Stephen Borgman

How To Build Your Self Confidence

Do You Want To Know How To Build Your Self Confidence?

If you want to know how to build your self-confidence, read on.

Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right. ~Henry Ford

There is a very sad story. An executive left $100,000 with three of his employees. The executive was going overseas on business for three years. The first employee took that money, assessed the business opportunities before her, came up with a business plan, and invested in the opportunity.

At the end of three years, the employee had sold that business for a very tidy profit. The second employee found a financial planner and invested the money in stocks and bonds, so that there was a good return on investment when the executive returned from overseas.

Now comes the sad part.

The third employee had a very rough childhood. His parents split up when he was young. Both parents had only bad things to say to the employee when he was growing up. He came to believe what they said about him, and he did not think that he had any talent or ability. He thought that he had gotten his current job out of luck. Having $100,000 on his hands made him very nervous. So he took the money to his basement and locked it in a safe. He was afraid of losing any money and getting a bad review from his boss.

Too many of us have locked $100,000 in the safe!!

The Bible tells this story. And here is the lesson I take from it, in terms of self-confidence. How much money do you think you are worth? $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, millions. How about: Priceless!!

Yet, how many of us, either out of fear, laziness, or false beliefs (based on what parents, teachers, or friends have told us growing up) have tried to “play it safe” by putting our talents in a safe. That safe represents the following key features of low self-confidence:

Checking your behavior according to what you think others want from you.

Staying in your comfort zone, because you fear failure, and avoiding risks.

Being a perfectionist, afraid to make any mistakes.

Either expecting compliments from others all the time, or having ‘false humility’ by downplaying any compliments you may get from others.

MindTools has an article that speaks of a great analogy for some practical exercises you can engage in to forge your self-confidence: it’s that of taking a journey. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix to immediately give you the self-confidence. But, if you have the commitment, focus, and determination necessary to make the journey, you be astounded at how much confidence you will forge by the end of the journey.

Success Factor: Prepare for the Journey

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit. – E.E. Cummings

Write down all the victories and accomplishments you have already achieved. One of the best questions I have ever come across when doing my year-end reflection in preparation for my goals for the next year (Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever) is found in the book that I’ve mentioned in parentheses. “What were some of my greatest accomplishments.” When you write it all down, it’s amazing what your accomplishments can do to boost your sense of self-confidence to set goals for the year ahead.

Think About Your Strengths. I wrote about this at length before in an article about Getting Your SWAT Together. By reflecting about what you are good at, as well as areas for growth (Now, Discover Your Strengths), you will be preparing for greatness.

Get your personal mission statement, vision, and goals in place. The scientific study of achievers and persons who are experience personal satisfaction (positive psychology) are striving toward meaningful goals.

Manage Your Mind. Half of your journey toward self-help motivation and self-confidence is in how you think and communicate to yourself about yourself, your abilities, your strengths, and your circumstances. (The other half is your ability to taking consistent actions daily toward your goals). You’ve got to feed your brain and soul valuable nutrients if you want to gain increased self-confidence. I want to take some time here to highlight some key fellow bloggers who help me feed my mind with positive and inspirational content:

Rod Kirby at The Success Center
Steven Aitchison at Change Your Thoughts.
Jonathan Wells at Advanced Life Skills.
Celestine Chua at The Personal Excellence Blog.
And this is an audio program from Brian Tracy that helped me immensely: The Science of Self-Confidence (Nightingale Conant)

These are just a few of many who influence me to keep growing in my journey of self-confidence.

Success Factor: Start the Journey

Here’s what I want you to do, before you get started. Pick one of your goals. Then go to HabitForge and enter it. Invite a couple of your close friends to monitor you. Then get started!

Build the Knowledge You Need to Succeed. Don’t delude yourself. If you figure out that you are lacking in certain skills after doing a SWOT analysis, make a plan to go out and get those skills. For example, it’s important to learn a new language to stay competitive in today’s business environment. I’m setting a goal to learn Spanish starting this year. So my first step will be to go to the library and find out what materials are available. My next step may be to sign up for a community college course. Another next action would be to take my friend up on an offer to go out with his Spanish speaking buddies to get immersed in hearing and (trying to) converse. In summary, find out what skills you need to learn. You may also need to build on skills that you already have, but you will need to grow them to the next level. Find those who are experts in the ares of knowledge you are seeking, and learn from them.

