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The Confidence Blueprint

Copyright © Andrew Leedham

This book is designed to provide competent and reliable information regarding the subject matter covered. However, it is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering legal, financial or professional advice. Laws vary from country to country and if legal or other expert assistance is required, the services of a professional should be sought. The author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability that is incurred from the use or application of the contents of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or any other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests write to the publisher, at the email address below.

andrew@unstoppableselfconfidence.com

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Unleash Your Natural Confidence

Dare to be wrong about who you think you are

Liz Ivory

You have probably heard the famous quote “change your thinking, change your life” many, many times. Everything including most importantly your sense of confidence is all a direct result of your mindset.

Confidence – true, deep, calm, certain and lasting confidence - feels for most people hopelessly out of reach. Most people, no matter how they present themselves to the world struggle nearly all of their lives with a juddering sense that they are ‘not enough’.

The answers to the how you change this struggle into getting what you want, all begin in your mind.

The purpose of this entire program is to give you the knowledge and strategies you need to help you begin changing your thoughts so you can start creating the positive results you desire.

Most people live at best to a fraction of their true potential – it is a staggering waste of life, lost happiness, deep dissatisfaction and ultimately sadness at realizing that life could be so much more if only……

But this pain and sadness comes from knowing that we are capable of being, doing and having so much more – the pain comes from not fulfilling our true potential, not being all that we are easily capable of being, expressing all of our talents, leaving our gifts locked away and unexpressed. Of a life un-lived.

If we knew we didn’t have the potential to be truly amazing, to achieve incredible, inspiring things, to contribute all we really have to those we love and the wider world, there would be no pain.

And worst of all we know that we do this to ourselves – we sabotage ourselves far more than anyone else is able to do to us. We stop ourselves taking opportunities, putting ourselves forward, taking our chances, speaking our truths. Because we feel unworthy and that we will be found out.

We have been taught and most importantly we have taught ourselves, to be less, to have less, to live less than is natural. And we do so based on a whole series of inaccurate thoughts and false assumptions that we don’t even truly realize we have.

If you have found it difficult to make breakthroughs in the past then this is almost certainly why. So the purpose of this book is to show you how quickly and easily you can actually make breakthroughs…It’s simply about going about

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it in the right way, not the way you’ve almost certainly been told you should do it.

Once you start thinking about confidence in the right way then success is simple and certain.

You are at the start of quite a journey – one that will transform the way you see and feel about yourself as you start to regain the natural confidence you were born with.

There is nothing for you to ‘do’ in these books – any direct effort is creating confidence is destined to fail. I have written this to be easy. All you have to do is take some time at the end of reading each breakthrough to just consider they key questions in the notes at the end.

When you do this over time you will see the natural confidence within you awaken without effort.

Let’s start by clearing out some of the clutter that is almost certainly stopping you thinking accurately about yourself and blocking the natural confidence that you were programmed with at birth.

I want to warn you that we will go a little deep here at times. The key is to take you time and slowly consider what’s written here. Don’t let your conditioned mind instantly reject the points and ideas made. Stay aware as we go through this – and take breaks when you need to.

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Eradicate False Limiting Beliefs

Stop and consider for a moment, what if there’s nothing wrong with you? What if you don’t need fixing?

What if all the limiting thoughts and beliefs you have about yourself are merely illusions and untruths that you are not consciously choosing but simply unconsciously thinking on autopilot?

One of the biggest problems with personal development and most teaching on confidence is that its stating point is that there are things you need to learn and change in order to become confident.

This is bad teaching.

And it keeps you stuck spinning your wheels, learning more and more and feeling worse and worse. After all you’ve now read X number of books, seen X number of therapists, been on X number of courses – so why aren’t you confident?

Now you feel that there’s something really wrong with you.

To understand why, I need to introduce you to the terrorist inside your head. A terrorist you didn’t even know was there and who has been secretly running your show for a very long time now.

Say hello to your ego.

Your ego is the voice in your head that sounds like you (and you think is you) that tells you every nasty, debilitating, negative, hurtful, limiting thought you’ve ever had. It’s made up of every bad influence, wrong assumption, past experience and imagined bad outcome picked up from parents, siblings, teachers and friends.

As a child you were naturally confident. Over time, you unlearnt this natural, default state.

