Using the Instant Confidence Method for Career and Business, you will gain the self-confidence needed to get recruited and promoted, become the leading authority in your field, receive awards and accolades, and attract a boss who follows you around like a lovesick puppy.

Colleagues will hang off your every word, clamor for your opinion, rush to do your bidding, green-light your projects, and scramble to buy your products or services.

Here is what you will gain from this program:

• You will FINALLY understand how to use your unique talents and abilities to make money, giving yourself the ability to command an obscenely high price in the marketplace.
• Taking ACTION on your business and career goals will feel completely natural to you no matter what your past, because of the powerful, unstoppable self-confidence imbedded deep inside you.
• You will suddenly be able to try new things, meet new people, take risks, and trust yourself to make decisions with second-guessing them.
• Rejections and failures involving money that used to rattle you will become non-issues, even to the point of not bothering you at all! Instead, your confidence will always be there, inside you, ready to carry you to success.
• Speaking to people with self-assurance will be effortless. People will hang off your every word, clamor for your opinion, green-light your projects, and scramble to buy your products or services.

This program will have three parts.

In Part I, I am going to explain the true source of confidence in career and business. Make sure you read this part before proceeding on to the nuts and bolts of the Method.

In Part II, I will lead you through the Instant Confidence Method you can use to program yourself for career and business confidence. Make sure you complete all of the ACTION Steps in this section.

In Part III, I will lead you through an emotional visualization audio session that will attract career and business success to you by causing you to take action on a daily basis towards your goals. Make sure you listen to this audio session every day for the next 30 days. It will program you for confidence without you having to work on it directly.

The challenge with confidence is that you cannot gain confidence from trying to pursue it directly. This is why most people are frustrated by their efforts to improve their confidence – they are trying to increase it with direct methods such as telling themselves they are confident.

It turns out that confidence comes from a combination of two key sources: success and self-esteem.

Success
The first and most obvious source of confidence is success. Anytime we accomplish a goal of any kind, we immediately experience an influx of joy, pride, and self-confidence.

Several years ago I was on the ice coaching in a scrimmage in my sport. There was a five year old boy there playing with girls who were a full two years younger.

About ten minutes into the game he came onto the bench, threw his helmet off and said, “I quit!”

“Connor, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m not doing anything out there! I never touch the ring!” he wailed.

I had to think fast because he was right. Connor was so much younger than the rest of the players that he wasn’t getting the ring much at all.

“Okay, I understand. But, the thing is, your team needs you. If you don’t go back out, your team won’t have enough players,” I reasoned with him.

He couldn’t think of an argument so he went back out. The very next shift he passed the ring to his sister who promptly scored a goal.

“Connor, you did it! It was because of you that your sister scored that goal!” I high-fived him.

His confidence was fine for the rest of the week because he had seen a glimpse of success.

Where Does Success Come From?

In No B.S. Wealth Attraction in the New Economy, Dan Kennedy writes, “There is a thing I call The Phenomenon. Every wealthy entrepreneur I work with has experienced it at least once, most several times. The Phenomenon is when you accomplish more or attract more wealth in 12 months than in the previous 6 years.”

How can The Phenomenon be made to happen?

According to Mr. Kennedy, the most important element of success is Congruent Behaviour. Our behaviour must be Congruent.

Congruent with what?

“Congruent with the behaviour of people already achieving goals you want to achieve,” says Kennedy. “Consider a goal to lose 40 pounds. Dropping by a doughnut shop every morning is incongruent behaviour. Taking the elevator to the second floor instead of walking is not congruent.

With regard to wealth, if you get your behaviour congruent with whatever your wealth goals are, and congruent with the behaviour of others who’ve achieved your wealth goals, it is an absolute certainty that your wealth will come flowing in.”

Canadian music superstar Jann Arden used congruent behaviour to pull herself out of depression and into stardom.

In her 20s, Arden was lost. Unsure how to make the Dream happen, she became promiscuous in a way that haunted her: “Every month I prayed I wasn’t pregnant…I would make a deal with God that if he could make me NOT pregnant I would never have sex with anyone again. I often thought of my mom when I was in those precarious situations. I’d picture her there in the corner of some guy’s cheap, messy apartment, watching me guzzle beer and smoke cigarettes and roll around in filthy sheets with a complete stranger. How had I gotten myself to this place? I had to get out and I had to get it together.”

Congruent behaviour was critical to Arden’s rise to the top. It may seem obvious, but successful singer/songwriters do two things:

1. They sing.
2. They write songs.

Recalls Arden: “I decided I was going to try as hard as I could to find a job singing in a band. If failure was the worst thing that could happen to me, I would surely be fine with that.”

Soon Arden was an established singer in Calgary club scene, which brought her a musical mentor, Neil MacGonigill. MacGonigill told her that she couldn’t just be a good songwriter – she had to be a great songwriter.

Says Arden: “All he wanted me to do was write, write, write. So that was essentially what I did in that little basement for the next few years. I’d sit at my desk with a pile of blank paper in front of me and box of black pens and wait for words to fall into my head. And they did fall, fast and furious…I wrote for nine or ten hours at a time. As soon as Neil and I felt we had enough great songs we’d go into the studio and do some demos.”

