remove negatives

If anything feels like it’s dragging you down, get rid of it. If it’s clutter, tidy up, if it’s a friend full of negativity explain nicely that you don’t really feel up to talking right now. If it’s your kids acting up, leave the room for a while and so on.

7. Surround with positives

Surround yourself with things that bring out good feelings in you. Examples could be things such as happy, upbeat friends, a nice new picture, a new car, an old comfy blanket, candles, pictures of your family, your girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse etc.

8. Rumours Die

Did you hear something about somebody who said something about somebody else? Drop it! Rumours are nasty, horrible things that will only bring you down. Best way to kill a rumour? Ignore it!

9. Total Honesty

Be totally honest with yourself at all times. If there’s something you don’t like, admit it. If there’s something you don’t want to do “right now” and it isn’t necessary for health and safety reasons then just don’t do it until you feel like it.

Same goes for the positive aspects. If there’s something you want to do, and it’s not hurting anybody, then go ahead and do it. If you start feeling great about yourself for no apparent reason admit it and enjoy the feeling.

10. Responsibility

Take full responsibility for your own actions. Don’t shove the blame for anything over onto someone or something else. We all make choices in our lives, and once we take responsibility for those choices we tend to choose better for ourselves.

Once we start to choose better, we feel better and things start falling into place. On the other hand, don’t take over someone else’s responsibilities just because you feel “you have to”.

11. Pretend

If you feel unsafe, unsure or nervous then go inside yourself and pretend you’re a hot-shot lawyer, actor, actress, singer or whatever you need to be. Make believe you’re presenting yourself as that person would until you feel better. Trust me, you WILL feel better, and eventually have no need to be anything but yourself.

12. Keep Trying

If you’re trying to do something but don’t get it right first time round, then try again, and again, and again, constantly learning from your mistakes until you get it right. When you finally DO get it right, you’ll feel wonderful about it.

13. Credit where credit is due

If you’ve done something really good, and people compliment you on it, accept the compliments with thanks! Understand that they’re complimenting because they really ARE impressed with what you’ve done.

Believe in you and give yourself a pat on the back. (Although physically it would probably be easier to just give yourself a round of applause).

14. Stand Tall

Standing up straight will ALWAYS make you feel better about yourself than slouching does. Stand with your feet slightly apart, suck in your tummy and behind, broaden your shoulders and straighten your neck. It’s an amazingly quick confidence boost.

15. Say Hello

Make it a rule to say hi to at least one person you don’t know EVERY day. Give them the smile you flash at yourself in the mirror, the biggest and best one you can find. They’ll smile back automatically, and they’ll walk away with a little extra confidence boost thanks to you.

People look their best when they smile, and they also feel better by smiling too! This ultimately means you get a confidence boost too, for making someone else feel good about themselves.

16. Never Say Never….Ever

If you think something can’t be done, then you’ll end up proving yourself right eventually. So never say never, just keep plugging along until it works for you. If other people are telling you it can’t be done, you’re going to feel such immense satisfaction at actually doing it that your confidence will soar.

17. Get Active

Don’t sit around the house just doing nothing. Get up, go out, cycling, walking, exercising, anything that might invigorate your brain. A lively brain full of thoughts will help you gain confidence.

18. “Happy Foods”

Happy foods, such as chocolate, strawberries, lemons, ice-cream etc will increase the serotonin levels in your brain, leading to an increased feeling of happiness.

Feeling happy is a natural confidence boost. So go on, enjoy your food! (in moderation, of course).

19. Face Your Fear

Is there something you are afraid of? Face it full on. Doing something scary and overcoming the fear is a fantastic way to boost your confidence. So go on, jump out of that plane (with a parachute of course), drive that car, speak in front of a large crowd, ask for a promotion, or whatever it is that scares you. You’ll feel absolutely brilliant once it’s done.

20. Willpower

Create a goal that you really want to reach. Possibly something like weight loss before a certain time, giving up smoking or having a certain amount of money in the bank within so many months etc. Take baby steps, and use your willpower until you succeed at reaching your goal.

