Money Can't Buy You Happiness, But Having Self Confidence Can!

Have you ever considered what money and self confidence can do for your life?

Money is certainly powerful. It can buy you many things, such as the survival basics, like food, water and shelter.  But it can also give you the luxuries in life, such as travel, expensive cars and designer clothes.

Have you also noticed that the things we buy with money are usually only really enjoyed in the short term?

Example 1:
Whenever you go on a holiday, soon after, you want another holiday, and sometimes you start wanting the next one before your current holiday has even finished!

Example 2:
It isn't long after getting a new car, that you want to upgrade again

Example 3:
How many times does it take for you to wear your new clothes before you go hunting for more?

We all seem to want money, yet the pleasures it gives us are usually very short term.  We still end up dis-satisfied.

On the other hand HAVING SELF CONFIDENCE is much deeper and the happiness can last forever because it is a skill that lives inside you during your progress through life.

Let me give you some examples of what total self confidence can give you:

Confidence can give you:

• Freedom

• Security

• Peace

• Comfort

• Strong relationships

• Great communications

• The ability to make choices that make you happy

• The chance to speak up for yourself in any situation

• Speak in front of groups of people

• The power to overcome criticism and comments from others

in other words, it can surely give you loads of happiness!

As you can see, having self confidence gives you enormous long lasting benefits.

But that is all well and good, but how do you get your self confidence to such a level?

There are obviously too many ways to mention here which will help you start having self confidence, but here are a few of my favourites:

1) Be Positive

2) Change Your Habits

Most of your behaviors are habitual.  In fact it can be as much as 90%.  Look into your life and notice your negative habits.  This could be an action (such as staying home alone as always, instead of going out with friends to experience something new), or it could be something you think or say (such as "I'll never gain enough confidence").

When you identify your negative habits, you will need to alter them slightly or change them altogether for a positive habit.

You may have read or heard that it takes 30 days to change a habit.  In my opinion it is instant.  I say this for two reasons.

1. If you wanted to be fit and healthy and until now you have never felt good about your weight.  If I tell you, "All you have to do is walk for 30 minutes once a week and eat one apple a day and you will have the body of your dreams (you choose it)"

2. Once you start doing something different on a regular basis, it's already becoming a habit.

With the first example I'm sure you would pick up this new habit instantly and with the second example, the moment you begin doing something on a regular basis, it is becoming a habit.  This is why I believe you can change your habits instantly.

Of course when choosing to change habits, for example eating salads instead of chocolates, you have to associate good feelings towards it.  If you say, "Ok, I'm going to stop eating chocolates and start eating salad", but every time you go to have your salad you say, "Oh damn, I wish I could eat the chocolate instead", then it's not going to work.

You have to really want the salad over the chocolate.

For me, I used to eat chocolates like there is tomorrow (Up to 1kg per week!).  Now when I go to have the salad, I think how much healthier, stronger and more energy I will have.  As opposed to the highs and lows the chocolate gave me.

So now I look forward to the salad, the same way I used to look forward to the chocolate.  Don't get me wrong. I still eat chocolates, but no where near as much now.  I am healthier and happier.  I get the best of both worlds, and you can too.

Find your negative habits and substitute them for a positive ones.  Then find reasons to love this new habit and NOT to want the negative one back.

3) Experience

There is no question that confidence is increased with experience. The more experience we get with something, the more knowledge, skilful and confidence we can get.

It goes like this:
Step 1 = Try something new with little or no confidence
Step 2 = Make mistakes
Step 3 = Learn from the mistakes and try again with refined skills
Step 4 = Gain confidence
Step 5 = Start to perform the same tasks with great skills and stronger confidence

The key here is Step 3. Numbers 1 and 2 are inevitable.  But if you don't do step 3 (learn from the mistakes AND try again with refined skills), then steps 4 and 5 will never happen.  If you do steps 1 and 2 then give up and say "see, I knew I couldn't do it" then you have just thrown step 3 out of the window and steps 4 and 5 have gone with it.

Every task you undertake will generate a result (positive or negative in your mind) which will also leave some clues (reasons).

There will be clues why you succeeded or didn't succeed.  You have to open your senses to work out those clues and learn from the mistakes (step 3) if you didn't succeed, refine the skills (step 3) and try again.

Each time you do this, you will edge a little closer to being successful.

I have noticed one thing recently.  EVERY single skill and thing I have done in my life, I have made mistakes in.

Recently I started learning web design.  As I started learning, everything was so slow due to the large number of mistakes.  I made a new design recently and analyzed it.  It consisted of:

>> Tables
>> Numbered and bulleted points
>> Different colours and font sizes
>> Pictures
>> Audio
>> Downloads

While it was pretty easy and I could do it relatively quickly (about 1 hour).  I remember doing a similar page months ago and it took me about 8 hours!  I made so many mistakes for each of the tasks.  It was an absolute joke (looking back), but at the time it was frustrating.

I would try something, it wouldn't work.  So I would try to figure out why it didn't work, then I would see something that wasn't right, so I'd try again and after doing this a few times I finally got the result I wanted. 

From that learning experience, I know what works and what doesn't and can create the same result in minutes now!

By gaining experience and learning from the errors to improve the results, if you stick with it long enough, there can only be one outcome - SUCCESS!

Undoubtedly this will sky rocket your confidence because you are coming from the angle of "I can do this". 

Experience is King for building confidence and results.

Proof of the pudding.  Go through the list below and tell yourself
a) how much confidence you have of performing that task
b) how much experience you have had performing that task

1. Driving a car
2. Hitting the ball in golf (not perfectly, just making the connection)
3. Typing on the keyboard without looking at the keys (touch typing)
4. Conducting surgery
5. Playing a musical instrument
6. Singing at a concert in front of 20,000+ people
7. Cooking an egg
8. Manually mending clothing with a needle

You will find that the tasks you have lots of confidence with, you have also had a lot of experience with and those that you have little to no confidence with are the tasks generally where you have little to no experience with.

So get out there and get as much experience as you can with tasks you want to be confident in and watch your confidence grow - but don't forget #3.