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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONFIDENCE: A GUIDE TO THE THEORY AND APPLICATION OF SELF EFFICACY BY SAM DAVIES

Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

DISCLAIMER The information provided in this book is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. This book is not meant to be used, nor should it be used to diagnose or treat any medical condition. For diagnosis or treatment of any medical problem, consult your own physician. The publisher and author are not responsible for any specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision and are not liable for any damages or negative consequences from any treatment; action, application or preparation, to any person reading or following the information in this book. References are provided for informational purposes only and do not constitute endorsement of any websites or other sources. Readers should be aware that the websites listed in this book may change.

Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is the culmination of twenty four years of personal experience, research and observation. It is dedicated to my Mum, Josie, my stepfather, Gethin and my sister, Nikki. I could not ask for a better family and of course, my best friends, all of whom I love and have loved me and supported me and continue to support me in my most challenging of times. This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever sought the truth and did not know where to look. This, I hope, can be the start.

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A NOTE TO THE READER I did not write this book for profit; I wrote it so I could contribute back to the world what it has provided me knowledge. If you did not purchase it, please do because it does not cost a lot and I put a lot of time and effort into it. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................... 3 A NOTE TO THE READER ...................................................... 4 PART 1 INTRODUCTION..................................................... 7 WHY I HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK ...................................... 7 HOW YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK ............................... 10 THE DEFINITION OF CONFIDENCE.................................... 14 THE PROBLEM WITH CONFIDENCE............................... 20 SELF-ESTEEM ...................................................................... 21 AFFIRMATIONS.................................................................... 22 COMPETENCY ..................................................................... 22 INDIFFERENCE.................................................................... 23 HOW TO EMOTIONALLY RELEASE YOURSELF FROM THE OUTCOME............................................................................. 24 RE-CONTEXUALISING CONFIDENCE ................................ 26 CONFIDENCE MYTH BUSTING ........................................... 27 PART TWO THE THEORY OF CONFIDENCE ................... 31 THE POLARITY OF CONFIDENCE ...................................... 31 THEORY WITHOUT APPLICATION ..................................... 31 APPLICATION WITHOUT THEORY ..................................... 31 BELIEF SYSTEMS................................................................. 32 SELF TALK ........................................................................... 33 REFRAMING ......................................................................... 36 PHYSIOLOGY........................................................................ 38 EYE CONTACT ..................................................................... 38 GESTURES ........................................................................... 40 BODY LANGUAGE ............................................................... 41 FACIALS ............................................................................... 42 VOCAL TONE, VOLUME & PACING..................................... 42 PART THREE THE APPLICATION OF CONFIDENCE ..... 45 LIFESTYLE DESIGN ............................................................. 45 FRIENDS ............................................................................... 46 APPEARENCE ...................................................................... 47 Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

SPONTANEITY ..................................................................... 48 EXERCISE............................................................................. 48 NUTRITION ........................................................................... 49 CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 50

Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

PART 1 INTRODUCTION To succeed in life, you need two thing; confidence and ignorance and then the success is sure Confidence; it is that elusive and much sought after commodity that we all want or have. If you want it, I would anticipate that you think you do not have it (you do, but you do not realise it yet) or if you have it, you want to understand it and perhaps, even have more or it. Whether you are the former and you want to move from scarcity to abundance or you are the latter and have abundance but want it to be internally validated as opposed to externally validated, I am confident I can coach you on what you want in this book. WHY I HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK The question is does the world really need another book on confidence? Perhaps not, but I wanted to write my own book on confidence to avoid the clichs that are common in self help. The book was written for two reasons. The first reason is, with the exception of some authors, I am sceptical of how many authors have actually applied their own theories and moved from scarcity to abundance as a result of it. There are many authors who are doctors in psychology who write about a lot of psychological theories that they have researched, but how many of them have ACTUALLY practised what they preach? It is easy for an author to write about how to be confidence in the Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

context of, for example, approaching a woman to ask her for her number, but how many of them have ACTUALLY done it themselves? Have they instead, researched confidence based on popular research and simply written a book about it? I am not a doctor nor do I claim to be, but I am self educated and know what I am talking about that I am confident of. Everything I have written about in this book is a result of twenty four years of personal experience, research and observation. I have tried and tested EVERYTHING myself and I have given credit where credit is due. There are of course some authors who do walk their talk and for that reason I am very indebted to them, for this book would not have been possible otherwise. The second reason I wrote this book is because people can be misguided to believe in nonsense like The Law of Attraction and The Secret and that if all they do is think about confidence and not act then they will be rewarded by the universe. This is nonsense and very delusional, if not dangerous thinking. People are manipulated to think that if they still have negativity in their lives after positive thinking it is because they are not aligned with the universe and as a result, the cycle perpetuates. I also do not believe in short term magic pill solutions like hypnosis CDs or other nonsense like that. Perhaps they do work for some; that is not for me to decide, but for others. However, I do not think they are the answer. If the development of confidence was that

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simple, everyone would listen to them. The honing of a skill, including confidence, comes from action taken on a consistent basis, not listening to a CD. I cannot emphasise enough. You MUST take action and do so, consistently. You cannot wait for circumstance to weigh in your favour before you act. This is what a lot of people choose to do. They wait until they have more money or more time, but the truth is there is never going to be a perfect time. When it comes to confidence, particularly with

regards to dating, people deny themselves the truth by using their education or career as an excuse not to self-improve; oh, I am too busy to work on (insert goal here) as soon as I have (insert excuse here) then I will work on it. This is not the answer. There are a lot of people who know what to do, but very rarely do they do what they know. This is very common when it comes to exercise. People know they should do it but they still excuse themselves from taking action. Knowledge is not power, but rather, knowledge plus action is power. Whilst the former is not necessarily a prerequisite to the later, as John Ruskin said quality is never an accident, it is always the result of intelligent effort.

