CURIOSITY & CONFIDENCE & CONNECTION...
You want to be more confident about yourself, is it your dream?
You want to be more competent at certain skills?
You want to learn more about others to have better connections?
Maybe there will be times when you feel doubtful about yourself, when you are feeling scared of giving it a try? Or maybe you feel a lack of confidence when seeing other people who are so good at what you want to learn and you think, “It is for them, not for me”? Or maybe you feel scared of judgment?
Because of these doubts and fears, you may not take positive action to develop yourself to be more competent….. and then confident!
How can you turn these doubts and fears to becoming EXCITEMENT, to make yourself take action to be better - more competent? Then you will feel more confident about yourself.
One of the practical exercises is to use CURIOSITY to trigger that EXCITEMENT!
When you feel doubtful about yourself: be curious to ask yourself, “Why do I feel like this?” and listen to the story behind the feeling - you acknowledge the feeling and its story. Right after that, tell yourself that you don’t need to be in that state of mind. Change your focus to another question: “What is the one thing I can do to make me feel better, right now?” That one thing can be going for a walk, thinking about something that you achieved in the past or, right away, practicing a technique to be better at what you want to achieve.
You are not confident about yourself when seeing other successful people: you may start your learning journey, you look for experts and you see their performance, you start comparing yourself and feel, “You are nowhere now,” and you overwhelm yourself with that comparison and jealousy. Acknowledge these feelings and be curious about, “What is the one thing I can learn from these people?” or “What is the story behind their achievement?” When you have CURIOSITY and ask these questions, you will learn part of the secret of their success. Just choose one action to take, one step at a time.
You are scared of judgment: maybe you want to speak up but you are scared of people judging you. You get overwhelmed by it, you decide to protect yourself by not trying. But stop, be curious about the feeling, acknowledge it and be curious, “What is the one thing I can learn from the success of others in order to be better?” Always be curious to listen and critically evaluate what you see, then you will gain enormously from this feedback.
Have a curious week my friends!
My favourite way of practicing CURIOSITY: (a quotation from my book)
“Spend a half-hour in a coffee shop being curious about everyone in the place. Without actually talking to anyone at first, release your curiosity and pose the following questions to yourself: I wonder where they are out of balance in their lives. I wonder what they value. I wonder what they are missing in their lives, what makes them laugh, where they have constructed self-imposed limits. What do they like about the day? What are their life dreams? What empowers them? What do they like about the people they’re sitting with? At the end of the half-hour, find someone you can spend a little more time with and actually ask that person the curious questions. As you ask the questions, be aware of what is happening with the other person. How does this person respond to you when you are curious? Then look at your own role in the conversation…
Afterward, be curious about your own curiosity. What did you learn about being curious? What was easy? What was hard? What made it easy or hard? How could you be more curious? What would that give you?”
