Effective methods to boost your confidence

Since no human being is immune to the feelings of insecurity and self-doubt, it sometimes, become hard to overcome. Also, undoubtedly, everyone at some point or the other, struggles with issues of self-esteem. This could be situational, for example some find themselves insecure and less confident while socializing with new or unknown people, or during public speaking, but could be very confident around the people they know. Some introverted people often feel shy or less confident while partying, dancing or singing, while some may feel lesser confident trying something new at their workplace. But you can certainly give yourself a quick boost in such situations. Thus, here are some simple confidence boosting techniques to follow.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

Smile More Often

Your physiology greatly influences your self-awareness and emotions. Moreover, it is a scientifically proven fact that smiling not only makes you more attractive, but also enhances your mood, lowers blood pressure, relieves stress and helps you stay positive. Hence, begin your day with a smile; look at yourself in the mirror with a smiling face and make an effort to smile more often, throughout the day, while talking to other people or greeting others.

Meditate Regularly

Pick a good Buddhist mindfulness guided meditation and try it every day for 10 minutes. It will help improve self-awareness and will drastically enhance your confidence level.

Improve Your Posture

Improve your sitting and standing posture. Research shows that those who sit straight are more likely to generate ideas and believe in their own thoughts, as compared to those who sit hunched over their desk throughout the day. Moreover, standing straight also not only makes you feel and look confident, but also significantly improves your productivity level. When you have an impending socially evaluative situation such as an interview or public speaking engagement, practice and improvise your posture a day before D-day.

Stand straight in a power pose and then after some time, observe which posture makes you feel confident and comfortable while standing straight. The power pose will help raise your level of testosterone (the hormone of dominance) and lower your stress hormone (cortisol) while also making you feel more confident.

Visualize Your Success

By visualizing your success, whether acing an interview or finishing a task or a workout, you can indeed take yourself a step ahead towards your desired success. Although many spiritual leaders have already accepted it as a well-known fact, it has also been scientifically proven that imaging an activity, stimulates the nervous system and activates several same neural pathways in the brain, as you would actually experience in an activity.

Thus, by visualizing yourself overcoming challenges, you can certainly help yourself be more confident and comfortable while dealing with the current challenges which will seem familiar.

Embrace Your Feelings of Low Self-Esteem

Once you are done with developing a habit of visualization, meditation and corrected posture, your next step should be to take the time to embrace your feeling of low self-esteem. Yes, you read it right, embrace your low self-esteem!

Moments of doubts, situations where you encounter low self-esteem, feeling of unhappiness, discontentment are pretty important and required as they are imperative poisons that compel you to eliminate what you do not like and to bring a positive change in yourself. By suppressing your negative self, you’ll end up always moving a step away from your improvement and perfection. So, begin by recognizing your insecurities and instead of improving your feelings of low self-esteem, start improvising your competence. Make yourself abler, learn what causes low self-esteem, where you lack and improve those abilities. You’ll gradually enhance your confidence levels too.

Embrace Your Failures

After learning the skills of accepting your weaknesses that cause self- doubts, re-evaluate how you consider your failures. Failures come as challenges in your life to make you what you truly are and to bring out your true potential, to make you more patient, more experienced, more mature, wiser, more humble, more resilient, more creative and more grounded. It also teaches you a lot about your true self. When you focus on learning, you gain from each of your failures, you take another step towards your desired success and failures become just a part of your journey to your phenomenal triumph.

Improve Your Surroundings

Last but not the least, to improve your confidence levels, expand your social circle. A supportive social circle will always encourage you to move forward and this encouragement truly plays a very vital role in boosting your confidence levels and for you to reach your goal. Thus, keep a distance from those who discourage you for your dreams and spend more time with the people who believe in you.

Understanding Love Relationships

Love is an emotion of enormous power. All long-term relationships go through a variety of phases.  If the relationship continues, it settles into a more stable time of building a history as a couple. If children or teenagers enter into the picture, that is entirely a new phase. Later, there is another phase of being together as a mature couple with the wisdom of experience.

