How to stop blocking your confidence

Do you feel like no matter how hard you’ve tried to change, you still find yourself going back to unconfident behaviour?

Like staying quiet when you want to speak up.

Avoiding social situations you find challenging.

Constantly feeling like you might fail. 

It’s Not Your Fault

You do have confidence, even if you don’t feel like you do. It’s in you somewhere. You just can’t connect with it right now.

But that’s ok, you can change that.

These unconfident behaviours are natural and it’s called self-sabotage. 

Self-sabotage is part of your psychological make-up, and very difficult to overcome. This is why so many confidence-building techniques don’t work.

You want to change but powerful psychological habits keep you trapped, stuck repeating the same old patterns.

But there is a way out.

Does This Next Story Sound Familiar?

Once, there was a Greek King called Sisyphus. In the story, Sisyphus is doomed to roll a very large stone up a hill.

Every day, he uses up huge amounts of effort to roll the stone up the hill. But at the end of each day, his strength gives way … and the stone rolls down back down. Sisyphus has no choice but to start the process all over again.

And so it goes on. The pattern repeats. On and on.

Are there things in your life that feel like a constant uphill struggle?

• Feeling trapped or unfulfilled because you’re locked away in your shell?

• Not being valued and being taken advantage of at work or in relationships?

• Feeling weighed down with emotions, and fear that if you begin to let them out your life will fall apart?

Things are about to change.

How You Can Stop Self-Sabotaging

Life is funny. Every so often it sends you a lifeline.

It happened to me. It was a chance encounter when I was really getting myself in a mess. You can read all about it in my book or by listening to a couple of my Facebook Lives: Shyness the Way Out, Say Goodbye to Living Your life on the Sidelines 

The lifeline may come through someone you meet, a leaflet you pick up, through surfing the internet, through losing your job or relationship that causes you to rethink what is really important to you. Maybe it was visiting this website …

Joseph Campbell, a remarkable man, spent his life thinking about this issue. He called this lifeline, “The Call to Adventure”.

What happens next, he says, is totally up to you.

Either you listen to The Call, or you ignore it.

Maybe you’re unsure of which call to answer? Maybe they’re all too big or uncomfortable to respond to?

Joseph Campbell calls this place of confusion, doubt and fear –  “the belly of the whale” which comes from the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale.

Whether you ignore, avoid or are confused by The Call, almost inevitably you will find yourself in the belly of the whale as Jonah did. Unable to do anything. Stuck and overwhelmed.

Are You In The Belly Of The While Right Now? 

It may feel like nothing much is happening. You may even feel quite comfortable. But there’s probably a voice inside your head saying, “If only you had….”

This painting by Annie Lucas gives you a good idea of what it’s like to be in the “belly of the whale”.

You may feel:

• Depressed. Depression is often the result of not responding to The Call.
• Resigned to your situation. You believe you don’t have the time or money to invest in the process of change so you soldier on determined to make the best of things. But deep down you know nothing is going to change. And it doesn’t.
• Really stuck. You can’t see a way forward.
• Overwhelmed and exhausted from negative feelings and lack of energy.
• Deep down, you believe that someone like you is never going to change, and it’ll be too hard to change anyway.

How often do you hear The Call to make a change?

How often do you ignore it?

If you are hearing The Call on a regular basis, I suggest it is time to take action NOW! Are you hearing the call right now as you read this article?

If so, be aware, that this is Your Call to make a change to ypur.

In my experience, if you receive The Call to make a change – and you don’t take action – you just stay stuck. In fact it’s worse than that. Every time you ignore the call, it gets harder and harder to get started.

However, the truth is that once you take the first step, something will begin to shift. And it’s never as hard as you think it was going to be.

After you’ve taken that first step, Joseph Campbell tells us, help and helpers will appear to assist you – seemingly from nowhere.

If You Feel Like Sisyphus Or Jonah, Maybe It’s Time To Stop.

Stop rolling the stone, stop toiling and struggling. Stop avoiding and ignoring what is really important to you.

There is a more successful way of dealing with challenges. Maybe there’s a creative solution you haven’t yet thought of.

And in my experience there always is.

There is a gift waiting somewhere in the struggle.

I’m not asking you to commit to anything right now, but I’d like to invite you to consider taking one small step forward.

And I mean a small step.

It might even be fun!

I can suggest a few things….

Get in contact by email and tell me about what you’re grappling with (see below)

Or book an informal chat on the phone with me to discuss how you could get started. 

What is the most surprising thing for many people when they join one of my courses, is that they find they are able to make significant shifts to their confidence levels whilst at the same time having the most enormous fun. And then they wonder why they spent all that time struggling.

This is because most methods for change involve digging up the past, churning over unresolved issues and going through the pain. For some people, this can more like Sisyphus’ stone.

I have a personal theory that it is actually far more healthy and healing to have fun while shifting the stuck places and that the effects, as a result, last much longer.  This bypasses the logical mind and puts you in touch with a powerful and superior intelligence that lies dormant within you.

This is the power of The Sunflower Effect, the powerful confidence-building system I have developed and refined over a 20 year period, based on my experience of completely changing my prospects in this area. (My courses have a very high success rate and 100% money-back guarantee.)