5 Strategies for Maximum Confidence | Jack Canfield

Hi there, Jack Canfield here. And today I want to share five strategies to help you develop maximum levels of confidence. If you're going to be successful in creating the life of your dreams, you have to believe that you're capable of making it happen. You have to believe you have the right stuff and that you're able to pull it off. Self confidence is a deep seated belief that you have whatever it takes to the abilities, the inner resources, the talents and the skills to create your desired results. So the first strategy I want to offer you is to make the choice to believe in yourself. That's right. Believing in yourself is a choice. It's an attitude you develop over time. And although it helps if you had positive and supportive parents, the fact is that most of us had run of the mill parents who inadvertently passed on to us the same limiting beliefs and negative conditioning that they grew up with. Now, to be successful, you have to remember the past is the past. And there is no payoff for blaming your parents for your current level of self confidence. It's your responsibility to take charge of your own self concept and your own beliefs. You must choose to believe that you can do anything you set your mind to, because the reality is, you can. Now strategy number two is to use positive self talk and positive visualization to persuade yourself that you can't achieve your goals that you are able to do it. Now the latest brain research indicates that with enough positive self talk and positive visualization, combined with proper training, coaching and practice, anyone can learn to do almost anything. If you choose to believe in yourself and act as if anything is possible, then you will do the things that are necessary to bring about the result. On the other hand, if you believe that it is impossible, if you will not do what is necessary and you will not produce the result either way, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Now the third strategy is to give up the words I can't. If you are going to develop maximum levels of self confidence and success, you need to give up the phrase I can't and all of its cousins such as I wish I were able to. The words I can't actually disempower you. They make you physically weaker when you say them. Your brain is designed to solve any problem and reach any goal that you give it. And the words you think and say actually affect your brain and your body. Now let me give you an example. When you were a toddler, there was no stopping you. You thought you could climb up on anything. No barrier was too big for you to attempt to overcome. But little by little. Your sense of invincibility was conditioned out of you by the emotional and physical abuse that you receive from your family, your friends, your teachers and coaches, and by the decisions that you made in response to that, until you no longer believe that you can. And so, to undo your past conditioning and move towards a future of confidence and success, you have to take responsibility for removing the words I can't from your vocabulary and replacing them with the words I can and I will. Now, the fourth strategy for achieving maximum levels of self confidence is to ignore what others think about you. If having others believing in you and your dream were a requirement for success, most of us would never accomplish anything. You need to base your decisions about what you want to do on your goals and desires. Not the goals, desires, opinions, judgments of other people, such as your parents, your friends, your spouse, your children, or co workers. So quit worrying about what other people think about you and follow your heart. In fact, most of the time, nobody is thinking about you at all. The truth is, they're all too busy worrying about their own lives. And if they're thinking about you at all, they're wondering what you're thinking about them. Meanwhile, all that time you're wasting worrying about what other people think about, your ideas, your goals, your clothes, your hair, and your home could be better spent focusing on doing the things that will actually get you closer to achieving your goals. And the final strategy that I want to share with you is to constantly acknowledge your positive past. Most people in our culture spend their time remembering and dwelling on their failures more than their successes. One reason for this is the leave them alone, pounce approach to parenting, teaching and management that is so prevalent in our culture. When you were a young child, your parents left you alone when you were playing and being cooperative and you were happy. And then they pounced on you when you made too much noise, you were a nuisance, or you got into trouble. There was almost always more emotional intensity around your errors and your mistakes and your failures than there ever was around your successes. And because the brain more easily remembers events that were accompanied by strong emotions, and most people underestimate and underappreciate the number of successes they've had compared to the number of failures they've had. So the best way to counteract this phenomenon is to consciously focus on and celebrate your successes, research has shown over and over again that the more you acknowledge your past successes, the more confident you become in taking on and successfully accomplishing new ones. Remembering and acknowledging that you have had successes in the past and will give you the self confidence that you can have more successes in the future. Now, keeping these five strategies in mind, I want to leave you with a bit of homework to complete. After you're done watching this video, I want you to create a victory log, a list of all your daily successes. Now you can keep your list in a notebook, in your iPad or your smartphone or on your computer, but the point is to keep a running list that you can add to each day. Begin by writing down your successes from yesterday and those that you have today and then keep that list going in order to log these victories into your long term memory. As simple as this exercise is, is extremely powerful in building your maximum confidence. Now to hold yourself accountable, I want you to leave a comment below with the first five items in your victory log and I'll follow up with you guys to make sure you're staying on track. So thanks again for watching and remember, nothing will change for the better until you do. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one and for some additional resources on how to develop your self confidence and your self esteem, visit my website@jackcampfield.com.