That’s me when I was around 4 years old (funnily enough I have a very similar polo shirt that I wear now!). Of course, at that age I had no idea what was in store for me, and just a couple of years later when I was around 6 years old I remember being asked by my primary school teacher what I wanted to be when I grew up. I reflected for a moment and torn between two options I said ‘I’m not sure. Either an artist or an inventor.’

I had two pictures - one of me in a huge studio, being swept along in the moment as I created magnificent works of art that would make people weep, and another of me in a lab coat with crazy hair surrounded by bubbling test tubes and all manner of electronic devices as I used all I knew to build Something Amazing (TM). Those two sides have always been there for me (I’m a typical Gemini) - the art and the science, the creative and the logical, the head and the heart.

In my 20’s I got sidetracked by a successful but personally damaging career in IT, which lead to me hitting my quarter-life crisis, losing my self-confidence and having to rebuild myself piece by piece, and I can see that part of the reason for hitting that crisis point is because I came to live purely in the logical part of me and pretty much ignored the creative side.

As a 6 year old boy I’d identified that both themes were hugely important to me, but ended up paying an extremely high price for it when I went forward with a life that didn’t reflect that.

Those two themes persist for me to this day, and a day where I can use my logic and my creativity is a great day because I get to use the things that have always been there and still persist for me.

Another memory that’s been a puzzle until fairly recently, is when I was 13 or 14 in my Religious Education classes. In some classes we’d ditch the normal teaching format in favour of a debate, where the teacher, Mrs Evans, would lead us all in a debate on particular topics related to religion in the world. One day, she asked me to come up to the front of the class, invited me to sit in her chair and told the class that I was going to lead the debate that day.

It felt great - I was sitting in the big chair at the head of the class, I was letting people speak and counter, and I was managing the flow of the whole thing. I remember clearly how much I enjoyed it.

Mrs Evans asked me to lead the class in a debate 3 or 4 times, and never asked anyone else. Why would she do that? I think the only reason can be because she wanted me to see something. To be honest, I’m still figuring out exactly what, but I think it has to do with leading people and bringing out what’s important to them.

Thanks so much Mrs Evans.

The great thing is that my work now - both the coaching and the ad project management - is a fantastic combination of head and heart, thinking and feeling, creativity and logic, orchestrating and leading - and that’s why it works.

I share this all with you because I’ve worked with hundreds of people who come to me with low confidence, not knowing what they should be doing, and they want to figure out how to be more confident so they can go forwards with something that feels right.

They feel stuck, like they spend just a tiny amount of time doing what they love and want more out of their lives and careers. Some of them even wonder if wanting something more is too much to ask for.

In my opinion and experience, having work that includes the things that have persisted for you is absolutely critical in terms of loving your work and getting more richness out of your working experience.

So figure out what your themes are. In your early days at school, what did you want to do when you grew up? What did you want to be when you were a kid? In your teenage years or at college or university, what did you really want to be, regardless of whether you took that route or not? What have been the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the jobs you’ve had?

What patterns can you see? What are the themes that come out and what still persists for you to this day?

Look at the patterns and themes that have always been there for you. Those things aren’t going anywhere, and ignoring them is ignoring who you are and who you’ve always been, and that’s a sure-fire way to lose all confidence in yourself.

I’m willing to bet that there’s something you’ve always wanted to do.

Maybe you want to write a novel, maybe you want to visit Africa, maybe you want to open a little coffee shop in your neighbourhood or maybe you’ve had an idea for a neat little product that just might change the world.

Everyone has at least one thing that you dream about, and 99.9% of the time you never do anything with them.

You persuade yourself that it’s pie in the sky, that’s it’s just a pipe dream and that it could never actually happen because you wouldn’t know where to start, couldn’t afford it and it probably wouldn’t work anyway. You lose faith in your ability to make your dream reality, and lose a little faith in yourself in the process.

The more you filter what you wish for, the more you train yourself to think small, and the less confident you become.

But what if it was possible? What if you could make some or all of it happen? What if you had what it took to see something come to life? Wouldn’t that be cool?

Here’s my 3 step process finding the confidence to do what you’ve always wanted to do.

1. Look into it

   Do some leg work and investigate what might be needed to get going. Look online for resources and examples of how other people have done similar things. Go talk with people who’ve been there, done that (use Ecademy or LinkedIn to find good people to talk with).

