Category Archives: Building Self Esteem

Lead By Example

Once upon a time there was a baby alligator. He was born like other alligators are born, first in an egg, and then hatched by time and his mother. He had several brothers and sisters. If he knew how to count, he would have counted at least sixteen alligator brothers and sisters.

The alligators lived in a very large alligator community, which had been established for several generations. They lived in a swampy place, just outside of several cotton field that were run by a few cotton farmers, that had been there for just as may generations.

Despite speaking different languages, the alligators and the farmers had a mutual understanding. The alligators wouldn’t wander on to the farmer’s fields, and they wouldn’t get shot. The farmers (or more likely their curious kids) wouldn’t wander on the alligator’s neighborhood, and wouldn’t be eaten.

Shortly after this young alligator was born, or hatched, there was a terrible storm. It hadn’t rained in quite a while, and both the farmers and the alligators were getting worried, for different reasons.

The farmers, of course, were overjoyed when the rains came, because it meant that years cotton crop would be particularly lush, which would get them quite a lot of money at the cotton marketplace.

The alligators weren’t so lucky. The rains came at a particular bad time of year. Baby alligator hatching season is a particularly precarious time on the alligator life cycle. The nests are especially vulnerable at this time, as the alligators are too weak to defend themselves, but the mother alligator has to leave them from time to time to get food. If the floods come during this time, it is all too easy for the baby alligators to get swept away and plucked by hungry birds.

Because of the extraordinarily heavy rains, the adult alligators didn’t fare much better. Before long, over half of the entire alligator community was wiped out by the floods, leaving many young orphans.

This young alligator suddenly found himself without a mother, and several siblings that he felt responsible for. He didn’t know how to hunt yet, and he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to provide for them.

One day he was out wandering around, wondering if he would even survive, let alone care adequately for his siblings. He came across a very old alligator, and asked him what he should do.

Young boy. Many have come before you that have faced much harsher conditions. They survived, and so shall you. You must not focus giving food to your siblings and your neighbors, for they must also learn how to fend for themselves. Fate has chosen you to be the next leader in the alligator community. And to do that you must not only provide, but also lead. Your actions will be an example to others. As you show others that you can get your needs met, they will also learn that they, too, can get their own needs met. As you show them that you can survive, they too, will realize they can as well. As you prosper, so shall they.

The young alligator, uplifted by this strange old alligator’s words, walked back to his nest, and rousted his siblings and his neighbors.

“Come!” he shouted.
“We have much work to do!” he turned and began to work. Everybody else followed, certain of their future.

Godzilla and Mind Programming

When I was a kid I used to really like watching old monster movies. There were one or two channels that would always show these old movies on Saturday afternoons, and I would always look forward to watching them. Most of them were “B” movies from the fifties and sixties, and had really interesting plots and story lines. Many of them were Japanese monster movies, and had an underlying metaphor of nuclear holocaust and the dangers that go along with it.

One of things that I find interesting, in retrospect, is that despite the seemingly “out here” story lines and the funny fact that their voices never matched their mouths, I still remember being completely drawn into these stories. As soon as they started, I couldn’t help but to completely lose myself in this and forget everything else. I don’t know if it was because I was a kid, and hadn’t really experienced a lot of special effects that most people expect when they see a science fiction movie, or just that being a kid allows for much more imagination and less critical attention to things that “don’t make any logical sense.”

I remember reading a study where the researchers were talking about different brainwaves in adults. Apparently, there are four different levels of brainwaves, beta, alpha, theta, and delta. Beta being the highest vibration, and delta being the lowest. Alpha is kind of a daydreaming state, the kind when you are in a meeting, and your boss is droning on about the latest sales figures, and you start thinking about that hot date you have this weekend, and suddenly your boss says “Peterson! Peterson! I’m talking to you!” and you say “Huh?”

Then there is theta, which is supposedly a really good brainwave state to be in, as it allows you to reprogram your subconscious, have amazing mental experiences, like shamanistic journeying and out of body experiences, and remote viewing and all kinds of other good stuff. Your imagination is best while it is in theta. It’s that stage just before you drift off into sleep that you are kind of conscious, but kind of just wandering around in la la land. If you’ve ever slipped into theta while falling asleep, and then slipped back out, you know what I’m talking about. You have a feeling of “who, what was I just thinking about?”

The brain is highly susceptible in the theta state. This is the best state to be in if your are undergoing hypnosis, because you can do things like learn to quit smoking, cut back on drinking, vastly improve your social skills, and remove any fears that you may have. And many studies indicate that children, up to about age 7 or 8, are almost always in the theta state.

