Deep down, you’re probably a lot like most people in the world. On some level, you want to win, get ahead, be effective, make a difference, achieve your goals, and feel good about yourself.
That’s great. And that’s exactly what happens when you have CONFIDENT PRESENCE.
Tons of research backs that up.
Unfortunately, you’ve been told a lie.
You’ve been told that your getting-ahead depends on you being really smart, in other words, your I.Q.
World-renowned psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman debunked that myth. He found that the scores on Harvard student entrance exams had absolutely no correlation with their eventual career success. In fact, he even went so far as to say that no more than 25% of a person’s success could be attributed to I.Q.
And you’ve been told that your getting-ahead depends on your academic credentials.
In his 25-year quest for the #1 factor in success, Dr. David McClelland said the answer was definitely not education, as important as that is. The world if filled with highly educated people who aren’t going very far.
So what is the truth?
According to Goleman, McClelland, and dozens of others, including a guy called Dr. Zimmerman, the #1 factor in success, the “secret sauce” you need to win, get ahead, be effective, make a difference, achieve your goals, and feel good about yourself is CONFIDENT PRESENCE.
To feel stronger on the inside, to come across more confidently on the outside, to get better results on and off the job, here are a few strategies. I can share so much more with you in the upcoming weeks.
►1. Increase your gratitude level..
One of the ways you destroy your own confidence is to focus on what you don’t have.
And any focus on your lack of something will be hard on your self-esteem and damage your CONFIDENT PRESENCE.
For example, some people spend their lives whining, saying they never had a chance in life. They lacked the right education, parents, race, religion, gender or whatever to get ahead.
All that will do is make you feel weak and come across as a loser.
By contrast, when you increase your gratitude level, you are focused on what you do have. That empowers and emboldens you. It gives you a more CONFIDENT PRESENCE.
To put this into practice, if you’re not already doing it, make a gratitude list. Make a list of the things you are thankful for … in other words, good things you have in your life. Your list might include your gratefulness for a partner that cares, for a mind that works, for a body that functions, for a job that pays the bills, for a faith that sustains you, and a hundred other things.
The more grateful you are the more confident you will become. You will look, feel, sound, and come across more confidently to others. And that’s a win-win.
► 2. Refuse to define yourself with lying words
No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. You will have failures along the way. But don’t ever tell yourself “I’m a failure.” That’s a noun. That’s a word that defines who you are, once and for all, and makes it very difficult for you to maintain your confidence.
When you apply words like “failure, loser, down-and-outer, good-for-nothing, over-the-hill, past-my-prime” to yourself, you’re lying to yourself. You are defining yourself by an incident, a habit, or some mistakes you’ve made. But you are SO MUCH more than that. Those labels are lies. As psychologist Dr. Bev Smallwood tells her clients,
“You are definitely not a ‘failure,’ unless you bail out, give up, or quit trying.”
To escape the lies that destroy your CONFIDENT PRESENCE, take a look at what’s going on in your head. Are you stuck in the lying past, calling yourself a “failure” for what you did in the past? Stop it!!!
Instead, focus on the present and the future. When confident people mess up, something quite different is going on in their heads. They say, “I failed. What can I learn from this? How can I do better next time.”
Try it. It works.
► 3. Practice CONFIDENT PRESENCE.
Confidence is not a matter of luck, that some people just have it and others don’t.
Confidence is not a matter of genetics. You don’t inherit it.
Confidence is the result of thinking the right thoughts, using the right skills, and presenting yourself with the right body language. And that comes from practice, practice, practice.
I had to learn that to become an effective speaker. In 9th grade Speech class, my knees shook so badly that the teacher got in the middle of my speech, slapped my knees, and said, “Stop that!”
Early in my professional speaking career, I was addressing a group of high-powered female judges. The meeting planner warned me in advance that if I said anything that they might not like, they would tear me apart. That scared me so much that in the opening few minutes of my presentation my mouth totally dried up and my tongue stuck to the top of my mouth.
In each case I didn’t have the CONFIDENT PRESENCE I needed. But through practice, practice, practice I achieved that and was even inducted into the “Legends of Speaking” in Washington D.C. this last August.
The point is YOU can do the same thing. When you practice the skills of confidence, you will have the confidence you need. I’ll show more ways to do that in the next few weeks.
