Self-Confidence and Your Home-Based Business - Strategies on How To Project a Positive Image Confidence sells, it breeds success. Regardless of your occupation as a home-based business owner, always remember you are the product and you have to sell yourself. You have to project a confident image to the buyer. If, the buyer does not feel you have confident in yourself or your product, then you may not be able to close the deal. Some indicators of lack of confidence are you are rambling on and on in your presentation; excessive nervousness; not being prepared, and or you are not knowledgeable about your product..
The purpose of this article is to help you build your self-confidence. This is the first of three articles that was written to increase your self-confidence level.
1. Prepare yourself before you speak. In an ever changing society you need to be prepared. You have to ensure you have all the facts (or at least the ones you need) about a subject matter before you set out to take on the challenge. You have to do your research talk to other people who may have experience in your area of interest. If, you have time get some training in the area. There is an enormous amount of free training, especially online. Prepare the facts get expert opinions and be able to quote what the experts are saying or said about the matter. However, most importantly, be organized. Develop a reputation as someone who can intelligently present a logical presentation or make a good factual based decision.
When you realize you are going to be in a situation where you have to voice your opinion and it may not be the most popular opinion be prepared to defend your position. Prepare at least three positions 1) Best case – if the other individual(s) are in agreement with you; 2) Worst case- if there is total disagreement and; 3) the most probable case - this is the case that will most likely occur. It is a mixture of best and worst cases.
2. Practice acting in a firmer more confident manner. Stand in the mirror and practice holding your ground but not being obnoxious. Watch your body language: practice open posture - eye contact and smiles avoid closed posture – folded arms and very little eye contact. Portray a relaxed demeanor stand straight and tall do not snoop or slouch. Listen at your voice tone, ensure it is not too high or low. Remember to apply your best, most likely, and worst case scenarios with a smile, calmly, and methodically. Practice, practice, and more practice until the body language, voice tone, and thought process are natural.
3. Always keep in mind confident people are positive people and everything begins with your thoughts which determines your destiny. I stated this before but it bears repeating:
Watch your Thoughts, for they become Words
Choose your Words, for they become Actions
Understand your Actions, for they become Habits
Study your Habits, for they will become your Character
Develop your Character, for it becomes your Destiny
So, you see your thoughts determine your destiny, they determine your place in life. Guard your thoughts do not entertain any negative, destructive, and or degrading thoughts about yourself or anyone else. They will come and when they do cancel them with something positive pure, edifying, and or uplifting about yourself and or that person, place, or thing.
4. You can identify a confident person by their body language and conversation. These people more than likely are positive people. They have positive thoughts and have positive things to say. The next time you have a conversation with some one, it can be a total stranger listen to what they say and how they say it. If, you talk to them long enough you will be able to determine their self-confidence level by their conversation and body language. If you talk with someone and all their conversation is about someone else’s misfortune or gossiping, usually there is something going on with that person. Usually, they have been hurt and hurting people tend to hurt others. It makes them feel better about themselves to talk about what they heard about someone else’s affairs. Rather than talk about themselves and how they are making their positive “mark” on society, they would prefer to continue spreading second-hand information (gossip). These are the people you want to get away from with a quickness, pray for them (under your breath), and keep it moving.
Always remember, act confident even if you are not, if you are nervous take deep breaths and hold them so you can calm down. Try your best to exude confidence. People generally believe a person who appears to know what she/he is talking about whether the person is right or wrong. They tend to believe the person because of their body language and because of the eloquence of their speech in other words “they sound good”.
Confidence Builders – How to Improve Yours“Calm down” have you ever heard someone tell someone to “Calm down”. We need to calm ourselves down when we are in a stressful situation and we are feeling helpless, out of control, and our mind is hitting us with a preponderance of negative thoughts. What if this happens? or What if that happens? The plain truths about “what if’s” are they usually don’t happen. However, we are conditioned to think of the worst case scenario. Usually, our body language plays right along with our mind – jittery, moving, talking, or laughing too much. When this happens take a few breaths, clear your mind, and “calm down”.
This is the second article in a three part series on self-confidence builders. The purpose of these articles are to help you build or increase your confidence. In them I will give you some pointers that you can apply immediately to help you in this area.
Know what you are capable of and do it. No one knows everything. However, whatever areas in your life or business you are expected to know you need to be knowledgeable. If you have a home-based internet marketing business and or network marketing business you are not expected to know everything there is to know about them. However, the area of the business the area of the business you specialize in position yourself (by researching, take training courses to acquire the proper knowledge) as that particular area expert. Perform self-talk tell yourself you are knowledgeable in that area and are capable of sharing your knowledge with others in a global market.