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Action is better than non-action, but action is normally as important as the as the theory that supports it. This is why this book is written in two sections: theory and application. I will elaborate on this later on. I wrote this book because I wish I had known what I know now and then I could have transformed myself for the better a lot sooner. There is not a lot in life that is more frustrating than when you want to make a change but do not know how. You know why, which is often overlooked, but you do not know how. This book is your chance to make that change. I have made the differentiations between the useful and the not so useful so you do not have to. I wish I could have known what you are going to learn in this book sooner because it would have saved me years of pain and inadequacy. HOW YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK This book is not particularly long, so I would

recommend you read it from start to finish without skipping ahead to chapters that are of interest to you. If you are new to this, there will be a lot of content that will challenge the conventional wisdom you have been conditioned to think and cause you to step out of your comfort zone. Please have an open mind when you read this book and please do not dismiss anything you read until you have tested it for yourself. It is neither correct nor incorrect, but whether it works for you or not is what is important. If you are not new to this, there may be some theories that you are familiar with, but that is Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

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okay too because it will reinforce what you already know as Anthony Robbins says repetition is the mother of skill. There is a great deal I could have written on each chapter in this book, but I wanted to ensure that all of the information I provided you with was as concise as possible, so you could put it into practice as soon as you had read it. I challenge you to read this book in its entirety and internalise the theories and apply them accordingly. There are a lot of people that do not finish books, do not be one of them. You do not owe it to me, you owe it to yourself. MY STORY As I write this book, I am 24 years old, I am very confident and I am very happy in my life with where I am. That is not to say that I have stopped learning I am constantly and never-endingly improving every area of my life. I have my challenges like we all do, but with the skill set I have honed over the years (and still continue to do) I am able to always head them face on and persevere. My self-esteem and my confidence are internally validated and are at the highest they have ever been. However, I did not always feel like this. When I was a teenager, between the ages of 16 and 20, I was very unhappy and I have no doubt, now, in retrospect, I was probably close to depression.

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Ironically, I did not really have a reason to feel like this. I was not unattractive nor had I had a particularly poor upbringing. I was simply held back by a very disempowering belief system. I was, of course, unaware of this at the time, but I would learn, as you will too, the importance of belief systems and how they can shape your life. As under confident as you may feel now, I too was once very under confident. Here is how bad I was; perhaps you will be able to relate:

I could not hold eye contact with anyone I did not know, even customers in the shop I worked in.

I did not kiss, go on a date or have sex with a girl until I was 20 years old.

I did not have any friends in my university class.

I wore glasses that did not compliment me and had very long, unkempt hair which was like a mask I used to hide from the world.

I was an underachiever. I was only accepted into university because I had enough credits from an extra-curricular module.

I had very low self esteem and very poor self image. I was often complimented on my looks but even then, it did not help.

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I am sure I had what psychologists would call learned helplessness which is when you feel so helpless you feel like your situation is never going to improve.

When I was a freshman at university, I did not leave my dorm room for 48 hours, even to use my mobile phone because the reception was poor in my room. I was too afraid to talk to anyone. Subsequently, I dropped out of university after less than a few weeks. (Note: I did return and graduate, but I never would have done had I not learnt what I am writing about in this book).

However, when I was 20, I was introduced to a book called The Game by Neil Strauss and introduced to what is known as The Seduction Community which teaches men how to attract women in a holistic way. I was sceptical at first, but when I applied what I learnt and it worked, it transformed my life. It introduced me to public speaker Anthony Robbins and a technology called neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP) which has been nicknamed a user manual for your brain. It is used in personal development and psychotherapy and you can use it to remove disempowering and unresourceful beliefs you have and communicate to yourself and others in a more positive way. I still use it to this day and a lot of what I write about it based on NLP technology. I soon realised that, what I learnt from NLP and other success theories was, it was not conducive to just my dating life, but to every other important area of my life

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as well. Soon, I had better friends, I was earning more money and I was setting and actualising goals unapologetically and on my own terms. However, it was not an easy process for me and neither will it be for you. I want you to understand that there is going to be a lot of ups and downs and there are going to be days when you want to quit. Quitting was not an option for me and it is not going to be an option for you either. You have to learn to persevere because otherwise, if you do not master this area of your life, then you probably never will and it will affect every other area of your life. There is never going to be a perfect time. That is the reality. I will elaborate on the motivation for confidence later on. Confidence is often sold to us as an outcome that is a result of an action when really; I feel it is a constant and never ending process. I am constantly and never endingly working on my own confidence all of the time. You have to be confident in your own ability to pursue confidence. THE DEFINITION OF CONFIDENCE So, what is confidence, but in particular, how do you define confidence? Confidence is a very subjective word. We all have our own definitions of the word confidence (or at least, we should) and that is what interests me about it. Whether it is public speaking, going for a job interview, or asking the opposite sex for a date, it is personal to you or as Serge King says effectiveness is the measure of truth. There are