Practice CANI (Constant and Never Ending Improvement, the term for kaizen, improvised by Anthony Robbins in his work, Awaken the Giant Within) In other words, take one small action each day toward mastering your new skill/knowledge areas. As you do this, your confidence will steadily increase.

Learn to Embrace Failure as Your Friend. The key to success is to have a positive attitude toward risk and failure. For example, Tony Robbins, a very successful public speaker, quickly outpaced other speakers because he slated himself to speak almost five times more often than they did. Did he fail? Sure! Did he look stupid? Sure! But he learned each time that he spoke, and he became progressively more expert and confident.

Success Factor: Increase the Pace

Once you have arrived at a degree of success and self-confidence, don’t make the mistake of getting complacent, overconfident, or lazy!

Continue to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. Set new goals for yourself. Rub shoulders with experts who are more successful than you are. At the same time, look for people with less confidence and experience, and see how you can lend them a helping hand with what you have learned.

I want to wrap this up with a fantastic video by Zig Ziglar that well illustrates how we build self-confidence. It takes a lot of effort and determination at the beginning, but once you get started, you will be happy that you read this article 🙂

(photo credit: pincusvt on Flickr)

I hope you’ve now figured out how to build your self-confidence. Please comment below!

What Everyone Should Know About SMART Goal Setting

By Stephen Borgman 15 Comments

SMART Goal Setting

How are you doing with keeping all those New Year’s resolutions you set at the beginning of the year? If you want to accomplish those resolutions you’ve got to understand SMART Goal Setting.

If you are like many of us, you may have forgotten all about them! It’s only natural, and we’re only human.

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. ”

~ Lawrence J. Peter

In this article, I’m going to share some personal success strategies to help make sure that you stay on track with your personal growth plan.

I’m also sharing this key success factor because it’s a vital happiness enhancing strategy that you can take part in. People who are happy engage in the practice of striving toward meaningful goals in their lives.

What is this strategy? Reviewing and Refining Your Goals!

I want to share the specifics of SMART goal setting, along with a two-step process for keeping you on track with your progress toward those goals.

If you’ll engage in these exercises, you’ll keep your ship on course.

“Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”

~ J.C. Penney

Review

Ships at sea can easily wander off course. Winds, currents, and even the every day distractions of taking care of business on the ship can cause the ship captain to lose sight of the main destination. In the same way, unless we are regularly reviewing our goals, we can easily lose sight of our goals and end up working on insignificant tasks, or seemingly urgent tasks that come up, but that don’t lead to our specific goals.

Take time daily, monthly, and each quarter, to review your mission, values, and purpose.

If you need some help figuring out your mission and purpose, I’ve written a couple of articles just for you, titled Have a Personal Mission You Can Be Proud Of!, and A Simple Formula: Find Your Mission Through Your Passion.

If you need some help clarifying your values, read my article What Everyone Ought To Know About True North, for some practical ways that you can set goals in keeping with your most important personal values.

As part of your review, think about the different areas of your life. Are you in the midst of achieving a balance in your success, or are you drifting off course in any areas of your life. You may want to consider using this life wheel worksheet from Mind Tools to help check what areas of your life you want to set extra goals in so that you will be happy with your balance at the end of this year.

Refine

Now that you have engaged in some journaling and reflection about where you now stand in terms of your progress toward your goals, you may need to further refine your goals. This is where SMART goal setting comes in. Here are the five criteria that make goals truly effective.

Specific

Is your goal specific enough? Think about WHAT you are going to do, and WHY you are going to do it. Both questions are vital to successfully meet your goals. Be careful to look for hidden goals run counter to achieving your important goal.

For example, one of my goals is: Take quiet time daily, practicing deep breathing and prayer/meditation 3x per day.