We know that if we take actions that are congruent with success, we will be successful, and confidence will flow from our success.

Self-Esteem

But success is not the whole story. Success is a definite source of confidence, but what about situations where we have no experience or skills? How do we gain the confidence to take action in those situations?

The second source of confidence is self-esteem. According to Dr. Nathaniel Branden, one of the key components of self-esteem is confidence in our ability to think and cope with the basic challenges of life.

When we have high self-esteem, we believe that we can learn what we need to learn to succeed. This allows us to be confident in doing things we’ve never even done before.

To gain self-esteem, we follow the natural laws of success and self-esteem.

How, specifically, do we create more success and self-esteem for ourselves so we can build the confidence we need?

There are three natural laws of success and self-esteem that, when followed, will give us an immediate boost in career and business confidence.

Natural laws are unchanging principles that always deliver a predictable result. For example, one of the natural laws of science is gravity. It doesn’t matter whether you know about gravity or whether you believe in gravity. If you jump out of an airplane, gravity will work on you. As Dr. Stephen R. Covey, the author of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People said, “We cannot break natural laws. We can only break ourselves against them.”

These natural laws are the same. Follow them, and you’ll enjoy an immediate influx of confidence at work.

If you prefer audio as your learning style, you can listen to The 3 Natural Laws of Success, Self-Esteem, and Career and Business Confidence here:

The first natural law for creating unshakable money self-confidence is that you must like yourself when it comes to your career and business pursuits. To like yourself in the area of career and business, you must:

1. Be Yourself,
2. Accept Yourself, and
3. Stand Up for Yourself.

The first step to being yourself in your career or business is to be 100% authentic in whatever you choose to do.

The Beatles became a pop sensation in the sixties, bringing British flair to the United States.

They started out as a small garage band, formed by sixteen-year-old John Lennon, who carried a dream and a love of music.

At first, they were rejected by every single recording label who heard them. One label even stated that, “the Beatles [have] no future in show business”.

Even when they found labels to accept them, they were still badmouthed. They were constantly put down by recording labels who told them to change everything from the way they dressed to the way they acted on stage.

Despite all the pressure to change, the Beatles did not bend. John Lennon said, “We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage.”

Authenticity = Passion = Excellence
One of the key reasons authenticity is so important is because when you give yourself permission to be yourself professionally, you will naturally honour your strengths and talents by developing and then offering them in the marketplace.

Only by being authentic will you have enough passion to stomach the long hours and massive commitment required to become world class in your field.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reveals why some men and women rise to prominence in their chosen fields.

One undeniable factor is the 10,000 hour rule.

Whether it’s Mozart, the Beatles, or Bill Gates, all extraordinary achievers put in a minimum of 10,000 hours developing their skills.

And there are no exceptions.

This doesn’t mean that talent isn’t a factor.

You must have some innate talent.

Assuming a minimum base of talent, though, what takes you from good to great is how hard you work.

Gladwell says, “The people at the top don’t just work harder or much harder. They work much, much harder.”

To succeed, you don’t focus on making yourself rich, famous, or powerful.

That leads to get rich quick schemes and chopping and changing.

You focus on becoming world class – an outlier – at something that helps people.

“I’d Never Do That Much Work”

When I was 18, I wanted to become the best player in the world at my sport.

I put together an elaborate binder that included:

-A 21 page essay on how I could improve my skills
-Monthly, weekly and daily fitness regimens
-Goals for shooting sessions and practices
-Mental toughness training strategies for each week

The binder was my ‘Bible’ until I was named captain of Team Canada ten years later.

I kept my binder a secret until a talented young player asked me for help making the National Team. She studied it and finally confessed, “It looks great, but to be honest, I’d never do that much work.”

There are two things about this story that are important.

First, notice the dates.

By 18, I had been already been practising for ten years. By 28, when I reached my goal, I had another ten years under my belt. I had definitely reached the 10,000 hour mark (it often takes about ten years, but it took me twenty).

Second, the commitment.

My young friend loved her sport. She just didn’t love it as much as I did. That’s why she experienced my binder as “work”.

If I thought I was “working” in my 10,000 hours, I probably wouldn’t have done it.

Which is why her path was the right one for her.

She became a world class athlete with a huge list of accomplishments that made her happy.

Every goal is a personal choice.

To succeed and be happy, you don’t need to be Mozart, Bill Gates or the Beatles.

But you do need to excel at what matters to you.

You learn how to become highly competent in a way that’s fun and easy.

In one year, you will be an local expert.

In three years, a national expert.

In five years, an international expert.

In ten, an outlier.

And there won’t be “work” involved. It will seem like play to you.

That’s the secret to the 10,000 hours.

You start by setting a PASSIONATE career or business goal. Passion is what drives work ethic. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, it’s commonly assumed that most successful entrepreneurs are driven by money.

Not so.

“They are fueled by a passion for their product or service, by the opportunity to solve a problem and make life easier, better, cheaper. ‘Most entrepreneurs I know believe they will change the world,’” says Jay Friedlander, who works with entrepreneurs at the College of the Atlantic and at Babson College.

