Remember your ABCs

Riddle: What is something everyone wants, everyone has a degree of it, and many struggle with it?

Answer: Confidence.

Confidence is a funny thing. Sometimes you’ll wake up feeling a million bucks and then you look in the mirror and immediately you can feel your confidence dissipating like a deflating balloon… strange, hey? Often this has a lot to do with issues with body image and low self-esteem, but did you know there is a way around that? Sounds a bit too good to be true, I know, but let me explain:

Neurologists have found that speaking certain things over yourself can actually completely change your thinking. That makes sense because we believe what we say about ourselves and think about ourselves, as well as what others say about us. We are all well aware of the power of speech.

Naturally, I’m a really confident person, please do not get this mixed up with arrogance – that’s confidence with a heart of pride and ego. My confidence comes from the fact that I love people and in order to talk to them you do need confidence, and particularly that in my opportunities in leadership I needed a heck of a lot of confidence to achieve success in the situations I faced. Some people are born with natural leadership and confidence gifting, yes, but believing that you are a leader and confidence will definitely make it easier next time you’re doing your group presentation at university.

However, this can easily be hurt by things said by others – unfortunately, this one is out of our control… or is it?

I find on multiple occasions that ‘killing them with kindness’ is actually the most powerful way of changing someone’s attitude towards you. I mean, if we understand the fact that what we say can actually affect what people believe, that’s completely scary, but if used properly, it’s incredible. Think about it. If someone was speaking things that were incredibly hurtful about you, and you turned around and complimented them, how would they react? Nine times out of ten they would probably stare back at you stunned. It’s a standard anti-bullying technique that I’ve been taught since I can remember but imagine if we fully took hold of it.

It’s funny how much of an impact our kindergarten fundamentals really have in tough situations today. Here’s another one:

‘Always remember your ABCs’.

However, this one I’m going to take a step beyond the 26 letters of the alphabet.

‘Always remember your ABCs, Always Be Confident, even if you don’t feel like it’.

Now I do know that this isn’t totally foreign to most of you but if we are talking about speaking things over yourself to believe them, this is a pretty good saying to remember.

Confidence is attractive. You’ll be surprised how attractive – give it a go!