How to Be Confident Part Three: The Soul

Listening to the mind can be very detrimental to your confidence. Learning to escape the mind and re-connecting with your soul can help you develop real confidence that can not be shaken or broken for anything.

The greatest tool that you have at your disposal for cutting through the fog that the mind creates is meditation. Meditation allows you to enter into the calm, peaceful and non thinking state that alcohol creates without consuming a single drop.

Real Benefits of Meditation

I know the image that comes to mind when you think of someone who meditates; some hippie dressed in weird clothing that sounds like a stoner and comes off as an arrogant prick. You don’t need to shave your head and wear a dress like a Buddhist to enjoy the many benefits that come from meditation:

1. Calmer emotions-we tend to make small situations into bigger ones when we are stressed out. Deep breathing allows your nervous system to slow down and greatly reduce the stress in your life.

2. Escape your mind and the insecurities and self conscious feelings that come from it

3. Allows you to stay calm and peaceful during stressful situations. Most men would get stressed out if a girl rejected them badly in front of a large group of people. They would get upset and feel like a loser, but a guy that meditates would smile and go about his business as if nothing happened.

One of the greatest benefits you will receive from meditation is the ability to let things go. When most people are in a position to lose something or someone their initial response is fear. Fear becomes worry that causes them to dig their claws in and hold on as tight as possible. Tightening your grip when things begin to slip away is neediness, the opposite of confidence.

Neediness is one of the biggest turn offs for women. Becoming needy and trying to keep what’s leaving you is ironic, in that it will cause you to lose what you desire even faster. With meditation the ability to let go of women or the possibility of women becomes a whole hell of a lot easier.

Meditation doesn’t end after thirty minutes of listening to a meditation cd alone in your room. You need to be able to meditate no matter what you are doing. At first it will be difficult to maintain the same level of peace you got while meditating alone but it will become easier over time. Breathe deeply while talking to friends. Relax and breathe deeply while you are waiting in the grocery line. Take it to the point where you can meditate in every action that you do.

Basic Meditation Exercise

Sit down in a chair with your back straight. Take a minute to let go of the events of the day. Relax your entire body and take a deep breath through your nose and into your stomach. Hold for five seconds. Let go of the breath through your nose while letting the air out of your stomach. Do this a couple of times.

Next breathe into your solar plexus, the area above your belly button but below your chest. Breathe in through your nose and hold it for five seconds. Breathe out of your nose, then repeat.

Next breathe into your chest through your nose. Hold for five seconds before letting the air out. Repeat for several times before putting it all together.

Now breathe in through your stomach, the solar plexus and finally your chest. Hold for five seconds. Then release it in order from your chest, solar plexus and finally your stomach. Repeat over and over again.

It can be difficult at first to attain a deep peaceful state but there is something you can do to cheat. Below is a link for a meditation program that I personally use that has greatly helped with not only women but with other areas of my life. You can check it out here:

www.centerpointe.com

Fear

Fear is a mental construct but I put it under the soul section for a reason. When your world is consumed by fear you will feel as if your soul, essence or self is slipping away. You know who you are but who you are seems so distant from where you are. Fear is a cage that prevents you from being confident and living the life you want.

There are millions of books, audio cds, programs to help you cope with fear but they are all out for your wallet. You can try to hypnotize yourself to eliminate your fear but it won’t work. You could look in the mirror repeating affirmations over and over that your fear is gone but it won’t make any difference because THE ONLY WAY AROUND A FEAR IS THROUGH IT.

You are scared to approach that girl or to ask her for her number but the only way to get over it is to push through your fear. Tired of your girlfriend nagging you to death but too scared to say anything for fear of losing her? The only solution is to get courage to see through your fears and stand up for yourself.

Everything I talked about so far is important to building confidence but none more than overcoming your fears. You can eat right, workout, not berate yourself but none of that will matter if you are filled with fear. All of those things will be mealiness without doing this one thing.