However, your goal cannot be just any goal. It has to be one that fills you with excitement.

Maybe you’re aiming too high or too low.

Maybe the goal is not a reflection of who you are.

Maybe the goal involves doing too many things you do not like.

If so, the goal will not work.

You have to tweak your career or business goal until it fills you with excitement.

In interviews with the world’s top musicians, virtually all of them made music (and their development as musicians) the focal point of their lives.

One of them, a world class trumpet player, admitted that he never really did anything he didn’t like to do, and he never liked to study.

He lived to practice, though, and in college he practiced even more: 10 hours per day.

He remembers, “I was always having to take time off if I had an important concert coming up because I was practicing so much my lips were worn down to a frazzle.”

This story shows us how important it is to express your true self when setting your goal.

Take this opportunity to set a specific career goal that, if achieved, would make you completely happy because it is expressing your authentic self. At this stage, do not worry that about “how” you will achieve it. Simply write down The Dream as it exists in your mind right now, and include as much detail as possible.

Next, list seven small Action Steps that will bring you closer to your goal. Then, each day for the next seven days, I want you to do one of them.

Each day will build your momentum.

By the end of the week, your passionate motivation will be restored…no more Sunday night blues.

People think that “accepting yourself” means that you need to force yourself to “like” or approve” of the traits you dislike about yourself.

Not only is this impossible, it’s missing the point of what self-acceptance really is. In Emotional Clearing, John Ruskan teaches us that the most profound way to accept ourselves to experience our feelings without resistance.

We also know that truly accepting ourselves (instead of resisting ourselves) is what paves the way for change. We cannot be in an adversarial relationship to ourselves and hope to like ourselves and be confident at the same time.

The King’s Speech

In 2010 The King’s Speech won the Oscar for Best Picture.

The film tells the story of ‘Bertie’, the man who became King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II.

After his brother abdicates, George (‘Bertie’) reluctantly assumes the throne.

Plagued by a dreaded stammer and considered unfit to be king, Bertie engages the help of an unorthodox speech therapist named Lionel Logue.

Through their unlikely friendship, Bertie finds his voice and boldly leads the country through World War II.

The King’s Speech reminds us how important self-acceptance is when seeking confidence.

Remember, self-acceptance is your ability to experience your feelings – and yourself – warts and all.

Sure, Bertie’s afraid to become a leader. It’s one of the first thing Lionel notices: “He could be a great man, but he’s afraid of his own shadow.”

But being afraid to take a risk is normal. No, Bertie’s got a much bigger problem. It’s his inability to accept his one big weakness: his stammer.

Bertie constantly tells himself that because he’s a Royal, he “shouldn’t” have a weakness like stammer. Then he hides behind a superiority complex, pretending he’s better than everyone else.

Only when Bertie finds the humility to accept Lionel as an equal does he start to improve.

Ever pull a Bertie?

Tell yourself you “should” be in a different situation than you actually are?

Maybe you think you “should” be making more money, have a better title, or be in a different job.

The problem with this approach is that it lacks self-acceptance.

You’re so busy rejecting yourself you can’t find the confidence to win.

Self-acceptance is the starting point to change.

You must start by accepting yourself warts and all, no matter how humiliating you think your situation is.

You can accept yourself anyway.

You don’t need to approve of your situation.

But you DO need to accept yourself.

When you do, a funny thing happens. Your problem doesn’t seem like such a big deal, and you are more empowered to solve it.

That’s why you must refuse to be in an adversarial relationship with the reality of your career or business life, and how you feel about it.

Warren Buffet, the brilliant investor and philanthropist, was interested in money and money matters right from his childhood.

Buffet, known as the Wizard of Omaha in his circle is now one of the richest people in the world. He credits his success to hard work and perseverance.

He is well known for his investment wisdom. But even he made some decisions which he regretted later.

One of the biggest was his decision to buy Berkshire Hathaway was rash and wrong.

He called it a “200 billion dollar mistake” for he wasted time and capital on something which he knew was on the way to doom.

Why? According to Buffett and Forbes, “Buffett wasted precious time and capital on a textile mill in terminal decline rather than allocate his funds in something more profitable—in his case, insurance.

By Buffett’s estimates, had he never invested a penny in Berkshire Hathaway and had instead used his funds to buy, say, Geico, his returns over the course of his career would have been doubled.

Berkshire will still go down in history as one of the greatest investment success stories in history, of course. But it was a terrible investment and a major distraction that cost Buffett dearly in terms of opportunity cost.

Here is what learned in the Berkshire Hathaway deal: “If you get into a lousy business, get out of it.” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2013/05/08/the-worst-investment-of-warren-buffetts-career/)

This reminds me of my favourite proverb:

“No matter how far down the wrong road you’ve gone, turn back.”

The courage to accept your situation–and yourself–always paves the way for change.

Write down a sentence that acknowledges a situation you are holding some shame about in your career or business. For example,

“I acknowledge I should have gotten a promotion three years ago and was passed over.”
“I acknowledge that my business is not profitable right now.”
”I acknowledge I am underpaid.”

The more upsetting it is for you to write down your sentence, the more you need to do this exercise. Record your sentence below:

According to Dr. Nathaniel Branden, healthy self-assertiveness is “the ability to express your wants and needs appropriately.”