On the other hand, one of my unwritten rules has been: I will watch my favorite TV show once a day to relax and de-stress. I realized, upon reflection, that a) it’s unrealistic to think that I am going to practice this quiet time 3x per day. On the other hand, I realized that my main focus this year is Steve’s coach, which means that if I don’t take care of myself through prayer and meditation, I will not have as much spiritual/mental/emotional vitality to carry out what I need to. So, when I realize that the WHAT is a bit too much, and that my WHY was not clear enough, I have now refined my goal as follows:

Take quiet time daily, practicing deep breathing and prayer/meditation 1x per day, before watching any Television.

Now that I am now more clear on the WHAT and the WHY, I believe I will be more successful in achieving this outcome.

Measurable

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
~ Vincent Van Gogh

If you have a hard time measuring the specific milestones or next actions needed to achieve your goal, it’s unlikely you’re going to accomplish that goal. I’m very grateful to Sterling and Jay from Internet Business Mastery for a couple of concepts in this regard.

First, you can use their success strategy of backward planning to make your goal more measurable.

For example, another one of my goals is as follows: I will run one full marathon, raising money for a worthy cause.

Utilizing the backward planning method, I picture myself finishing the race. Then I ask myself, what happened just before that? Well, I had all the planning down for parking and for the racing equipment I would need in order to successfully run the race. I had successfully raised the $500 dollars I needed to raise for my charity. I had run more than 26.2 miles prior to starting the race. I had trained on hills to strengthen my legs and my mental mindset. These steps all become sub-activities I can then schedule into my calendar.

Attainable and Realistic

These two words actually seem to go together in my mind. If it’s not realistic, is it going to be attainable? I think not! Some of us are guilty of thinking too small. On the other hand, we can think so big that we actually don’t believe we will carry it out it on a sub-conscious level. For example, “I will earn $5 million dollars” is a big goal, but it lacks the specific WHAT, WHY, and action steps for attaining it. And most likely, unless you are going to play the lottery (I don’t encourage it :), and win, you won’t carry out that goal in one year.

On the other hand, if you are careful to follow the steps listed above, you will have a much more attainable and realistic goals. You want goals that will stretch you, but that are realistic and attainable.

Timely

This criteria goes hand in hand with setting specific and measurable goals. If you engage in the backward planning activity that I described above, you will have a set of actions for your goals. I urge you to set a date for accomplishing each one of those goals. The date may change, but it will motivate you to take action regularly to carry out your goal.

By writing down this date next to your goal, you can then set timelines for the activities that need to lead up to meeting your goal. Make sure that you are working on one activity every day to help you get closer to your end goal.

Once again, I am going to share a great idea from Sterling and Jay from Internet Business Mastery. Utilize Google Calendar or some other type of online calendar to schedule the different activities that you need to carry out for each of your goals. Set that calendar as your browser default. This is an invaluable strategy! You can also color code your different tasks to correlate with your different goals.

In order to keep this from getting too complicated, you may want to focus on one or two goals at a time. The encouraging part about this method is that you will daily have a reminder of the most important activities to focus on for the day. And you’ll know that your ship is staying on course despite all the cross currents and winds of distraction and hassles of every day living.

Here are Some Helpful Motivational Books for Your Goal Setting Journey:

Inspiration

The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel. Stories are inspirational. This story will inspire you as you embark or continue on your goal setting journey.

Life Mission and Purpose

How to Find Your Mission in Life, written by Richard N. Bolles, one of my favorite authors, is a small and inspiring book to help you find your true life mission. He is also the author What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers, another personal favorite of mine.

The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life, written by Laurie Beth Jones, is one of my all-time favorites on this subject as well.

Goal Setting Workbooks:

Make Success Measurable!: A Mindbook-Workbook for Setting Goals and Taking Action, by Douglas Kay Smith.

Goal Setting Forms : Tools to Help You Get Ready, Get Set, and Go for Your Goals!, by Gary Ryan Blair

How are you doing with accomplishing your New Year’s Resolutions?

Are you on track, or have you drifted off course?

Please share your thoughts below!

photo credit: elbphoto

Brandeis University M.S. in Project and Program Management Online

Habits of Unsuccessful People versus Successful People

By Stephen Borgman Leave a Comment

Ever wondered what separates unsuccessful people from successful people?

