The Tao of Pooh

I bumped into a very old friend a couple of weeks ago. He reminded me of a book I nagged him to reading back in the early nineties which I had completely forgotten about.

Amazingly, not only had my old pal remembered the Tao of Pooh, he had also studied Taoism further trying to blend some of the key messages into his life. He urged me to look into it further again and reread the book. As soon as I was home I was straight onto Amazon to order a paperback copy. It was not available in Kindle format!

Delving back into a book I loved when I was 21 in my mid forties was a bit odd. It was a little like going back to childhood playground or old school. It was recognisable but seemed and seemed a bit smaller.

However, the main lessons of Taoism sound very worthwhile; don't try to be someone you are not, maintain humility and humbleness and keep faith in ourselves maintaining patience as "every thousand mile journey starts with a single step."

I think I'll read some more on Taoism.

Cheers
  

Confidence and Teamwork

I am reading Matthew Syed's latest book The Greatest at the moment. It is exactly the type of book I love delving deeper into sports of all types to identify lessons for success in life.

One point in particular struck me. His disdain for personal awards in team sports like football such as world player of the year which has been shared between Messi and Ronaldo for the last few years. However, the point Syed makes is that these players would be nothing without their teammates to carry out the less glamorous ball winning and passing duties. 

He has a point.

Which got me thinking. We are all members of teams one way or another whether that is in relationships or the workplace and it is our duty to be good team mates to ensure others can shine and do the best they can. So even if we don't gain any personal accolades we can be save in the knowledge we have made life better for others. And nothing can provide a greater confidence boost than that.

Cheers

The Iceberg Illusion

I love this graphic which I stole from Matthew Syed's twitter feed. It sums things up perfectly. When something looks really easy or second nature to someone, there has generally been a lot of work put in.

 

How to persuade someone to change their mind...

Seventeenth century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal a brief but productive life. He died the age of 39 but not before some remarkmarkable theories and discoveries.

There was a story in the papers earlier in the week as he apparently preempted psychologists by hundreds of years by developing a theory of how to persuade others to change their view.

The secret, apparently, is not to argue black is black or white is white. Rather, we should describe our view in the perspective of allowing the other person to see the whole story while not actually disagreeing with their view. This allows them to take on board new information or adopt a view without having to swallow their pride and accept they are wrong.

I think many of us who lack confidence can be concerned about being assertive enough the persuade others. But being bolshy isn't necessary merely providing a full view of the facts!

Cheers

Too much confidence is even worse....

It is doubtful whether this issue would be a realistic concern for any of us. I suppose our journey to increasing self belief would be complete if we grew over confident. However, I think this could be even worse than failing self esteem.

Lets take our old friend Donald Trump who recently awarded himself an A for effort after the initial few weeks of Precidency. He is now waking up to the harsh reality of 24/7 coverage from the world media and we have had a number of embarassing episodes. The Mike Flynn resignation, the courts blocking his executive order for the travel ban, his arbitrary bans on various media organisations and now we have his Attorney General Jeff Sessions in hot water over his links to the Russian administration.

It's not so easy being in the hot seat as it was being the rogue, populist outsider only a few months ago. This is only after a few weeks as well without any real negative foreign affairs or economic issues to deal with. All these problems have been created internally driven by Trump's hubris.

I suppose the moral of the story is that it is positive to try to build our own confidence but be very wary of those who display too much. It generally leads to disaster.

Cheers

Dr Steve Peters for Kids

There was a report recently in the local media here in Scotland about some research conducted at a school in Scotland in helping the pupils deal with stress. The report went to say that around 40% of the pupils were stressed and needed extra support. They cited the twin stresses of forthcoming exams (an age old problem) and the pressure to appear to have a perfect life on social media (a newer problem).

I think my old friend Dr Steve Peters has a lot of really useful input here and my view is that his theories should be taught to children as well as adults.

This video is a really useful starting point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6bHxhfJGIU

Cheers

Building Confidence in Children - Carol Dweck

Carol Dweck has completed some very interesting research into how to motivate and support individuals and children in particular.

Startlingly, she concludes that tell children they are smart and clever can be damaging to them. This is because if a child believes they are smart they are less likely to push themselves as they don't want to fail and lose their "smart" label.

Better to reward children for being determined, willing to attempt challenging tasks and showing grit. These should motivate kids to keep going even if they fail at first.

Cheers

The point of this blog

The point of this bog is to help others (and myself) become more confident. I am fortunate that I have managed to build my confidence, slowly, over many years.

Daniel Coyle's blog is one of the many really useful resources I use. It can be found here http://thetalentcode.com/  

One of the lessons I have learned is that we can all reach a high level of compentence in any skill we chose. We just have to apply ourselves to engage in purposeful practice over a sustained period of time. The videos on the improvements that can be made in table tennis and playing the violin are amazing.

I think, however, we need to be kind to ourselves. Learning and progress is messy and certainly does not move in a straight line. I think when learning a new skill we can be easily put off initially as we don't feel we are making enough immediate progress. If we view it as a process with peaks and plateaus we can become a little more relaxed about it and not expect massive improvements every day. We should only judge our progress after a sustained period.

The good news is that we can also apply this logic to the skill of building our confidence. Don't anticipate overnight success or even large improvements in a short space of time, just incremental improvements on a weekly basis.

Cheers

Pilates

As I may have mentioned before I have found exercising really beneficial to improve physical and mental well being and can be slightly addictive.

I have been running regularly for the last 10 years or so and cycling for about 5. I also try to do a bit of amateur yoga as I am not the most flexible.

However, I pilates recently and what a difference, it improves posture, composure as well as conditioning and strength I hope. I remember the recently retired Manchester United player Ryan Giggs stating that he felt his career had been prolonged by regularly taking pilates classes.

I'm still a complete novice and have only tried beginners videos on Youtube but it is well worth a try.

Cheers

Self Esteem and Dopamine - Simon Sinek

I really enjoyed Simon Sinek's youtube interview about the generation known as millenials. He talks about many of the subjects we have covered here; self esteem as a result of failed parenting strategies and dopamine hits as a result of getting positive feedback on social media. These factors have affected younger people more than others.

He goes on to say prolonged periods on social media result in people feeling worse rather than better about life. Younger people are becoming reliant on devices rather than friends resulting in superficial friendships. It all sounds like a recipe for a lack of confidence and increased likelihoods of depression.

Instant gratification is another expectation younger people have; however, we only become fulfilled where we put the work in over the long term. Really interesting viewing.

What it here at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU

Cheers

Happy New Year?

There is a view that 2016 was not a great year; a stream of very popular celebrities many for here in the UK passed away at a depressingly speedy rate throughout the year.

Combine this with the puzzling Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump across the Atlantic many would have you believe that last year was the worst ever.

But was it really?

The UK team enjoyed unprecedented success at the Rio games, Andy Murray won Wimbledon and my own football team enjoyed a very successful time.

So what can we conclude from this?

All the events I mentioned are objective, there are plenty who have a completely opposing view. Also I had no direct influence over them. We can be hostages to fortune if we look to external events to ensure we feel happy.

Happiness and confidence are an inside job, for every time your team or sports star overachieves they will also fail to meet expectations. So how to we ensure we are happy; meditation, eating healthily, plenty of exercise and treating others as we would like to be treated ourselves.  That's what I'll be doing as well as having my fingers crossed Donald Trump isn't re-elected in 202, hopefully there will only be four years of damage done!

Cheers