It will be really hard, as will power can be very elusive at times, but keep going and don’t give up. Once you have reached that first goal by using your willpower you will have the confidence to create new goals AND reach them.

21. Ask questions

Any time you find yourself worrying about something you haven’t done, or something you think you should have done, ask yourself positive questions. Instead of thinking “I’m terrible for missing my friend’s birthday” think “What can I do to make my friend feel special?”

Or, instead of “Why can’t I ever seem to do things on time?” change it to “What can I change to better manage my time” Creating positive questions will release the negative energies which have a tendency to pull down your self confidence.

22. Learn

Accept that not everything works out the way we plan it. Decide to accept any mistakes and rejections as part of a learning curve that we all need to go through.

Without mistakes, you can’t learn from your own experiences. Remember, experience builds confidence, so always learn as much as you can.

23. List

Write a list of every single thing you’re good at, anything from clipping the dog’s toenails to putting up a shelf. Take the time to sit and actually think about what you ARE good at and add them all to the list. You’ll be surprised at how many things you end up jotting down, no matter how minor or trivial they may seem at the time.

Whenever you have a spare 5 minutes, or if you’re feeling a little low, take the list out of your pocket and read it. This is a great little way to give yourself a nice confidence boost.

24: Help out

There are lots of ways to help others, and feeling useful and helpful are great ways of building your confidence. Just make sure you do things because you WANT to do them. You could call a good friend who may be down at the moment-even take them out for coffee, you will brighten both your days, or you could possibly help out at an old folks home or similar. Knowing that people appreciate your help will boost your confidence for sure.

25: Show the way

Think of the one thing you do best of all. Think long and hard about this one. Thought of something? Now, find a discussion group or similar related to that topic and spread your wisdom by answering questions, offering advice or help to anybody needing it. If you can’t find a group, you could even start one yourself.

People will look up to you and that will give you all the more reason to feel confident about yourself.

Be Blessed

By Ralston Heath. Did you like what you read? Find out more from: How to Have Anything You Want
Labels: life, personal growth, relationship

I recently wrote about managing my first team and how I build community. A key to our success was building a community of people who wanted to win but also cared about each other. This team was over 20 years ago and just this morning, I spoke to a team member in Germany. Last week I got a call from a lady on that team that was on vacation in Marco Island. My sponsor for this blog is a company owned by a member of this team. My secretary from that team is in touch with me. In the past 20 years, she started and finished her college education, got a masters degree and is the Director of The University of Buffalo School Entrepreneurship Althea did all this as an adult with 2 kids. We buried one of our teammates, Bill McCarthy, I big Irish guy that was so loved the church was full like he was a world leader. He was an Account Manager, and still a group as us executives flew the company Gulf Stream in to Olean, New York for the funeral. His young son is now at St Bonaventure as a student. I am sorry, I was thinking about these guys and had to brag on a couple of them. As you see, I lucked out because they were truly great people.

Why would I open with a paragraph filled with nostalgia, isn’t time to move on? Yes and no. Yes because time dose not stand still and no because there are lessons learned that we can apply better today given the technology. Just think how much easier is would be to build community and a team sprit with blogs.

I was based in Buffalo, had 4 sales reps in “The Buff.” 1 in Syracuse, 2 in Rochester, 1 in Olean and 3 in Albany. Today we all could have blogs to communicate with each other. We could provide advice on competitors; understand pricing trends in the market. We could introduce our families, celebrate closes and build community. Sales reps like to communicate and the great ones are thinking business all the time.

I will share with you some of my favorite blogs . You will see there are different ways of blogging. All businesses should blog to build community with customers but internal blogging can work well for team building. I will on purpose introduce a diverse group of bloggers. That’s right, men, women, different races. Judge for your self but I love blogging and I know it can build community.

You have to visit my man Douglass Karr. He is a talented marketer and has an excellent blog. Have him show you his son blog as well.

Paula Neal Mooney is a gifted blogger and blogs on a variety of topic. She has great visuals and a keen insight.

If you want to blog to fame, visit Divya Uttam, she is blowing up right with an exciting contest to make it possible to line your pockets. She’s only 22!

