The Confidence Doc

Empowerment: Limiting and Empowering Beliefs

Confidence and Empowerment begins with beliefs.  Beliefs are not written in stone by any means.  Beliefs are formed from how you perceive the thoughts and feelings that you have from your experiences and from what you were told about how life works. 

Now it does not mean that the belief has to be the Truth of the Universe.  It does not matter.  If the belief is emotionalized, a heart-felt way of seeing reality, then the outcome of the belief will be what impacts your life. 

I used to think that what I believed was the way life was – end of conversation.  Little did I know that my ego was running the show and the way I was looking at life was limiting my experience in every area of my life.  It really is “be it unto you as you believe”. 

Our faith determines how we see.  Most of us have heard the saying “seeing is believing”.  The truth is, “believing is seeing”.  You can take ten people and they can give you ten versions of “how life is”.  Some of them may also get highly defensive and angry if your version differs from their own.  

Most of us over-identify with our beliefs as if they are WHO we are and not simply WHAT we think!  YOU are not your thoughts! 

Here is the bottom line:

Personal Empowerment: Would You Rather Be Happy or Right?

Personal empowerment cannot occur if you keep doing the same thing and using the same information that got you where you are today.  How are you ever going to expand into a bigger role in life if you keep closing your mind to new information? 

Einstein is credited with saying that it is insanity to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.  How true! 

If you want to stop struggling and feeling like life is one big survival of the fittest contest, you have to be willing to release your old beliefs and paradigms that no longer work for you.  Why is this so hard? 

There can be many reasons, but one is that from a science standpoint, once you wire into your nervous system what you believe to be true, you will only tend to notice what aligns with your “reality”.  Reality is relative; my reality is not your reality. 

Once you start to unconsciously believe what you do, your conscious choice shuts down and you “fall asleep”.  If you are not aware or paying attention you will live your life on autopilot.  If your life is working very well for you, this is fine, but if it is not, your suffering will tend to only increase with time, like a growing cancer. 

There was an article written in Science Daily.com July 2, 2009, entitled “People Sometimes Seek the Truth, but Prefer Like-Minded Views”.  In other words, birds of a feather flock together.  In this article, done as a collaborative effort of several universities, it was shown that most people prefer to select information that supports their existing views. 

Personal Transformation: Rising Above Your Present Drama

Transformation literally means to rise above form, or transcend “form”.  Form is what you are seeing in your world at the moment.  And here is what I’ve discovered: what I see was formed by my perceptions. 

My perceptual system is unique to me in many ways.  My thoughts, emotions and feelings create the vision and energy that forms how I experience life.  I know that most people still believe that we are hapless victims of circumstances.  I used to. 

It has been so freeing to realize that this is just not the case.  While I cannot control everything in my world, I can control how I react to a great degree.  Here’s an as yet little known point that is powerful - how conscious are you to recognize that the physical world starts within the quantum field of all that is? 

In practical terms, everything is energy and then the invisible, tiny particles of waves and particles “gel” into form according to our consciousness.  While science shows there is no such thing as space and that the “observer” affects the movement of the quantum field, there is much controversy over “what is consciousness”? 

Confidence and Self-Esteem Building from Cancer?

Confidence is built by taking action while self-esteem, strictly speaking, is about how you feel about yourself.  Self-esteem is related to your self-image. 

I read an article the other day from an online site www.newswise.com entitled “Cancer, a Silver-Lining?” dated June 22, 2009.  In it, Dr. Patricia Mumby from Loyola University medical center in Chicago was interviewed regarding the life-changing effects of cancer on the attitudes of the patient involved. 

While the initial response, understandably was of anxiety and shock, the patients who fared the best ultimately did so by changing their minds. 

“People who are going through cancer treatments have to face challenges head-on and when they are able to master them and move forward, that builds self-esteem. Coping and adapting to life stresses builds self-confidence,” said Mumby.

Once again, the insight applies regarding the fact that it is not what happens to you, but your RESPONSE that determines the outcome of your life.  I have “response-ability” and so do you.  We are not hapless victims of circumstance. We can use any circumstance to develop mental muscle and find the positive life lesson or treasure in the trial.