Make it a habit to be self-confident eliminate all distractions that are interfering with your concentration of being a positive, uplifting, and a confident person. Remember, your thoughts, speech, and body language are indicators of your confidence level. If you are in a negative or destructive relationship and or environment, they could possibly hinder you from building your confidence.
Know your strengths and weaknesses. Know what you are good at verses what you are not and work in your areas of strength. Work on your areas of weakness and while you are working on these areas, if you have a partner or friend who is good in your weak area, allow them to assist you. Always build yourself up, pat yourself on the back and dwell on your positive aspects. Do not dwell on negative thoughts about yourself, always think on the things you do well. Always encourage yourself do not depend on others to validate or affirm you. Remember to “cancel” all negative thoughts with an overwhelming influx of the positive aspects of yourself.
Know who you are and who and what are important to you. Know what you value and what motivate, and inspire you. “Be true to thyself”, as we would say in my neighborhood “be real”, especially with yourself. We can put on airs and facades with other people but at the end of the day we have to look in the mirror and make a real assessment of ourselves. We have to ask ourselves why am I making false impressions of myself to others? I’m I that concerned about what others think of me that I have to pretend to be someone I’m not? If you are so concerned about what others think of you, then you need to make improvements in your deficient areas. If there is something about yourself you are not pleased with, then make an honest effort to change it, if it can be changed.
Needless to say, we all have life challenges, deficiencies, and struggles because life (things) happens. Oprah said, “the greatest lesson of my life (has been) to recognize I am solely responsible for it, and not trying to please other people, and not living my life to please other people, but doing what my heart says all the time”.
Self-Confidence, You Have to Make It a PracticeHave you decided to learn from past mistakes and not beat yourself up for being human?
We are going to make bad decisions and rather than dwell on them learn from them. Learn what not to do the next time that situation or a similar situation presents itself to you. Forgive yourself, just in case no one has told you lately, “you are not perfect”.
This is the third and final article in a three part series on self-confidence builders. The purpose of these articles is to help you build or increase your confidence. In them I will give you some pointers that you can apply immediately to help you in this area.
Do not dwell on your past mistakes learn from them, how not to do it the next time. If you accomplish something do not be afraid to let someone know. Sometimes you have to talk yourself up. You have to learn how to encourage yourself rather than talk to others about your failure you should talk about your success. You would not talk about your success to the point that you could be labeled braggadocio; you are just casually mentioning it as your own confidence builder.
Let us not get stuck in a rut try new things, take a different routine to work, (unless you are like me someone who work-from-home) change your hair, treat yourself some times. Do not wait for someone to do something special for you do it for yourself. Love on you. I have found if you love you; people treat you better. They realize you love yourself to much to be mistreated by someone else. Try new experiences, think outside the box. For example, who said you have to work Monday – Friday from 9 to 5 for 30 years. Then when you finally retire you are limited to a fixed income that is less than what you earned when you were working and it is still not enough to live off of. Why not start your own home-based business now while you are employed. Then, if something should happen to your job or you want to retire early you have something, as my mom would say, “to fall back on”. If nothing else it will be a new experience for you and the more new experiences you have in your life the more confident you will feel in unknown situations. Expand your knowledge base by trying something new.
Never stop learning new things. We have a world wide library at our fingertips - the internet. We can put a topic in the search engine press “search” and we have access to pages of information for that topic. Turn the television off and pick up a book and read about different events, places, cultures, and people. Create time for reading and sharing with your family and friends. All these things help build your confidence, reading allows you to stay abreast of current events. Then, when you speak to the stranger in the elevator; you will have a current event to share or ask them what do they think about it. Always surround yourself with knowledgeable people; people who are smarter than you; folks who can show you something new and cutting edge. This also helps to build your confidence because you are learning things the average people do not know. Subsequently, you would be considered above average because of your intellect. How about that to boost your confidence and even your self-esteem?
Like I mentioned in prior article practice, practice, and more practice being self-confident. Self-confidence is important and can be learned. However, it takes practice and a conscious effort from you. This time rather than practice in front of your mirror practice in small situations. Be the first to do something, i.e. the first to speak to a stranger and maintain eye contact, the first to extend your hand for a hand-shake, or the first to try something new or different with your business when it is not the popular thing to do. Former President Robert F. Kennedy said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”.
Are you self-confident, yet? I certainly hope these articles helped you build or increase your confidence level. My intent of writing these articles was to share with you the necessary tools to solve your problems and negotiate stressful life challenges you will encounter. If you apply these methods you should not be as fearful when life (things) happen. Also you should be empowered to take control of the challenge and not allow the challenge take control you.
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Do have a life goal or dream that you want to achieve but do not know how? Do you lack the self-confidence to even attempt your goal? If this is you, then the following steps listed in this article can help you gain the confidence in yourself to start working towards your goal.