As a child you hadn’t yet been exposed to and polluted with these destructive thought patterns so your natural confidence (that is your birthright) just existed. As a baby and young child you had no sense that you were in any way unworthy, undeserving, not good enough at something, not good looking enough, intelligent enough, funny enough, attractive enough.

For these thoughts to exist and become part of you, you had to learn them – they weren’t naturally part of you. Not all learning is good learning!

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Over time your natural confidence became polluted by these external negative influences and experiences that made you feel bad.

If you want a really simple and obvious illustration of this, just watch the #LikeaGirl ad campaign – you can see it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

It shows how girls are taught that being a girl is ‘less than….’ As they grow up. They don’t start off thinking that way – they simply get taught the negative until they ‘know’ it. With some thought you will no doubt be able to remember similar experiences of your own.

You got told that you needed to be different from who you were to fit in, you learned to progressively filter out and ignore the good things you were told about your self and focus on the things you needed to change or ‘get better’ at. Over time these negative thoughts became internalized and part of your ego.

And because you’ve never been taught about your ego before you thought these voices were just you.

Just ask yourself, would you consciously choose to:

• criticize yourself • feel bad • never believe you are good enough (or even simply ‘enough’) • keep yourself stuck in unhappy or destructive relationships, in a job that

makes you miserable, thinking that you don’t deserve or couldn’t get anything better

• tell yourself that bad things will happen to you if you take a risk and try something amazing

When you stop and look at it, you see the madness.

The purpose of your ego is to keep you safe, to metaphorically wrap you in cotton wool and to keep you away form the things that might cause you pain. It knows you’ve survived the past so it tries to trap you there. To do this it has to stop you from moving forwards – and nothing gets you moving forwards like self confidence.

After all look at all the truly incredible things we accomplish in our first few years of life (before our ego has developed) – we learn to walk, talk, run, smile, laugh, love, play, ride bikes, get dressed, makes friends. Can you imagine from a standing start learning anything harder than walking and talking? Do you know how many times a child falls over and hurts themselves when they are learning to walk?

Yet as we grow up and our ego asserts itself, we go from living life at 100% to a little bit less each and every year. To the point when most people reach their 30s and 40s they have stopped truly growing as their ego has taken over.

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As adults our egos tells us things like –

• You’re not good enough • You’re not as attractive as Bob / Mary / Person X • You’ll never be a big success – you’re too old, too young, too poor, too

‘insert your own line here’ • You’re not as talented as that person • If you try that – people will laugh at you • For women – be sexy but don’t you dare be sexual, have a great career

but you’d better not spend any time away from your children otherwise you are a terrible mother

• For men – be a man but not too much, be sensitive, but not too much • And a million other variations of these thoughts and many others

The real you, the unpolluted you, knows these are all lies and wants you to be all of who you really are – to be the grandest, greatest expression of who you are, to live fully, to reach your true potential, to try all of these amazing, wonderful crazy things dreams that come into your head.

It knows the truth is that you are able to achieve every single one of these dreams and many many more.

So from time to time, the real you reasserts itself and you attempt to move forward. As soon as you do, your ego flares up and goes full crazy at you – saying really nasty things to you in order to halt your progress.

And when you stop it throws that ‘failure’ at you as further evidence that it was right all along, that you weren’t really good enough. Later on when you see someone doing something amazing, it says – look I told you that you were a loser. If only you could be like them.

So I want you to realize – you are not your ego. That voice in your head isn’t you.

Awareness of your ego is the key to restoring and keeping your natural confidence that is your birthright.

To silence your ego you simply need to become aware of it and the crap it throws at you. As you realize that those negative thoughts are not you but something separate from you, you have the ability to dissolve them, to disengage from them and give the real, naturally confident the ability to shine through.

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Having confidence is not so much learning something new, but unlearning damaging limiting beliefs that you have unconsciously accepted without realising since the day you were born. You have to shrug off stifling social conditioning and realign with you true self, your natural self, not the false mask that society has told you to be.

The role and identity you have been given is not the role you have to accept. You can always live out a role of your own creation, a role that fulfils your authentic self. You deserve that.

§ Some things for you to just consider:

• What nasty, limiting thoughts has your ego thrown at you? • Would the real you ever consciously choose to believe the nasty,

negative thoughts you have been saying to yourself? • Consider what value these limiting thoughts have to you – do they help

you to feel good in any way? If they don’t ask yourself why you continue to think them?

