How does a person obtain the strength and qualities they need in order to become successful in life? The key to building the confidence and self-esteem you’ll need to lead your life lies in developing a strong relationship with yourself. To do this you must defy society’s pull toward preoccupation with what’s happening “out there” by turning your vision inward.

We live in a world that constantly pulls us outside of ourselves. There are the sensational news stories, larger than life film characters, nonstop advertisements on television, radio, the Internet, and in the mail. And there are the individual distractions as well – earning a living, raising the kids, company politics, keeping up with the Joneses – you get the picture.

We also tend to focus our attention on everything but the present moment. We’re either pulled back into the past or forward into the future, never living in the “now.” The problem with this perspective is that within the present moment lies the opportunity to use our most potent creative power. The more we live outside of the present moment, the more attached we become to external results, accomplishments, possessions, or the opinions of others.

A commitment to turning your vision inward on a regular basis will train you to look inside for answers. When you do, you’ll begin to make the highest spiritual choices for your life. By engaging in activities that draw you closer to yourself, you not only create a strong attachment to your inner world, you learn that you can trust yourself to handle any situation. A solid, positive relationship with yourself is essential. There are no shortcuts, no quick fixes, and no easy antidotes. The journey to self-confidence and courage begins and ends with you.

It’s so ironic that the very thing we need to do to build a strong foundation of confidence and self-esteem is so simple – we need to spend time with ourselves. Each one of us has our own unique way of developing a stronger connection to our spiritual center. The method may be different, but the goal is the same: You need to spend consistent time in communion with yourself. The way you do this is less important than the commitment you make to a regular practice. It is always surprising at how people know exactly what they need to do to develop a stronger relationship with themselves; it’s doing it that’s the problem. Take action and start giving time to yourself!

You can’t and be perky, successful, and at peace unless you have a sincere t look at yourself first. You should take note of all of the blockages so that you can get to work on your life.

Observe the 4 ways in which to start:

1. Get to know what other people like about you. Ask someone close to you to tell you honestly how he or she views you. Have that person rate you and your specific traits on a scale of one to five. Do people describe you as your own worst enemy? If they do, you need to work on your self-knowledge to understand why.

2. Determine what you expect to achieve in life. This is what you expect, not what you hope or dream for.

3. Consider your life for a moment. What drives you? What inhibits you?

4. Evaluate how you handle compliments. This is a good barometer of how you feel about yourself because if you accept them naturally without seeking them out you have strong self-approval and a sense of worthiness. Can you accept compliments without discomfort, or do you always have to take exception or deflect them? Do you crave compliments to the point that you will do anything to get them?

Once you begin to know and understand yourself more completely, then you must accept and love yourself. Self-approval is crucial to changing your life and pursuing your dreams and goals. Self-hatred, guilt, and long-standing anger block your growth. Practice self-love and forgiveness and they will carry over into your relationships, your work and the world around you.

By loving yourself, you open up the possibility for others to love you, too. Work to remove the psychological blinders that restrict your own growth. Understand yourself and your motives and the influences in your life and open yourself up. Direct your energy away from self-destruction or self-loathing. Forgive yourself. Forgive those who have hurt you. Give yourself self-approval and permission to move on.

Right now, write down all your bad habits and faults and all the mistakes you have made in your life. Did you hurt someone? Did you malign someone? Did you waste an opportunity? Have you written down everything that has nagged and eaten at you over the years? Good. Now take that piece of paper, tear it to shreds and throw it away. Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on. The way to your dreams is now clear!

Try it right now. Close your eyes and take three slow, deep breaths. Notice this shift in energy in your body and your mind. See what I mean? When you close your eyes, you shut out the world. From this perspective you begin to notice how you feel and what you think in a way that most of us never acknowledge because of our busy lives. For example, you might notice bodily sensations like the shallowness of your breath or the beating of your heart. You notice sounds that you were oblivious to before, like the hum of your computer or the noise of passing traffic. You notice your thoughts and the busyness of your mind as it worries, plans, or overanalyzes. When you learn to connect with your breath on a regular basis by closing your eyes and breathing deeply, you calm your nervous system. Then, as your mind settles, you learn to enter into a state of thoughtlessness so you can become an objective witness to the present moment.

Meditation can be challenging for those of us who are used to being busy. As technology advances at lightning speed there are more ways than ever for people to make demands on our time and energy. We have voice-mail, e-mail, cell phones, beepers, faxes, snail-mail, and a myriad of time-management devices. We are bombarded with information and stimuli on a daily basis. For example, American Demographics reports that the typical U.S. office worker receives more than 189 messages a day. This type of overstimulation makes it very difficult to settle ourselves long enough to sit with silence.

