I can’t catch a ball to save my life. I suspect that if a Very Bad Man had an automatic weapon aimed at me and demanded that I either catch a ball or a bullet, I’d fumble the ball and get a bullet right in the kisser.

Fortunately I’m not a sports player or a likely target for deranged gun-owners, so there are very few times where that particular weakness of mine matters. Another of my weaknesses is that I like to be in control and have a tendency to think very logically, which sometimes strips away any spontaneity. Someone hurtling into my well-constructed plan could well be on the receiving end of a frosty reception as I hastily refocus and replan. The impact of that can be pretty harsh, both on me and other people

What I’ve learned is that my creativity and my need to have a whole load of fun can be a great way of dealing with that particular weakness. I recognise that planning everything and looking at everything coolly, is, well, just plain dull. I need to laugh myself silly and I need to allow myself to wing it sometimes.

I’ve got bags full of weaknesses and bags full of strengths, and I’ve learned a whole lot about both. I’ve seen too often that people are always quick to beat themselves up for their weaknesses, and that negative focus can quickly strip away your self confidence and self esteem.

Just as you need to be confident in your strengths, it can be a real eye opener to get to know a little bit about your weaknesses and learn some simple ways to kick them into touch.

Suzi was a client of mine whose promotion in her marketing agency meant that she had to travel around and deliver presentations to clients. She was terrified. She’d presented once before and had frozen solid, so her level of confidence about having to present regularly was zero.

She waxed lyrical about how badly organised she was, how badly she’d screwed up and how she just wasn’t a good presenter. She was really just focusing on her weaknesses (some of which she’d blown up out of all proportion) and creating her reality exclusively around those weaknesses. That’s where her focus was so that’s what her experience became, and her confidence suffered as a result.

In one session I took her through my strengths exercise, and we found that she was actually pretty brilliant creatively, had a huge amount of energy and determination, and was fantastic at connecting with people one-to-one both socially and professionally.

So what we did was find ways for her to play to her strengths in her new role. She looked at her presentations as a playground for her creativity which suddenly allowed her to enjoy what she was doing. She used her strengths in connecting with people to shift her thinking from having to present to a room full of strangers to presenting to a room full of individuals she could connect with.

Suzi’s still presenting, gets amazing feedback and absolutely loves it.

Your can more than compensate for any weaknesses you might have, so don’t beat yourself up or feel less than for having them. Here are my 4 strategies for managing them.

1. Transform them. Just like Suzi did, how can use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses? What strengths can you apply that will transform your ability to deliver? Your strengths are more than a match for any weakness, don’t let yourself think otherwise.
2. Eliminate them. Do you actually need to do what you’re weak at? If you don’t need to do it, why do it and beat yourself up about it? Like me playing catch, if you can eliminate the activity without dodging responsibility or eliminating something you enjoy or something important, by all means go for it.
3. Delegate them. Is there someone else you can give the task to? Can you outsource the activity or give it to someone who’s stronger at it than you? Again, if it’s something you can delegate without it being a way for you to dodge responsibility or avoid screwing up, then go for it.
4. Minimise them. How can you minimise the weakness? Is there something you can learn that will improve it or the impact that it has? What’s a way that you can practice or get better at something that might be a weak point? Remember, you’ll never excel at a weakness so know when to call it quits.

A couple of years ago I took a 4 hour a week shift in my local Gap store. I loved it. I broke the store’s sales records, had regular customers who scheduled their shopping for when I was working and I flirted like crazy. I was in my element.

But it was also the first time that I really saw how important body image is with regards to self-confidence.

I had great fun helping women pick out a pair of jeans, going through a few different pairs until we found ‘the one’. I was sure to give honest but positive feedback, and when a customer looked great in a pair of jeans I’d tell them. The effect of telling a woman that she looks great in a pair of jeans was instant.

Every time I did it she’d visibly change. Her posture shifted; her face shone; she became self-approving instead of self-deprecating, and her whole personality seemed to relax. The first time I saw it happen I was pretty stunned at how one little compliment had such a huge effect in their self-esteem.

I see this everywhere on the TV too. There are so many makeover shows (What Not to Wear, 10 Years Younger, How to Look Good Naked, etc, etc.) where, at the end of the show, the woman always grins broadly and her friends and family all say how confident she’s become – something the restyled woman will also enthuse about.