• Consider, would you stay friends with someone who said the things that your ego says to you all day every day? Would you consider that person a true friend? Would you keep listening to them?

• Do you remember as a child that you just were?

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Reconnect With the Real You

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde

Do you know who you really are?

It sounds like a strange question doesn’t it? But consider it for a while.

Who are you really?

• What do you really like? • What do you really care about? • What matters to you? • What do you love to do? What are

your passions? • What would you do with your life if

you had all the money you desired? • What are your values?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions instinctively, really know them and most importantly live to them, how can you feel good and confident about yourself? Its difficult to feel good about yourself when you don’t really know who you are.

You’ve got to know who you are before you can feel good about who you are!

This is a big part of where a lot of teaching on confidence goes wrong – despite what you may have been told, confidence has almost nothing to do with making you something or someone different from who you are.

You don’t need to be more this or less that, be prettier, have better teeth, more money, use different body language, make better eye contact, be more assertive, an alpha male, a strong woman etc.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with being any of these things. Just don’t think they will make you confident, in a fundamental lasting way. Because they can’t.

Confidence is an inside out job.

The minute your sense of who you are, your value is based in any way on ‘stuff’ or external things or other people’s opinions and perceptions – you’re going wrong.

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All of that external stuff is outside your control and can disappear at any time. If your identity crumbles the minute something external disappears then you were never confident in the first place – you simply had the illusion of confidence.

You can lose all your money, you can lose your partner, we all lose our looks at least in the way that society values them as we get older, you can stop being good at

something. People can just stop liking you for no reason at all. A tsnumani event (bankruptcy, loss of a job, bad accident, end of a marriage etc) can happen to any of us at any time.

The key is whether your core self, your core worth is defined by your own sense of who you are not the external stuff that makes up your life.

The same is true when you see people ‘acting’ confident – whether its guys being told to act like alpha males, or women being told to act strong and assertive. If you’re ‘acting anything, it is by definition an illusion and unsustainable.

When I think of the truly confident people I know, it is all about their energy – a calm still, unshakeable energy within that requires no permission from anyone or anything for them to be all of who they are. There is no ’act’ – they are just being who they are.

As someone wisely said, the difference between confidence and arrogance is self awareness.

A confident person neither seek nor require anyone’s approval. They are not threatened by anyone else’s opinions. They have no need to shout over or criticize anyone else, to have power over anyone else, to emotionally protect themselves from anyone else. They do not fear any event – no matter what the calm stillness within them remains.

They simply and deeply know that they are awesome just as they are. Their sense of who they are comes from within themselves.

They are fully connected with their core – there is no posing or bragging in their words and deeds. They are present, in the moment, living life to a level that most can barely conceive.

Because of all of this, the radiate security and confidence - they are simply a light shining the way.

Can you take a moment and imagine that shortly that will be you?

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Just imagine it for a while and see yourself having become that confident person. Don’t imagine what you will be doing – that comes later. Right now just imagine the feelings you will have when you’ve become this confident.

So many people have completely lost their sense of self and become disconnected from their core, from who they really are. And as a result they don’t and can’t feel good about themselves.

The problem has always existed but has become much, much worse in the age of social media. Its now almost an epidemic and it is starting at ever earlier ages.

There are now endless streams of information coming at you from every angle telling you what you must be, do and have – what you should wear, the lifestyle you should have, the body shape you should have, the food you should eat, how you should behave.

And guess what - it changes every few months. So all the things that you killed yourself trying to get have now changed. What a mind fuck!

As children we don’t know we ‘should’ be something we’re not – we just are. We haven’t learnt the nonsense that we ‘should’ mentally, physically, re-shape ourselves to submit to what society says we should be, do and have at that point in time. That’s why so few young children suffer with metal illness.

The tragedy is that this is starting to happen children at an ever earlier age. They are learning younger that they need to become something else in order to be ‘OK’.

This is something we can start to change.

As we get more socialized, we become aware that we need to be something else to fit in, to belong and so we begin to release our grip on our core identity. We begin to lose touch with our own feelings, wants and needs. After all how can you keep fully in touch with them when you’re told that they are wrong and must be dropped in order for you to fit in?