   Write down what you need to know and what you need to figure out so that you can make a decision to do it or not. Having investigated you might find that in reality it’s not up your alley after all, or you might find yourself getting pretty darn excited at what you’re discovering. Either way, looking into it won’t cost you anything and you’ll never know without doing the leg work.

2. Make a choice

   Once you’ve looked into it, you need to make a choice based on 2 things.

   a. What matters to you. Is the choice founded on something that matters to you personally? Is it something you can engage with on an ongoing basis? Is it something you’ll enjoy no matter how it turns out? If not, you’re much less likely to follow through with it.

   b. Your priorities. How does this fit in with your other priorities (family, finances, career, hobbies, etc)? What compromises are you willing to make going forwards, and where are the boundaries? It might be the case that your priorities are such that now isn’t the right time, in which case figure out what criteria needs to be satisfied and when is the right time.

   Once you’ve figured those 2 things out, make your choice and commit to it. That commitment is what will carry you through, and it’s an attitude and a way of behaving that shapes your experience and behaviour as you go forwards.

3. Do one thing
   If you’ve made a choice to go forwards, do one thing today. Just one thing. Then do one more thing tomorrow.

   That’s all.

   Do one thing every day - no matter how big or small - and in a year you’d have done a whopping 365 things towards something you want. Even the most complex of tasks (and the Biggest and Messiest of projects) can be achieved simply by doing one thing followed by another, then another, then another. Don’t elevate the task to something bigger than you, break it into chunks that you can deal with and tackle each one in turn.

   If the one thing you do on a particular day doesn’t work out, don’t sweat it. There’s the next day to try it a different way so don’t beat yourself up – you can’t control how everything turns out.

   Oh, don’t think that once you’ve made a decision that you can’t make a different decision. Often you need to tune things as you go, and sometimes what you learn along the way renders the destination redundant. Being confident means allowing yourself to continue to make choices that serve you well.

You know what, I love doing nothing. I’m actually pretty good at it, and when I’ve been busy it’s just great to sit back, do nothing and relax for a while. I’m a great schlepper, and I’ve come to see that schlepping is a key piece of what makes me productive.

When I started freelancing alongside my coaching I thought I’d make use of my commuting time to write, and that if I took my laptop to work with me I could sit in a coffee shop at lunch time and take care of emails. I tried to squeeze more time out of my day, all of which added to my stress levels and didn’t get me any further ahead.

I was stressed out, waking up in the middle of the night worrying that things aren’t getting done and that the world will fall apart if I don’t’ do them.

I felt bad that things were getting on top of me and that I wasn’t able to do everything. I started seeing myself as failing to get things done, that somehow I was less than because even though I was on the go for 16 hours a day I wasn’t delivering what I wanted to deliver.

Recognise this?

Many of my clients sure do - this is one of the many confidence-impacting problems that I deal with every week. The bottom line is that if you keep on going full steam ahead, trying to do everything with the notion that you ought to be able to do it all, you’ll burn out. You’ll lose yourself in the middle of everything you’re doing, and you’ll find your focus and sense of what you’re about slipping.

Let that ride and your self-confidence will suffer as you focus more and more on what you’re not doing and where you’re not seeing things happen as you’d like them to.

The belief that you need to deliver consistently without ever stopping is a deeply flawed one. It WILL get in the way of what you’re working on, and it WILL impact how you see yourself and your level of confidence.

So stop it.

I want to spell out to you that it’s okay to not do things. It’s okay to slow down, take a break and nourish yourself. More than that, it’s dangerous not to.

One quick distinction to make - don’t think for a second that slowing down is the same as procrastinating. Far from it. This funny little film shows you precisely what procrastinating is.

Procrastinating is busying yourself with all kinds of other things so that you don’t have to ‘get your stuff done’. Slowing down is making a deliberate and positive choice to take a break and nourish yourself.

As I’ve come to see. slowing down can be an amazing strategy for being more productive.

Tell me - Do you have problems slowing down or feel bad that you’re not getting everything done? How do you refuel, recharge and nourish yourself?

Some 37 years ago on May 25th, following a mix-up at the hospital, a baby boy was taken in by a family of squirrels who lived in a park closeby. The boy had a lovely childhood, climbing trees, burying nuts and playing with his friends. It got cold in the winter, but he had a bit of lie-in on really cold days and always had lots of food to nibble on.