Which explains why watching monster movies is so fascinating, even with cheesy special effects, obviously fake monsters, and voices that don’t match the actor’s lips. Of course, this is a double edge sword, both for kids and for parents. Anything you say to a kid, especially if it comes from an authority figure, will go straight in as unquestioned truth. Which is fantastic if you understand this and give kids empowering messages like, ” you can be anything you want to be,” or “there is no such thing as failure, you are always learning and getting better,” or “you are a worthy person who deserves success.” These can be wonderful messages to give to kids on a regular basis that will ensure they grow up to be happy self-sufficient individuals. Of course when you say things to them without thinking, or behave in ways that indicate any other that the above statements, that has a powerful effect as well.

The lowest form of brainwaves is delta, which is when you are deep asleep, even deeper than the dreaming state. Scientists believe that you only need less than an hour of delta sleep per night, and your good to go. Even if you sleep eight hours or more, and don’t get that delta state, you will still feel groggy all day, as if you only slept a few hours.

But my favorite was the Godzilla and Gamera movies. I even liked Gamara more than Godzilla, because I always believed Gamara to be a good guy, and Godzilla to be a bad guy. Gamara was always helping people out, while Godzilla was always walking all over Tokyo and generally causing mayhem.

Body Language Tips for Flirting and Attraction

If you’ve ever been in a social situation, and were interested in meeting someone, you know how difficult it can be to sort through all the mixed signals and various levels of communication. I recently saw the movie “He’s just not that into you,” as it was recently released in Japan. A very well written movie about how social signals can sometimes be misinterpreted and frequently misunderstood.

Luckily, there has been a plethora of books (some good, some not so good) written by “experts” regarding body language. And as you would expect, there are a large number of body language signals that you can use to improve your flirting and social intercourse that are consistent throughout all the books.

Of course, that either means that each author or authors is on to something, or they all copied from the same report. I will assume with the former, and proceed to share with you some of the basics. One side benefit from becoming comfortable with learning to read body language, and using it for flirting is you will also be building your self-esteem and self-confidence. There are few things that make you feel better than a successful flirtations endeavor. (And all the good stuff that goes along with it.)

Some of these might be revealing, and some you have likely already heard about, but it pays to be sure. Nothing is more embarrassing than mis reading a signal and making a fool out of yourself (If you’ve seen the aforementioned movie, there was a pretty funny scene after the party.)

The two most obvious is eye contact and a smile. Eye contact can be very difficult to maintain for some people, so if you person you are interested in doesn’t hold eye contact very long, that either means they aren’t interested, or are very shy.

If you are a guy, and you are flirting with girls, if she makes eye contact, smiles a little bit, and then looks down before looking away, that is a fantastic sign. Many times that is all you need to make an approach. Because many girls are shy, you will need to smile first. Eye contact, then slowly let your face smile, both with your lips and with your eyes. Then just relax and see how she responds.

Another good sign, one that takes a while to calibrate, is if when you smile, she smiles in response, and takes a deep breath. That means you are making her feel butterflies. Nice work!

Another one to notice is that if she is talking to somebody else, and she makes eye contact with you while she’s in the conversation. She likely won’t smile at you, because that would be impolite to the persons she is speaking with. What is a good sign in this situation is if while she is talking to him or her, she might turn her body so that it is facing you while she is facing him. If this happens, you can either go and introduce yourself to both of them, and join the conversation, or simply wait until a better opportunity.

Another great sign from girls is if she flashes her palm at you. If she smiles, quickly brushes her hair back while revealing her palm, then looks down and away, that is about as green a light as your going to get. She is basically screaming at you to make a move.

If you are a girl and are looking from signs from guys, pay attention to their voice and body movements. Guys will naturally try to look more “alpha” when an attractive woman is around. They do this buy speaking louder, and using wider gestures with their friends. If you want him to come and talk to you, send any of the signals mentioned above. A good way is to make eye contact, smile and turn your head briefly, looking around the room, but keep your chest pointed at him, but don’t be to obvious or come on too strong. For most guys, eye contact and brief, warm smile is all you really need.

If this is all new to you, don’t worry. There are plenty of books out there to help you lean this stuff. When I first found out the incredible depth of information that was being sent back and forth I was floored. For months I would just go and sit in public places and just watch the signals people were sending too each other. The level of and depth of communication among people is truly amazing.

