Dear Blossom
The Confidence Breakthrough seminar was the place to be in London over this weekend (5th and 6th Nov). Attendees experienced massive shifts as in their confidence issues. Convened by Elliot Kay of Strategic Brilliance Services and partly sponsored by Pony Express Speaker Training Ltd., seven speakers led workshops on the seven-step process for increasing the confidence quotient in every aspect of life.
The first step led by Nathanael King was all around mastering your thoughts and emotions, getting them to work for you, rather than against you. Nathanael reminded us that experiencing fear was an essential part of our survival. The problem tends to be around the fear of fear and the anxieties that accompany our thoughts. Here’s his challenge to us: It is our responsibility to create our beautiful emotional state. Of course, it is. And, of course, we can. Knowing this and practising this is a great confidence booster.
I led the second step of accepting that judgement is a normal part of life. Knowing and acting on this makes it possible for us to love ourselves and to open us up to be receptive of love and support from others. We do not need to remain prisoners in the castle of judgement, irrespective of our past experiences. We can exercise our gift of choice: we can choose what to do with the judgements; choose to accept love and choose to love and respect ourselves enough to walk away from toxic environments.
And we can, of course, choose to use our voice.
The consistency in taking actions in our own behalf is a real confidence enhancer.

Ash Taylor took on step 3 with the assertion that Confidence comes from defining your own success. Indeed! If you don’t know what success means for you, how can you confidently work towards it? If the ‘success’ you are working towards isn’t really your definition of it, why are you surprised that you lack motivation and /or you self-sabotage along the way?
Or perhaps you are exceptionally disciplined and have achieved this ‘borrowed success’. Is it any wonder that you still feel empty and dissatisfied, taking a confidence knock along with those feelings of there being perhaps something wrong with you?
So, get out your notepads (regular or electronic); define your success and write it down; make a visual representation of it; then take another brave step and share it!
Kim Parker opened step 4 by getting us all to dance to Katy Perry’s Firework. (It is worth checking out those lyrics and bopping along to them for a quick energy boost). This step is about collapsing insecurities. You see, once you have committed to your vision of success which will almost inevitably take you on new paths, all manner of insecurities will pop into your mind. A large part of this is your unconscious mind trying to protect you …its preferred path is the tried and tested one, even if that means you staying in the same miserable spot!
So, having learnt to master your thoughts and with self-love letting judgement wash over you; having determined your own version of success, your tasks are: to nurture that relationship with yourself and to keep up that positive communication. These will help you employ a laser focus on your outcomes. This focus will make your outcomes much larger than your insecurities therefore increasing your confidence quotient in yourself and shrinking your insecurities in the process.
Step 5 is about living your values. Michele Coughlin asked the vital question: whose path are you on?
If you don’t know your values, how can you live in alignment with them? And if you’re attempting to live your life according to somebody else values, or according to ‘Hollywood values’ – those which are not authentic to you but you think are what values you ought to have – then you can fully expect to struggle with confidence.
So work out what is important to you at this point in time and see how you can make choices that support this. It is a process, sometimes a painful one, but it is worthy of the work. Because, once you are clear on what is important to you, you will find it easier and quicker to make decisions which in turn feeds your confidence.
Beata Podgorska led the 6th step on committing to something bigger. She led delegates to go deeper with their vision for their future; helping them to get in touch with their emotions; to anticipate their experiences when they actually begin to live out their vision and in making a promise to themselves to do everything they can to take the necessary steps. Her food for thought was who did you think of while writing your promise?
This dimension is about getting in touch with something bigger than ourselves, hitching our vision to a bigger cause than ourselves. Because, if walking in our own definition of success according to our values is beneficial to more than just us as individuals, when we come against challenges and obstacles as we inevitably will, that bigger picture we are committed to will give the extra oomph to our confidence levels.
So, what is it for you? If you choose to up your confidence levels and walk in your vision and be who you are, what impact will that have on you and the ‘something bigger’ that you are called to serve?
Finally, Harry Singha rounded it all off with the 7th session: Owning your Identity.
How do you see yourself now? How do you see your future self? Can you, would you own your identity – your identity today, as well as ‘the you’ that you aspire to become?
You need to have an awareness of your beliefs about yourself. If these are not serving you, you can change them into ones that do. It is a process, and the length of time it takes depends on the individual and what resources and support they have at their disposal. It is vital to remember that you cannot be anything other than what you believe about yourself.
Harry left us with many useful sound bites and I will leave you with this: Express: do not suppress – the medical term for holding on to stuff is constipation!
Expressing yourself, expressing your truths: being on the outside the same person as you are on the inside is such a breath of fresh air and massive confidence booster!
Go forth and be you!