How to use NLP to Build Confidence in Life and Business

Confidence is Key 

One of the greatest resources to have your arsenal is confidence.

Confidence is knowledge that whatever comes up, you have access to your own internal resources to overcome any external obstacles.

Confidence has roots in preparation, even if you are performing a task that you are not used to, you have the confidence in knowing you have overcome greater challenges than this one and therefore are the best candidate for the task at hand.
Always do all you can to prepare ahead of time, this will help you to increase your knowledge and preparedness. Your unconscious mind will have all the information for you to access if you can just relax.

Confidence is knowing on the outset and having a high level of motivation that no matter what obstacle is thrown in your direction you will regroup and sail through the finish line.
Sometimes things so not go according to plan, never mind Failing Publicly is Fun too, it builds resilience and helps you not to get the heebie -jeebies  whenever you find yourself in a tight spot.  

What internal representations are playing ? 

Confidence is about how you represent information in your own head, it has to do with the words you use to speak to yourself and if the words encourage you or not. Confidence is about what pictures you see when you imagine a situation you are in. Where your focus is and what you allow to take up the most space in your mind. Have you ever imagined something bad and began to break a sweat ?
Your Physiology and Brain chemistry respond to these movies going on in your mind, sometimes people get panic attacks because they cannot stop themselves from playing disastrous movies of Bad things happening. Well then that is easily remedied by changing the tape play something that changes your physiology for the better and loop that. Muhammad Ali was the master of that do you remember, he was known as simply "The Greatest" also used to make up  affirmations such as "I figured if I said it enough I would convince the world that I really was the greatest".

Your internal representations dictate what you imagine your current, past and future experience to be and how you represent this information to yourself.

Put on a show that feels good for a change

It is useful to replace representations that scare you or make you feel bad with powerful representations that make you feel good.

Much of the time even slight shifts to the way that you have stored these sounds and images can evoke intense feelings one way or the other.

Confidence is about representing that you have the necessary resources internally to do an outstanding job externally. When a person is confident they feel capable and ready for a brand new challenge, when a person is not confident they often feel worried and anxious and imagine all of the worst things possible happening.

Feeling bad is just a state of mind

Many times people feel defeated before they even begin an operation, and they reinforce these feelings with the words and pictures they present to themselves and auto play.

What if Muhammad Ali Imagined himself Getting Pummeled every time he got in the ring do you think he would have made it to be known as "The Greatest" ?
If we can learn to take these often distorted perceptions with a pinch of salt and replace them with perceptions that are empowering and motivate us to be even more creative in reaching our goal.

Since we are distorting information anyway, we could represent the greatest outcome ever and watch how other s would congratulate us on a job well done.

We could hear them say words such as

“Well Done”

“Thank you sharing for your expertise”

“You saved the day in the final hour”,

“You are my hero”

We couldn’t have done it without you” and so on.

Which one do you personally feel is more useful to you?

Next time you are facing a challenging situation remember all the other times you victoriously pulled through and place those pictures as representations of your strength and capability to do a fantastic job.

Adjust your submodalities 

Let us say you have a picture in your mind of you getting run over by your competition, The picture is:

Black and white

Still

Fuzzy

Big

Close to your Face

Darkly lit

And it makes you feel down.

The thing with this is it is a Broken self management process because it does not lead to your progress.

Develop an accessible System 
Just making slight changes will make all the difference, what if you were to replace it with a picture of you doing the Best Job ever:

And make subtle changes like:

Make it Colour

Moving

Sharp edges

As Big the largest Tv screen you can drum up

A believable distance close to your face that evokes the best response,

Brightly lit

And it makes you feel Fabulous think of something that feel great .
Remember Feeling Great actually Feels great ... well isn't that reason enough ?

We can do the same thing with sound we can change everything about how we are representing our experience by changing sound. Changing sound had a powerful affect if something feels bad put a silly voice on it and s-l-o-w- i-t-w-a-y- d-o-w-n  to a pace that is in slow motion, or what about a super fast squeaky voice ? and change the place it is coming from if it originates from a Man put a Dress on him and turn him into a cartoon character or an animal or a character from a Broadways show that makes you laugh.
I am pretty sure you get the picture ;)

Find out what else you can do with Sound there are tons of ways in which you can change how sound makes you feel if you do nothing else Turn the volume ways down until it is barely audible .. and then well you might as well just turn it off with a Radio Button and change the channel, to something you like better.

Instead of having a movie that makes us feel bad in our heads replace with a movie that makes us feel great, Confident,  Powerful, possible, and any other feeling you would like to experience.

Remember how we were Chaining Anchors before well that is a great exercise to use here too.

Yes you Can 

In communication Confidence is transmitted in subtle unconscious ways if you begin to note changes in others you will become more aware of what confidence looks like here are some bits to calibrate to begin with.

Watch for:
Skin tone is it flushed in times of stress

Posture how is a person presenting themselves are they Tall as trees or slumped over

Language do they speak of possibility opportunity and things they move toward

Breathing do they give short breaths or relaxing breath

Where is their Focus, Attitude and Energy.

Confidence is created by having a "Can do Attitude", no matter what your skill level is you can always find something to be confident about.

Concentrate on the wins you have already achieved and the challenges you have already against all odds overcome.

How you perceive yourself will largely determine the level of success you will experience.  Building on your own confidence and Self belief is essential for excellent performance in business.

Learn how to change image and sound in your own mind which will create more favorable emotions for you to build on, subtle sub modality shifts will make all the difference.

Learn how to Control your emotions by controlling the movies you play in your own mind 

Learn how to change image and sound in your own mind which will create more favorable emotions for you to build on, subtle sub modality shifts will make all the difference. 

      Knowing that internally you have all the resources you need oftentimes outweighs a lack of external resources.

Lights Camera Action

2)      Create a Plan of Action with Well Formed Outcomes

3)      Fine Tune your Calibration Skills

4)      Improve your Rapport Skills

5)      Model somebody you greatly admire

6)      Practice Mental Drills of How you want things to turn out

7)      Become Congruent and Transmit with Certainty

8)      Listen more than speaking and Pay attention to subtle Clues in communication

9)      Remember your original Outcome in Communication and be Determined - patient and creative in reaching it

10   Always Be prepared to have a flexible approach with a can do attitude

In Life as in Business, there are any number of ways the chips may fall, Having a Can do attitude includes preparing a Plan B and assessing your risk. Sometimes no matter how carefully you have planned a situation Glitches happen, in these cases  Attitude is the Glue which will make or break your recovery in high pressure situations. 

Change internal Feelings Change External Results

How you perceive the situation can be clouded by how you feel about the situation, all of this is influenced by the words and pictures you are presenting to yourself.

Using your physiology to create positive energy inside you and presenting pictures that calm you down give you a clean canvas to create a new outcome.

Begin to put together a 15 minute internal brainstorming session on your clean canvas and compare to your external resources the solution that seems to be the best Fit at the time.

Once you have thought it through stick to the one you have chosen and follow it through.

Thanks for Reading our little NLP Blog "NLP is Fun" be sure to look through more than 200 other Empowering articles on here
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Speak soon,
Nadia.