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How to
Improve Self-Confidence!
Smile and try to think a
negative thought
Choice: Between Stimulus and Response
Have you ever tried to smile and think a
negative thought? Usually the result is that one of the feelings will win out.
Whether it is you will feel better because you smiled or that you will
eventually feel bad and frown, this is an important fact in human psychology.
Humans cannot really hold attention on more
than one thought at a time. This is the key to mastering oneself in this life.
Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist
who ended up in a concentration camp during World War II. He witnessed numerous
atrocities and was a victim of German experimentation himself.
However, he observed that people trapped in
the camp had different ways of dealing with their dire predicament. Some people
lost the will to live, others went mad. Some men turned on their fellow inmates,
while some ended their lives in suicide.
There were others, though who turned out
quite differently. There were men who went from hut to hut, and gave away their
last piece of bread. They encouraged the men, women, and children of the camp to
keep on living. They gave them a reason to hope for a better future.
Why were these men, in the face of
overwhelming despair, still able to master themselves enough to help others with
their problems? This is what puzzled Frankl. But even he would eventually find
out why when he was tortured.
Frankl believes that between stimuli and
response lays the choice of man to react to any given circumstance. He has
practiced this in the concentration camps and his sense of future vision helped
him survive. He realized he had a choice, and his choice was to live.
The human animal is the only organism so far
known to be aware of its own existence. Untrained, this awareness does not help
him overcome his instincts to react to any given situation. Frankl has found out
that it is possible to use the will to make a choice on how one can react.
Other theories also hold true to this tenet.
Sales people have long practiced that if one smiles long, he will eventually
feel good about himself. In essence, he can make himself feel anything he wants.
In essence, it is outside-in.
Smile even if there is no reason to smile. It
will foster a sense of positivism that drives out negative thoughts. This is a
two-edged sword. Try to frown and you can find yourself too serious to even let
people near you. Our thoughts are fluid and they are ever in one state to the
other.
The challenge is to keep them where you want
them.
Proper breathing methods have long
recommended to clear the cobwebs from your everyday life.
The effect of breathing is that concentrating
on the breath is a source of steadiness that is much needed when one needs a
sense of control. Breathing deeply and concentrating on it also loosens hold on
the ego. It supplies the body with more oxygen to fight the effects of stress.
The test is still to catch yourself when you
are too stressed to function well. This is where choice comes in. You make the
choice to stop work when going on will be counter-productive. You choose whether
it is feasible to commit to a project when you know you already have your hands
full. Awareness is the gauge that tells you when you have too much. Choice is
the lever that you turn to ease the pressure.
Part of choosing is when to say no. When
presented with an opportunity. One must ask if the opportunity is feasible and
if there it time to devote to it? If it is not, then there should be no shame in
declining. Overloading oneself is another sign of poor choice, and doesn’t do
you or the inviting party any lasting good.
The key is the awareness to response with an
appropriate choice.
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Confidence News:
MSN
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Google
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Yahoo!
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