Another way of expressing this is “I matter,” and “I have a right to exist.”

When you believe you matter, you are willing to stand up for and fight for your deepest career and business aspirations – even when everyone else thinks it’s a silly pipe dream.

Hilary Swank is best known for her starring roles in P.S. I Love You and Boys Don’t Cry. While she is worth nearly $40 million today, Hilary did not come from means.

Instead of growing up in a house, she lived out her childhood in a trailer while her parents struggled to earn money for the family and fought constantly.

Acting helped Hilary distract herself from her always-bickering parents and from the teasing got for being poor.

At age fifteen, her parents separated and her father moved away. To support Swank’s desire to act, Swank and her mother moved out to L.A. and lived in their car on the streets. When they weren’t living in their cramped car, they stayed with friends in the area, all while Swank auditioned for several roles.

When several classmates teased and taunted her for wanting to be an actress, she said, “You only have one life and if you’re not doing what you love, what’s the point?”

This is a textbook example of the conviction, “I matter.”

I would like you to write down five different endings for the following sentence each day for two weeks:

If I were 5% more self-assertive at work today–

Here are some sample endings:

• I’d talk more in meetings (showcase my ideas) rather than let the higher-ups decide
• I’d finally confront my team member about his poor performance
• I’d raise my consulting fees – I’m worth it!
• I’d tell my staff to do their job (rather than having me spend my time doing it)
• I’d take some time for myself rather than working all the time

• I’d tell my supplier his price is too high and negotiate a better one
• I’d confront my staff about performance issues
• I’d tell the person who works next to me to be quiet when on the phone

Now that you’ve completed your list, do ONE thing on your list – the action that is most likely to bring you closer to the career or business goal you set earlier in this lesson.

The second natural law that will give you success and self-esteem is the law of self-trust. When it comes to making career and business decisions, you must trust yourself implicitly. This means you must:

1. Achieve Mastery, and
2. Discipline Yourself.

Mastery comes from superior technique. Here are two areas in career and business will bring you tremendous success if you master them.

Influence: How to Get People to Yes.
One of the most critical and highest paid skill in any profession is the soft skill of influence.

Influence is getting people to embrace our ideas, promote us, buy our services, or start working together.

The first key to getting anyone to Yes was revealed by Dale Carnegie over forty-three years ago.

He said, “There is only one way under high Heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.”

When we show a person how saying Yes will get him what HE wants, the rest is child’s play.

Win Beforehand – The Code of the Samurai

In his Guru Product Blueprint program, Author Eben Pagan says that to get anyone to Yes, we need to invoke The Code of the Samurai, which is “Win Beforehand.”

We guarantee success with people BEFOREHAND.

We do this by deeply understanding the other person’s fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations.

Only then can we make a successful offer, suggestion, or proposal.

How do we do this?

Simple. We listen to them. We ask them two main questions:

1. What is your biggest fear or frustration?
2. What do you want to achieve, specifically?

When I heard about the Code of the Samurai, I was blown away. I literally felt like I had been let out of prison.

Like most people, I had been programmed to believe that to INFLUENCE people, I had to go into a room by myself, put on my thinking cap, and somehow craft an amazing ‘pitch’ that would dazzle the listener.

How wrong I was!

The truth is INFLUENCE is really about listening first. If we’re courageous enough to ask people, they will tell us exactly what they want.

And guess what?

“It turns out,” says Pagan, “That our biggest opportunities lie in other peoples’ unmet emotional needs.” If we craft an offer that matches their needs perfectly, it will literally ‘sell itself.’

A Personal Example
Last summer it was time to release a new program for our athletes and coaches here at the Courage to Win.

We had tons of ideas, but no way of making a decision on what to offer.

We decided to use the Code of the Samurai.

I jumped on the phone and interviewed 32 athletes and coaches. It turns out that they ALL wanted to learn three things:

1. a) how to be more confident in competition,
2. b) how to be the star player in their sport or team, and
3. c) how to deliver a peak performance.

These may sound obvious, but they weren’t to us. We needed to hear it ‘straight from the horse’s mouth.’

Afterwards, we created a new program, The Confident Champion System, tailored exactly to their needs.

It was the easiest, most successful, most enjoyable project we’ve ever done, thanks to the Code of the Samurai.

How about you?

Are you preparing for a meeting, presentation, chat, or sales call? Do you need to motivate someone on your team?

Is your teenager, spouse, or sibling not cooperating? Are you preparing for a meeting, presentation, chat, or sales call?

Do you need to motivate someone on your team? Is your teenager, spouse, or sibling not cooperating?

If not, you can use the Code of the Samurai to turn things around quickly. Select a person or group whom you need to sell an idea, proposal, or product or service.

Conduct at least three interviews in which you ask them what their biggest fear or frustration is and their biggest want or aspiration is. Record their answers in the space below.

A second critical important skill to achieving MASTERY in career or business is to think win-win.

Over the past sixteen years I’ve asked over 6,500 people in seminars to reveal their biggest stressors. Here’s the most common complaint of employees:

“My supervisor won’t let me do things my way. She over-rides and micro-manages me.”