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multiple versions of the truth, but the one that supports you the most is the most useful. The Oxford English Dictionary defines confidence as a feeling of assurance, especially of self assurance: the state or quality of being certain. The self assurance part of the definition is what we want to focus on. However, if I were to cut this definition down further and define the word certain it would be defined as sure to come to happen: inevitable; established beyond a doubt or question; indisputable. This I think is very interesting because If for example you said I am confident I am going to get that promotion with confidence connoting certainty you are ultimately arguing that I am confident I am going to get that promotion (beyond a doubt or question). Can you see how this could be problematic? You have no control over anything in your life other than what you picture in your head, what you say to yourself and what action you take, so basing your confidence on an external reality can be very troublesome. I define confidence as the certainty that I will always do the best I can in a situation with what resources I have regardless of the outcome. Confidence is very ambiguous. What people really want is want is self efficacy. This theory is central to Albert Banduras social cognitive theory. Bandura define self efficacy as the belief in ones capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations Therefore, what you really

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want to focus on is what prospective situations are for you. There is no one that is confident in every prospective situation. EXERCISE #1 Please write down, in one sentence, how you define confidence. What is confidence for you? Confidence is not objective, it is subjective to you. Write down how you define confidence not how you think it should be. If for example you defined confidence as the ability to approach any member of the opposite sex and start and hold a conversation then you could start to strategise how you could do that. Maybe you could read a book on how to be a good conversationalist; maybe you could approach more people than you normally would or maybe you could model someone who is already a very good conversationalist. If it is as simple as that, then why do more people not do it? This will be explained later. THE MOTIVATION FOR CONFIDENCE The goal I have with this book is I want to give you the motivation to make this a reality. The importance with any goal is, of course, to ask yourself why you want to actualise that goal to begin with.

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I feel motivation for a goal is as important as the goal itself because otherwise, your goal will be no more than that, a goal. There is a very important concept to confidence and that is the concept of stretching you need to stretch yourself mentally and force yourself to step out of your comfort zone. Ask yourself What am I afraid of? and then challenge it. This is Karl Rohnke comfort/stretch/panic model. See Figure 1. FIGURE 1

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Karl Rohnkes Comfort/Stretch/Panic Zone Model. The point of this diagram is to illustrate that through stretching yourself as you would with a physical exercise like yoga, you want to step from your comfort zone into your stretch zone as often as you can and from your stretch zone into your panic zone. The consequence of this is your comfort zone will soon become your stretch zone and your panic zone will become your stretch zone and therefore, as a result, your comfort zone will increase tenfold. EXERCISE #4 1) What is your goal? What do you want?

Specifically? Do not answer I want to be confident because as I mentioned in the introduction, this is too ambiguous and ill-defined. I want to be confident enough to approach any woman, look her in the eye and introduce myself without appearing under confident would be a more suitable answer. Then you can work on each element. This is what we are going to work on later on. 2) Why have you not taken action? Please, be honest with yourself. Why specifically have you not taken action in the past? Is it because of a disempowering belief you had? Is it because you procrastinated? Is it because you did not want it enough? Identify the reason so you can change it now.

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3) In the past, what pain have you linked to taking action? This pain can be emotional pain, be it the pain of rejection, the pain of frustration, the pain of financial failure. What is it for you? 4) What will it cost you if you do not change right now? This, you need to be as realistic as possible. The more pain you associate in your nervous system to not taking action now, the more powerful it will be. Write, as detailed as you can, what will happen if you do not take action now. Please do not write I will be unhappy, you need to emotionalise it as much as you can. Instead, write I will be unhappy and this will affect my mental and physical health and then that will cost me so much more in my life. 5) How does that make you feel? Again, be as honest as you can with yourself. How does it really make you feel now? 6) What pleasure will you receive by taking action right now? Please write down, again, as detailed as you can, all the pleasure you will receive from taking massive action now.

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7) What action will you need to take in order to reach your outcome? If you want to feel confident in public speaking, you could join a toast masters club. If you wanted to feel more confident with women, you could learn how to Salsa. Write down a step-by-step plan of what you will need to do. Author Stephen Convey says begin with the end in mind and then work backwards. 8) How long will it take you to achieve this goal and how will know when you have achieved it? If you put a time constraint on when you want to actualise your goal by, it will stop you procrastinating. So, if you wrote down for question 1 I want to feel confident enough to ask a woman on a date set yourself a time constraint of 30 days for example. THE PROBLEM WITH CONFIDENCE What are the first three letters of confidence? Con. The problem with confidence is it is sold to us as this commodity that is a result of an action, rather than seen a process of constant and never ending improvement. Confidence is sold to us as once it is acquired it is constant and unshakable when this is not true. Confidence is based on emotion and this is why it can come and go. Confidence is very misleading because it says you are emotionally invested in it and need the outcome to Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