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably noticed the busyness of your mind when you’ve tried to get quiet or meditate. As soon as you close your eyes and breathe your mind quickly pulls you back outside by reminding you of what needs to be done (future focus) or of what didn’t get done (past focus). It’s this kind ,of frenetic overanalyzing that keeps people from using this important tool.

You don’t have to go on a month-long silent retreat or move to India to learn how to be still. There are simple ways to begin experiencing the power of stillness right now. For example, when waiting in line at the grocery store, gently close your eyes for several seconds and repeat to yourself: “May I feel calm. May I feel peace. May I feel relaxed.” You can use this same exercise when stuck in traffic or faced with a challenging problem at work.

When you set a goal do not allow others to restrict you by telling you that your goal is unrealistic. You have a choice. You can let their limited vision persuade you by telling yourself that they’re right or, you can persuade yourself by using positive self-talk that will help you concentrate on fulfilling your goal. Utilizing positive self-talk will prepare you for taking the necessary steps to make your goals a reality.

Changing your self-talk to clearly define and crystallize your goals and desires is the first step toward attaining them. Then, breaking up your goals and desires into manageable parts helps you to see what additional steps need to be taken to get the results you need. Initially, setting your sights to achieve a moderate amount of success is the best way to reach your goals. To reach your goal, move forward and develop a realistic plan to achieve immediate success. This will help you overcome overwhelming feelings of doubt and fear. As you complete each objective celebrate your success along the way.

Taking action to change your self-talk changes your self-image, awakening your awareness. What you tell yourself affects your emotional life. When your emotional life is affected, your mental and physical life are affected as well. This highly interactive and reciprocal condition forms the basis for all personal, behavioral and motivational change.

Changing your self-image will create a change in what you do and how you do it. A positive change in your self-image is a powerful asset to help you create success in your life. Experiencing a positive change in your self-image raises your self-esteem. Your heightened sense of self-esteem allows you to appreciate yourself for who you are and the qualities you possess: “I can and I will change my future!” “I can and I WILL change my life!”

When you change your self-image, you change your life. Changing your self-image also has an effect on others. Once you begin to see and experience changes in your life, you will ultimately help others to change. Showing concern, and expressing yourself in positive ways, can change the other person’s sense of him/herself. You have a choice. You can either encourage or discourage the beliefs of others.

Encouraging others will change the image they have of themselves. By changing your self image and increasing your self-esteem, you will help others to increase their self-esteem as well. In a reciprocal relationship, when you respond favorably to someone, or express yourself positively, most of the time the response that is returned will be a positive one. When you change your self-image, others will believe that they can change their self-image.

Have you noticed at work that the smallest amount of negativity can erode or even paralyze someone’s home or business? Personality conflicts, political agendas, or feelings of revenge become the main focus. The negativity takes your mind off your objective, your everyday activities, your studies, or your work, and you become caught up in something that doesn’t really matter. On the personal side, I’m sure we all know someone who hates the idea of family reunions or being with friends of friends who are so strange that they must be from another planet. At work, have you ever seen or heard those at the “water cooler club”? A small band of whiners, conspirators, gossipers, whose work output is marginal at best, who know who’s been doing what to whom and for how long.

What do you do? Since we will never be able to change everything in our world to our liking, we have to learn to adjust and make the most of what we have. For example, when it comes to marriage – the key to a good marriage, whether it is one of business or a personal union, is compromise. When it comes to surviving a negative environment you can at least begin by limiting your exposure. Think of it as radiation: a sudden burst of exposure can instantly vaporize you, but what a lot of people forget is that small continual doses of radiation can be just as deadly. So, limit your exposure to a negative environment. If possible stay away from those water cooler gossipers, the folks craving your appeasement, or anyone or group that you don’t have to put up with. And whenever you come into contact with those people or situations that drive you up the wall, be the better person and make the best of things. Grit your teeth, and smile, smile, smile.

So many folks complain about things without dealing with their circumstances, and sooner or later these same folks find themselves part of the same setting they complained about in the first place. Is there anything you can do to change things at home or work that can alter the environment? You will probably find some things that weren’t quite as bad as you thought they were.

Another question: Are you willing to compromise in your current situation that troubles you, or can you put up with how things are? If you are willing to change something in order to make things better, then do it, but do so on a continual basis – whether it’s your attitude, staying away from others who pull you down – whatever the case, do something. If you can put up with the situation, then make the most of it!