Because you're disconnected from yourself, it's hard to keep a consistent high opinion of yourself.

And you grow up and your ego develops it starts throwing all kinds of negative shit at you. That horrible negative voice starts speaking to you, but until you get taught that you have an ego you think it is you. So what you don’t like is your ego not the real you!

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So the problem (lack of confidence, self esteem and feeling good about ourselves) comes from trying to change who we are, to contort ourselves and bend ourselves out of shape, trying to comply with a false and constantly shifting sense of what we ‘should be’.

It is only when you shine a light on this insanity that you can see the destructiveness of this way of thinking.

Oscar Wilde said – ‘Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live’.

Take a moment to consider this quote. Because it reveals one of the key forms of mind control that we learnt as we grew up and that keeps us stuck thinking negatively about ourselves.

Words matter – and more importantly misunderstandings of what words really mean matter and can send you miles off track.

Selfishness is just such a word. I was often taught growing up to put my own thoughts, feelings and needs to one side. That doing this made me a ‘good’ person. The less I focused on my own needs and feelings the better. Any time I did I was essentially being selfish.

Placing value on my own needs, thoughts and feelings was ‘selfish’ (bad).

Don’t misunderstand me – this was actually done with the best of intentions but is incredibly damaging nonetheless.

What is taught is that the path to adulthood is ignoring and shutting away my own thoughts and feelings and first and foremost doing the right thing by others.

Subconsciously what his says is that ‘you don’t matter’ and you are a ‘good boy’ or ‘good girl’ if you act in such as way that shows your needs, feeling and thoughts become subservient to others.

But what if this is wrong?

What if your greatest service to others comes from expressing your unique gifts and talents to the world, fully, wholly and without reservation? What if the most damaging thing you can do is to hide away your essence (for what are you really if not your thoughts, feelings, desires)?

I’m not saying for a second that you should forcibly impose your desires on anyone. Or hurt or ignore others feelings. Or that acting in service to others is a bad thing. In fact I’m saying quite the opposite.

But maybe through expressing those unique thoughts, feelings and desires (by expressing who you are) and findings others who’s journey and desires naturally align with yours is the path to harmony and happiness?

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Think of all of us as part of one enormous jigsaw puzzle – one of those puzzles with thousands of pieces.

Each of us, each piece, a unique shape that fits perfectly in the right spot. Now try putting that piece in the wrong spot and connecting it with other pieces in the wrong spot. Trying to force them together to fit, to make the shape of each piece slightly different to force them into position. Even if you succeeded, would the jigsaw puzzle make any sense at the end? Or would it be a horrible mess?

Just think about it. There are 7 billion of us now. How many of us truly live, fully expressing all of who we are?

How can the great jigsaw puzzle work if we’re all trying to change the shape of who we are? How can the right people, the right opportunities, the right relationships, the right careers, the right anything truly come into our lives if we are projecting, being, living as something we’re not.

At the end of my marriage, I went for some counseling that had a profound impact on me. Amongst the many ‘thought bombs’ that landed on me through that process was the fact that I had found entirely the wrong person for me (as had my ex-wife) because I had not been fully me. I had been who I thought I should be according to the opinions and ideas of those around me.

I had presented a false self to the world (not the true shape of my jigsaw puzzle piece) and so had joined with the wrong ‘matching’ piece.

If I had fully honest with myself, with my ex-wife and with the world about who I was, unafraid of that being rejected, knowing that the process of rejection was simply the path to finding the right person, an awful lot of pain and misery would have been avoided.

The key is observation and consideration – this helps you change your thought processes from inaccurate and unhelpful patterns that damage you to accurate patterns that reconnect you with your core and set you free to be who you truly are. All the external appearances of confidence come about without effort when you get your thought processes right. And that’s the job we’re doing here.

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Some things for you to consider:

• Do you really know who you are? Spend a little time getting to know yourself again

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• Have you been trying to fix the wrong problem – by fixing external things to get confident. Consider how well that has worked for you

• Consider – how much of your life have you spent not fully expressing who you are? Consider why you have chosen to do that

• Consider – how much time have you spent seeking the approval of others, in little ways and big ways? Has this made you feel good about yourself? If not why have you chosen to do it?

• Consider – do you think you will get ‘there’ when you get that job / partner / car / house / body / money / holiday etc? When you have gotten these things in the past has it made any lasting change to how you feel about yourself?