You will love Jim Legington’s blog. His ministry is strong and filled with love.

On occasion I will hip you to some of my favorites. My hope is that we can learn from each other and lead business to make blogging a way of life.

Lastly, I need votes for best business blog .I am up to 13, please click in the upper right corner on the stamp and vote for me. Thanks!

Little did I know I would do a post on sports today? But, how about King James, aka; LeBron James? Have you ever seen a basketball player score the last 25 points his team scored versus a great defensive team? Keep in mind these are the NBA promoted,” Best Athletes in the World!” The men that make sport fans claim, I love this game! Did you see it?
King James dribbling around in the forth quarter with 3 of the Pistons chasing him, looking for an opening and suddenly launching a fade away 3 point shot, nothing but net. Now all you jock’s throw up a fade away 3 with nobody guarding you. Hard isn’t it?

Lebron burst on the scene as a high school phenom, who was so good his games were on national TV . As a high school senior his young mother brought a new Hummer SUV. The jealous national white media made it sound like this was a criminal act. LeBron was portrayed as a bad guy. Just think a 17 year old being talked about being a cause of what is wrong with young athletes. When I did my research, I discovered a kid, that was a good teammate in high school, was popular, not a gang banger, respectful of adults. That is why I root for him.

Lebron was crucified by the jealous white media after game one of this series for passing the ball to the open man, Dontrell Marshall, who missed the shot as the clock ran out. TheCcavaliers lost. Game 2 as the clock ran out, Lebron took the last shot, was fouled and missed. The foul was not called and the Cav’s lost again.

This week in Chicago, esteemed sports columnist Sam Smith nailed Lebron as being not a good fit for the Olympic team. Lebron had his game face on, all business and pissed off. Now the sport writers are calling him royalty. A few days ago he was a flop. Now he is the man.

Together Everyone Accomplishes More. The first letter from each word spells TEAM! Corny, you bet, true, you got that right. Many times people are promoted to manager because they were good at something. I was a good salesman, not great by any means but nerveless always one of the top ranked salesmen in the division. I did consistent business and managed to sell more than much more talented salesmen. For that I got promoted to National Accounts Manager for Government Accounts. I was fortunate in that position and had some remarkable accomplishments. I was promoted again in 8 months to a district manager position. It would be natural to assume my success would continue, it did, but it was more challenging than anticipated.

I was responsible for a group of 12 people. I was a good salesman, had an unbelievable year as an National Accounts Manager. I also had never been anyone’s boss before and had no training other than a week of administrative information. I did not even know how to go about hiring a secretary. Little did I know the biggest task would be building a team? My thoughts were everyone would want to be a team, have team goals, enjoy each others company, and do well.

It was shocking to find out, some folk just wanted to get paid, were negative, were defensive, and could not even think of listening to coaching from a black manager that was much younger. Here is what worked.

We celebrated success, the team had not done well and felt things were different in upstate new York. If anyone did something positive we went over board with complements.

We established a team identity. I tried to hire people that did not fit the corporate image. The image of this company was like Ken and Barbie dolls. I resented the image because it did not fit me. I diversified by hiring several blacks, loud shit talking white guys and some very nice people. We wanted to be like the old Oakland Raiders or Detroit Pistons. The bad asses. Several of us wore full beards, some wore too much jewelry, we adopted paisley ties as a look. We all dressed in nice expensive clothes and raised hell together. The only way we would not be laughed at was to kick butt.

We had team meetings every month and conference calls on a weekly basis. We had Friday afternoon happy hours and plenty of team dinners. We had team picnics and put pressure on ourselves to win and win big, but we kept it a party.

We became a team thought being real people first, learning to like each other, setting common goals as a team and individual goals and celebrating success. We loved the fact that we were different. We helped each other get promoted. We became a family that loved and respected each other. The bottom line is when building a team think about the people first. Allow every one to be them selves and feel valued in order for the beautiful dynamics of team elevate performance. As the manager, be a leader not the boss, be a team member, not the boss, admit mistakes and take advice. Do not pressure yourself to be perfect, be good not perfect. Let your people know you faults and all. It is a lot of fun!