Here’s the most common complaint of supervisors:

“People won’t do what I tell them to do. They’re either working on something else or doing our initiatives their way.”

The obvious pattern here is that both people want their way. Both want to win.

So they both dig in, and make it personal. “He’s a dictator.” “She won’t buy in to my leadership.”

The REAL problem, though, is much deeper.

It’s that most of us are programmed in what Dr. Stephen R. Covey calls the Win/Lose paradigm. This is the habit of trying to get our way even when it affects another person negatively.

The challenge with Win/Lose thinking is that it conveniently overlooks the fact that there is another person in the equation. This person may pretend accept losing temporarily, but he resents it. These buried frustrations eventually show up in the form of passive resistance, over-reactions, stalled motivation, crankiness, low trust, arguments, disloyalty, and depression.

Here’s how supervisors typically go for Win/Lose:

“Just get it done – I don’t have time to keep hashing it out.”
“That’s how we do it here.”
“The rationale is confidential – you’re on a need-to-know basis.”

Here’s how employees go for Win/Lose:

“I’ll just do it my way and hope he comes around.”
“If I get the team on my side, she’ll have to see we’re right.”
“I’ll get to that project later.”

If you’re a supervisor, you’re probably thinking, “What’s wrong with getting my way? I’m the boss, I’m supposed to.”

If you’re an employee, you’re probably thinking, “I’ve got to trust my instincts. Why did she bother hiring me if she’s just going to over-ride me all the time?“

Both of these are Win/Lose thinking. It’s deeply imbedded in all of us.

The solution, of course, is what Covey calls Win/Win. This is a mindset that says, “I’m not committing to a major decision, process, or strategy unless both of us buy into it.”

The Win/Win mindset is the leadership secret of successful leaders. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it takes communication. But long-term, it’s the only mindset that works to create lasting harmony in any partnership.

Write down the name of ONE person whom you resent because you have been too accommodating towards him or her (going lose-win):

How has your resentment been affecting your career or business results? Have you been avoiding issues? Blaming? Being a victim? Be specific.

Next, write down how you could be more assertive and get your “win” without causing this person to have to “lose.” What is a potential win-win?

The third principle of career and business MASTERY is personal productivity.

The average person he is incredibly non-productive. According to Robert Half International, most employees work approximately 50% of the time.

The rest of the time, they take coffee breaks, check their personal email, and chat with colleagues. In the other 50% of the time, they work on what is easy to do, not on what is hard and important.

Years ago I worked as a management consultant for a major corporation. We interviewed the CEO and asked her what her biggest complaint about her employees was. Without hesitating, she replied: “They are all working on the wrong things.”

Harrison Ford’s Secret to Success
In a profession that prizes youth above all else, Hollywood superstar Harrison Ford didn’t get his big break until his mid 30’s.

In fact, before his big break in American Graffiti, Ford was so unhappy with the roles being offered him that he became a part-time carpenter to support his family.

By 1997, Ford was ranked No. 1 in Empire’s “Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time.” In a recent issue of Success magazine, Ford gives us his astonishingly simple three step formula for success. Here it is:

Make Yourself Useful
“I’ve always thought the simplest thing you can do is make yourself useful. Be easy to work with, be a hard worker and help people get the job done,” says Ford.

Of course, the mindset that allows us to get the job done is accountability.

The current head of Apple, Tim Cook, is the highest paid CEO in the world. Cook joined Apple in 1998 and since then he became one of most prolific employee in the organization. Even after Apple founder Steve Jobs passed away, Cook handled the company exceptionally well.

What defines Cook’s attitude is his blatant accountability. “My own personal philosophy on giving is best stated in a John F. Kennedy quote, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ I have always believed this.”

In the space below, write done ONE way you could heighten your personal accountability or productivity in your career or business immediately.

Here are three examples:

Speaker Brian Tracy says that highly productive people are prepared to Eat That Frog every day. What he means is that you take your most important deliverable and you finish it before 11:00 am. He says, “If you have to eat a frog, it doesn’t pay to stare at it all day first.”

Another way you could heighten your personal productivity is to exercise in the morning, which will give you more energy for your work day.

A third way you could accomplish this exercise is to take ONE item in your career and business that is incredibly important and track it daily. For example, if you are a sales professional, you could review the number of people you’ve reached out to on a daily basis.

Record the step you will take below:

To Trust Yourself, Mastery is not enough. You might be very, very good at what you do, but you must be certain that you will take action consistently. Therefore, you must be willing to discipline yourself.

When it comes to our work, we must discipline ourselves to work on the 20% of activities that will bring us 80% of our results. The easiest and quickest way is to commit to getting outside our comfort zone.

You’ve heard of the Comfort Zone?

It’s a place we feel comfortable. We have a Comfort Zone in everything: food, tasks – even driving routes.

The Comfort Zone simplifies life. You don’t need to exert effort or thought when you’re inside your Comfort Zone.

Problem is, the Comfort Zone becomes a habit. We stop moving outside it and challenging ourselves.

That’s when the Comfort Zone becomes the enemy of high achievement in your life. How do you know the Comfort Zone is getting you?