After you get good at this, your flirting skills will skyrocket. You will never again wonder who to approach, or how to flirt the right way. And when you learn to project the right body language, you will almost guarantee that when you make that first approach, you will almost always be warmly accepted, for at least a friendly conversation. And that is a good feeling.

Powerful Memories to Increase Public Speaking Skills and Obliterate Fear

I was talking to a friend the other day; actually I interrupted my friend the other day is a more accurate way of putting it. He was reading a book about public speaking, and how to overcome the fear of public speaking. He had recently been promoted at his work, and he was going to have to do a lot of traveling to other divisions, and meet with large groups of potential clients. He was going to have to speak in front of some very large groups, so he was a bit worried about overcome his fear of public speaking. He actually had a stack of books he was working on. It seems he was kind of worried that his new promotion would take him places that he wasn’t quite ready to go.

I can recall another friend from a few years ago that was in a similar situation. He was always getting promoted at work, and he was always learning new skills. From public speaking, to sales, to negotiation, he was always making himself more valuable to the company. He would always invest at least twenty percent of his salary in himself, from books to seminars to self-improvement programs. And he always reaped fantastic rewards. He was telling me about a particular useful tool that he used, which was a memory-improving product.

He explained to me about emotional memory, and how the history of any human is so incredibly rich and powerful and so completely overstuffed with memories that we can choose anything we want to create in the future, and look back into the past to find an appropriate memory. The cool thing about the human brain is that it can apply almost any memory to any situation. Memories don’t really have any particular meaning except the meaning that we give to them. And the cool thing is that we can give the same memory different meanings depending on how you’d like to project yourself into the future.

For example, I’m sure as you sit there, reading this, you can bring to mind some memories from the past. Maybe from yesterday, or maybe from a year ago. And some of those memories that you are remembering now can be helpful, while others will cause a certain amount of anxiety. And if you can just take all those memories that cause some anxiety, and put them aside, you can free your mind up to bring to bear all the memories that give you feelings of pleasure and happiness.

Like that one time, a while ago, where that one thing happened that was particularly pleasant. Maybe you were planning on it happening, maybe it happened spontaneously. Either way, as you bring it to mind now, you can start to see what happens when you project it into the future. And whether or not you can close your eyes and think of that is not really important. What’s important I that you can begin to realize that you can recall any memory from your past that you want, and deliver it to your future, so when you get there, it will be waiting for you.

But emotional memory wasn’t even the main gist of the program my friend had so successfully used. It was more of a technical memory program that taught how to easily remember complex sets of facts and information, so when you needed to present them to a large group of people, you would not only be able to feel extremely comfortable giving a speech in public, but you would be persuasive as well, which could naturally increase your ability to sell and make lots of money.

How to Remove Public Speaking Fear and Skyrocket Your Sales Skills

If you are in sales, any kind of sales, there is one skill you can learn that will have a powerful effect on all your other skills for selling. And when you realize in almost every interaction you have with others, you are selling something at some level. An idea, your point of view, a behavior that you want others to perform. Whether you are going to convince that gorgeous woman to come over to your place for dinner, or persuade your kids to finish their homework before watching TV, you are selling something.

And there is one powerful skill that can dramatically help you in all aspects of this. That, of course, is public speaking. I’m sure you know that public speaking is the number one fear of people today. Almost everybody dreads the idea of being called up to speak. If you’ve ever had to give a toast, or even introduce somebody to large group of people, you know how nerve wracking it can be. Overcoming public speaking fear can be the singularly most beneficial decision you can make. It will increase your self-confidence, increase your self-esteem, and give you much more clarity of thought when choosing your words during normal, every day conversations.

And if you are in an honest to goodness sales job, where you have to put yourself in front of people day in and day out, overcoming the anxiety of public speaking can do wonders for your closing ratio. It’s a well-known fact that giving talks on a regular basis, regardless of what business you are in can do wonders for your income.

So how does one go about reducing public speaking fears? How can you banish public speaking anxiety once and for all? There are two ways to approach this. One is through various forms of mental imagery and visualization, training your brain to think of speaking in a different way, so it doesn’t cause you the anxiety that it might have before. These can be a wonderful way to make it feel easy and natural to not only feel comfortable giving public speeches, but to look forward to doing them as well.

One way to do this is to imagine the feeling you will get when you finish your speech, and you can hear the applause of the audience. Really get a good picture in your mind of what that looks like, sounds like, and feels like. Practice imagining that on a regular basis, until that thought becomes second nature, and not whatever thought you used to think that gave you the problems.