Because it’s so common, fear has many other names: apprehension, misgiving, trepidation, dread, horror, phobia, terror, alarm, consternation, foreboding, qualm, suspicion, trepidation, fret, alarm, uneasiness, distress, panic, etc. Physically, we feel fear in the area we generally call the stomach. In its more intense forms, the feeling of fear is accompanied by a quickening of the pulse, a widening of the eyes, and a sharpening of the senses.

Someone once described fear in an acronym: “False Expectations Appearing Real.” For the most part, what we fear is not real – it is merely our mind imagining something awful that has not yet happened. Seldom do we do the thing we fear, so we never discover if our projection of disaster was accurate. In fact, when we don’t do the thing we are afraid of, we breathe a sigh of relief as though it actually would have taken place. “That was a close one!” we say, even though we never actually got close to anything but a string of our own negative thoughts.

Fear breeds lack of experience, lack of experience breeds ignorance, ignorance breeds more fear. It is a vicious circle. As Lucretius described it more than two centuries ago, “For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.” Put another way, fear is interest paid on a debt you may not owe.

When we begin to feel fear, we look around for something to fear. Considering all there is to look at (the media, the environment, our body, our memory, our imagination), we have little trouble finding something. Thus the fear grows, our perception of the world darkens and it becomes an increasingly terrible place.

Eventually, we begin to avoid all things and thoughts that even might produce fear, or that might produce the fear of fear, or that might produce the fear of fear of fear. It becomes a many-layered fortress – fear defending fear defending fear defending fear – and inside: nothing.

Anytime we let unreal fears (and that includes untested fears) keep us from moving toward our dreams, it is a form of madness. Do not let this madness get in the way of your success, whatever that may be for you.

Submitted By Rob Harper

If you could listen in, you would hear non-assertive people saying all kinds of negative sentences to themselves. They selectively remember some criticism of themselves, exaggerate it to monstrous proportions, and repeat it over and over like a chant. The man battling his bulging waistline might be saying, “I am ugly, fat, and disgusting. No one can stand to look at me. I am a fat worm. I’ve got no will power.” The shy, retiring boy at a dance might be saying, “Those girls are whispering about me. My pimples are horrible. If I talk to that girl, she’ll insult and ridicule me. I never know what to say to girls. I’ll die if she cuts me down.”

The fact is that people are often their own worst downers. They say to themselves, “I am irrational, emotional, stupid, dull, ugly, shy, cold, submissive, fat, ineffectual, overbearing, bitchy, childish, a bully, a miserable father (mother), a lousy speaker, a failure, and over-the-hill.” We all have our own lists. People can be terribly brutal with themselves. Out of the whole animal kingdom, only humans are endowed with this capacity to make themselves miserable. Can you imagine your pet cat or dog moping around, saying such brutal things to himself?

Worse yet, in many cases our negative view of ourselves may be communicated to new acquaintances before they have time to form an independent impression of us. If we tell people we are inadequate, they may do us the disservice of believing us. A woman in one of Sharon’s assertiveness classes repeatedly advertised herself poorly by prefacing each remark with, “I doubt if my idea is worth anything, but…” Without realizing it, the class did indeed pay less and less attention to her ideas – at least until they stopped to examine the subtle message her remark conveyed.

The toll of a negative self-concept is that it limits what we are willing to try, forestalling opportunities for growth and enjoyment. Doomsday prophesies about our social failures tend to be self-fulfilling. The shy woman who retreats from friendly overtures is indeed judged to be cold, aloof, disdainful, and the man who was turned down for approaching her is even less likely to make another overture to her (or vice versa!) The student with anxiety about taking a test “goes blank” to such an extent that he does indeed fail just as miserably as he had feared.

Doesn’t that sound great? The very thing we need to do our best in a new situation! Well, it’s precisely what does happen each time we enter a new situation. Most of the time, however, we call it “fear” and we don’t like it.

Contrary to popular belief, our parents didn’t teach us to feel fear. Our parents did teach us to use fear as a reason not to do something and they did this from love. A child cannot logically determine if its physical well being was or was not endangered when attempting each new activity.

Unfortunately, at the age of eighteen or so, when we do know the difference between that which is truly dangerous and that which is merely new and untried, no one draws us aside and says, “That fear you’ve been using as a reason not to do things – it’s really part of the energy to get things done.”

The first thing we need when entering a new situation (be it physically, or in our imagination) is more energy. A new situation, by definition, will be different, and extra energy will help us meet the challenges of whatever “different” may offer. When we feel fear, our body releases into the blood stream adrenaline, glucose and other energy-producing chemicals. This physical energy is available to support our thoughts and actions.

In a new situation, naturally we want all the information we can get. This is when the sharpened senses, sensitivity and heightened awareness associated with fear are useful – they help us absorb and more quickly process the new information.