At first you will feel a lot of pressure and fear at the thought of conquering that which scares you. It might become too overwhelming and cause you to try and cop out of what you know needs to be done. You may even attempt to rationalize your fears, “oh, it’s not that bad. I don’t need to do that.”

If you buy into the excuse that you don’t need to overcome your fears that badly it’s more than ok. When you can’t seem to get yourself to do something it’s best to just let it go. In time your frustration with the limitation that fear puts on your life will start to build up and hit a boiling point. When that happens you won’t buy into your excuses and you will be highly motivated to do something about your life.

To help speed up the process of hitting that boiling point there is a simple exercise you can do: Imagine all the times that you let fear prevent you from doing something you wanted to do. Put each instance where you felt you let yourself down by choosing to be scared and play them back to back in your mind like a movie. Put the movie you made on repeat for a week straight until you get fed up with letting fear drive your life.

Every time that you overcome a fear you gain a certain level of confidence. After your heart rate calms down you will feel a little bit more free, a little bit more confident. Push through enough fears and your level of confidence will be beyond anything you could imagine.

The key to getting through a fear is to not hesitate. The more time spent waiting gives you a bigger opportunity to not do it. Every second that passes by the more anxiety you will feel. Your mind will start in with it’s annoying ‘what if?’ questions. “What if she rejects me? What if I make a fool of myself? What if…” Wait long enough and your anxiety will take over and cause you to shut down and lose out on yet another opportunity.

It’s important to not try and look cool while pushing through your fears. If the desire to not embarrass yourself is too strong you will end up not doing anything at all. Accept that you will not be perfect pushing through your fears. Come to terms with the fact that you will make a fool of yourself for a while.

How to Overcome Your Fears

The first step is always the hardest, being honest about what you are scared of. In this great society of ours we have been taught to hide our fears and act as if they don’t exist. You can try your best to run from what makes your heart race, palms sweat and gives you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach but all your effort is done in vain.

Take some time and think about your fears, insecurities and doubts and write them down. Don’t judge yourself for having this fear or start to compare yourself to other people who DON’T have this type of fear. It’s not important what you have, what’s important is what you are going to do about it.

Prescribing the Symptom

The next step is to actually…*gulp* face your fears, insecurities and doubts.. If you are scared to approach women who are complete strangers then your plan will be to approach random women. For the most part what to do about your fears should be quite simple but some are more complex.

Prescribing the symptom is taking what you fear or worry about and doing it. I had a student who had a deep seeded fear of blushing around other people. This was a problem because he would get nervous around women and start to get red in the face. He would freak out about blushing and as a result blush even more.

It was a real problem that he couldn’t seem to get over. I told him to prescribe the symptom by consciously trying to make himself blush. It’s a little difficult thing to do on command so I instructed him to go out and buy women’s blush. “Really cake on the blush so there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that you are wearing makeup or blushing.”

At first he was hesitant but I assured him that this will help him get over his issues. He was very scared the first couple of times going out with women’s makeup but he eventually got over it. It got to the point where he would go out and forget that his face was red from the blush. He became comfortable with an awkward situation that helped him get over his issues with blushing and become more confident.

Another student felt uncomfortable buying condoms. He felt as if everyone was watching and judging him for it. I told him to go to the store and buy a big box of condoms and nothing else. Typically people would try to hide their condoms but he wasn’t going to do that. He was going to hold them up high around his chest so everyone knew what he was buying and what he was going to do with them.

Whatever you are insecure or fearful about devise a plan to get over your issues. If worry too much that people are judging you for the way you dress then go out in a hot pink belly shirt. If you are scared about saying the wrong things in conversations with people start to say inappropriate jokes or anything that will create enormous awkward silence. You get the idea.

Becoming confident is like anything else in life, it starts with a choice. You have two choices: make excuses and stay the way you are or choose to take control of your life. There is no halfway when it comes to making a choice like this. You are either in it fully or you aren’t.

If you need convincing that learning to become confident is the right choice take a look at those who took the other route. Notice their unhappiness, bitterness and frustration and ask yourself “is that what I really want?”