Picture this: you, your son (or daughter), and a couple of your close family members outside clipping berries and leaves from bushes just hours before your Thanksgiving dinner is to be served. You feel relaxed, you’re laughing, breathing in fresh air, connecting with the people around you and really enjoying yourself.

Now, picture this: You’re outside on your own, clipping berries and leaves (to be used as decoration on your Thanksgiving table). You feel hurried and tired, trying to fit in one more thing before you take care of more Thanksgiving dinner details. You’re rushing to get back to the house because you know you have more to do.

My guess is you can relate to both scenarios, I know I can. I’m happy to say the first scenario depicts my personal experience this past Thanksgiving. But, above and beyond this point, the first scenario, is all about allowing others to support you. Accepting help from others and NOT trying to do everything yourself.

Accepting help from others is a GREAT way to grow your confidence, and begin to feel better about yourself.

How?

You see, most people have it backward (I know I did for quite sometime). They think, if you do it all yourself you’ll gain recognition from others, and approval- wow, look how wonderful that woman is, she just did all that herself!! (Sound familiar?)

The reality of this situation is this though- you end up tired, running yourself ragged, maybe getting sick, maybe overeating because you’re stressed, and, you have no free time to have fun because you dedicated all your time to taking care of this thing (or many things) all yourself.

Sound like a confidence booster? NOT!!!

So, the bottom line is this- if you want to grow your confidence and feel better about yourself, you need to go against that urge to be a one woman powerhouse and instead, allow yourself to reach out, ask for, and accept support.

I promise you, once you do, you’ll feel a load of weight lifted off your shoulders and just that alone is a serious confidence booster!

How to bring this into your personal life: Look around at your daily life. Where have you taken on too much? Where do you run yourself most ragged? Now, make a plan to get support. Reach out to your spouse, call a family member, a friend, someone who can help you ease your work load.

Good luck! Let me know how it turns out, I’d love to hear, I invite you to post your comments below! Thanks for sharing!

Would you like a gift to get you started with living your best life possible? A life full of genuine happiness & confidence? A life where you look at yourself in the mirror everyday and feel GREAT with what you see reflected back? I have 5 f*ree Dare to Be You audio tips you can register to receive- now.

Sound good? I welcome you to sign up here!

I use to strive to dot all my I’s and cross all my T’s.

What do I mean by that?

I use to strive to do everything perfectly. I thought that was the way you were “suppose” to do things!

Your life is not best served if you too are striving to dot all your I’s and cross all your T’s. It’s time to color outside the lines and learn to be okay with that.

Guess what? If you’re striving for perfection you’re not being REAL.

The BEST, absolute most important thing you can do to in this lifetime to boost your confidence is to NOT strive for perfection, to not hold yourself to such high friggin’ standards that you beat yourself up when you can’t reach them. No way Jose!

And, as we all know, beating yourself up only dismantles your confidence, not add to it!

Instead, you want to begin to realign your intention for yourself- perfection in the garbage- ditch it!!

By the way, holding onto reaching for perfection will only cause your self esteem to falter even more. Think about it. When you try to create something that’s perfect; a project at home, at work, school, a special event… whatever it may be- you tend to gauge yourself based on everything being done just right, no ‘mistakes’. If you do something wrong- God forbid- you then drill into yourself for making what probably was a minor mistake. Would you treat your best friend this way? I hope not. And, I’m guessing probably not. So, skip treating yourself this way too!

This week’s Confidence Upgrade:

Find 1-2 places in your life where you try to have everything look or be “just right”. Notice it, acknowledge it to yourself, and then lower your standards. Yup, you read that right- lower your standards! Remember your goal is to sincerely love yourself more, in order to do this you have to allow yourself to expect things to be off sometimes and most importantly, you want to begin to cultivate grace for yourself. You want to do things less then perfectly and recognize and go as far as to say to yourself- good job- you’re still wonderful, I love you AND, I appreciate you for being REAL!

Yes this is the goal, to “mess things up” and still feel good about yourself- to love yourself anyway!

Have fun lowering your standards! Wink, wink!

As always, thank you for your interest.

By the way, I’d love to hear from those of you who have also strived for perfection. Where did it show up in your life. Have you ever tried to let it go before. Where are you at with it now? I invite you to post your comments! Thanks so much for sharing!

Would you like a gift to get you started with living your best life possible? A life full of genuine happiness & confidence? A life where you look at yourself in the mirror everyday and feel GREAT with what you see reflected back? I have 5 f*ree Dare to Be You audio tips you can register to receive- now.

Sound good? I welcome you to sign up here!

Ever had an experience where you felt like people where analyzing and criticizing what you’re up to. At work: maybe co-workers criticized a mistake you made. At home, perhaps your spouse is quick to show you exactly what he or she thinks is wrong with what you do! Or maybe it’s a sibling, they see what you do as wrong instead of seeing what you do as wonderful!

Well, in any of these instances, the key is to focus on the truth first. Are you really and truly a bad person because you made a little mistake? Are you as bad as your spouse might have you think you are at times? The honest Truth is NO. Absolutely not! Think about it. Go into this thought for a few minutes. Are you a bad person or a good person?

By the way if you are questioning this- You are innately a GOOD person!

Find 5 examples of where you’ve been a good person in your life. Dig, keep going until you find at least 5 situations that exemplify your goodness. Really think about each situation.

Now, remind yourself of your Truth. You are a good person and probably a great person, so say this out loud. Really, say this out loud at least 10 times. Who cares if you feel silly, say it!!

Saying this out loud allows you to begin to feel this, and really integrate into your body that, yes indeed, you are a great person- regardless of others judgements!