Another aspect of fear is letting go of irrelevancies. We automatically focus on what’s most important, “and let the rest of the world go by.” When in a new situation, we want to focus on what’s in front of us, what’s central, what’s significant. Fear drives thoughts about whether the grapefruit will be on sale or not right out of our awareness.

Part of doing our best in a new situation involves learning. There is so much to learn from a new experience – so much to learn about the experience and, more importantly, so much to learn about ourselves. Fear provides a good environment for learning – not an ideal environment (fear is not known for its abundance of patience) – but a good environment nonetheless. The energy, clarity of mind and ability to focus are excellent tools for learning.

We almost always get to our goal through means other than the ones we put on our schedule. So why plan? Because people who don’t make long-range plans seldom get to where they want to be. In short, a plan will get you to your goal, but not in the way that’s on the plan.

So, plan. And, be prepared not just to change horses in midstream, but to change to a boat in midstream. Keep your goal, your dream. Stay firm and fixed on that. Be prepared, however, for whatever methods come along to get you there. Especially methods not on your plan. Plan on it.

How do you plan? Simple. Take a segment of time, take a goal, and divide up the latter into the former. Keep dividing it up until you have your next action step – something you can do right now to move toward your goal. Let’s say you want to produce a play within the next year. Get some kind of calendar that divides a year into units with which we’re all familiar – months, weeks, days, etc. Twelve months from now, write, “Play opens.” You have the goal (the play), and you have the time twelve months). Now, chop up the goal.

What needs to happen before the play opens? Make a list. One item per 3×5 card is good, or list them on a sheet of paper. This list doesn’t need to be in any particular order. Just brainstorm and get everything out of your head. When the list is complete, put it in order, according to time. What needs to happen first, second, and so forth. “Find a play,” for example, would probably come before, “Design the posters.” If something is a toss-up (“Do I find the play or the director first?”), choose the way in which you would like it to go, and schedule that. Remember: little of this will go this way, but if you don’t do it, you won’t get a play.

Now, start laying these out backwards in time. How many weeks of rehearsal? Six weeks? Put those in. That means casting and theater will have to be completed by six weeks before a year from now. How much time do you want to work with the director before casting? Put that time in. Continue.

When everything is roughly laid out, you can ask yourself, “Is a year enough time? Is a year too much time?” Let’s say a year is a good period of time – not too ambitious, not too lethargic. Continue breaking the plan down until you know what you must do next – something specific you can actually, physically do. “Find a play,” is too vague. “Call these twelve people and let them know I’m looking for a play,” is a workable next action step. This might be followed by, “Read plays submitted.” That is a realistic step in action that you can take.

Now, start scheduling the next action steps. When will you call the people on the list? “Next week” is not good enough for that one. When next week? What day? What time? Schedule it in. If you don’t have an appointment book or calendar of some kind, by all means get one.

Alas, saying no to something before we know what we’re saying no to has a rather nasty name – one that no one likes to hear applied to themselves. That word is prejudice. It means, of course, to prejudge something. Human beings do it all the time. How many opinions do you have of people you have never even met?

By watching TV, we all have had the chance to meet a number of famous people who we initially “knew” only through the media. Many of them lived up to (or down to) their reputations. Others did not. Some people who had “bad reps” in the press were, in fact, delightful. Others, who are known to be magnificent individuals, were, in fact, monsters.

“My mind is made up,” the old saying goes, “don’t try and confuse me with the facts.” The answer to this comes from Aldous Huxley, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” William S. Burroughs gave the tendency to make up our minds before we have enough information an even more severe interpretation: “A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what’s going on.”

If something presents itself to you, and you don’t know enough about it to really decide if it might help you achieve your goal, don’t say no – find out more. How do we find out more? By asking, doing, listening – in short, by getting involved; experiencing.

As you may have gathered by now, our advice on new opportunities is: if it’s not going to physically harm you, and it might be helpful on the path to your ultimate goal in life, then try it. Other than the comfort zone’s control of your life, what have you got to lose?

Another reason people don’t even want to hear about new opportunities is that people are afraid to say no – especially after they’ve “gotten to know someone.” It’s the old don’t-say-no to-people-you-know-but-do-say-no-to-people-you-don’t-know rule. It’s a rule perpetrated by the people we know, for obvious reasons. (“Why are you giving your money to this charity to save eagles when your own brother needs new plumbing?”)

No, we’re not suggesting you listen to the spiel of every person who tries to sell you a flower at the airport. It is safe to assume that one flower-seller will tell you about the same thing as any other. We are suggesting, however, that you listen to it once. You never know when someone or something has a lot to offer you in reaching your dreams.