Research indicates that when women over 18 look at themselves in the mirror, 80% are unhappy with what they see. So I’m willing to bet that a month or two down the line those made-over women will slip back into their old way of thinking about themselves, and their self-confidence will slip backwards too. The same goes for those women who I said looked great in their new pair of jeans – they may have been buoyed temporarily but would soon have gone back to their old way of seeing themselves (until the next time they went shopping).

Those makeover shows and my role in Gap all did the same thing – to build someone’s self esteem and self-confidence by dressing up the outside and hoping that it leaks through to the inside.

I’m not about to tell you that “it’s what’s on the inside that matters”, because it’s often more complicated than that. The fact is that your relationship with your body is important - it would be stupid for me to tell you otherwise. If you have a bad body image you have a bad relationship with your body. It’s like having a bad relationship with your partner and not knowing it – you’ll be sure to suffer as a result.

And that means that your body image matters.

Your job is to get along with yourself no matter what, and that includes getting along with your body. By all means hit the gym if there’s something you’re not happy with that’s within your power to change, but don’t go too far and don’t let that be a conditional relationship. Don’t tell yourself “I’ll be happy with myself when I lose 6 pounds” or “I’ll be happy when I can get into those jeans I wore 5 years ago” – that’s making your happiness dependent on a bad relationship with your body and it won’t work.

Also feel free to enjoy a compliment, but don’t go searching for validation in order to get some relief from a bad relationship with your body.

With some clients I’ll get into this area with them, while with others it’s not an issue. What’s abundantly clear and what I’ve seen work is that a good body image starts with radical self-honesty. That means being totally honest about what you like and what you might not like so much, and it’s only with complete self-honesty that you put yourself in a place where you can make different choices. That’s how you’re able to celebrate what you like about your body and learn to be okay with what you don’t.

Let me know how your relationship with your body affects your self-confidence, and check out this neat little body image test.

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

If I was to sit you down now and go through everything that you’re currently getting up to I’m sure it would be a pretty long list. All that stuff in your head, all that stuff that occupies your time, all the people, all the to-do’s, all those things you’d love to do if only you had the time. Yep, it’s a pretty long list.

To paraphrase Shakespeare in the quotation from Macbeth above (my English Literature O’Level wasn’t wasted), you get so busy with everything on your list that all that ’stuff’ becomes a load of busyness and pressure that sometimes doesn’t add up to a whole lot.

So sometimes I throw this curveball question at my clients – “On a scale of one to ten, with ten being you at your best, how much like you do you feel right now?”

Think about it. Right now, as you’re reading these words, how much like you do you really feel?

Being a ten out of ten means that you feel absolutely right, like you’re completely yourself, in the perfect place or that you’re able to be exactly who you want to be. Take a moment to figure out where you are on that scale right now.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that when I ask people that question, the vast majority quietly answer “6“, which is a pretty low place to be on the ‘Being You’ scale.

Blowing my own trumpet for a moment, by the time I’m finished with them I always hear them confidently say “9” (10 out of 10 is normally reserved for those utterly ‘perfect’ moments that come and go).

Wherever you scored yourself, it means that the remainder of the scale is busy doing something other than being you. If you scored yourself as a 6 out of 10, it means that 40% of you is busy doing something else. While 60% of you is busy being you the other 40% is occupied with other things that have nothing to do with being you.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that seems as crazy as a soup sandwich.

As long as there’s a chunk of you that’s busy doing something else you’re not giving yourself the chance to be at your best or to feel like yourself, and over time it’s pretty obvious that you’re sense of self will shrink along with your self-confidence.

You need to get to grips with what that other chunk of you is focused on – otherwise you’ll never feel as much like yourself as you deserve to feel.

That’s part of the thrill for me in working with my clients – that I get to see them climb that scale and become more ‘them’. So think about what that other chunk of you is doing. What stuff is it busy trying to deal with? Is it struggling to find a way to make what you want happen? Is it resisting the place that it finds itself in? What’s distracting it? Is it dreaming about what comes next?

Having a piece of you that’s busying itself with not being you makes as much sense as having Ernest Borgnine lead a Jazzercise class.

So tell me, what are you really up to?

I love getting good feedback, and just recently I’ve had some great feedback from my coaching and from the ad agency I’m freelancing at. Coaching clients are getting results and the agency have asked me to stick around for another couple of months (I said ‘Yes’, coz I’m having fun).

It feels good to know I’m doing a great job and that people value what I do, but there’s this niggle at the back of my head that says, “Steve, if you’re so flamin’ confident, why is it that you’re feeling great simply because someone said something nice about you.” Giving it some thought, here’s what I think.