People say Love and relationships in present age do not have that passion like old days. But were the relationships in old times really perfect? The truth is there was a perception set in everyone’s mind that relationships should last forever, at least once we're married to someone, the societal obscurity that we have to be with that person, no matter whether we are happy or not, but just because we have circumscribed with the vows of marriage. Although we are not too different from those people who lived centuries ago, our core desires are still the same. But we have become practical in our lives.Imagine being in love, maybe you have been in love or you hope to be in love. We figure out things quickly, we make quick decisions, a number of emotions rush together so quickly, but then what happens? 50% of marriages get failed? Why? Have you ever tried to discover the answer? 

Sometimes, two people come out to be completely different, maybe the female could be goal oriented but fallen in love with the guy who wants his girl or wife to not to work, or go for some other job or any other similar thought. The moment when love rules our mind, we don’t let our brain function, and we just flow with the storm of emotions. We agree to such mundane things, the kind of behavior we don't expect from ourselves. We get ready to sacrifice, sacrifice our ambitions, our dreams, our actual self, but the truth is one can never change his true personality, and hence it results in divorce, break-ups, and range of relationship problems.

We have the prefrontal cortex brain which takes rational decisions, located near the front head, is involved in decision making in response to emotions. The prefrontal cortex controls what decision a person makes when faced with an emotional reaction. The same part of the brain controls addictions and the feeling of love. But what happens our feeling of being in love gets too strong which starts controlling even our brain and mind, and we become unable to take rational decisions in love matters and accept even the wrong. And this is what happens when we realize, that the person in front of us is not the right, and we should stop here or should contemplate the situation, but suddenly the other part of the brain which is controlled by the feeling of love suddenly comes and tell the brain to knock it off, we don’t let the prefrontal cortex brain control our heart -- let alone the feeling of love.

The most important thing one needs to understand is, never fall in love, and always rise in love. Let the person accept you as you are. Love is supporting each other, fight for each other’s dreams to make them true. Remember, attachments are always against love. As long as you are attached to someone or have a fear of losing someone, you can never reach to the unconditional boundaries of love. The key to a properly functioning love and a lasting relationship is trust. It does not require rituals to follow or get circumscribed with vows of marriage or rituals which bounds you to be with the person and not to exit the doors even when two are not happy together. 

Love is about two people committing themselves to the fullest.  Often people are so lost in their search for the custom or traditional love they believe in, that they forget commitment and love are truly important to make things work. The dream of the perfection which exists in the mind of people keeps them away from the reality. One must understand the perfection comes with the true understanding of unconditional love. 

So now, do you understand love? 

5 MORNING ROUTINES TO WIN THE DAY

Tim Ferris, author of ‘the 4-hour Workweek’, has his 5 favorite morning hacks to maximize his productivity. As per Tim, positive momentum and a distraction-less start of your day don't come naturally, rather it’s manually earned every day by following a strict routine. After Interviewing hundreds of ultra-successful people, from the famous chess prodigies to athletes to billionaires – he has picked the common denominator out of all and made a list of his top 5 routines.

Out of his top five routines, he claims that even if he gets to three routines per morning – he wins. And as the famous saying goes, “if you win the morning, you win the day”.

Tim Ferris is an efficient all-rounder – he fluently speaks 5 languages, is a national Chinese kickboxing champion, holds a world record in Tango and is a best-selling author. That’s a big list for a single man – and getting demotivated from a long list of someone else’s achievement is not the point. Rather, it is a proof that the only thing that’s stopping us from succeeding in any field is our mental limitations, and Tim has a way out.

There is a lot we can learn from Tim, and his belief that single individual can achieve greatness, and with a right set of mind – can reach the pinnacle of his field. So, let’s get started.

Top 5 Morning routines

5. Make your bed

It might sound like an unimportant ritual, but it gives one a sense of control at the very beginning of the day. It’s a form of strategy that helps you to deal the intangibles and curveballs that life throws at you. No matter how complex your day is planned ahead – you can always make your bed and straighten at least one thing.