On his 18th Birthday, his squirrel Mum and squirrel Dad explained in an excited manner that he was not really a squirrel at all, but a human child, and that he was ready to join his real family.

On entering the human world, Steve, as his squirrel Mum and squirrel Dad had named him, was agog at how big everything was and how funny everyone looked. He soon settled in to human life - he got a job selling jeans, found a friend to see films with and had a comfy bed to sleep in.

Today, he’s shaken off his old squirrel ways but still remembers those happy days of tree climbing and playing with his friends. It’s a thought that makes him smile, and every year on his Birthday he buries a handful of nuts in the back garden.

Disclaimer 1: None of the above is true. Steve’s just a regular schmo who thinks that squirrels are pretty cool.

Disclaimer 3: Steve sometimes forgets to be silly, so this is a reminder to him to be what he is - silly.

Inspired partly by this brilliant coaching spoof from The Daily Show, I wanted to tell you why you’ll always stand to lose out in life.

Yeah, I know, I probably shouldn’t be using the ‘L’ word because I’m a coach and all that, but there’s a good reason I mention it. That reason is this:

You Will Lose

Gimme a second to explain. When I’m working with a client I do whatever I can to help them make good decisions and get going with what’s most important to them, but often there’s One Big Thing that gets in the way of making progress. The simple fact is that right along with everything you stand to gain from what you’re working on and everything you’re putting in place, there also comes a loss.

Read that last sentence again, it’s important. It means that whatever you stand to gain - a fantastic new job, a fun relationship that gives you what you really need, an unshakeable sense of who you are or just a healthy sense of perspective - you’ll lose something else in the process.

Gain a relationship and lose your independence or time with friends or family. Gain a new job and lose your familiarity with your current job or lose out on free time. Gain a new way of looking at something and lose the comfort of seeing things the way you used to.

When I said “Yes” to taking on the Big Messy Project at my ad agency, I gained a bunch of great colleagues, a sizable challenge and a good fee; but I lost a great deal of time for writing and coaching.

This is one of the reasons we stop ourselves doing things we want and stay right where we are instead, because we don’t look at the equation between what we stand to lose and what we stand to gain.

What you stand to lose has a stronger influence over you than what you stand to gain, and that’s why this is such a big deal. The influence over you from any potential loss will outway the influence from any potential gain, unless, that is, you deliberately intervene.

It’s only by deliberately looking at the gain/loss equation that you can make a decision based on what’s most important to you rather than what that feeling of unease, uncertainty, unfamiliarity, fear or even sadness that comes with loss. Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Think of something you want to do but haven’t got off the starting blocks with yet. What have you been putting off that’s important to you? Where haven’t you been moving forwards where you want to? Write it down.
2. Write down the specifics of what you stand to gain by getting moving. What are the benefits? What would it mean to you? How would it feel to Step up and great a better game?
   Next, write down what you stand to lose by getting moving. What will you have to leave behind? What does it mean you have to let go of? How will things change?
3. Now look at what you stand to gain against what you stand to lose. What jumps out at you as most important? Imagine yourself in the future having got moving with what you’ve been putting off, having gained and lost along the way - how do you feel now?
4. How can you manage or minimise what you stand to lose? How can shift your viewpoint so that you’re okay with what you stand to lose? What’s a different way you can look at things so that it doesn’t look like a loss at all?

The worst thing you can do is make an automatic choice based entirely on what you’ll lose, without ever being aware of what you’ll gain.

Do things that way, and you’ll lose more than you’ll ever know.

I was sitting in a local coffee shop on Saturday morning, watching people coming and going in the heavy rain that was more monsoon than April shower. People were really struggling to walk along while keeping their umbrellas in their hands and the rain off. Faces all scrunched up in effort, shoulders hunched over, both hands gripping the umbrella, it looked a real struggle for a lot of people.

But every now and then I saw someone who was walking along as if it wasn’t raining at all. They didn’t carry an umbrella, they weren’t hunched over, their faces were relaxed and it looked like they were simply going about their business. It kind of winded me for a moment, because I saw right in front of me a glaringly simple example of what I’m always going on about with my clients - hootlessness.

It’s become one of my favourite words, first introduced to me by Michael Neill and originating from part of the Sedona Method. What is hottlessness? It’s a state of not giving a hoot about the outcome; it’s letting go of your attachment to what you want and simply allowing things to happen.

