Archive for December, 2008

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Emotional Baggage

Monday, December 15th, 2008

 

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies”

Nelson Mandela

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What is Emotional Baggage?

Emotional Baggage is often an event you think or talk about, possibly frequently, that creates emotional pain and causes a strong show of emotion and which can affect your everyday behaviour. These can be conscious or subconscious actions.

Everybody has emotional baggage. It can lead to anger, resentment, mistrust, tears and fear. A negative emotional experience can have a lasting effect - if you let it.

Baggage can also be people in your life. Some people are negative influences and triggers. It is important not to allow negative emotional vampires and influences to suck the life out of you.

Some people remain emotional victims. Is the weight of your emotional baggage weighing you down? Is your glass of life half empty or half full?

Why is Baggage Important?

According to many books, 93% of communication is non-verbal. You wear your heart on your sleeve so if you carry baggage it shows! You can try hiding it but all to no avail. It will eventually come out. It’s called baggage because you carry it around, and it can affect your life and relationships.

Allowing past issues to take over and affect the present can keep you from experiencing a healthy, loving relationship and is one of the biggest blocks to intimacy. It’s the excuse you give yourself for not trying something or to excuse failure. From now on accept no excuses only action!

Unpack and Leave Behind Emotional Baggage

The first thing to say is that no-one else can solve your problems. The only person who can do that is you. Accept that and you are a major step on the road to solving them. The only person you can control is yourself.

And that is the basic advice - get over it. Put it behind you and get on with your life. Leave your baggage behind. Decide to put it down. Having baggage and dealing with it is part of growth.

First recognise a problem exists. Damaging attitudes and problems are often hidden and if you knew what you were doing you would stop doing it. In a lot of cases they are not only hidden, they are disguised as thoughts, facts, people or things.

You need to sort yourself out before you get involved with anyone else. It’s like a flight where there is an emergency where the air masks come down. In this event you are told to fix your own mask before trying to help anyone else, whether that is your partner, your child or a stranger. If you try to help someone before you put your own mask on, you risk both of you dying. If you fix your mask first you improve the odds for both of you.
 
Sort out your own mask first. Learn about yourself before you try to learn about someone else.

You must discover what baggage you have, find out how to leave it behind and so become acceptable to more women.

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“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”

Maxwell Maltz

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Your Goal

Acknowledge that these things are occurring and you are allowing past events to rule your current life. Eliminate them from your mind by replacing the thoughts with more positive alternatives. Identify the emotional baggage you carry with you and let it go.

The Plan  

Examine what you say to yourself about you, other people or the situation.

 

Article First Published on EzineArticles Dating and Emotional Baggage

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Confidence

Friday, December 12th, 2008

 

“Confidence is a habit that can be developed by acting as if you already had the confidence you desire to have.”

 Brian Tracy

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Why Is Confidence Important?

Confidence is very attractive, probably the number one attraction for a woman. She dreams of a strong, capable and independent partner and men like that demonstrate confidence in spades. Women will look at a confident man and believe he

       ·         Has ambition and vitality - he can drive a woman on
       ·         Is able to make good decisions - he chose you!
       ·         Is in control of his destiny, future, life and career.
       ·         Is sure of himself and his abilities - he does not fear to try

Confidence comes from certainty, certainty that you can cope. If you know you can deal with whatever life throws at you, you will be and act confidently. However always be aware, confidence is in the eye of the beholder and the other side of confidence can be misconstrued as arrogance so it is a fine line you need to tread.

Confidence is not about looks, it comes from inside. It comes from having self-respect and self-understanding, having the self awareness to make the most of what you have. When you are looking to appear confident, you are selling yourself.

If you have ever felt awkward and didn’t know what to say when talking to a woman, walked into a party and wanted to walk straight out or wanted to walk up and talk to someone you fancy but ended up by either not trying or looking like an idiot then you are not alone. The important thing to remember is that everyone has had these sorts of experiences. Confidence is about self-belief and this is a skill you can learn.

Fear - The Biggest Turn-Off

Fear is an extremely powerful emotion and conquering it will give you massive amounts of confidence. 

Fear is not attractive. It indicates you don’t know your own value, you have low self worth and it clouds your judgement. The fear of rejection can stop you functioning. This can include your movement and speech, so you don’t look relaxed.

Fear is a major turn off. Women can smell fear. She will feel it which makes rejection more likely which is why you are afraid! It’s a vicious circle which you have to break before you can be successful. Fear causes you not to approach her or you take so long the moment is past. You must deal with it now!

So how can you overcome fear, any fear? The answer is one you and I have done many times before. The secret is to simply face the fear and then it goes away. Start slow and take small steps. It’s always easier to kill a monster when it’s small.

Make it easy on yourself and get help in overcoming what you are afraid of.

Rejection - The Test

Rejection is one of life’s greatest fears and can do great damage. It makes you feel small, worthless and insecure, causing a massive loss of self-confidence and instilling feelings of hurt. Rejection hurts. You want to be loved and popular

What you have to realise is that her saying “no” is part of the game. Women are willing and able to make the first move but the initial approach is a test. She knows fear will make you fail and, as discussed above, she is not interested in a man with fear. Realise it’s a numbers game. Rejection is just a natural part of the dating game.