Yes, people spend too much time looking for signs that they’re doing the right thing or on the right path. Sometimes we get that by hearing that we’re doing well at work, sometimes it could be encouragement from a friend or loved one, and sometimes we get that feedback by seeing our material wealth or possessions growing.

It’s all about validation, and speaking as a human being it’s something that I need. I know that I’m good at what I do, that I work hard and deliver results, but that knowledge and that feeling of capability is internal. Without external validation there’s no feedback, and everything I do exists in a vacuum.

I can say to myself “Nice job Steve” and “Well done Steve, did really well there“, but that’s a different experience to having someone say those things to me.

Knowing that I’ve done a good job carries with it a degree of satisfaction and fulfilment based on whatever the activity means to me. When there’s external validation of something I’ve done it carries a different experience of satisfaction and fulfilment based on what it means to someone else, and that’s where the difference is.

The problem comes, of course, when you start seeking out that external validation as the only means of feeling good about yourself. Start people pleasing and doing things with the agenda of attracting validation and you’ll end up chasing things based on what they mean to other people and not what they mean to you.

That’s a slippery slope that leads to you’re-okay-and-I’m-not-okay-ville. It’s a place that sucks, and going there will only damage your self-confidence and self-esteem (i.e. that’s bad).

So the difference is one of focus. Rather than looking for external validation and aligning your behaviour to deliver that, you need to align your behaviour so that it leads to great work, then look at and acknowledge what you did to deliver that great work.

The cool thing is - and I didn’t know this when I started coaching myself on this whole ‘Why do I need validation‘ thing - that aligning your behaviour to deliver great work is really the same thing as playing a game that matters to you. Make a choice to engage with something that matters and play to your best level, and not only will you feel like you’re doing great work but it’ll be a whole lot more likely that you’ll get some great feedback from others too.

So I’m not bothered by the fact that I love external validation, as long as I’m sure my focus is in the right place.

Who doesn’t love a bit of validation once in a while?

A lot of people feel crappy about who they are, where they are and what they’ve got. If you want the same results, here’s how to do it:

1. Take criticism personally.
   When someone tells you that you’ve done something wrong, that a piece of work isn’t up to scratch, that you look tired, that you made a mistake or that they don’t like what you’re wearing – take it all on board.

   Recognise that other people are able to look objectively at what’s happening, so they’re better placed to tell you the truth. They’re most probably right and what do you know anyway?

2. Think that every challenge is bigger than you
   Face it; there are some tasks you’re just not up to. Landing that exciting new job, getting a promotion, taking on the ‘big project’ or building a relationship that really works – these are all big challenges and you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew.

   Some things are just bigger than you are, so it’s better to take on small stuff that you know you can do.

3. Focus on what you’re worst at
   You might be pretty poor at creative thinking. You might stink at financial planning. You might be rubbish at presenting or you might suck at taking part in high-pressure meetings.

   It’s good to know what you’re not good at so that you can avoid doing those things. The more you look at the areas you’re weakest in the easier it is to steer clear of them.

4. Make sure there’s very little ‘You’ time
   Life’s busier than ever, right? You’ve got loads going on at work, loads happening with friends and all kinds of demands on your time. The best thing to do is to plan things out so that you can do everything. It’s good to be busy and running around after everyone else will mean that everyone’s happy and nobody will have a problem with you. It’s a win-win!
5. Let your imagination run riot
   Life always has something nasty up its sleeve, so it’s a good idea to look at all the things that could go wrong.

   It’s much better to think about what could happen than have it come along out of the blue and blindside you. You don’t want to be picking up the pieces all the time, so let your imagination figure out all the things that can go wrong so that you know what might happen ahead of time.

6. Stay right where you are
   How many times have you taken a chance, only for things to go wrong? How many times have you grasped an opportunity only for it to slip between your fingers?

   There’s always another screw-up waiting for you, so it’s better to stay right where you are. Where you are right now is a known quantity – it’s safe, warm and comfortable. Doesn’t that sound better than going out there, screwing up and looking stupid?

7. Set your expectations low
   Set your expectations high and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Have high expectations of yourself and what you can do and you’re in line for the biggest of reality checks.

   Things rarely turn out as you want them to, so set your expectations low so that you don’t end up more disappointed than necessary.

Follow these simple steps and I guarantee that in 14 days you’ll be feeling so crappy you won’t want to get out of bed in the morning. And who wouldn’t want to spend all day in bed – nice result!

Holy moly, I hate being ill.