4. Meditate

He states, ‘more than 80% of the world class performers I’ve interviewed practice one form or the other of mindfulness’. As per Tim, there are few who go to Headspace, few who opt for guided meditation, and others who stick to traditional meditation techniques.   

3. Do Pushups

Tim says, doing any kind of physical exercise first thing in the morning helps you to stay prime, and wake your complete body at a go. He prefers to do the pushups, but he recommends any kind of exercise – sit-ups, lunges, and squats. Doing so quiets ones’ mental chatter and effects the mood dramatically.  

2.  Hydrate yourself

You need to water yourself and take out the dryness of the entire last night. He recommends titanium tea which is one teaspoon of turmeric, some ginger shaving and a teaspoon each of black tea and dragon tea. He recommends it for excellent cognition and weight loss. He personally prefers it with a glass of cold water, but even warm water would do the same trick.   

1. Write a Journal

The most important trick in his list is to write a journal for whatever is going in your head. You can plan your day or prioritize things or just express gratitude for the various labels in your life. When Tim writes his journal, he broadly considers four categories; opportunity for the day, some small goals, yesterday’s achievements and relationships.  

Are you jealous of other’s success?

How do you feel when your best friend bags a promotion, or for that matter, if he gets into a happy relationship? Don’t you often brush off these type of news with a shallow statement – perhaps saying – ‘it’s never going to last’.

We all acknowledge that jealousy at its core is a form of protective shield. It exists to give us a defense mechanism against all types of the successes of other people – that might, in various cases, demoralize us. We often mourn to our peer’s victory, often refuse them with a superficial tag, protecting our ego, screaming;’ I am a much better person than everyone else’. We don’t necessarily put that out loud – but most of us religiously believe in that statement.  We believe that our adversity is this temporary phase which will vanish as soon we want them to vanish. We all with our inner beings agree – that we’re and everything about us – is in control.

According to one study – it’s hard not to hate people around us – especially people that we grew up with; our friends, siblings, co-workers, spouse – merely to be just okay with this socially ranking based society. Certainly, this comparison trap swallows us – changes our perception and judgments. While jealousy is a natural response to so many adversities of life – it’s not necessarily beneficial and healthy.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

Don’t mix exteriors to interiors

In this social networking world, it’s easier than ever before to fall for complaints. In our terrible lives, we often complain about how other’s success looks completely unachievable. We always try to believe we’re fixed beings and there are differences that we often get confused about – but the evident truth is we’re a constantly changing species and we evolve every day with our every new experience.

We often ignore people’s journey to their success and regard it as pure dumb luck, effortless or unearned. We often fall prey to over-simplification and reactive thinking, for a simple reason because it’s easier to pass comments than to ask tougher questions to ourselves; How does their success relate to my own values?, or What do I admire about their story?, or What have they done to get that? When we introspect and try to answer these questions – we reflect, and immediately come out of the comparing trap and turn inwards to face our own desires and fears.

It’s not a secret that envy and admiration are the reactions to what we value the most. If we somehow align ourselves with what we value – we’re much inclined to a richly satisfying life. We should use other’s success as a mirror to our life – and that’s a critical key to most of our life’s hardships.

How to minimize your jealousy?

Avoid comparisons

Acknowledge that everyone around you is on a different track of life and all of them have their own set of weaknesses and strengths. We should also accept that these things that limit us don’t completely define us. 

Accept

We should all admit jealousy as our natural reaction to other’s success. We should be completely honest and put aside our bruised ego whenever we face things we wish we could do. And most importantly, we should accept ourselves completely to recognize our true potential and uniqueness we are endowed with.

Reframe Jealousy into Inspiration

The same emotion that fuels jealousy can be used for motivations and inspirations to accomplish something for you. Instead of downplaying other successes, you should ask yourself if you aren’t capable of what someone else has done already. You should think, more usual than often – If they can do – I can do it too.

Compliment

Make it a habit of complimenting people on their achievements. Celebrate all the success stories and rather to resent on what did not work for you – celebrate the possibility of it. It’s a lot lesser stressful and at the same time – healthier.

