Archive for Self Confidence
You ARE already goal setting
Posted by: | CommentsWorthy goals push, drive and motivate you to do more, to be more and to have more. If I think back to my childhood, I can remember one of my earliest goals in life. I was a small child, and I mean that in stature not just being young. To give you a better vision of what I mean, I was only four foot three inches in the ninth grade. So as you can imagine, many of the bigger boys made not only a goal of but a pastime out of picking on me. I internally set a goal to create situations in my little life that would help me avoid as much of this school yard harassment as possible.
So, how does a small boy accomplish this large feat? I accomplished this goal by breaking it down into three smaller goals. First, I learned from my father (who by the way was six feet three inches tall) that making people laugh was the quickest way to reach inside them. So my first sub goal was to hone my sense of humor. You see, if you can engage a person, and make them laugh, I found they were far less likely to want to mistreat you.
Second sub goal was to leverage a powerful force to my side. What powerful force you ask? Well, let me explain and I am sure you can figure out which one of the primary human drivers I was leveraging for this goal. Every school year (and throughout the summer) I would make friends with some of the more popular and pretty girls. I did this knowing that some of those ‘more manly’ boys would want meet and learn about these girls. Thus, having those lovely ladies as friends gave him and I some common ground. A side benefit of this goal was the obvious ego boost that came with being friends with some of the more popular and attractive girls at school.
Sub goal three was set as a back-up plan…when all else fails you should know how to
1) Run
2) Fight
So I learned both. Why fight? Because you cannot always far enough or fast enough. Why run? Because you cannot always fight your way out. Even though by the time I had gotten into high school I had about three years of martial arts under my belt (no pun intended) – there were times when running WAS and IS the best option. One such time was when I was surrounded by nine guys whom did not like the fact that I had befriended a girl named ‘Tracy.’ Tracy’s boyfriend was in juvenile hall and when he got out they surrounded me as I left school. I am no Jackie Chan or Jett Lee, heck I am not even Steven Segal, so running in this case was the best solution. However, in those times when the odds were a little better I was able to use the martial arts I had learned to defend myself and others. Again a side benefit of this sub goal was the self-esteem, self-confidence and inner calm that come from feeling strong enough to protect yourself and those you care about even when you choose not to use it.
All this goes to show that goal setting has been a part of my life since very early in my life. I am betting that setting goals has been a part of your life from an early age as well, directly or indirectly. Did you have your eye on someone you wanted to date? Were you able to get that first date? Did you see that new TV in the advertisement and figure out how you could make it fit into your budget? Did your child come to you and say how much they really really really wanted you to be at their play/recital/show? You see even indirectly goal setting is already a part of your life.
Now is the time to make it an ACTIVE part of your life and truly compound and reap the benefits that a focused goals plan can get you. It has been said that we are only truly happy when we are actively working towards a worthy goal. And you know what – this is not new news!
You need to set and work towards worthy goals and yes I will be taking you through an entirely new way to set your goals in up-coming posts – but in the mean time you can find many other great tips and techniques for goals setting, (including brainstorming your goals) in previous postb. Let me know your thoughts, questions and concerns!
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s TOP Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas Programs
Goals Choices and Change
Posted by: | CommentsEnvision if you will, spending the day with a beautiful woman (or handsome man) having a wonderful dinner, going to one of the happening nightclubs in the city and dancing the night away. Drinking a little and laughing a lot. Then returning home after a night’s worth of partying, opening the front door to you home only to find it ransacked, even worse, realizing upon closer inspection that your home was not ransacked by thieves, but rather by the local police.
This is where my rollercoaster of a life had taken me. The choices I made; choices in friends, choices in lifestyle and even the choices in the person I had choose as a mate were coming to an ugly head. I was about to lose everything. And I do mean everything, even my first child. Have you ever been faced with that moment in your life when you were about to lose something or someone that meant the world to you? If you have ever been faced with loosing anything or everything you have built, loved or cherished then you will know what I mean when I say – it was time to make new choices and time to set some new goals and most importantly time to make a change.