Now, remember, the next time you’re in the company of someone who’s criticizing you, try hard not to take it to heart, and if need be, walk yourself through these steps again. This approach will help to keep your confidence up when things get tricky. Trust me, I know from personal experience! (Wink, wink!)

As always, thank you for listening.

By the way, I’d love to hear from those of you who have experienced someone being critical of you. Who was it and how did you handle it? I invite you to post your comments! Thanks so much for sharing!

Would you like a gift to get you started with living your best life possible? A life full of genuine happiness & confidence? A life where you look at yourself in the mirror everyday and feel GREAT with what you see reflected back? I have 5 f*ree Dare to Be You audio tips you can register to receive- now.

Sound good? I welcome you to sign up here!

Ok. I’ve been pretty busy lately. And as I was trying to keep my life feeling balanced, (which I was doing a fairly good job at- and believe me, this hasn’t always been the case,) I found I was starting to feel ungrounded, you know, a little nervous and off kilter. My mind was beginning to worry that I might not have enough time for everything I was hoping to do.

So, I closed my eyes and told myself I had plenty of time. I opened my eyes and noticed, I still felt shaky. So, I turned to a very easy “confidence restoring quick fix”. What was this quick fix?

I squirted some Rescue Remedy, by Bach into my mouth. This is the spray version of some flower essence. It’s created from pure flowers, flowers that have been identified to create a feeling of calmness, patience and feeling more grounded. It really, really works! I encourage you to give it a try sometime and see for yourself!

Hey, if you like this tip and could benefit from collecting more creative ideas to help you boost your confidence and let go of that negative self talk- you’re welcome to join us for a f*ree phone seminar tonight. I reserved 100 lines for the call, and honestly they have filled up fast, the last I knew we had approximately 25 spots left! Sign up soon before you miss a great opportunity!

Click here to sign up for the seminar!

Looking forward to ‘seeing’ you tonight!

And for those of you who can’t join us, or are just not interested, have a wonderful weekend! I look forward to connecting with you again another time!

By the way, I just spoke to Caitlin Boyle this week, from Operation Beautiful.com, author of Operation Beautiful book, and my cohost this evening for the Breakthrough Negative Self Talk phone seminar. Together we’ve got some great confidence boosting strategies for you, and if my guess is right, we’ve got some NEW strategies you’ve yet to hear of! So don’t miss out! If you can’t make it tonight, you can sign up to receive the recording and then listen at another time!

Click here to sign up for the live or recorded seminar.

When you see an argument arising between your kids and your spouse, or if friction begins to arise between friends or other family members do you have a habit of trying to jump in and smooth things over in some way?

I get it! I get it better then you may imagine! (wink, wink)

So, you probably think of yourself as striving for the greater good, having peace in your relationships and family- that’s your goal!

But, here’s the clencher:

Your effort to bypass arguing among your family sometimes CREATES more arguing. Your spouse or other family members don’t want you to step in. Even if they’re headed down a path which looks completely disastrous to you, they do not want your help, advice, gentle guidance, understanding or even a peep out of you. They want to play it out THEIR way- not yours.

So, what do you do?

You try the best you can to LET GO!

Let the argument go, let it grow into chaos, if you have to block your ears, step out of the house, separate yourself.

Why?

Because the people involved need to figure this out themselves. And, by the way, take solace in the fact that you can share advice or guidance at another time, but in the heat of the moment LET GO! We never learn our own lessons if someone keeps stepping in. You have a heart of gold to want things to be more harmonious for everyone, but harmony at all times is not possible. So, embrace this idea and let go. Let both arguing parties “do their thing”! And later, when the time is right, ask them if they would like to talk.

I assure you, they will be more apt to change and improve the situation if they get a chance to really get into it themselves- you know, get down and dirty with the other person!

**By the way, let me add a disclaimer here- if physicality is involved of course you don’t turn the other cheek, but we’re talkin’ good ol’ fashion yelling and arguing here- nothing beyond!

Ok. I’m still working on letting go at times. I’ve grown enormously in this area, but guess what? I’m human and that old, “just let me help them make it better” side of me will still emerge at times.

Guess what I find happens when I succumb to the urge to step in and “help”- sometimes I make the situation better and sometimes I make it worse. And comparatively, guess what happens when I don’t step in? Sometimes the situation gets better and sometimes it gets worse!

So, the reality is, it really doesn’t make a difference if you step in, you just think it will! The bigger picture here is, you’re preventing lessons from being learned if you step in.

So lets all journey together and keep on steppin’ back and letting go!!

This week’s Upgrade Tip:

Look around to see where you can step out of the picture more and let go! Then have a go at it! And from there keep on tryin’!!!

I wish you well and as always, thanks for listening!

Anyone able to fully relate? How have you handled situations like this? What has worked? What hasn’t? I’d love to hear! Please post your comments so others may learn from you as well! Thanks so much for sharing!

Speaking of letting go, one of the greatest things a person can let go of is Negative Self Talk. Man, criticizing yourself is really stifling. It can hold you back from having a great relationship, it will affect your ability to be successful and you end up one too many times making yourself think you’re not good enough! This is so common, you are so NOT alone. If you’re ready to move through being critical of yourself and to finally see how wonderful you really are and, not only see it, but BELIEVE it, AND consistently function from this place, then join us! Join us for a F*ree phone seminar that will help you to rock your world of self criticism and open your eyes to how great you really are!

Click here to find out more!

**By the way, this seminar is definitely not your same old same old, myself and Caitlin Boyle owner and founder of Operation Beautiful and author of the Operation Beautiful book will be sharing a very unique and super successful approach to overcoming self criticism.

Click here to sign up or find out more!