Reflect on your jealousy pattern

Learn how to figure out a pattern of the areas around which you find your jealousy, and those would be the valuable signs of your life to show where in life you need to put more focus in. 

Do you think your jealousy is holding you back from tapping your full potential? Comment below to let us know about your concerns and we’d help you to handle it progressively.

Is your Job fulfilling and meaningful?

The idea that the work should be fulfilling rather than its obvious nature of necessity for survival is quite a new concept. The first requirement of any job is to pay -- and then the secondary requirements, as important as money but less recognized – like it should have a meaning, should help other people, should make a change in the society. But how many people can actually raise and say that they have these attributes?

If we dwell ourselves into the dictionaries of past – say pre-1900, the word ‘fulfillment’ doesn’t even appear. In this modern world, we don’t just expect money from our labor but, we also— to our lesser or greater extent expect meaning and satisfaction. It’s evidently too much to ask and gives us a clear reason why there are so many people having a career crisis.

 What does it mean to have a fulfilling or meaningful job?

Seemingly, to feel a job is fulfilling and meaningful, a job should have following attributes in it;

1.    It should tap the most talented part of us.

2.    It should help other people.

3.    It impacts the society and makes a difference.

4.   It should make a great contribution towards fulfilling the organizational goal

Often on the Sunday night after the sun is set – we think about where our job is taking us – if it’s giving us any value and meaning at all. And it’s surprising to acknowledge that you’re not alone – almost all of us have that anxiety.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

It’s perfectly normal to be confused about your career choice

Before the industrial revolution – there were about 200 trades out there, which over time have stretched to half of a million. The result, we get so anxious to make a right choice – we don’t make any choice at all.

Knowing yourself helps

For knowing what to do with your life is a complicated calling and almost all of us are never confident even if we think we know what it is. It’s not to say that we don’t have a taste rather it’s the lack of clarity.

Thinking a lot clears the dust

If you think making a decision to buy a new house takes months of research – then picking a right career is indeed a result of a long-term thinking. We shouldn’t feel guilty about taking time – but seeing the long term result – to spend a life doing something worth and provide it time with generosity.

Try something new

I wouldn’t recommend you to sit on a bed and contemplate your inner-self to find the right choice. Rather the recommended process is to go out and collide with the society and find out a series of things that doesn’t match with you. Only through that - a continuous friction, you’ll be able to find a right choice.

Be confident

Our immediate world is surrounded by the self-help books that help us understand the importance of confidence. There are too many pieces of advice which after a sincere moment looks so mundane. But, the truth is – confident does make a difference in the real capitalist society and there are always opportunities to grab if you’re confident enough to ask for them.

Why is it so hard to find a fulfilling and meaningful job?

We all feel that our work is a big scam that does give us money but at the same time, takes all our precious time. While there are many factors we can blame that doesn’t let us reach our ultimate goals – there are three factors that stand out.

1.    No one tells us our authentic working identity

Through our universities and society – we’re prepared for any job rather than a particular type, the one that suits your talent and interests. We’re often our best at work when we deeply believe in the work that we do.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

2.    Working for something that actually makes a difference

In today’s modern world – it’s very easy to pack a product in a shiny wrap that at the end of the day adds no value to a customer's life. You might already be working for such a brand for money – but at the end – it’s really hard to derive any meaning out of these jobs.

3.    Tangible results

You might be working on something huge and it might feel like – if things go the way they’re going – it might change the world entirely by 2025. Looking at the timeline – it might get stressful, full of hopelessness accompanied with doubts and this happens essentially because there are no real immediate results, nothing tangible and that can sadly take out the core meaning out of your whole picture.

We live in a society where working in a bigger organization is appreciated, but often, it loses meaning because of the above reasons.  We often move out to work in smaller organizations with much real by-product and that often is enough to give us meaning.

What can you do to make job fulfilling and meaningful?