I’m writing this post from under the duvet, and I swear I’ve never felt this bad (perhaps with the exception of severe food poisoning in Morocco when I was 13, which really wasn’t pretty). For the last 6 or 7 days I’ve felt as sick as 10 men, and while I was hoping that all I had was a seasonal cold that would be gone in a couple of days, the doc says that it’s full on flu.

Great. Just what I need.

Being ill brings the worst out in me. In the few moments when I’m awake I start beating myself up about the fact that I’m ill.

“I should be getting more work done.”
“I haven’t written anything for days.”
“I’m behind on my paperwork.”
“I’m letting people down.”
“I’m wasting time being ill.”
“I’m a bad coach.”
“I’m a bad project manager.”
“I’m a bad friend.”

and on and on…

I know that I’m thinking that way simply because the better pieces of me can’t think straight right now, so I’m just doing what the doc told me to do and letting it all ride.

It’s a great example of how everything you have in your life - family, friends, home, finances, partner and of course your body and your physical fitness impacts how you feel about yourself. What you have in each of your environments (as I call them) either adds to or takes away from your sense of self. Any glitch in any of those areas and you’ll feel it.

So yes, it’s incredibly frustrating that I’m not getting round to all the things I should be doing and that those better parts of me aren’t around for a while, and I can only vaguely imagine everything that I’ll need to do when I’m back to normal. But for now, the most beneficial thing for me to do is trust that I’ll be back on form in a couple of days and will soon get everything back on track.

That’s like an extra layer of comfort and an extra feeling of warmth. So while I may be feeling uber-crappy, I’m so glad I can see through the crap I’m telling myself and have complete trust that I’ll be back on top form soon…

I don’t want to sound smug, but I’ve got a pretty good life right now.

That’s not to say that life hasn’t slapped me round the face, stuck its foot out to trip me over or driven through a puddle and drenched me.

When I was 19 I spent 18 months on prescription painkillers; I had no idea who I was and no clue what it meant to live a life. I walked around lost, feeling numb.

When I turned 30 I hit another crisis point. My head just stopped working; ideas escaped me, the simplest actions seemed impossible and I didn’t see anyone for 3 months because I just couldn’t understand the thread of conversations. I ended up on a cocktail of anti-depressants for a year.

Why am I telling you this? For the simple reason that I’m glad I went through those times. I’m glad I’ve been completely lost in the middle of my own life. I’m glad I’ve been lower than low. I’m glad I’ve plumbed the depths.

Not for any masochistic reasons and I certainly don’t want a medal (although I do like shiny things), I just want to point out that without both of those times in my life (and all the other, smaller blips) I wouldn’t have discovered who I was.

The challenges you face in life don’t make you who you are, they reveal who you are.

Ever since I started coaching some 6 years ago, I’ve always said that it’s not what happens to you it’s what you do with what happens to you. Even though there are times when life just sucks, that may be the truest thing I’ve ever said.

Without those hard times and without those times that make you question how the heck you can go on, you don’t know the full extent of who you are and what you’ve got. Without adversity, you’ll never know what you’re truly capable of.

Every crisis makes you more adept at living your life. Each adversity adds to your inner confidence.

Live your life without experiencing adversity and you’ll be living in a cushioned, protected, safe and heavily limited environment. And that’s why adversity is a valid and necessary ingredient for truly confident living.

Don’t give the hard times a bad rap; you need them.

So it seems that an increasing number of women in their 20’s are having botox treatment even though they don’t need it.

One London clinic reports that a quarter of its clients are under 30, and that this number’s increasing. Botox expert Dr Nick Lowe says, “You’ve got to have some lines and wrinkles to start with. A lot of people come in as a result of peer pressure, when there’s absolutely no need for them to have it.”

Having botox when you’re in your 40’s or 50’s is one thing, but having poison injected into your face in your 20’s because you want to fit in really doesn’t sound like a good idea; it’s plain crazy.

However these people are justifying it in their heads, I agree with Dr Lowe that it stems from some kind of peer pressure (whether direct or perceived).

Peer pressure comes from a lack of security (”I’m not good enough“) and needing to feel validated (”I need peoples’ approval to feel that I’m good enough“) among your peers. It’s a fundamental lack of self esteem and confidence that no amount of botox is going to fix.

These young women are fooling themselves about their reasons for seeking botox treatment – a strategy that will only spell more confidence-related problems as time goes by.

Stop it. Address the core issue and forget about papering over the cracks and covering up the wrinkles.