At that very moment I set a mental goal, to change my life, clean up my act as well as my body. I was determined to not to fall any farther into the bottomless pit that the current roller coaster ride I was on, was diving me into. I was time to make new choices, to begin searching for a better way and to make changes. Battered but not broken, I set a goal to pull myself out of that pit, and sail to new heights. Thanks to the help of my parents (RIP Daddy & love you Mom!) as well as some very close friends (Thank you Robbie!) I begin a new life, one that has set me upon a path of new choices, discovery, goal setting and self-improvement.
Over the course of the next couple years, I scratched and clawed my way back to reality. I worked temporary jobs and in a warehouse at a major department store to pay the bills and re-build my self-esteem. Then I set another mental goal to land a job that would pay enough to enable me to move back out on my own and raise my beautiful daughter in a healthy, happy and stable home – free of unwanted rollercoasters.
Tough choices had to be made for such a change. Did I want to keep the seemingly fun and thrills of the easier dark side? Or did I want to become truly successful, happy and fulfilled buy getting all those things that money CAN NOT buy? I had to make changes. Changes like breaking away from the places, habits and even the people that had aided in, and in some ways even urged on, my downfall.
Once again, goals were set, choices were made and changes put in place and I succeeded. I began working for a Fortune 5 company and climbed the ranks in that organization. In addition I found someone special to share my life with. Within about six years I was managing a team of people and millions of dollars in marketing materials that serviced all of North America. The only way I was able to accomplish this, is through an on-going process of goal setting, wiser choices/change and consistent self-improvement.
I don’t tell you this story to impress you, I tell you in the hopes that you will see that you are not alone in having gone through tough times (or going through them), that I have been there and done that and made it back from the dark side (so can you). My dark side was worse than I would wish upon anyone and I still made it. So can you. That is part of the journey we will be going through here. Sharing with you the tips, techniques and tools I used to make it from the streets (or should I say gutters) of Southern California, to a beautiful office in a Fortune5 company and beyond.
Are you ready to set the goals, make the choices and changes that will take your life to the next level? What about the level after that? What about to a level that you haven’t even dreamed is possible? I am betting you are ready and that is why you are still reading now.
In my next post we will discuss what can motivate you whether you are 9 or 90. Until then….
Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s TOP Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas Programs
Making Mistakes – Getting Older AND Wiser
Posted by: | CommentsSo many make the assumption that as you get older you automatically get wiser, sadly I have come to learn that this is not always the case. I have watched many a friend, client or colleague make the same mistake over and over again – pushing me to the realization that not everyone pauses to learn from their mistakes. This inability to learn from their mistakes and travel down a more productive path of self-improvement, not only traps them in their own “groundhog’s day” (where Bill Murray keeps reliving the same day over and over again) but this reliving of mistakes will open up a whole new jar of mistakes for them to NOT learn from.
Let me let you in on a little tip about mistakes and learning from your mistakes. Your Success At Last tip about making mistakes is; first let’s be honest with ourselves, you are going to make mistakes so do not beat yourself up over them. Forgive yourself for your mistakes! Then second, learn from your mistakes and you can and will grow older AND wiser.
You see hind sight is 20/20. You can always see the mistakes you made, however wisdom is the ability to see the mistakes looming on the horizon. The only way to gain this coveted wisdom is not by avoiding the mistakes in your life or even in denying the mistakes you have made. Rather getting wiser comes from learning from the mistake you made and of course escaping with some, and hopefully, all of your dignity in intact.
While getting older is something we all are going to do; only the smartest among us will get wiser. The older you get the more opportunities you will have to make mistakes. Thus the more opportunities you will have to grow wiser from those same errors in judgment, stumbling of footing and failing of your ways.
As long as you are able to look back at the mistakes you have made, see where you went wrong and resolve to yourself that you will not make those same mistakes again – then you are all the wiser for taking that time in self-reflection. Also this self-reflection will impact how you treat others, because you will realize that others are getting older right along with you and that some of them may not be getting as wise as quickly as you are. You will find yourself a little more patient, kind and forgiving of their mistakes once you truly take this Success Atlas tip of learning for your mistakes to heart.
So go out there and do, fear not your mistakes only fear an inability to grow wiser from them, for you see wisdom is not about avoiding mistakes nor just about making mistakes – wisdom is about learning from your mistakes and growing within from them.
Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s Top Motivated Coaches
Sweat now or Bleed Later – Facing Fear and Building Motivation
Posted by: | CommentsI have learned over my 45+ years of life that fear can be one of the most crippling ailments to your motivation in reaching a goal, no matter how small or large that dream or goal might be. Fear allows your mind to run wild with worst case scenarios that quite probably would never happen if you sweated it out and simply took consistent action. The four letter word know as fear can, if you let it, keep you from taking the first step towards your dream or goal – and I have found that in 100% of the cases with no exceptions, if you do not take the first step towards your dream or goal you will never take the second step, because your fear will bleed your motivation out of you. So you will need to sweat now or bleed later.
The lesson of sweating now or bleeding later is another one of the valuable lessons I learned from the military that I have been able to apply to all areas of my life long after having left the military. In the armed forces they teach you, in a number of ways, that the more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in battle. There in hides a lesson I was able to take and apply in everything I attempt. In the military they train and train and train, putting you through situations that you could face under fire. But then they take it one step farther and put you though the next level of situation in an attempt to prepare you for the most extreme types of situations that God forbid you would ever have to face. But this next level of sweating in peace time preps you for these worst case scenarios and enables you to face them with a more level head.
One less extreme example I can share with you would alli best buy be during basic training, when you are taught how to quickly remove your gas mask from its pouch and put it on correctly in seconds. We went through drill after drill after drill on doing this at times when we knew it was coming and times when it was a complete surprise. I remember thinking how fast I was able to do it with all this practice. Then we took a 5+ mile hike out into the woods to a small one story cinder block building which had ‘smoke’ coming out of it. We were told this build was filled with tear gas and were instructed to put our gas masks on. Then in groups of 8 to 10 at a time we were lead into the gas filled building. I remember thinking to myself how glad I was that I paid attention when learning to seal the mask correctly around my face. Once inside we were lined up and a few seconds later instructed to pull our mask off. WHAT??!! You want to talk about heart pound fear! None of us wanted to but we all knew we had to – and we were told that we all had to stand in that gas there until everyone did it AND until everyone took their first breath of the notorious tear gas.
I would love to tell you about how tough I was in handling this experience but sadly I am only human and the gas… well the gas is designed to be very effective. Let me tell you – I never want to experience tear gas again. Imagine if you will your face feeling like it is on fire as if sitting under sun lamp on high, then you eyes burning like all your sweat was pouring right into them. Now add to that an uncontrollable cough, the burning in your lungs makes you think they are going to explode. Then there is your nose – lets just say, the body can be quite effective at trying to push foreign agents out of the body and the nose will try to do this by flooding itself. You get the picture.
I can hear you now, “Wait Tracy what lesson could you have learned from this other then perhaps your fellow soldiers look really funny stumbling out of the gas house with faces washed out with tears and snot?” Well I realized the value of the gas house lesson two nights later while we were sleeping in the woods and one of the drill sergeants threw a tear gas grenade. My nose got the first hint of that gas and my body snapped to being fully awake and I had that gas mask on faster then I had ever done it previously. Sweat now or bleed later.
The lesson of sweating now or bleeding later has stayed with me long since I learned it. When I was faced with the opportunity to compete at a national level in a humorous speech contest I could feel my fear welling up and impacting my usual practice process. I was avoiding honing my speech for fear of failing on stage. Odd as it might seem the act of avoiding the honing was surely going to result in my failing on stage. It wasn’t speaking in public in general that I was afraid of – it was speaking to an audience of people that I knew would want someone else to win. The friends and family of those I would be up against would be in the audience and I knew they wouldn’t want me to win, that fear was choking off my action. So I faced my fear head on by putting myself into a speaking opportunity where I knew the audience would be even less likely to want me to successful in giving my message. I arranged to give a motivational speech at the Gwinnett County Juvenile Detention Facility. I figured that if I could face this audience of teenagers whose lives had taken a turn that landed them in this facility, where they were being made to sit through my presentation – then I could surly face any audience I would meet at the Humorous Speech Contest.