There’s a common assumption or belief that you need to fight or struggle to get what you want. All too often we think that we won’t be ‘happy’ until that moment comes along where you get what you want or get where you want to be going. The position that way too many people have adopted is that you need to fight and struggle or be unhappy until what you want comes along. Absolutely not true.

Hootlessness is knowing that your happiness isn’t dependant on getting the things you want. It’s knowing that you can get the things you really want, but that you don’t have to struggle, fight or suffer to get them. As long as you believe that you’re unhappy until you get what you want and you struggle, fight and suffer to get it, you’ll always have to struggle, fight and suffer and you’ll continue to be unhappy.

Just like the people in the rain, the people who thought they had to struggle were struggling. The people I saw who weren’t struggling were the people who knew full-well it was raining, but went about doing what they wanted to do, were enjoying their day and actually seemed lighter on their feet as a result.

An important point - don’t think for a second that hootlessness is the same as not caring, not feeling, ignoring anything ‘bad’ or can be boiled down to simple positive thinking (which is about as much use as a concrete parachute). You can be hootless and still care deeply about what’s important to you and still go after what matters.

Hootlessness is freedom, but it’s not apathy. It happens when you know what you really want and let go of the ‘Must make it happen, gotta get there, must do it now‘ approach. Hootlessness allows the best part of you to take the lead, the part that knows who you are and what you can do, and the part that’s more graceful, more fun- loving and does things with ease.

Hootlessness and real inner confidence are closely woven together, which is why this idea is such an important one to get hold of. So get out there in the rain and don’t give a hoot.

Can you be a leader and not be confident?

Hell yeah.

While the Obama’s, Clinton’s, Trump’s , Blair’s and even the Bush’s of the world all seem to be confident (even if where they’re placing their confidence is just plain nuts), I’m willing to bet that there are times when they don’t know what the heck they’re going to do and are shaking in their boots.

The same goes for leadership on a smaller scale. If you’re a new manager or have some leadership responsibility then don’t worry, you’re allowed to not be confident.

There are many styles and definitions of leadership, but as I see it, a leader is simply someone who takes people from point A to point B. A leader is someone who knows what the destination is, believes in the benefits of getting there and inspires others to join them on the journey.

A leader has confidence in the direction they’re heading in; a leader has confidence that the end point is ‘right’ and a leader has the confidence to fully engage with the journey.

And here’s the key difference – a leader does not need to be confident in the specifics of each step of that journey, they just need to be confident that the journey matters.

Read that last sentence again.

People can spot a leader who’s faking it from a mile away, so the real trick if you’re in a leadership position is to put effort into getting to the same place of (un)confidence. That’s true, authentic leadership, and the only way to have that is to know yourself well enough to have figured out that you can learn, adapt and grow, and from knowing what really matters to you.

This ties in nicely with the 3rd Principle of Self-Confidence - “Being truly confident doesn’t mean you can’t not be confident”, and the leaders who’ve inspired me and who I look up to most certainly have this in common. I’m willing to bet that the leaders you look up to do too.

I took the opportunity recently to rent out the DVD’s of the first season of the TV show ‘Fame‘, and it took me right back to those Thursday nights when I’d watch and wonder if I could go to drama school so I could be just like them, and all those afternoons singing along to the songs in my bedroom.

Hey, I was 11, what d’ya want?!

Even though it’s dated a little (cough) and some of the acting seems to come from the William Shatner school of emoting, I loved every minute. I particularly remember the relationship between Bruno (the curly haired piano playing guy with a shy streak a mile wide) and his music teacher, Mr Shorofsky (him in the picture there).

Bruno hated performing in front of people, preferring to keep his music to himself and keep his talent quiet, while the fantastically wise and cantankerous Mr Shorofsky thought that music is meant to be heard by everyone, and always fought with Bruno about his lack of self-belief.

In one episode, following a rare performance for the big end-of-show-song-and-dance, Mr Shorofsky stands up from his table and in the middle of rapturous applause loudly shouts, “Boo! Boo!” As the applause dies down he wanders nearer the stage and says to Bruno,

“You’ve just been booed Mr Martelli. While the men of the William Morris agency watched the pretty girls dance, they didn’t hear a note of your music.

You don’t get applause unless you grow. And you don’t grow unless you’re courageous enough to be bad.”

That Mr Shorofsky knew what he was talking about. You don’t win unless you grow. And you don’t grow unless you’re courageous enough to screw up.