• Consider – can you ever really feel good about yourself when you are pretending to be someone you’re not?

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Reprogram Your Self Talk For Natural Confidence

I am – two of the most powerful words, for what you put after them shapes your reality

Bevan Lee

How we describe ourselves to ourselves is the most powerful force for change in the world.

The challenge for most people is that the labels they use to describe themselves are firstly unconsciously chosen and maintained and secondly negative and limiting.

When we were children (in the time before thought and before our egos had had a chance to develop) we didn’t really have labels for ourselves, just possibilities and imagination of who we could become.

Over time through the negative influence of family, friends, teachers and society in general most of us learned to take on predominantly negative or self limiting labels that stifled and suppressed the natural confidence that we were born with.

As we were given these labels we thought about them for a short period of time until they became who we thought we were – and then we stopped thinking about them and over time stopped even being aware that the label even existed. It simply became who we were.

In short, we lost consciousness and awareness of the shitty programming we were given.

Even worse, many of these labels and programs were presented to us as ‘good’ and so when we tried to occasionally rebel against them and throw them off, our ego told us we were ‘bad’ for doing so.

Let me give you an example – when I was a child at school I remember being told regularly at the slightest expression of satisfaction or pride with something I had achieved or done, ‘not to think that I was something special’.

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The intent (completely and utterly misguided) was, I think, to ensure that I didn’t become arrogant, complacent or lazy. To remind me of the need to work hard to achieve things and to stay grounded and humble.

What this actually ended up teaching me was something pretty toxic and insidious – that feeling like I was ‘something special’ was bad.

So clearly I had to think that I was not something special, I was ‘un-special’, not worthy of praise for who I was (who I am) but rather for what I did (working hard). So feeling good or special could only at best be a transitory experience when I was doing something. So in blunt terms unless I was a performing monkey, I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to feel good.

So I learnt that I was not special – not special became one of the labels that I unconsciously carried with me for many years, a label that limited me in both my personal and professional life terribly. And I wasn’t even conscious of it for most of that time – it became an ingrained program.

With a little thought you will no doubt be able to pick out similar labels you were given by your teachers, parents, siblings or peers.

Almost all us of are told often and without thought that we are ‘not enough’ of this or ‘too much’ of that. Sometimes we are told both.

And just to really add to the toxic mess, the same people who told you that you’re ‘not enough’ or ‘too much’ will also often tell you to ‘be confident’, as if it was a simple switch but only in really specific circumstances.

I remember once being asked to do a small talk in front of my school assembly and being told that I needed to be more confident in the way I spoke – I had been told repeatedly to not think of myself as anything special yet now I had to be confident. With contradictory instructions like that it’s no wonder so many people struggle.

I learned that I was only ‘allowed’ to be confident when doing things, but only if I had worked hard as part of the process. As soon as that exercise was over I was to return to my ‘not special’ state. Doing was praiseworthy, being was not.

Again there is nothing wrong with teaching children that they need to take action in order to achieve goals. But as we get older the ambition of the gals themselves is defined by what we think of ourselves. So telling children not to think of themselves as special becomes incredibly destructive and limiting.

A child who could change the world, is taught, consciously or by accident to think small – and the child and the wider world is poorer as a result.

So how do you stop living with labels and an identity that you didn’t choose, weren’t aware of and that keep you trapped living and feeling that you are less than you truly are?

There are two keys to lasting, permanent change.

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Firstly you need to feel safe to change – massive, life-altering change can happen in an instant, as soon as you feel safe to make the changes necessary. Rarely is it the case that we don’t know what to do. Nearly always the challenge is that we know exactly what to do, but we’re still not doing it. Because we don’t feel safe or worthy.

Secondly you need to change your identity, how you see yourself – this sounds difficult but actually is far easier than most people realize. It’s a matter of becoming conscious and aware of the bugs and shitty, stifling programming and labels that have held you back and then observing whether you want to choose to continue with them.

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this – right now your ego is already completely dismissing what I’ve just written. Just for now don’t judge what I’ve written, just allow yourself to be open to the possibility that massive positive

change is possible.

You can always judge and dismiss later.

Albert Einstein once said that ‘No problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness that caused it’.

A great deal of self help and personal development will talk to you about affirmations, taking massive action and even faking it till you make it.