I often talk about thoughts and feelings on this blog.

However, I recently came across this helpful infographic about behavior.

Success habits will most often lead to successful people.

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. ~Samuel Johnson

Many thanks to SuccessStory.com for sharing this with us.

One of my unhealthy habits is fear of change. What I can see from this infographic is that I need to take calculated risks, viewing them as exciting opportunities, instead of threats to my security.

What success habits do you need to work on to be successful?

Can You Really Make Money Online?!

By Stephen Borgman 1 Comment

Make Money Online: How I Created My First Web Startup

This is a guest post from Lars King, an entrepreneur in the making.

MINDSET

I had just made $150 in two days, online, from total strangers. How was this possible, you ask? Two words: passive income. For the last couple of years, I’ve been listening to a podcast called “Smart Passive Income,” detailing the what, how and why of passive income. People would come on the show and tell success stories about how they make money in their sleep. Little did I know that these podcasts were actually conditioning my mind to see new opportunities and think in ways that would help me create my own passive income.

I became very attached to the idea of disconnecting the money you make from the direct labor-hours you work (e.g. a job with an hourly wage). I wanted to put a lot of time and effort into something valuable, and have it provide money for me after I was finished working on it. I noticed that lots of people loved to talk about passive income, but very few people were actually putting in the work to actually create it.

IDEA

One day as I was walking back to my apartment, eating a burrito and listening to a podcast, an idea popped into my head. I immediately wrote it down. Here it is: Everyone needs motivation. How do people get motivated? Usually, they go see a motivational speaker (costing hundreds of dollars) with the effects lasting for about a week. If people could watch a different highly motivational video every single morning for a year, their lives would be completely transformed. I knew this would be true, but I still needed to do some research to find out if this was actually a project worth starting.

RESEARCH

The next day, full of energy about my idea, I called dozens of people I knew. I received very valuable feedback from all of them, which helped mold and shape my idea to be the best that it could be. I asked people if they would actually pay for the service, and some said yes, they completely would. There was a need for this service. Time to build!

PERSISTENCE

I originally had some glamorous picture in my mind of what creating an internet-based business would be like, which was quickly shattered. Doing something in real life is rarely like the picture in your head before you do it. It was hard to create, taking far more time and energy than I originally thought. I had to learn all about different web technologies and buy lots of resources, but persisting in the face of uncertainty and lack of knowledge is what kept me working long hours to create the service. I was also gaining valuable skills and experience while putting this business together.

I tried to work on Year Of Motivation during the semester when I had classes, but I never seemed to make much progress, as I could only work one hour here, and half an hour there. Luckily, I had a month off for winter break, so I essentially locked myself in my room for a week and a half and createdYear Of Motivation. I didn’t write one line of code the entire time. Online business is so accessible now, and will only continue to be more and more accessible as time goes on.

LAUNCH

After I finally launched, I let my network know about the service. As people started going to the site and learning about how Year Of Motivation sustainably solves their problem with motivation, they started buying it. It felt great to know that I created lots of value for people who bought the service, and that I was profiting from the value I created. It was a win-win. That’s entrepreneurship in a nutshell, and it’s something I feel very passionate about.

Since launching, many people have emailed me and thanked me for changing their lives with this product. Also, since I believe in this product so much, I have a 30-day money-back guarantee for everyone, no questions asked. If you don’t feel motivated every single morning, go to Year Of Motivation and check it out. I promise you won’t regret it.

Major press have covered it so far, links below:
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2014/03/northeastern-students.html
http://bostinno.streetwise.co/all-series/this-northeastern-student-wants-to-motivate-you-every-morning-of-the-year/
http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2014/02/what-motivates-you/

What questions do you have for Lars? Could you create something similar?

Image credit: nasirkhan / 123RF Stock Photo

Build Your Life Like Martin Luther King Jr

By Stephen Borgman 19 Comments

John 12:24-25 I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Jesus Christ, fortelling his coming death

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot, Christian martyr, 1945

As a Caucasian, I have a lot of shame for the infamous history of slavery and segregation in our country. One man changed all that, and his name was Martin Luther King, Jr.