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weigh in your favour. We need to psyche ourselves up when really it should be an emotional state that we do not need to tap into. So, if confidence if misleading, what should you be working on? SELF-ESTEEM Have you ever met a confident person that was low in self esteem? I assume you answered no because I have not either. As obvious as you think it is as you read that; self esteem is a pre-requisite to confidence because if you do not believe in yourself or that you deserve to have whatever you want in your life, then no one will. You have got to learn who you are by trial and error and love who you are. Some will scoff at this, but that is okay, because they have their own insecurities they need to address. You need to understand that only you can make yourself happy and if you can learn to validate yourself, then no one other than yourself can affect your state. I have been guilty of this in the past and even now occasionally. I believe, when you are outcome dependent, be it in your career or in particular, your relationships, they can often seriously negatively affect your self esteem if you become outcome dependent. For example, I will not be happy until I am promoted or I will not be happy until I have a boyfriend/girlfriend. In relationships, you invest a lot of emotion and a lot can be jeopardised. When you become emotionally invested in another person and they do not meet the Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

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expectation that you have of them, your self esteem can pay the price because you feel your self-worth has been taken advantage of. This is common when one partner is unfaithful on the other. That is not to say of course never to emotionally invest in people, but have your guard up until you feel sure you can trust that person with your feelings. AFFIRMATIONS There is a very useful exercise to use to inflate your self esteem when it is low. If you write I am (blank) statements, for example I am charismatic, I am confident, I am outcome independent and so on and read them aloud, twice a day, what happens is you start to re-condition your brain for new behaviours. The reason for this is because your brain has a part called the reticular activating system or RAS for short. What this does is act as a filter to all the information your brain receives through the five senses. So, when you write and practice affirmations (and believe in the process) your brain starts to look for reference points to support these new beliefs. Remember, your brain is not there to sabotage you; it is there to support you. COMPETENCY If you feel confident in your job, it is because you feel competent in your job; you have performed in your job role, so regularly, that you know every outcome. Jobs tend to be repetitive. The more you repeat the action,

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the more competent you became and therefore, more confident. However, it is of course not enough to be competent in an area of your life to feel confident, there is something else as well: you need indifference. INDIFFERENCE Indifference is a much overlooked concept in

understanding confidence. If you think about it, the desire to feel confident is either predicated on how you think it will make you feel or how you think it will make others feel. Is that not true? If you said to yourself I want to feel confident in my job so my job performance will improve and I can have a promotion that desire is based on how you think it will make you feel. If you said to yourself I want to feel confident because I know women are attracted to men who feel confident that desire is based on how you think it will make others feel. The irony with confidence is it is always predicated on an emotionally invested outcome. If I do not feel confident in this interview I am not going to get the job is a very common on. The irony is the desire to feel confident often results in the adverse effect. So, how do you release yourself from the emotionally invested outcome?

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HOW TO EMOTIONALLY RELEASE YOURSELF FROM THE OUTCOME It is very simple; you think of what the worst case scenario could be and then you make it happen (if you can) or you hypothesis it. I used to perform in public as a musician, it was very low-key but it was still very nerve wracking. I did not always feel confident and I certainly would not try to fake it and nor would I want to. My three fears were always, what if I am not applauded? What if I forget the lyrics and what if I drop my plectrum while Im playing my guitar? Guess what? All three happened and it was not as bad as I had first envisioned! Again, fear simply stands for nothing but false evidence appearing real. After this, my confidence was a lot higher because I no longer was as fearful as I had been because I had realised it was not as bad as I had first envisioned. When it comes to dating, men are no different. When a man wants to start a conversation, men will make up a lot of excuses not to do it; what if she has a boyfriend? What if she is not very nice? What if . . . ? There are always one million and one what if reasons not to do what you want to feel you need confidence to do. Realise, that emotionally investing in an outcome will not influence it any more in your favour; in fact, it will have the opposite effect.

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Ask yourself the question do I really care about the outcome? Again, with regards to dating, those who approach a lot of women succeed more, not only, because they are approaching more women and playing the numbers game but because they vibe. sub-communicate a This is what people cool, are playful, carefree

attracted to. I recently applied for a job and was indifferent to the outcome (because I was going travelling but because I had already agreed to the interview, attended anyway). When I was in the interview, I was fun, curious and talkative because I could be; I was myself was nothing to lose and completely emotionally detached from the outcome. Unsurprisingly, I was offered a second interview. With indifference, the point is it is not that you do not care, because you do, otherwise you would not be in the position you are in, but if it is was a positive outcome your response would cool, no problem and if it was a negative outcome your response would be cool, no problem. There are a lot of people that feel fear because of what may happen. This is always going to be a possible negative outcome and the reality is most of them are visualised in your head, never to actualise. Do you know what fear stands for? Fear stands for false evidence appearing real. Remember that the next time you feel fearful.

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This is why you should be more process orientated than outcome orientated. If you are approaching a woman, interviewing from a job or public speaking, tell yourself I am indifferent. I am emotionally detached from the outcome. I am process dependent. If the outcome is not one that I want, then I can learn from it and move on. RE-CONTEXUALISING CONFIDENCE If I were to ask you to think about confidence with regards to your own life, I would presume that there would be at least one area of your life where you do feel confident; when you perform in your job role, when you play a sport or when you play a musical instrument in public. I have coached men who regularly perform in public and have no reservations, but did not have the confidence to approach women. Conversely, I am friends with men who have no reservations with approaching women to ask them for their number but would never dream about performing in public. They would not be confident enough. The revelation here is every human being has the same neurology and what one person can learn, be it consciously or not, another can as well. What is important to understand here is WHY this is. Why can one person feel confident in an area of their life and another cannot?