The problem with these approaches is frankly that they are almost certain to fail. Behaviour (confidence, action etc) follows identify and consciousness not the other way around.

You do not change behavior (in a lasting permanent way that works) at the level of behaviour – you change it by changing awareness and consciousness, and as a result your identity.

I don’t want you to fake anything or to look to act differently – instead I want you to become aware of the truth about yourself. Then change becomes easy and obvious.

You do this by observing and considering the labels that you have accepted and taken on and that you’ve lost awareness of.

Don’t judge or feel bad about them – just enjoy the process of reawakening and becoming aware of them. Any thought or feeling of being ‘not enough’ or ‘too much’, not as good as person x etc are all labels, baggage that despite what you may think you have a choice of continuing with.

You just weren’t aware of the choice – up until now…..

As you find each label, each piece of shitty, negative, limiting programming ask yourself if you would choose that programming?

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Ask yourself if living with that thought makes you feel good or bad.

Ask yourself if keeping that label or programming makes you feel confident or worthy?

Ask yourself how you feel about the labels and programming you identify?

At first you may find it tricky to truly, emotionally accept the truth that you can drop these labels for yourself. Again don’t feel bad about that – just be aware that that is how you feel and ask yourself why you’ve chosen to feel that.

Then as a way of breaking the thinking pattern, ask yourself if you would be able to consciously give that programming to a young child?

If the answer is ‘no’, then ask why you would give it to yourself?

As you start to throw of the shackles of shitty programs and stifling social conditioning you make space for the real you to re-emerge.

§

Some things for you to consider:

• What labels have you been given or taken on that you had lost awareness of?

• Would you choose any of these labels? Do any of these labels help you feel good, confident worthy – do any of them hold any benefit for you?

• Would you consciously choose to give any of these labels or programs to a young child? Do you feel they are accurate? If not consider why you would choose to continue with them yourself

• Consider do you choose to continue with any of these negative, limiting labels from now on?

• Consider do you understand why trying to become confident by changing your behavior is destined to fail?

• Do you see that by simply becoming aware of the bugs that are limiting you and have distorted your true identity, change becomes easy and without pain or effort. Confidence is then about becoming aware of the truth of who you are

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Stop Negativity Fast

One of the biggest misconceptions around confidence and self-help teaching in general is the focus on lack of confidence as the problem to be cured.

I get that this sounds backwards but so much self help teaching does have this backwards and whilst well intentioned can cause real harm.

Instead what’s needed is understand how to think about ourselves accurately - and the result is the absence of a lack of confidence.

Confidence then is simply the absence of negative thought about ourselves.

In simple terms if you were unknowingly drinking poison, you’d become unwell and feel terrible. Once you realized you were drinking poison and stopped you’d start to feel better – you wouldn’t need to try and feel better or put any effort into it. It would simply happen naturally - your natural, default state is health.

All you need to do is be aware of what’s poisonous and not drink it.

The same is true with your thinking – once you realize that your ego, unknowingly (and sometimes knowingly!) helped and supported by friends, colleagues, the media, social media is feeding your mind negativity (poison), you suddenly and maybe for the first time, have the choice to stop feeding on the negative, destructive thought patterns that undermine your natural confidence and self esteem that is hard wired into your DNA.

Despite what you may think you don’t need to put any effort into trying to feel confident at all. You don’t need you to say any mantras, affirmations, to look yourself in the mirror and pump yourself up or fake it till you make it.

Instead all you need to do is to take a little time and start to identify the negative, poisonous thoughts damaging your sense of yourself and holding you back. And each time you find one, simply ask yourself if there is any benefit to you in that thought?

Keep a little bit of your focus inside yourself on your feelings as you go about your day. Be conscious and aware of each time you start to feel bad – when it happens simply stop for a moment and ask yourself, ‘Would I choose this negative thought?’, does it help me be who I want to be? If it doesn’t do I choose to continue thinking it or drop it?

You will start to become aware of just how many little thoughts your ego and the wider world bombard you with every day. And that you have chosen to

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take on board. You may have chosen unconsciously, but you have still made the choice…..

….And now I have made you aware of the choice, you have the ability to make a different choice, one that serves you instead of harming you.

As you do this, you will in that moment throw off the shackles of that negative thought that has held you back and in the process re-pattern yourself to think in your naturally confident ways again, without effort.