Well to make a long story short – I was actually well received by both audiences. The teens actually appreciated that someone took the time to speak to them and had many questions to ask during and after my presentation. And while I did not win the humorous speech contest, I did learn that if you ever had to face something that you fear then you can always ‘stage’ a bigger battle then the one you have to face. If you have something hard to do and you are reluctant or hesitant to do it, pick out something even harder and do that first.
Apply this sweat now or bleed later lesson and watch what it does to your motivation when you finally reach that ‘real’ challenge!
Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy Brinkmann
One of today’s TOP Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas Programs.
Build competence by feeling competent
Posted by: | CommentsHow competent do you want to be at what you do? How competent do you want to be at something new? How do you base that competence? Do you have periodic tests, or evaluations against yourself, or against other perhaps? Do you put your work(s) on display in public for the whole world to see, or at least for your office & boss to see? You see, no matter how you demonstrate your competence in what you do – there is definitely always an objective way by which you can and should consider yourself a success in that activity or skill.
While, as I just noted, there is always a way to prove and evaluate your competence, what I find most peculiar is the fact that people who really think they are incompetent at what they do, will often not change their mind when presented with indicators of their success and competence. Their self doubt overrules the evidence of competence, like a judge in the court of their mind. However, this also works on the opposite side of the street. The proof of this would be most evident in all the reality shows we have seen explode onto the scene over the recent years.
One such show that has captured by attention features dancers from all skill levels and walks of life performing weekly to entertain and to win the shows grand prize. The early episodes have many of those people that ‘believe’ they can dance at a level they believe makes them worthy of appearing on the show but truly they can not. When they are given sincere critique by the judges of the show (all of which have been in the industry for many years) they balk at the critique and proclaim their future success in dance. All the while you, the audience member, sit there wondering “how in the world do THEY think they can dance?”
Now I am not saying that they will never reach the level they believe they already have, what I am saying is that their belief in their competence is a driving force and that same driving force can work to your own advantage. I say this from my own experience as well as the experience of people I have come across over the years.
From my own experience, I can share a brief story of how my own belief in my competence launched my programming business. Shortly after leaving the US Military, I did computer programming – mostly as a hobby. While in the military I did use it to make my job simpler by programming a few record keeping tasks and the like. But mostly I did it as a past time – reading up on what was going on in the industry and studying the current programming languages and seeing what I was able to do with them. After I got out of the service I decided to see what I could do with my hobby by trying to turn it into a career. I was able to land a job at a medical billing company as a systems analyst, and then a couple months later I was promoted to their programmer.
How? Well I believed in my ability and my competence in the programming language they were using for their billing system. But, here is the catch… I had only been programming in that particular languages for about six months. So it wasn’t my length of time or experience in their system or its langue that landed me the promotion. Nope it was my belief in my ability to use the knowledge I did have, and my ability to learn everything else I needed to in the time line they expected me to. That’s just what I did, I programmed their doctors billing system over the course of the next few months, by applying the all the best of what I had already learned. Applying all the knowledge and competence I had; not just from their system’s language but from other languages that I had alli and sales previously studied and read up on.
You see, I am willing to bet that you are like most other people (myself included) and that like most people the first step toward improving your job performance, sports performance, relationship performance or any other performance has nothing to do with the job, sport or skill itself. But rather it has to do with improving how they, and you, feel about yourself as a whole and how you feel about yourself relative to that skill or competence. Studies I have read bear out the fact that in eight out of ten people, it is self image that has far more to do with ones performance and competence then their actual level of skill or competence in that skill.
So, you see the next time your sitting down watching one of those reality shows and giggling to yourself as you see the person with that seemingly unrealistic belief that they have the skill to be a winner on that show. Stop for moment and ask how you can take on that same belief in your desired skill of choice. For that passionate belief will bear some wonderful fruit in your competence in that skill as you strive to build it.
Here are a few action steps you can take right now to build your own belief in your competence:
• Create positive affirmations in an area you would like to build competence in and stand tall and recite them with feeling – without feeling and passion the road to competence is much longer
• Read, listen, and study the different nuances of what you are trying to become competent in.
• Everyday practice your skill(s) in the area you are wanting to become more competent in. Do not focus on only one area but grow outward step by step growing your competence and confidence.
Think Successfully & Take Action (with competence!)
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s TOP Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas programs