Another mental trick is to imagine the benefit the audience will receive from your speech. How will it help them? How can they use the information? When you think in terms of this, you will be less likely to imagine them judging and scrutinizing you, and more likely to imagine them thankful to you for doing them favor by sharing your unique information with them.

The second way of extinguishing your public speaking anxiety once and for all is to simply speak as often as possible. Every time you think of speaking, and grow anxious, and then get out of speaking, it reinforces the thought that public speaking is dangerous. When you begin to speak in public as often as possible, anywhere were there are people within earshot that don’t know you, you will gain confidence. Anywhere you can do this will work. Talking to strangers in line at the supermarket, making an announcement at the dinner table at home, if you have a large family, volunteering at your church. Toastmaster is a great place to practice these skills in a friendly, supportive environment.

When you combine the mental tricks outlined above, and the habit of speaking as often as possible, any fear or anxiety you have associated with public speaking will quickly vanish, and your skills of selling and persuading will skyrocket, not to mention your self-confidence and self-esteem. Learning to feel comfortable while speaking in public can very well be one of the greatest, and cheapest, self improvement and self-development programs at your disposal.

How to Maximize Body Language for Flirting and Attraction

One thing that every man must have in his arsenal of dating skills is a solid understanding of female body language. You can powerfully increase your flirting and attraction with some basic knowledge in this area. Despite the ignorance of most guys in this area, body language is one of the least understood communication skills. It is something that I not taught in schools, not spoken about much in men’s magazines, nor discussed with men over beers at the local pub on a Friday night.

The shocking truth of how powerful body language is came to me several years ago after reading a book on the subject. I was sitting in a meeting at work, a very large meeting, with the big boss talking to all the employees. There had been several rumors floating around about mergers, and relocation. I worked at a large medical products company, and up until then all of the products were manufactured on sight in southern California. Had they decided to shift manufacturing to another location for cheap labor, such as Mexico, many jobs would be lost.

Because everybody was hearing these rumors, the big boss decided to hold meeting in an attempt to calm everybody down. I happened to be sitting in the front row. After dancing around the issue as eloquently as he could, somebody finally asked a direct question:

“Are we going to lose our jobs to Mexico?”

His answer:

“I promise, we will always manufacture our products in the United States.”

Everybody seemed to accept this answer, except me. When he said it, he was leaning back, half standing, half leaning against the podium, his legs were crossed at the ankles, and neither of his the souls of his shoes were touching the floor. His arms were crossed in front of him, and he wasn’t looking anybody in the eye.

His word said one thing, but his body language said something completely different. He was lying. Apparently, I was the only one who noticed, as the rumors stopped.

Until about three months later, when they announced, seemingly out of the blue that the entire manufacturing department was shutting down. Hundreds of jobs, hundreds of people that had worked there for many years, were lost.

Luckily, because I was able to read his body language instead of his words, I had been actively searching for a job in the meantime, so I was prepared.

This is an example of male/male body language communication, which can be powerful during negotiations, interviews, detecting if somebody is lying. They can be just as powerful when flirting or trying to attract the woman of your dreams.

This is one area that unfortunately many men are completely clueless on. To say this is the weakest point of male communication would be an understatement. I once watched a friend of mine try (unsuccessfully) to pick up a girl in a bar. She was sitting her friend at a table. He stopped, and was standing above her. (Not a good idea by the way, you seem too intimidating when you do this.) Every time he leaned in to speak to her, she would lean back, and unconsciously touch her necklace.

Leaning back is an obvious STAY AWAY, but the necklace touching is also a huge sign of disinterest. She was unconsciously protecting her neck, a very vulnerable part of the body. When I asked my friend about this later, he said he had no idea that was going on.

Next time you are at a bar or a club, and are trying to impress the ladies, paying subtle attention to her body language can go a long way.

Is she open? Is she protecting her vulnerable areas? Are her breasts pointed at you or away from you? When she talks does she look at you, or is she looking around the room? What about her feet? Are they pointed at you or away?

While difficult at first, paying attention to her body language can give you a powerful edge in your flirting and seduction efforts. By only paying attention to girls that are into you, you will spend a lot less effort, and save yourself a lot of frustration, heartache, and time.

And a great side benefit is because you will only be paying attention to girls that are paying attention to you, your self-confidence and self-esteem will shoot through the roof. Before you know it you’ll be able to read the body language of an entire room, and determine right away whom you should talk to, and whom you should leave to all other guys out there who haven’t been enlightened by this article.