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CONFIDENCE MYTH BUSTING Before you can learn confidence and develop selfefficacy, you need to believe in yourself and in order to do that as congruently as you can, you need to understand on an emotional level, what is limiting you. If you cannot believe that the belief system you currently have is disempowering you, then that is the first belief you need to change. CONFIDENCE MYTH #1 You are born with it and you either have it or you do not. This is false for two reasons. The first reason is because no one is born with confidence; it is not like a good hand in poker that is randomly dealt out at birth. When you are a baby you do not have confidence because it has not yet been nurtured. People who are naturally confident are people who have had it nurtured through their adolescence. The second reason is just because you do not have confidence now does not mean that you cannot re-possess it. I know this because as I mentioned before I used to be very under confident but because I am confident now and have learnt how to do so I can backwards engineer it and teach it to you. CONFIDENCE MYTH #2 If you had confidence once and then you lose it you cannot regain it.

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This is false. Confidence is not a commodity that can be bought nor sold it is a feeling when fostered correctly can be unshakable and unaffected by the external realities of the world. This is what differentiates the winners from the losers of the world. Research some of the most successful men and women of the 20th century Thomas Edison, Lee Iacocca and Abraham Lincoln for example and you will learn that their confidence in their own personal levels of successes was not based on external realities, they persevered and their greatest pains resulted in their greatest gains. However, if you learn how to develop true self confidence (that which I know you will from reading this e-book) because it is a result of what you believe of yourself, then you should never really lose it, period. Yes, of course there will be times when you will perhaps re-define what it means to you, but this is necessary to grow. It is important in life to make periodic evaluations on how you feel in order to move closer and closer towards where you want to be. CONFIDENCE MYTH #3 You need to have (fill in the blank) to feel confident. As I mentioned before in The Problem with Confidence, this is false. People argue if I had (fill in the blank) then I could/would feel more confident. This, in fact, is the opposite of confidence and is insecurity. People who feel the need to fill a void in the life in order to feel a particular way will never feel fulfilled, it is, as Eckhart Tolle would argue egoic. Ultimately, people do not want what they think they want. Either they

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think they want what they want or they think they think they know what they want. Does this make sense? Read it again if not. People are conditioned to think that if they attain X then they will be happy: that they are made. This could not be any more incorrect. Confidence, as Serge Kahili King argues all power comes from within. This correlation does not imply causation: you do not need X before you can have Y. CONFIDENCE MYTH #4 If you want to be confident, all you really need to do is fake it until you make it. This is half true, but also one of my favourite myths to dispel. As I will elaborate, confidence consists of two parts: physiology (that is, how you move and use your physical body) and state (what you say to yourself and how). People who fake their confidence often do so because they is are not in fact we overcompensating all have them, for but insecurity they have. I want to clarify this: having insecurity bad, overcompensating with a false sense of self is not a way to deal with it. There is a very fine line between confidence and arrogance. How do you differentiate the two? I would define confidence as associating with your strengths, accentuating them and instead of disassociating with your weaknesses, recognize them so you can transform them into strengths. Arrogance is the opposite. Arrogance is the overcompensation for ones weaknesses as if it is unacceptable.

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EXERCISE #2 Write down, with regards be to how you defined to the

confidence, a few adjectives that would justify it. For example, would you more attractive men/women you met? Would you be a positive thinker? Would you dress in such a way that complimented how you felt about yourself? These are all questions that need to be considered. EXERCISE #3 Close your eyes and visualise your ideal self. By that, I mean, how you would like to see yourself. Are you a public speaker with a room full of people with all eyes on you? Are you the life and soul of the party? Are you in the company of the opposite sex and comfortable? Write down what you see in your minds eye and how it makes you feel specifically.

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PART TWO THE THEORY OF CONFIDENCE THE POLARITY OF CONFIDENCE As I mentioned before, I believe there are two pillars of confidence application. This is the formula I see for confidence: Theory (State + Physiology) + Application (Action + Lifestyle Design) = Confidence Furthermore, I believe, when learning confidence, people fall short of their goal for confidence for one of two reasons. THEORY WITHOUT APPLICATION How can you learn how to be confident if you do not know how to? Understanding this, on an intellectual level (rather than an emotional level, which I will explain later) is not enough. I believe that in order to feel confident, you need to take action as well. This may sound like common sense, but there is a difference between knowing what to do and doing what you know. It is allegorical to learning how to drive a car: learning the theory is important, but it is useless without its practical counterpart. APPLICATION WITHOUT THEORY If you take action without really knowing what you are doing, is it safe to assume that you will get nowhere fast? Again, to use the learning how to drive a car that are co-dependent: Theory and

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analogy, if you learnt how to drive a car without learning the theory first, chances are (as well as endangering your life and others) you would not be as efficient as you could be. So how do you learn the theory of confidence? As you can see, confidence is based on a belief that you have about yourself and your capabilities. This is also known as self-efficacy. We will return to the theory of confidence later on BELIEF SYSTEMS As I mentioned before, confidence is a belief; a belief that you have about yourself. Most, if not all of the beliefs we have in our belief system are a result of years of bad conditioning and most of us are unaware of this. For example, if when you were younger, (when you were most susceptible to forming a belief) someone called you ugly, that becomes an idea in your head. When an idea becomes reinforced (if someone else says it) with more reference points, it becomes a belief and once a belief is formed, it can become very difficult to dispel. What we need to do is form a new belief that you are confident now, not that you are going to be, but you are now. This is done by understanding how belief systems are formed. Anthony Robbins in his book Awaken The Giant Within uses the analogy that a belief is like a table and the legs that support it are the reference points. The Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