There are many signs. One is boredom. Your life feels repetitious and without novelty.

Another is restlessness and lack of meaning.

You wonder, “What’s it all mean?” There’s a niggling feeling in the back of your mind that you were meant for more.

A final one is inertia. When you think about moving outside the comfort zone, it feels exhausting.

The good news is that it’s pretty easy to move outside your Comfort Zone once you set your mind to it, the way Amelia Earhart did.

Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo. She was driven by her passion for flying and to prove that a woman could be as good a pilot as a man.

But what drove her most was her prized value of Adventure. She said, “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” That is tough to disagree with!

She also said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life, and the process is its own reward.”

The faster you get going, the more momentum you build. This is key because as Dale Carnegie wrote, “Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry because they never seem to get their work done.”

The good news is that there is a key, under-used method for conquering the Comfort Zone called simulation training.

In simulation training, you exaggerate your preparation to the point where the ‘normal’ demands of the task seem easy — like when Rocky Balboa did one-handed push-ups.

You go WAY beyond until your mind and body adjust. After that, tasks that used to scare you feel like child’s play.

Simulation training was originally used in sports to help athletes get over their fear of physical pain.

In fact back in the 80s, China got famous for over-training their Olympic badminton players. Today, athletes use simulation training deal with the pressure of competition.

Tiger Woods’ father was notorious for clapping his hands or tipping over a golf bag during Tiger’s swing.

Basketball superstars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant dribble the ball while “hired hands” pummel them with tennis balls.

You can use simulation training to get over any fear at work.

First you identify the task that scares you.

Then you go overboard by assigning yourself a ridiculous deliverable – something way above and beyond.

I did this to get over my fear of recording audio programs.

Recording used to really stress me out. It would take me all day to psyche up to record just a few minutes of material.

One day I said, “Enough.”

I recorded an entire program – six hours of material – in one afternoon. Recording has been easy ever since.

The cool part thing about simulation training is that it doesn’t take any extra time. You do it while you’re getting real work done.

Write done THREE tasks you want to bring into your Comfort Zone now. Make sure you select tasks that will impact your results massively.

Next, plan a simulation training assignment that will bring each one into your comfort zone:

The third and final natural law for creating unshakable confidence is that you must believe in yourself. For this, we must

1. Re-invent Yourself, and
2. Commit Yourself.

To believe that you can achieve your most cherished goals, you must invent a new and improved version of yourself…think You, 2.0. The easiest way to do this is to understand that there is a natural genius inside you that can be unleashed. To do this, you focus on future possibilities instead of current limitations.Confident, superstar athletes focus on possibilities, not limitations.

They live out of their imagination long enough to DREAM a new future – even when they are not succeeding.

The tricky part?

To do this, we have to ignore “reality” as it stands right now.

Recently I asked a group of athletes to imagine themselves TEN TIMES better than they are right now.

At first, they thought I was crazy.

“How can I believe something that’s not TRUE?” one of them demanded.

“Is there a fear in your mind that isn’t necessarily TRUE, but you believe it?” I asked.

He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.”

“The defense rests,” I said. “Now please imagine yourself TEN TIMES better than you are right now.”

Seriously, why is it okay to believe the bad stuff we can imagine, but not the good? I’m here to say: if we’re going to use our imagination to create FEAR, then let’s use it to create CONFIDENCE too.

I love the story of NBA basketball Steve Nash. Nash toiled away in obscurity for years before eventually being voted the NBA’s most valuable player.

Steve is a star today because decided to use the power of his mind to BELIEVE.

Nash says: “People have always doubted whether I was good enough to play this game at this level. I thought I was, and I thought I could be. What other people thought was really always irrelevant to me. Once I figured out I could play in the NBA, I also figured out I could be an All-Star.”

Take 30 seconds right now and imagine yourself 10 times better in your career and business skills. Don’t THINK it over and try to be rational. Take a leap of faith.

What would a person like this look like, work like, and DO?

Now rinse and repeat this mental exercise in practice warm up every day for the next seven days. You will be surprised how much more confidence you feel.

To believe in yourself, you must commit yourself to persist in achieving your goal through setbacks, loss, challenges, and disappointment. You must know in your heart of hearts that you are not going to pack it in at the first sign of adversity.

The truth is that human beings are not wired to persist. We are wired for instant gratification – and when things don’t work out the way we expect, we fall into learned helplessness and give up.

The good news is that now that once you know about the phenomenon of learned helplessness, you can commit yourself to persist anytime you hit a setback.

‘Screw It, Let’s Do It’

Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Groups, which now compromises more than 400 companies, was not a whiz kid growing up. He recalls, “I was not a promising student, probably because of undiagnosed dyslexia. But my parents did not see my trouble learning as a limitation. Rather, they helped me find my strengths by teaching me to constantly look for new challenges.”*

It was exactly this habit of looking for new challenges allowed Branson to persist far longer than the average entrepreneur. He says:

“The U.K.’s recession of the late 1970s coincided with a slowdown in our record sales and a lack of hits. We had created a close community at Virgin, and I wanted the people I worked with to enjoy their jobs. I was also deeply concerned about job security. We were running at a loss, and I had to decide whether to consolidate our stores and rein back the recording business, or follow my instincts and invest in new artists.