You will find that as you go through that thought process, the negative thought will start to dissolve, and reveal to you your true, underlying confident self that was always there, just hidden under layers of negative crap you weren’t even aware of.

Remember that your ego is cunning and many of these thought patterns are pretty ingrained so will take a little work to fully dissolve. Don’t let your ego beat you up when you repeat negative thought patterns. That is one of its most cunning tricks to throw you off track.

Like anything in life that you become good at, practice and repetition is the key.

§

Some things for you to consider:

• Consider that confidence then is simply the absence of negative thought about ourselves

• Consider that confidence is your natural state – you have simply been feeding on negative thoughts that are like poison. Once you stop taking the poison your natural sate returns

• Consider, can you keep a little focus on the inside and be aware of all the negative thoughts that your ego throws at you. Consider now that you are aware of these thoughts, maybe for the first time, will you choose to let them go?

• Consider that you don’t need to put any effort into feeling confident, simply in identifying and dissolving the negative thoughts that don’t help you be who you really are

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Take Control of Your Mind

We can always choose to perceive things differently. We can focus on what's wrong in our life, or we can focus on what's right.

~Marianne Williamson

The people who succeed in life and live confidently and fully are those that focus on who they need to be in order to live the life they want. Because they love who they are they go into life with no expectation or agenda.

I get that this sounds a bit trite but as is so often the case (watch for your ego now….), the question is not whether we ‘know’ something but whether we are living to the truth of that thing that we claim to know. So before your ego tries dismiss this, spend some time observing how much you truly live to the things you think you know.

The key is your focus – what you focus on day to day and where you allow your conscious focus to go when things don’t work out in the way you wanted.

The first few times you do this if will feel strange – then you’ll begin to see the benefits and you’ll start to wonder why you didn’t make this a habit years ago.

Every single one of us will have times where we feel low, down on ourselves and generally out of sync with the world around us. That is normal and natural.

The question is how long you allow yourself to stay there.

The difference between confident people and unconfident people (and bluntly successful people and unsuccessful people) is how long they remain focused on and indulging the ‘problem’, the negative and how quickly they refocus on the good and the possibility of life.

So many of the things that we define as going ‘wrong’ are in fact wonderful gifts (yes really) that because we have judged something as ‘bad’, we miss. So many of the greatest things that I have experienced have come from things that I unconsciously labeled as bad.

The minute I judge them as bad I have closed my mind off to the possibilities that life is showing me, I can start to feel sorry for myself and I can indulge negative thinking both about the situation and very quickly about myself. I can start to feel bad, low, and negative about myself or something I did.

This matters – and here’s why…..

There is a part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) and it’s responsible for your habit formation and your awareness of the patterns of

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your experience. It takes the huge array of information that your senses take in each and every day and filters out the data and experiences that ‘are no longer needed’ based on habits and patterns.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. When I was about 20 I had quite a bad accident when I was bitten on the face by a dog. As a result I had some quite bad scarring on my face and required a couple of operations to fix the damage. For a while I had some quite visible scarring that bothered me a great deal and made me very self-conscious.

Immediately after that I became extremely aware of any scars on peoples faces – but here’s what strange…..

……I started seeing scars on people’s faces that I had known for years and that I had never previously noticed. My RAS had for years switched off noticing something. It was only when I had a reason to do I start to become aware of something that had always been there.

What this means is that if you have decided and accepted something negative about yourself, over time you accept that as 100% true and your RAS (with the help of your ego) filters out information that challenges that ‘truth’.

Don’t believe me? – well try this……

Think back over the last few months. How well can you recall the times you were criticized by someone? I would guess reasonably well. Most people remember criticisms pretty well.

Now over the same period how well can you recall the times people said something wonderful or complimentary about you? If you’re like most people, with a bit more thought and effort you can remember some but not in anything like the same way or to the same extent as the criticisms.

The criticisms and compliments are both facts – they both happened.

Your ego and your RAS simply caused you to focus on the one that most aligns with your (often negative) habits and view of yourself. If you were to think accurately about yourself you would have to think much more positively about yourself. But that challenges ingrained patterns.

Conversely people that feel great about themselves are quick to dismiss the critics and see the compliments far more clearly. Both approaches are simply habits.