What can you and I learn about personal leadership development from this one man?

Study!!

Readers are Leaders

Education is not everything, but it does develop our character and our knowledge, exposes us to different viewpoints, and gives us a platform to speak from. Marting Luther King, Jr. developed his personal effective through vigorous study, earning his PhD in theology. It takes vision and character to commit yourself to the effort, discipline, and self-sacrifice that such study requires. But, like all things in life, a key success factor to significance and fulfillment is to live life from a long-term perspective. This allows you to sacrifice the gratification of the short-term to reap the rewards of a long-term commitment.

Learn from Live Leaders

Martin Luther King, Jr., learned and absorbed lessons from many key leaders. His most important personal leadership development came from his visit to India, to visit with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. It was from this great soul that Martin Luther formulated his own values and vision of changing a society through peaceful, organized, and non-violent opposition.Who are you choosing as your role models? What are you reading? I urge you to start setting aside up to one hour per day purely for reading and study. And I urge you to be on the lookout for leaders who you can look up to and learn from.

Be Faithful with Little Things, and You Will Be Promoted to Bigger Things

Martin Luther King, Jr. started out as a minister at a small congregation. He honed his speaking skills, and became a gifted preacher. What is your personal career development plan? Do you have one? There are two extremes to avoid here. One is to become impatient with your place and to go negative. In this instance, you have a pair of complaining glasses on, and you can only see what is wrong with your boss, with your co-workers, and with the duties of your job. The other extreme is to avoid all planning for the future, to be afraid of taking on bigger challenges.

By paying rigorous attention to your personal career strengths, by setting your goals, by pro-actively taking on greater responsibility, being early for work, and staying late when needed, you will be sharpening your personal skills, which are your greatest assets. Don’t ever neglect to plow your own plot of ground, for in it you will find the diamonds of greatness that may lead to your next opportunity.

Clarify and Commit to a Bigger Vision

You will find that a pure pursuit of material success will, in the long run, lose its luster. True personal leadership development comes, paradoxically, with a certain denial of self, for without it you will not find true significance.

Before I lose you with this statement, you must realize that true legacies come from service to a greater good. In order to do this, you must clarify your values, know your abilities and talents, and figure out how you can align your abilities and talents with a way or ways to serve humankind and your Creator.

Figure out what legacy you will leave behind!

Check out this powerful quote from Martin Luther King, Jr:

“ I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”

Wow! And again, I will say, Wow! What are you going to give your life to?

Be Willing to Be Controversial

Anyone who is doing anything of impact in life is going to get criticism. Be prepared. Make it your companion. Listen carefully and non-defensively to what is being said in the criticism. But then be willing to do what it takes to stay true to your values and to your vision. Martin Luther King, Jr. drew all sorts of criticism from whites and from his own race.

He was criticized for being non-violent, he was criticized as being a Communist, he was criticized for putting children in harm’s way during protests. He was under incredible pressure. Yet he prayed, he thought, he wrote, he reflected, and he made his stand.

Listen to this great quote in the midst of one of his waves of criticism:

“And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Decide to Be Courageous!

As you can see from the quote above, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a courageous man. Without courage, he never would have accepted the position of leading the civil rights movement. Without courage, he never would have organized the first peace marches. Without courage, he never would have stood up for his place in the midst of severe criticism from inside and outside his ranks. Without courage he would not have stayed true to his larger vision and mission. Without Martin Luther King Jr’s courage, President Obama might never have become president. Without courage, people of all races in the United States would not have the same civil liberties they have today.

How do you get courage so that you can increase your personal effectiveness and promote your personal development?

Think of something that you have put off because of fear. Put it on the calendar for sometime this week and Do It!!
Practice exercising your courage muscles on a regular basis. When needed, assert your place. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. (This is written for those who don’t regularly do so, not for those who often speak too much :).

I hope that you will take time to reflect on Martin Luther King, Jr. this week: his example, his life, and his legacy!

photo credit: caboindex

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