Hoping to expand our way out of financial problems, I bought two nightclubs and invested more money in our record business. Its managing director, Simon Draper, was a great talent, so I backed him to create the U.K.’s largest independent label.”

Brandon’s last motivational rule? “Screw it, let’s do it!” **(http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219563).

I want you to acknowledge ONE area of career or business that you’ve given up on, whether it’s getting a promotion, changing careers, starting a business, etc.

Write down this topic in the space below:

________________________________________________________________

How will you re-commit yourself to persisting in succeeding in this area, no matter what?

To sum up the three natural laws of self-confidence: “Like Yourself, Trust Yourself, Believe in Yourself.”

Natural Law #1
You Must Like Yourself

To like yourself, you must:

1. Be Yourself,
2. Accept Yourself, and
3. Stand Up for Yourself.

Natural Law #2
You Must Trust Yourself

To trust yourself, you must:

1. Teach Yourself Mastery, and
2. Discipline Yourself.

Natural Law #3
You Must BELIEVE in Yourself

To believe in yourself, you must:

1. Re-invent Yourself, and
2. Commit Yourself to Persist.

To help you internalize the Instant Confidence Method for Business & Career Confidence, we’ve created a short cut. It is made up of three steps, and each step has three questions. That’s a total of nine questions.

By answering these nine questions, you will experience an influx of confidence.

Once you’ve practiced it, the Method will take you under five minutes to complete, but for now, take your time completing it. Answer all of the questions on paper.

If you prefer audio, click on the link below to listen to the Business and Career Confidence Method:

The starting point to mastering fear is to face it. The reason why we need to face our fear is that denial never works. The fear – and the career of business causing it– are still there, getting more chronic by the day.

Just as with money, the biggest fears in career and business are rejection and failure.

Fear of Rejection.
To succeed in your career or business, at some point you’re going to have to make an offer, whether to an employer or a client of some sort. And making an offer will bring you face to face with rejection.

Kevin O’Leary, the tough-talking star of the Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank, started out with a one product software company in a humble home office. At first, manufacturers weren’t interested in working with a one product company. Then it dawned on O’Leary that he could just copy Microsoft and ask manufacturers to bundle his software with their hardware.

What happened next?

Says O’Leary: “I picked up the phone. Let me repeat that. I. Picked. Up. The. Phone. So many entrepreneurs with great ideas get stalled at this juncture…Too many great ideas die at the feet of those afraid to pick up the phone because they don’t want to face potential rejection.

And trust me, if you do take the risk of reaching out to venture capitalists and prominent executives, you will be rejected. Plenty of times.” (Kevin O’Leary. Cold Hard Truth – On Business, Money & Life, 2011).

Fear of Failure.
In our attempts to rise to career prominence, it seems that we all temporarily fall into the trap of wanting the road to success to be smooth and without confusion, mistakes, or failure of any kind.

Another terrible myth.

Trying to look good, be perfect, and avoid failure is one of the most self-defeating mindsets out there. It traps us inside our Comfort Zone, afraid to try new things, month after month and year after year.

Another bad idea… if we’re trying to become a respected expert or build a brand, by definition we’re going to have to learn new things.

Choose a career or business situation you lack confidence in to apply the Instant Confidence Method to. Then, answer the first question in step one:

1. WHAT is my worst fear about this situation?
   
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I don’t know what happened to you when you answered this question, but I’ve noticed that when we turn and face a fear, often starts to diminish. In the words of Eckhardt Tolle, “What we resist persists. What we look at disappears.”

Rob, our volunteer client here in the studio, said that his worst fear is, “That I’ve made a big mistake in changing careers…it’s not going well and I fear I’m too old to start yet another one. Have I mortgaged my family’s future to chase a silly dream?”

The next question in Step One is:

2. What similar setback, disappointment, or failure has happened to me in the past? (and how much did I give up when it did?)

________________________________________________________________

Author Dr. Deepak Chopra likes to say, “What you fear has already happened to you.” Chances are that this situation, a microcosm of it, or something like it has happened to you in the past. This question helps you recognize any learned helpless you have from previous disappointments, setbacks or failures. I’ve noticed that just remembering these setbacks — and realizing how much we’ve given up can restore our hope quite spontaneously. First, you gain compassion with yourself and your struggle. Second, you see just how passive you’ve been lately, which gives you ideas for new things to try.

Here is Rob’s answer: “My first career as a researcher after college didn’t work out either. I didn’t realize how much training I’d need to get the jobs I wanted.”

3. WHY did this setback or failure happen to me?

________________________________________________________________

When we’re confident, we think about failure differently than when we are being perfectionistic. When we’re being perfectionistic, we think, “I’m failing. This is humiliating. I should quit.”People with superior confidence ask question three: “WHY am I failing?” and leave no stone unturned in finding the answer.

Caveat
A common answer to this question is, “I don’t know.” This can be a very good sign — because it reveals to you that you need more mastery to be able to gain total self-confidence.

From Rob: “I guess if I’m honest with myself I wasn’t committed enough to that career to do the training. I wish I had thought that through before going down that path.”

The next step in the process of mastering fear is simply to release it.

