Why is self-confidence so essential to success?

With unstoppable self-confidence we see the incredible opportunities available to us and we’re armed with the mindset to seize them.

We turn setbacks into comebacks and stumbling blocks into stepping stones. 

And unlock a deep, unshakable sense of calmness and certainty no matter what is happening.

But for many people that true, natural and connected sense of self confidence is something that feels out of reach, something that is only available to others.

In truth most people are making 5 critical mistakes that sabotage and undermine their confidence and success.

Mistake 1: Seeking The Approval Of Others

99% of people in the world suffer from the disease of needing the approval of others.

But people pleasing and seeking the approval of others are the most toxic and confidence and success destroying behaviours that exist.

Here’s why.

The foundation stone of confidence is the freedom to be fully and authentically who you...

Comfort is the enemy of progress ~ Unknown

When was the last time you got uncomfortable?

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

When you took yourself outside your ‘normal’ routine, your normal boundaries, your normal rules?

You may have heard the quote that life begins at the end of your comfort zone. And it’s completely true.

To build the life you dream of and to become the person you want to be, will require you to act in ways different to those you have so far.

But what holds many people back form actually making these changes that would deliver them so much benefit, happiness and joy is the sense that being outside your comfort zone is difficult, hard work, somehow painful.

But what if that isn’t true.

Like so many things that hold most people back, it is small misunderstandings and the wrong labels that create MASSIVE problems.

My mentor Stephen once told that change itself was easy. The problem was getting people to the point...

For a very long time one of the things that held me back was a need for others to have faith in me.

I needed others to tell me I could do something before I KNEW I could do something.

In effect I needed the permission of others to go after my dreams and desires.

Somehow even though I wanted to believe (be very, very careful with that word) that I could do or achieve something, I only really gave myself permission to move forwards when others told me I was ‘good enough’ to.

The problem with that thinking, as you may have noticed, is that you are making yourself and your life dependent on the opinion of others.

They have the power to push you forwards or hold you back. Which makes you (and made me) a puppet.

But here’s the thing.

So often that ‘belief’ that they offer or decline to offer to you is essentially a reflection of what they believe they can achieve themselves.

It isn’t a reflection of YOUR talents, capabilities and potential. It is a...

So much of what we are taught about love is isn’t actually love at all.

It’s really co-dependency.

We are taught this Hollywood, Disney like version of love that says that someone else ‘completes’ you. 

Which by definition means that you were somehow ‘incomplete’ before you met them and that you would become incomplete once again if they ever decided to end the relationship. So now the end of a relationship isn’t simply the end of a relationship, it’s the end of you being a complete person.

We are taught that ‘true love’ means sacrificing anything and everything for the other person. Yet when you really stop and think about it, would ‘true love’ ever really require that? Would it ever require you to give up the essence of who you are, what makes you, YOU?

Is requiring complete sacrifice from your partner really a loving act?

We are taught that somehow life only really starts if and when you find that...

Learning that my challenges were my friends was quite a journey for me.

I used to get discouraged and despondent if something went wrong.

I often thought it was a ‘sign’ that something wasn’t for me, that something wasn’t ‘meant to happen’.

That life / god / fate / the universe was telling me to stop and give up.

But that was a MASSIVE misunderstanding on my part and one that cost me a great deal.

Instead I learned (because I had to) that the challenges were my friends, in fact my very best friends.

That I was being given EXACTLY the experienced I need to learn what I needed to learn in order to progress to the next stage of my journey.

To gain the experience, the wisdom and the skills I needed in order for that next stage of my journey to make sense.

That without those experiences and the new understandings they gifted to me, I wouldn’t be ready or prepared for what was to come.

So my choice was simple.

To accept and then EMBRACE my...

Would you like to know how you can become a complete master of pretty much anything?

Let me tell you something you almost certainly already know but almost certainly haven’t applied and more importantly LIVED as a way of life.

But the change you want doesn’t come (ever) from reading and intellectually understanding something. That is the lie of almost all personal development.

The natural model of human learning and development is incredibly simple but astonishingly powerful. 

Step 1 in the natural model is to know what you really want to master, what you will be naturally, internally inspired to master. If you’re not inspired it won’t happen. 

Step 2 is to attempt the skill, the thing that you want to become excellent at. You will, to a large or small extent, fail. TO FAIL MEANS TO LEARN. So this is a good things.

Step 3 is to observe what you did, what worked and what didn’t and make another attempt, APPLYING the learning from your previous...

Do you worry?

And more importantly have you (unconsciously) decided to label yourself a ‘worrier’?

Most people worry by default. It is a reflex action, a habit.

When something happens or indeed even when nothing at all happens they instinctively and without thought start to worry about it.

They examine and explore, often in great detail, all the possible ways things could go ‘wrong’, could turn out ‘badly’.

This isn’t what definitely WILL happen, just what COULD happen.

Some people go so far as to think it is RESPONSIBLE to worry. That by some karmic hidden hand, they will suffer and things will go wrong if they don’t worry.

This is not only completely insane but incredibly toxic and damaging thinking.

They are literally programming their subconscious minds, their incredible creation machines, to seek out and create more things to worry about.

Remember our minds are perceptual machines. What we feed them with emotion becomes the filter...

Are you afraid to live?

If you answered straight away, then your ego answered, not the real you.

So slow down, tune into your feelings (which is where your truth lies) and FEEL your answer.

Consider what your life would look like if you had no fear of doing all the things you wanted to do, of acting completely liberated from embarrassment or shame or the tyranny of others opinions about you.

How ‘unleashed’ would you feel, would you act, would you BE?

The tragic truth is that almost everyone is afraid to fully and truly live. Afraid of what might go wrong, of losing what they currently have, of being vulnerable, afraid of what others would say or think about them.

Your fear of truly living with the handbrake off means that you are living a lie, that you are living INAUTHENTICALLY.

Because as a result of this fear you are not being who you really are or fully expressing who you are.

In some way shape or form you are shading the truth about yourself, hiding yourself (in...

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think? Or letting go of how I feel, what I believe and who I am? ~ Brene Brown

How much do you allow yourself to be a prisoner of what others think?

Of what others think about you, about what you ‘should’ and ‘should not’ be, do or have?

About the choices you should make and the life you should live?

About whether or not you are good enough?

So many people’s lives fall so far short of what they could otherwise be because they allow so much of it to be defined FOR THEM instead of BY THEM.

They allow so much of their life experience and their sense of themselves to be shaped, mangled and directly determined by whether or not others would approve of their choices.

But take a moment and consider what this means.

When you allow what others think to take precedence over what you think, you are by definition making yourself DEPENDENT on them.

Your sense of yourself becomes dependent on their sense of...

Be careful what you tolerate. You are teaching people how to treat you ~ Unknown

Love is not a reason to tolerate disrespect.

One of the myths (lies) that I most passionate about dispelling is the dreadful, awful teaching that you demonstrate your love by the degree to which you are prepared to sacrifice yourself for someone you love.

This is insane bullshit that doesn’t get any less insane because most of the world buys it.

And it is probably responsible for more failed and toxic relationships and more screwed up people than almost any other belief.

Why on earth would anyone that truly, properly, deeply loved you require you to sacrifice yourself, who you are, what you are passionate about, what makes you who you are?

When you slow down and think about it does that make ANY SENSE AT ALL?

Does it sound healthy, the basis for a strong, respectful relationship?

Or does it sound like the basis for an unhealthy, toxic and potentially abusive one?

You are responsible for teaching...