Confidence: Your Response Ability Reflects Your Inner Power

Confidence has to do with managing your own thoughts, feelings and emotions.  Your perceptions are changeable to the degree that you take conscious control over the management of your own inner world.  Most people seem to be too pre-occupied with what others are doing to the neglect of their own personal development. 

This tendency is often related to the egoic need to deny our own weaknesses, which will also cause us to not develop our strengths and talents.  It is not what happens to you that determines the outcome of your life, but how you RESPOND to the situations and circumstances that you encounter. 

You have a unique destiny that you can move consciously toward, or if you choose to stay asleep and sleep walk through life you will tend to stumble into a fate that is less elegant and empowered.  The choice is ultimately yours as we have been given the gift of free will. 

This free will though, is dependent upon your level of conscious awareness.  If you stay in the victim, blame game mode, you will feel that you are simply tossed to-and-fro upon the waves of life.  However, once you are willing to accept yourself where you are and become willing to take responsibility without blame, you can consciously start to develop your “response ability”. 

This is your ability to make conscious choice about where you want to go.  Where ever you currently find yourself was created by past choices and decisions, whether consciously or unconsciously chosen.  The key is to in the present time, the now, start to learn how to manage the way that you think and feel, setting conscious intention to heal illusions and perceptions that limit you, and change the energy that is constrictive and non-productive to one that is expansive and full of possibility. 

Self-Mastery and Conscious Creation

Self-Mastery is having awareness of your contribution to the creative process of your own reality.  It is mastery over the ego intellect and using the power within you to consciously create the outcome of your life. 

This is where purpose and destiny comes in.  If you sleepwalk through life on autopilot, unaware of how your thought and feelings create your experience of reality, you will continue to feel victimized and will play it safe as to avoid confronting your own limiting beliefs. 

This will take you to a fate of living out your unconscious, robot-like habits that have been passed down to you by well meaning, but also often unhappy or unfulfilled people.  If you wake up and understand the creative process, you can begin to consciously unfold your true destiny.

Marching toward this "fate" is certainly not thriving.  As Maya Angelou said, “surviving is important, thriving is elegant”.  Want to start living an elegant life?  One step is to start to realize that your thoughts and feelings really matter and that they are the starting point of everything from your health, to your wealth. 

This will determine ultimately where you live and work, and who you attract in your relationships.  We are hearing more and more about the “Law of Attraction”.  This law that addresses the energy of vibration is nothing new, but due to a number of factors, it is beginning to surface into the awareness of the masses of people. 

This is good as it opens the door to having new conversations about possibility.  We hear about how our brains use only 10% of its capacity.  Well, aren’t you curious about the other 90%?  I was and I am.  This is why I started out, even at the age of twelve, questioning life and wondering how I could improve the quality of my life. 

We have been subject to his law of vibration all along; the issue is we have not been aware of it and we have been creating what we don’t want. 

Empowerment: Are You Waiting For Permission To Make Changes?

To empower, as defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary, means, “to make (someone) stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights.”  I like this definition.  I particularly go for the idea of empowering yourself. 

You are ultimately the only authority over your life.  I was on a panel over the past weekend that had as the topic of discussion “Anti-aging”.  Interestingly, everyone on the panel had at least some non-traditional opinions about aging. 

I also added some information that has had formal study from Neuroscience that shows that stress actually has a damaging effect on gene replication in cells within your body’s immune system.  Stress can damage the end of genes known as telomeres and this can accelerate aging in the body. 

A gentleman from the audience who has a background in science suddenly appeared to become agitated and voiced his opinion that he was disappointed in the panel because we were all bringing only our “opinions”, “advice” and unscientific information to the discussion.  Now mind you, the information on telomeres that I mentioned is science, so he was not correct on this matter. 