However while accepting rejection is part of the game, you never have to like it. So what are you to do? The answer is to improve the odds. Combine increased confidence with being more careful about who you approach. Work out which women are open to being approached by you. Women are often only being friendly not initiating an approach. If there is no invite then rejection is inevitable. You need to be able to read the woman you are talking to. Improve your odds by reading these messages using body language.

Developing Confidence with Women

As with all the best ideas, the approach to building confidence is simple. The basic principle is to start small and build up slowly. Baby step your way to success!

Relax

The first action you can take when you need to be confident is to relax and the most important component is to breathe properly. Learn how to relax.

Eye Contact

There is no better indicator of a person with confidence than someone who makes eye contact with the people they come into contact with. Hence if you want to look confident, you have to be comfortable at making eye contact. This is an essential skill to develop.  

Chatting

To become confident with women you have to be comfortable chatting to them. You have to start small and build up. Develop a chatting strategy. Make it easy!

Using Feedback

If you keep getting rejected look at the approach you are taking, take the feedback and adjust what you do. If it doesn’t work out as you hoped, try something different.

Acting with Confidence

The number one way to get confidence is to simply act as though you are confident. Within a very short period of time, you will begin to feel remarkably confident.

So how do you act in a confident manner? You need to practice, prepare and in general improve your knowledge and experience.

You form an impression of the people you meet from what you first see. It’s said over 80% of the initial impression you give comes from your body language, which might be your posture, your facial expression, your eye contact or your gestures. All these things speak so loudly about you. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Your actions speak so loudly. I cannot hear what you are saying”.

So:

    ·            Smile - It makes you look open, friendly and confident no matter how you feel.

    ·            Maintain eye contact - Little eye contact communicates shyness or a lack of interest.

    ·            Control your gesture - Too many physical gestures make you look nervous.

    ·            Control your posture - Face people when talking with them, stand upright and lean in.

This is a two way relationship. If you feel confident and resourceful any challenge will be met with positive and confident thoughts. To control your emotions challenge your thoughts. To be confident, think confident.

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“When you believe you can - you can!”

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Your Goal

To feel and look confident in social situations

The Plan  

Take positive steps to improve your confidence by recalling past experiences and desensitise your fear of social interactions. Understand fear is a choice. Anchor confident feelings. Maintain a contact diary to monitor and control your progress.

 

Article First Published on EzineArticles Dating Confidence - The Key to Dating Mastery

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Presentation

Monday, December 8th, 2008

 

 

“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change circumstances, the seasons or the wind but you can change yourself”

Jim Rohn

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First Impressions Count!

Be aware of first impressions. Impressions come from what you look like, how you act and what you stand for. When asked, the vast majority of women would accept a date if the man asking seemed normal and pleasant. First impressions count, so always look your best.

There are three qualities women notice about any man

     Appearance 
          - what comes from outside 
          - “he looks after himself”,

     Attractive 
          - what emanates from with-in 
          - “he has life and is interesting”,

     Attitude 
          - confidence and ambition 
          - “he can look after me”.

 Your Physical Appearance  

The basic message is to get in shape and feel good about yourself.

Your shape doesn’t really matter. What matters is how you feel about what you look like. If you are happy with your body you feel more confident and more attractive - this is in your mind.

Your Clothes  

When you dress well you feel good which makes you feel confident which makes you look confident.

The number one rule is to always to look great whatever your income. Looking your best means wearing clothes which are

       ·         Clean
       ·         Ironed
       ·         In good repair
       ·         The right size
       ·         Matching
       ·         Appropriate to the location in which you find yourself.
 
Your Habits  

Identify if you have anything that would cause you to be unacceptable and then remove those habits. Get tools to help you identify the habits you have and then remove them.

Your Confidence  

For a woman the most attractive thing about you is the confidence you have and exhibit. It comes back looking like you can deal with any situation. If you can look after yourself, you can look after her. Fin out how to become and look more confident.

Your Manners  

Your attractiveness to a woman depends on how you make her feel. If you make her feel special then you are attractive to her and she will want to spend time with you. Discover what makes her feel good.

Your Interests  

To be attractive to a woman, you need to be interesting. You  need to do interesting things, know interesting things and have interesting things to talk about.  

You have to make yourself more interesting. Give yourself things to talk about and suddenly you are interesting.

Your Ambitions  

Women are attracted to ambitious men who know what they want to achieve in life and are working towards it. You need to think why you are special and work on it.

Sort your job and career and think about your plans for your life outside of work.

Your Independence  

Women like you to be strong and independent and this is an important part of sex appeal. They dream of strong, capable, independent males. Homer Simpson isn’t sexy. Independence is a must.

Independence is also a physical thing and typically for a man this means not being dependent on your mother. This means being able to look after yourself. Women observe such things before you notice.

Identify what independence means, what part of independence is attractive to women and then work on getting exactly that!

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“Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success“

Christopher Lasch

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Your Goal  

First impressions count, so always look your best. Work on your appearance to become presentable and feel good about yourself.

The Plan  

Get in shape, sort out your eating regime, review and adapt your wardrobe, identify and eliminate unpleasant habits and become interesting, positive and independent.

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