And can be learned with just a little consciousness and practice. Your choice (and despite what your ego is telling you it is always a choice) is about where

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you will direct your focus. The positive and the negative are both facts. You can create good habits just as easily as bad ones.

Often when we get criticized or things go wrong, we either feel angry or our ego, our inner critic starts to throw all kinds of shit at us:

• See, I told you I can’t do this • I knew I wasn’t good enough • I knew this wouldn’t work out • I knew that advice wouldn’t work for me • I knew I’d be found out

Don’t beat yourself up for thinking these kinds of things. Just become aware that your ego will throw these kinds of things at you all the time.

Then slow your mind down for a few moments and think about all the possible ways that a situation could in fact work out amazingly for you.

Once you start to create the new habit of focusing on possibility (how can this situation work out for the best for me) it is just as easy to do as the focus on the negative.

So when you feel your focus drifting towards the negative, don’t fight it or judge it and don’t feel bad about it.

Instead just slow down and observe what your ego is doing. Ask yourself if focusing on the negative is helping you be the person you desire to be, is it helping you feel good about yourself, to feel confident about yourself and your life? If it is then you should keep doing it? If its not then consider if changing that pattern would be helpful.

Then also ask yourself what possibilities life is offering you. Watch as your ego tries to dismiss this as a bit hippy and new age. But think about whether your old ways of thinking have helped you be who you want to be, to be happy and confident.

Often when I say this to people they say that I’m asking them to ignore the ‘truth’? Somehow many people have come to view on the negative as the truth.

When you consider the possibility that of what your life would be like if you filtered out the negative in the same way that you had filtered out the positive for years, you can start to see just what possibilities life can offer you.

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Some things for your to consider:

• When you start to feel negative about a situation in your life or about yourself, ask yourself “Am I seeing this accurately and truthfully and am I allowing myself to only see the negative”

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• Is focusing on the negative helping me in any way? If so then ask yourself if you need to continue with that habit

• Consider things from your past that ‘went wrong’ and look at how even though they seemed bad at the time they actually worked out for the best. Where you cant see this yet, consider how things could work out for the best

• Consider how many compliments you can remember that you received over the last few months. Consider how many criticisms you received at the same time. Ask yourself which ones you remember more easily. Ask yourself if you’re hanging onto criticisms or compliments more and if this is helping you

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IT’S YOUR TIME TO START LIVING CONFIDENTLY

Confidence, or a lack of confidence, is simply a habit. And despite what you may think right now, thinking confidently is your natural state and therefore far easier to achieve than feeling unconfident.

All that’s happened is that over a long period of time, you’ve been taught and picked up a series of bad habits that caused you to go off track. My job is to reacquaint you with your natural mindset that give you back your natural born confidence.

A very wise mentor once told me that the first time you think a new way, it is like trying to cut a path through a jungle with a machete. You’re having to clear the path step-by-step hacking through the vegetation. It takes a little effort.

By the 10th time you have a pretty good clear path and it’s much easier.

By the hundredth time you have a nice tarmac road, by the thousandth time you have a 6 lane superhighway and its very difficult to direct your thoughts down path filled with vegetation.

That process happened for you to think in negative, harmful ways. Very quickly by simply being conscious and understanding the right, helpful ways to think you can re-wire your mind to think in ways that will make confident and powerful in ways that will astonish you.

If you have enjoyed learning this and would like to see how far you really can go, and what level you can take your life to then I strongly recommend you begin the full Unstoppable Self Confidence process. It sets out a simple step by step process for unleashing your natural self-confidence, permanently, no matter how you feel today. If you think what you’ve learnt here is good, then you’ll love the full process.

I look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Your friend, Andrew

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If you’d like to learn more about how to regain the natural self-confidence you were born with then for more details:

Click here to learn more – www.unstoppableselfconfidence.com

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Helping Others

If you found this book inspiring and helpful, then with one action you can help me, you can help yourself and you can help others too.

I’d like your feedback on this book as I’m always looking to improve my work. All you need to is click on the link below, answer a couple of questions about how you felt about this book…..then just write a couple of sentences saying about how this book helped you, inspired you and what you are now going to do with the info….And why you think everyone should hear about it….

You sending me a response will really help!

Click this link to leave me your thoughts – https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6XT2Z6K

Thank-you!

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© Andrew Leedham