In The Sedona Method, author Hale Dwoskin explains that most adults only really know two ways of dealing with fear and other emotions: either suppressing them or expressing them. We’ve lost touch with our instinctive gift of being able to release them, the way we did as children. He says, “Have you ever watched a young child get furious with a playmate or a parent, and even say something like, ‘I hate you and will never speak to you again,’ and then, just a few minutes later, the child feels and acts as though nothing at all has happened?”

Children automatically release negative emotions as a way of being. As a result, they find it much easier than adults to take risks, jump in and take action, try new things, express themselves, give and receive love, stay in the present moment, and be incredibly resilient.

The first reason to release fear is because when we fear something, we constantly ruminate on it, sometimes to the point of even bringing it about. As Lester Levenson, the creator of the Sedona Method said, “Fear, and it will appear.”

The second reason to release fear is because once we’ve listened to its wisdom, letting it go is really the only effective way to deal with it. The truth is that the mind cannot deal with fear in any meaningful way.

Here is the Sedona Method and the questions from Step Two:

1. Instead of resisting the fear, welcome it; you can even try to make it stronger as an energetic experience. Then ask yourself, “Can I welcome this fear?”

________________________________________________________

How did this go for you?

This question might have surprised you because I just told you that we were going to release fear. It seems counter-intuitive, but before we can release fear or any negative emotion, we need to experience it first.

Rob said, “To be honest I have a hard time letting that fear in. There’s a lot of shame in the idea that I’ve made a mistake in this new career. But I noticed that when I contemplated letting it in, I started having spontaneous ideas about how I could salvage some learning and connections from what I have done. If I do change now it won’t have been a total loss.”

2. Once you’ve welcomed your fear sufficiently, ask yourself, “Can I let the fear go?”
   
   ________________________________________________________

When you ask the question, be honest with yourself. If the answer it No, honour that No. Sometimes in giving ourselves permission to keep a fear frees us up to release it; other times, we are just not ready.

Rob’s report: “Yes, I can, and it feels good. It will take me time to release it all, but I can feel that I’ve already released some of it.”

3. Will I let the fear go? When?
   
   ________________________________________________________

There is a difference between, “can I do something” and “will I do something.” Releasing needs to be a choice, and one that is made on your own terms.

Rob: “Some now, some tomorrow, and some the day after that. I gotta say, this feels pretty liberating!”

What If The Emotion Blocking My Confidence Is NOT Fear?
You might be thinking that “fear” is not the right word to describe how you feel about the situation in which you lack confidence. You might feel a sense of anger, frustration, grief, hopeless, needy, impatience, inadequacy, insignificance…the list can be long! You can use the steps in the Instant Confidence Method for all of these emotions and it will be just as effective.

Earlier I said that when we are in the throes of fear, anxiety, stress, or self-doubt, confidence is impossible. Now that you have paved the way by releasing it, you are primed to fill yourself with unshakable confidence.

The starting point is realizing that your confidence is there, inside you, ready to be triggered. In the word of Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna, “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”

The first question in step three is:

1. If my fear was a person, what would it ask me to learn or do so I can succeed?
   
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In this question you are checking to see if there is any wisdom to be gleaned from your fear. You are basically using the “DIAGNOSE before you PRESCRIBE” method, which is as old as time itself. For example…

You get cranky every time you spend money.

You tell yourself it’s because the economy is tight, but when you listen to your survival fear, you DIAGNOSE that you’ve never learned how to increase your income, and spending money scares you.

Rob responded: “It would ask me to sit down and really determine how I can make the most money possible from the change I just made – my new skill set – so I can come out of this with a positive experience that I can really leverage in my next act.”

The next question in Step Three is:

2. If I were a genius in my chosen field, how would I act, specifically? (What decisions would I make, conversations would I have, commitments I would get in or get out of?)

________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
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Take a few moments now to answer question two and write down everything you would think and do if you trusted your natural financial genius for a change.

Rob: “I would be much more business-oriented than just focused on the quality of the product we make. I’d always have the bottom line in mind when making decisions at work. I wouldn’t compromise quality but I would stop putting the cart before the horse and make sure the company is profiting from every decision I make. I think I could be good at this if I focused on it.”

3. What would the perfect “mental movie” of success in this area look like? Write out your answer to this question in incredible detail.
   
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To trigger unshakable confidence in yourself, you’ll want to harness the amazing power of visualization, which is simply making creative pictures in your mind of what you want to achieve.

This technique has been used the world over by confident people to achieve their goals and dreams.

Below is a visualization audio I’ve recorded for you to use for this purpose:

Here is the summary of the nine questions of the short cut for the Instant Career and Business Confidence.

Step One – Face My Fear
What is my worst fear?
What similar setback, disappointment, or failure has happened to me in the past?
Why did this setback, disappointment or failure happen to me?

Step Two – Release My Fear
Can I welcome this fear?
Can I let it go? Will I let it go?
When?

Step Three – Trigger My Confidence
If my fear was a person, what would it ask me to learn or do so I can succeed?
If I were a genius in this area, how would I act, specifically?
What would the perfect “mental movie” of success look like?

Your friend,
Lisa B.