Let me know what you think - would you have botox in your 20’s?

Here’s an email I got from Sally back in September:

“There is one question I have for you - how do you handle family member(s) and a partner who have ways to destroy your confidence levels? Growing up, I was an over-weight girl and my Mom and sister put me down a lot, but I was not afraid to have fun & express myself and had lots of friends. Nowadays, I’m in much better shape, but I keep to myself - I don’t do anything but go to work & school (no time and no REAL friends to be with) and it seems my partner, my sister & mom still have a way to bring me down. How can I overcome this?”

- Sally in Boston

Anything to do with family is a really tough one, because at the end of the day there’s only so far you can go. You can’t choose your family, so with that has to come a certain amount of acceptance. It sounds like you’ve had a tough time growing up and have had to put up with a lot of negativity. Good for you for seeing that this doesn’t have to define you and that you can have something better for yourself – I can’t emphasise enough how important that is.

You know, if you’re told enough times that you’re not good enough you might start to believe it one day. What I can tell you without doubt is that you are better and more resourceful than you know. What your partner, Mom and sister say and do is just plain wrong.

Do they know how much their behaviour is affecting you? It’s possible that because they don’t know how you’re feeling that they assume their behaviour is okay. If it’s damaging your sense of self their behaviour is not okay.

Your responses to others’ behaviour teaches them what is and isn’t acceptable. If these people have learned previously that it’s acceptable to do what they’re doing, then it’s time for you to let them know that it isn’t what you expect anymore, and that you deserve to be treated with respect.

It may be that you’ve gone down that road and things are still the same. In that case it really turns into two questions – “How else can I turn this around?” and “What am I prepared to do to turn things around?”

It starts with you, and perhaps the biggest question you need to answer is “What are the reasons I’ve chosen a partner who puts me down and why do I tolerate how my Mom and sister treat me?”

Sally sent me an update recently:

“Thank you for thinking of me. I think there are a lot of people who can relate to me & my situation. I can honesty say I am not the same person who wrote you a few months ago. My energy level has increased, my confidence levels have increased. I know I have no control of other people & what they say and do but I can control how it affects me. I believe the way they treat others is a reflection of how they feel about themselves. No one deserves to be degraded by another. We are all flesh & blood. No one is more superior than another. Some people might be richer, skinnier or more beautiful but it doesn’t make them a better person. Some people might have nothing…..(material)…and still have everything.

You might feel like someone has control of your life but as soon as you realize that when you look in that mirror & it’s only you…it’s your life…..you can make the first step in taking control of your life. Only you can make it happen.”

Nicely done Sally.

The idea of responsibility is a simple one. The dictionary definition talks about ‘the state of being responsible’, ‘a burden of obligation’ and ‘reliability or dependability’.

Crikey, no wonder it’s something that frequently scares the bejeezus out of people. I don’t want a ‘burden of obligation’ - could that sound any more albatross-around-my-neck-ey? The concept seems to leave little room for fun or spontaneity.

But the bottom-line truth is this - you’re 100% responsible for your life and how you experience it.

That might sound like a cliche and it might even sound trite, but if you gloss over it I guarantee you’ll never get true inner confidence.

This is something I’ve personally grappled with, so I know it’s a toughie. In the past, the idea that I was wholly responsible for being on anti-depressants, for having a crappy career and for not having people in my life who I could turn to was something that wouldn’t even register with me. It was much easier to put some of the blame (at the very least) for where I was in life down to external factors - that damn company, my friends were shallow and too wrapped up in their own stuff, why hadn’t anyone discovered how amazing I was?

Blaming external factors meant that I could hope those factors could turn in my favour one day.

I was living in a very convenient state of denial. If where I was in my life was 100% down to me - 100% my responsibility - then apparently I was pretty much screwed.

What I now see is that I was, and am, 100% responsible for my life. Asking ‘Who’s to blame?’ at whatever level of consciousness shifts the focus from what we can do and puts it onto what’s been done to us. I’d cast myself as the victim, and in doing that I gave away all my power – which continued to damage my confidence and was exactly what I needed to keep close in order to change things.

I kinda like you, so I want to make sure you don’t go down the same road I did.

Please don’t assign blame, point your finger or ask ‘Whose fault is it?’. That’s a great way of disowning parts of your life and giving away your power, and that will only undermine what you’re capable of and your sense of who you are. Let that happen and you’ll strip your self-confidence bare.

(BTW, I’ve got a really quick exercise on this, so let me know if you’d like me to send it through to you.)