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analogy says the more reference points you have the more stability your belief has. There is a concept I have developed called RPM, which stands for Reference Point Momentum. Here, the more reference points you have, the more momentum you build in your own self-belief. The problem is most people do not believe that you can change a belief, but think about all the beliefs you do or used to have that you now feel embarrassed about, say, the belief that Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny are real. Remember a time when you truly believed that? The theory is if you have a belief that has a lot of references, it is a lot more difficult to destabilise. For example, if you have a belief that says I am confident then your reference points may be because I know I am and because I have been told I am and because I can ask a woman for her number without fear and because I take pauses when I talk. The more reference points you have, the more stabilised that belief will be. SELF TALK There are a large percentage of people who are unaware that they have an inner voice, inner critic, inner child or whatever you prefer to call it. They are not (yet) conscience to the fact. It is that voice of selfdoubt you hear any and every time you want to do something that is out of your comfort zone and it holds you back.

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This can also in some circles be labelled as your ego; an illusionary sense of self; that self preservation/defence mechanism that will see the world as us versus them. This is what holds people back. Whenever you hear dont do it, what if you embarrass yourself? or dont do it, what if you make a mistake this is the ego at work. If you can master your self-talk, you will differentiate yourself from the people in life that fall short. All professional athletes know how important this is every time they compete. The key to mastering this is allowing yourself to become aware of this voice. This is what Eckhart Tolle calls watching the thinker. Do not agree or disagree with it, simply become aware of it. Once you become aware of it, you can begin to challenge it. This take tremendous practice but the brain is like a muscle, the more you exercise it the stronger it becomes. For example, you are in a bar and you see a person you are attracted to and want to approach. What do you feel? I would guess you feel afraid, why? It is because of your self-talk. You may hear your self-talk say dont do it, remember the last time you approached someone? You embarrassed yourself! This, often, will be enough for someone not to take action. They have literally talked themselves out of it.

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Instead, what you can do is the following: Anticipate a situation where you know you are going to feel unconfident and plan in advance how you are going to deal with it. Obviously, you cannot prepare for every eventuality, but you can prepare for how you think you are going to react to it. If you are going on a night out and know you are going to be talking to members of the opposite sex and you know it makes you feel under confident, you can write down on a piece of paper all of the most common responses you hear from your self-talk when you are in the situation and write down opposing, positive truisms. So, if you always hear dont do it, she wont like you you can write down how do I know that? She does not even know me; I am going to find out. If you always hear what if she does not hear you, she will think that you are an idiot you can write down if she does not hear me then I will speak with a higher volume so she can. The point of this exercise is it allows you to preemptively know what you are going to think and counter act with what you chose to think. There are a lot of people that think self-talk is not autonomous but it is. You control it and with these new scripts internalised, you will soon re-programme your subconscious mind. This is known as reframing.

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REFRAMING There is a really useful formula which I read in Jack Canfields book The Success Principles which is: Event + Response = Outcome There is an event, there is your own personal response and then there is an outcome. You see, there is the world that goes on inside you and there is the world that goes on outside you. The world that goes on inside you is what you have control over. You cannot control your car not starting in the morning before work or when a member of the opposite sex rejects you, but you can control how you choose to define it. If you were at a bar and in the distance you saw someone pointing their finger at you, what would your interpretation of this be? Would you interpret that they are ridiculing you? What you interpret they were attracted to you? Would you interpret they were jealous of you? Your interpretation is based on your belief system and the success is framing an interaction as positively as possible. There is another exercise you can do to help this. We experience our external reality through our five senses which are visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory (that is smell) and gustatory (that is taste) which cause our personal map of reality. We respond to our map of reality and not reality itself. In NLP

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(neuro-linguistic-programming) these are known as representational systems or modalities. Modalities are comprised of submodalities. For

example, the auditory modality would be comprised of submodalities like duration, pitch, rhythm, timber, volume and so on. If we take self-talk, which is an auditory modality, we can take note of what kind of submodalities are present. EXERCISE #5 Sit in a room where you will not be disturbed, close your eyes and listen to your self-talk. I want you to write down what you hear. Is it loud or not? Is it distant or is it not? Whose voice is it? Can you hear any other sounds? What words is it using? If you become aware of your negative self-talk, (which so many people never do) you can learn to change it. If I took a CD and I scratched it and then I played it in a CD player, what would it do? It would jump would it not? This is allegorical to what you can do to your selftalk. Repeat Exercise #5 but this time, I want you to change the person whose voice you can hear, change it to a person you admire or your ideal self. Listen to your

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negative self-talk and play an endless loop of an old car horn over it. This is known as a pattern interrupt. The more ridiculous you make it the better it will work, so make it as ridiculous as possible. The reason why this works is it throws your brain off what it was focusing on. PHYSIOLOGY Obviously, a very important concept in confidence is how you come across to others, not because you are seeking their approval, but because as I mentioned before, state and physiology work hand in hand with each other. I see the confidence physiology comprised of the following: Eye Contact Gestures Body Language Facials Vocal Tone, Volume and Pacing EYE CONTACT The eyes are the window to the soul English Proverb A lot can be said about a person who can hold eye contact. It can sub-communicate sexual prowess, honesty, and most importantly, confidence.