A very intelligent physician on the panel who was a plastic surgeon and an integrative medicine specialist acknowledged that while it was true that some of the information being given did not have formal, establishment science to back it up, clinically the results from experience showed that they had a place in the healing tool box.  My response was “right on”.  I agree. 

If you wait on formal science to give us permission to make personal change in our health, you may be dead and gone by the time academia puts its stamp of approval on it and the information makes its ways into the mainstream textbooks.  The books are usually at least a decade behind in the school system. The point is, science can be slow to change. 

The Gratitude Attitude: How to Get Happy

Happiness, according to a survey done by Tom W. Smith of the University of Chicago’s National Opinion research Center, is at its lowest levels since 1972.  According to this survey, 14 percent of Americans are “not too happy”. 

Considering some of the statistics I come across, 14 percent would be lower than expected.  In a study from 2007 by the US department Center of Disease Control, it was estimated that out of the 2.4 BILLION drugs prescribed, 118 million were for anti-depressants, followed by 113 million for high blood pressure (a sign of life under pressure). 

In searching the Internet, I found that the estimates for anti-depressant usage is between 4-10%.  It said the use of antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs -- those that affect brain chemistry -- has skyrocketed over the last decade. 

I suspect that some of those people who were surveyed were either not being honest, or it was not a very good population sampling.  I believe a part of the problem with unhappiness is that many people do not realize that happiness cannot be found outside of themselves. 

I know this from personal experience.  I once thought that if I could just obtain a good, relationship, money, career, physical appearance – among other things – that then I would be happy.  I have discovered that none of these things could fill what I have come to call, a spiritual void. 

Happiness starts within you; it is a spiritual quality that I believe is linked directly to the force of gratitude. 

Confidence Building is an Inside Job

Confidence building is truly an “inside job”.  It is time for us to wake up as humanity and realize this.  As long as we keep waiting for others to tell us who we are, what we can accomplish in life, and whether or not we are worthy, we will continue to play it safe, which means to play small. 

Our new president, Barack Obama, cast aside all of the naysayers and went for his dream, his purpose, his mission.  His personal power and his confidence is a shining example to us all of what we are capable of.  He is not unique.  He has a unique purpose and gifts, but his ability to raise his confidence is not unique. 

We are all wired, at a spiritual level to be able to step up to a higher level of being that will lead us to our dream.  I have never had a desire to be the president.  I have leadership ability and gifts, but my purpose is not the same as his.  You too have a purpose.  Everyone does. 

But until you start to master the belief that you are “not enough”, or that you are powerless, which is really a conditioned belief, you will continue to go through life stressed out and living in a chronic state of fear and competition. 

Your focus has to be within because your inner world of thought creates your outer world of experience.  What you think and feel creates your "reality".  This is now even science. 

Your Confidence Shapes Your Destiny

Your confidence level can make or break you.  Your faith in your ability to bring forth the hidden gifts and talents that you were born with will determine whether or not you will be able to fulfill your destiny and share them with the world. 

As I witnessed our new 44th President of the United States of American give his acceptance speech, I was thinking about the courage that it took for him to face the challenges that he had to overcome and the faith that he obviously has in God and the Spirit of God that enlivens him. 

No doubt he had to overcome all manner of discouragement and the lack of faith of those around him, that what he was endeavoring to do was even possible.  But to his credit, he dreamed the impossible dream, and with humility, faith, hope and courage, empowered by love, he made it happen. 

As the scripture say, “be it unto you, according to your faith….nothing is impossible….” Just by following him over his journey during the past several years, I could see evidence of growing confidence in President Obama. 

Confidence is not the same as arrogance; in fact, true core confidence has the sure stamp of humility written all over it.  You see, the more truly confident you are, from the inside out, the less need you have for power over others. 

When you KNOW who you are, there is no need to feel superior to someone else or to belittle others.  In fact, you are sure to inspire others to pursue their own greatness, which is what Barack Obama has done for me. 

While I am so proud of him, I do not live my life vicariously through him, but I am endeavoring to reach my own God given potential, for I too have a unique, special purpose at this time in our history, as we all do.  You see, you were born for such a time as this.