The worst that can happen is that you get booed and feel silly for a while. Big deal. You’re still here. You’re still whole. The world didn’t end. You can pick yourself up, learn from it and get back into the game.

God knows I’ve screwed up my fair share of times, but I value each and every one of those times because I grow a little bit each time. The things I do now sometimes go badly, but that’s okay too. I wouldn’t have any successes at all if things didn’t go wrong from time to time. It’s part of the process, and don’t let those times damage how I see myself.

So that’s why I’m booing you and that’s why I’m saying that you stink - because I want you to be confident and courageous enough to be bad.

So go on - run the risk of being boo’d, run the risk of being bad at something and run the risk of screwing up. Screwing up really doesn’t matter; having the kahonas to be bad is what really matters.

I’m still feeling ropey, but as I eluded to in my last email, that doesn’t really matter when you add it all up. That’s especially true in light of viewing Randy Pausch’s lecture, and I want you to see it too because he’s right on the money. Take a look and then read on.

I love that Randy talks a lot about having fun and playing well. That’s exactly the approach I take with every one of my clients, and this is the only real choice you have:

To become a great player in a game that truly matters.

As Randy says, “experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want“. Absolutely true, and the fact that you might not get what you want and might not win does not change the fact that you love the game. That’s where the gold is.

So if you don’t make the decision to engage with a game that matters to you you’ll be missing out on the fun stuff, you’ll be missing out on what’s most important to you and you’ll be missing out on a truly confident life.

That’s what Ryan has by the bucket-load. (Here’s the full lecture on YouTube if you’re interested.)

Gen-Y professionals seem to generate 2 responses from people. The first is that they’re honest, capable, resourceful, valuable and enthusiastic individuals and a valuable asset to an organisation. The second is that they’re they’re a bunch of selfish, needy, disloyal know-it-alls who are headed for the biggest of reality-checks.

I’ve come across both of these Gen-Y types in my time, both personally and professionally (and I know which I prefer), but I don’t think this is particularly new. There have always been ‘good guys’ and there have always been ‘jerks’.

In a recent article in Business Week, Jack and Suzy Welch argue that there are two reasons why Gen-Y gets a bad rap -

“The first is the age-old human propensity to worry about the wayward values of ‘kids these days’. Your grandparents worried about your parents, who worried about you, and someday your kids will worry about theirs. The second reason is something we call trend inflation. With the explosion of media outlets in every form, all of them needing content, there has emerged a relentless parade of so-called cultural phenomena backed up by little more than the vague phrase, ‘experts say’.”

I think it’s a little more than that. We’re so indundated by media messages that the emergence of online digital media has helped shift things from a ‘push’ environment where information and ads are pushed onto the consumer to a ‘pull’ environment, where the consumer is massively more selective and able to filter what they see and when they see it.

This seems to have fed into the Gen-Y attitude, putting them in a much firmer position of choice about what happens and how. Undoubtedly there’s more choice these days - from what work you do and how you get it done, to what you eat and how you socialise, to where you live and how you pursue success.

And this is where Gen-Y can turn into a bunch of needy know-it-alls. The problem comes where they pursue an idea of success that they’ve absorbed rather than developed for themselves. Taking on an idea of success from the outside means that it will never mean much - it’ll only appear to mean something until that inevitable day when you wake up and find your life meaningless. It’s typically these people who go around with a sense of entitlement, acting like they know it all and (when you get right down to it) chasing something for no other reason than it looks good and keeps them busy.

The other approach, adopted by the kind of Gen-Y people that I love, is to figure out what success really looks like and get clear on what you want to build for yourself and those you care about. This comes from a place of knowing who you are and what you’re about - yep, a place of self-confidence.

Jack and Suzy echo this:

“…the question ‘Does success only have to be about money?’ came up just the other evening at dinner with a Gen Yer we know who earns a modest salary as an assistant golf pro. ‘I wake up every morning thrilled about getting to work and helping people,’ he told us. ‘That’s what makes me feel successful.’”

The Gen-Yers who understand that they’ll be able to live a full life and contribute to whatever rocks their world as long as they’re living life from the inside-out are the ones who will succeed. These are the folks who are making change happen, who’re setting up businesses in line with what they care about and who’re being snapped up by organisations around the world.

Remember who you are and what’s important to you; then you’ve got it made.