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The importance with eye contact is not to stare. If you want to improve your eye contact you can do the following exercise. If you are talking to a group, be sure to address everyone in the group by making eye contact with each person and holding it for no more than 3 seconds before you move onto the next person and then repeat the cycle. I had a job interview once where I was interview by 3 women. They were sat in a semi-circle in front of me. I was asked a question by one of the women and rather than answering the question by looking at the floor and reciprocating her eye contact, I instead held hers, moved onto the second one, held hers, moved onto the third and then repeated the process. I used the other components (which I am going to explain momentarily) and continued with the interview. I was offered the job after 25 minutes (even when there should have been second and third interviews) and was called charismatic. I do not say this to impress you but rather to impress upon you that power of how eye contact alone can communicate so much confidence. EXERCISE #6 The next time you are in conversation with someone (depending on how confident you are with already doing this) do not look the person in the eyes but instead look at them peripherally. You can do this by looking at them in the eyes, but really you are focusing on their right ear. It is difficult at first, but once you

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learn how to do it, you learn how to soften your eye contact without intimidated the person. GESTURES Gesturing confidence; is very important who are in communicating gesture.

people

confident,

Whenever you see a politician, regardless of whether you are a fan of their political opinions or not, there is no denying that a Bill Clinton was not charismatic. He knew how to gesture. Most do not gesture because they are worried about what other people will think about which as we have already established, she should not concern yourself with. People who gesture own a greeting. They lightly touch people when they greet them. They are not afraid to touch. They do not invade peoples personal space but they touch with authority; they know what a persons comfort zones are and act in accordance with them. They do not fidget with their hands if they do not know what to do with them. They feel comfortable in their own space. Have you seen the average man in a bar? He holds his beer up to his chest like it is a comfort blanket while his other hand is in his pocket or on the phone, forever checking his Facebook News Feed every 60 seconds. When you talk, throw gestures out and when you listen, have your arms bent at your elbows and rest one hand in the other.

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BODY LANGUAGE A psychologist called Albert Mehrabian conducted a study where studied how we communicate. He concluded communication is comprised of: 55% Body language 38% Vocal tonality 7% Words As you can see, body language is therefore incredibly important. Is your body language typically positive or negative? What I mean by negative body language is do you fidget when you are sat opposite someone? Do you stand with one leg when you stand? Do you cross your leg and move it up and down nervously? A lot of these are unconscious and it takes a good friend to point it out for us. Once we know what it is we can correct it. What you can do if you are prone to fidget with your fingers is let your arms fall by your side and put your thumb and forefinger together on each hand. This may seem unnatural at first, but it will keep you from fidgeting. Another exercise you can do when you stand, especially if you stand with one leg bent (which is something I used to do until someone pointed it out) is stand with your feet shoulder width apart so your shoulders are now in line with your feet. Have you ever been in a busy bar and been pushed from side to side? I know I have; stand like this and it will cut

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that from happening again. Now, you own your space and people can see that. FACIALS People are drawn to people who have animated facials because it demonstrates how animated and dynamic you can be. Think of an actor that tells you a story through his non-verbal communication. They way he makes a face to illustrate a specific emotion he is communicating with his words, it contributes so much more too it. VOCAL TONE, VOLUME & PACING Again, think of an actor or a news anchor, their telling of the story is what keeps you from changing the channel, it may be what they are telling you and how they are telling you which keeps you interested. Many speak in a very monotonous voice, they do not know when to enunciate certain words, speak with passion or greet someone in a certain way that makes them feel welcome. The same can be said about volume and pacing. People are afraid to speak with volume because they are afraid they will be thought of as loud. This is not the case at all. If you speak with volume in your voice you are not loud. Instead you are speaking clearly and confidently.

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People do not take their time when they speak. They tell a story and use place holders, also known as brain farts when they do not know what to say next and say things like erm like and um. Confident people do not use place holders because they do not need to; they are confident in what they are saying and can take as long as they want because they are not afraid that the person is going to grow bored of them. They expect that they will want to listen to what they have to say. Most people use place holders because it is a bad habit that A) they have never been aware of and B) as a result, have never been able to replace the habit with a better one. When I first started to correct this bad habit I had, I used to say like for nearly every other word and needed to replace it. What I did was I learnt to slow down and speak more slowly, (but not so slowly that the people I was speaking to lost interest) and every time I felt the need to say like I would instead click my fingers. Storytelling is one of lifes most valuable skills to master because everyone has a story to tell. People who are good story tellers know how to hold an audience, they not when to stop, when to continue, when to change their tone and so on. You are left hanging on their every word because they do not for a second waste your time by losing where they are with place holders.

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Now that you have all the tool and techniques to find and develop your self confidence, it is time to explore it through the medium of lifestyle design.