Fulfillment is felt when you establish the love for what you do, and you establish that love when you keep yourself distraction, stress and most importantly monotony free. Simply put, to actually feel that connection and bring love for your work, you ought to try something new every day.  Try to learn something new, see beyond the projects you’ve been doing since long, and try to find out something new; maybe new ideas that can make an organization grow. Try something that taps your innermost talent, and if you cannot really add that in your job, try to do that in your spare time; may be at office itself or at home, but do something what you love; because this actually brings contentment and increase your productive thinking capacity which can help you add more value to your organization with your work.

Lessons learned in 2016 shall help you in 2017

We all know how crucial part learning is for every human being. It is quite strange that we often think that we perform same tasks every day; we wake up in the morning, go to office, college or school depending upon what age group we are in) spend entire day as usual but still when we look back we notice how drastically our life has changed. Not only our life, but we too constantly change our thoughts, our perspectives, our behavior and so on. So what is that which bring that change in our lives and in our personalities? It is the experiences we get in life! Every experience; good or bad, brings an opportunity for us to learn something new and grow. Ignoring the lessons of those experiences or denying to them is like brushing off the pearls of wisdom that are lying all around us. Every failure or success, no matter how big or small; gives us a lesson, whether in personal or at professional front. The people who are able to embrace those failures, take learnings and use those lessons in the next chapters of life ultimately catapult themselves to success and happiness.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

Therefore, knowing how to examine your mistakes and wins to get better learnings is the most powerful source to attain growth in each sphere of life; whether personal, professional, or social. This process which is known as debriefing is crucial to keep growing and keep walking on the path which ultimately leads you to your divine destination.

We always make resolutions for the New Year; where these resolutions come from in our mind? From our experiences, we had in the past. For instance; because you threw tantrums and showed anger to your subordinates at workplace; due to which you faced problems and got learning that you should control your anger; so now you may make a resolution that you will change your temperament. Or because you trust so easily, many people took advantage and hurt your feeling, so you will make a resolution that you will work on your emotions and will become smart enough to know whom should you trust and whom not. Therefore, the learning we get in our past make us bring positive changes in our future and this is how we grow and become wiser in life.

Now, once you are familiar with the concept, I would suggest you to evaluate your year 2016 and take a look back to identify what you learned from both good and bad experiences you had in all fronts of life and what are the lessons you need to take that will enable you to take wiser decisions and actions in 2017.

Factors to identify how your relationships can benefit through this debrief process: Amount of time you spend with your family, friends or loved ones, how well you communicated your thoughts to others, how well you kept your commitments and promises, how honest and trustworthy you have been throughout the year, how do you find the surroundings or social circle you have, how trustworthy people are around you, how well you should mingle up with others and where do you need to give a shut up call.

Factors to identify how your professional life can benefit through this debrief process: How productive you were throughout the year, how profitable you were for the business, how did you present yourself to others; do you need any improvisation? How well you socialized with others, how well ou managed your work or the team under you, in what areas you need to bring changes

Your wealth: How you managed your financial matters, how much did you save, Is there anything in your mind through which you can gain more health and pursue you passion? Then go for it!

Choose one area of your life and begin evaluating;

1. This about a specific event or an event you still could not forget; whichever comes to your mind.
2. What do you feel while recalling that specific event? Sometimes when things go horribly wrong and the little voice in your mind tries to convince you that the entire event was just a nightmare, and you try hard to forget it. Think about it once again, there was some learning behind that incident, a lesson for you. Did you identify a new strength in you? Did someone unexpectedly extend you support? What learnings did you receive from that incident?

Remember, you can't learn less. Experiments, trials or goof ups are our inherent learning mechanism for development. Setting aside some time to go through and critically analyse your experiments and the outcomes you faced help you make a foundation to a better and brighter year ahead. Wish a very Happy New Year!

Take Charge of your life with AK Mishra's Art of Success

Every individual is an extraordinary creation of the universe, we must discover our uniqueness by paying attention to our deep inherent self. AK Mishra's Art of Success training sessions encourage participants to spend quality time in solitude in order to understand our inner voice and recognize our deep inherent potential to achieve extraordinary success in all spheres of life.