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PART THREE THE APPLICATION OF CONFIDENCE Now you have learnt the theory of confidence, you need to learn how to apply it. In this chapter, we are going to look at how to apply the theory you have learnt. LIFESTYLE DESIGN What is Lifestyle Design? Lifestyle Design is very simple: it is designing the lifestyle YOU want and then actualising it. The problem with society is we are socially conditioned to graduate from university (if we were so inclined) and then work a 9 5 job (if not an 8 6 job) and have very little time for ourselves. This is an outdated modal as Timothy Ferris writes about his book The 4 Hour Work Week. Yes, we all have to work but as Timothy Ferris says your job description is not your self description. What do you do when you are NOT in work? It is no secret that confident people have a lot more going on in their life than just their job, they have hobbies, friendships, relationships, goals and so on. There are a lot of people that use their job as an excuse not to actualise their goals, even if it is a personal development goal like confidence building. Time, or lack therefore, is NOT an excuse. You do the thing you are scared shitless of and then you get the courage George Clooney, Three Kings When my first girlfriend broke up with me, she did so because I had neglected my own lifestyle design and ironically, my lifestyle design was the reason she had fallen for me in the first place. I decided to use this as Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

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an opportunity to re-design my lifestyle and enrolled on a vocal training programme because I had always wanted to do learn how to sing professional but it has always been out of my comfort zone. EXERCISE #7 What have you always wanted to do but never had the confidence to do? Write the answer down and decide to take an action that will move you towards it now, not tomorrow, but now. Commit to the action and then follow through. Now that you read this book, you have the tools which I would hope will make you take action. Here are 5 actions you can take that will help you in this final critical area of confidence building. FRIENDS Do your friends challenge you to be not yourself, but your best self? How you socialise and more appropriately, who you socialise with will have an enormous affect on your self esteem and therefore your confidence. If you socialise with negative people, they reaffirm bad habits in you. Do not be surprised if on your road to confidence you lose friends in the process. When Oprah Winfrey lost a lot of weight, she also lost a lot of friends because when she was overweight, those friends used her to feel better about their own insecurities. If you develop into your best self, it causes people to question their own role in your social circle. There may be the confident friend Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

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who now feels threatened. This is very important because this can occur when you start to make real headway and stop because you are worried about what your friends think. Do not, because your real friends will always want the absolute best for you. If you do want to find new friends but do not know how, do not settle for second best. Think of the kind of people that you would like to be friends with and then set out of meet them. Join a website like Meet Up and look for Meet Ups with like-minded people. If there are no Meet Ups that cater for your specific interests, then create one. This will encourage you to step out of your comfort zone and take control. This will contribute to your confidence. APPEARENCE Confident people take pride in their appearance, not for the validation from others but for themselves. You should have good hygiene (which is shockingly neglected by a lot of people). This sounds like common sense but it amazes me how some people seldom pay attention to how important personal hygiene is. Even if you have to wake up earlier, do it. If you dress well, it will reaffirm the positive self image you have for yourself in your head. I made a number of physical transformations myself by cutting my hair when it was long, growing designer stubble, dressing more stylishly and piercing both of my ears. It may not sound like a lot, but these simple changes met the image I had of myself and I suddenly felt a lot more comfortable in my own skin. Who do you idolise not for their physical appearance but for how they dress? Model your idols

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on without trying to copy them, but draw your own inspiration based on how they dress. SPONTANEITY Spontaneity means you are unafraid to take risks and do what you feel like. Do you like to do certain things because it makes others laugh or yourself? Selfamusement is a very attractive attribute to have because it means you are internally validated and live in the moment. The best way to explore your own spontaneity is to say yes more. In 2005, Danny Wallace released the book Yes Man; the autobiographical story told how he said yes to everything and all of the new exciting opportunities it presented to him. I read the book and decided to say yes more myself. I ended up becoming a qualified open water scuba diver, organised a man auction for cancer research UK and starred in a short student film where I met some incredible people in the process, some I am still in touch with to this day and never would have met otherwise. The point is not to say yes to everything but to say yes in situations you would not usually say yes to or that are out of your comfort zone. You will see a world of opportunity open up to you and develop more confidence in the process. EXERCISE If you do not exercise you should. Exercise is one of those ought to areas; people know they ought to do it but cant because of x, y and z. There are no excuses not to exercise. If you ever feel in a negative and unhelpful state, exercise can help a lot because as per the aforementioned, it causes you to change your Copyright Sam Davies, 2012

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physiology and therefore your emotional state. Join a gym or if you cannot afford a gym, go distance running and commit to it; have a realistic goal, chunk it down and strive to actualise it. Remember to reward yourself with your success. NUTRITION This is similar to exercise. Your emotional state is often predicated on what you are putting into your body. Find a diet that works for you and commit to it, even if you are not trying to lose weight. For example, cut re-fined sugars and white carbs out of your diet and eat more fruits and vegetables. This coupled with exercise will make you feel like your absolute best. Again, this sounds like common sense but it amazes me when people complain to me about how they feel and then I ask them what they had for breakfast and they tell me either nothing or chocolate.

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CONCLUSION I hope you have enjoyed reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it. It is my contribution to the world and I hope you have found value in it. I wish you nothing but the best of luck on your road to personal development. If you wish to read more about me you can read my personal blog at www.samuelthomasdavies.com Please leave a comment and leave me feedback if you wish, I would love to hear from you.

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