Queen of Confidence: Storm watcher

I’ve left the bedroom window open a bit, with a towel on the sill. It’s chilly in there now. The rain soaked air smells like black truffles and the storm shrouded Bay that I can now barely see through the balcony doors off the great room. Soggy dogs, their fur still slightly scented from the striped kitties they danced with one night last week, sleep damply on the floor nearby.

The last of the homemade chicken and rice soup is warming my belly. Got the Blues playing in the background and a peach on a plate near my keyboard.

What has any of this to do with confidence, or life purpose, you might well ask, and rightly so. But lemme splain. At times like this, I get contemplative. Some folks do that when it rains. It’s a good thing.

There is a line in a very famous book that says, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven”. It goes on in poetic and profound depth, explaining the different seasons of life itself. I shall not endeavor to improve on prior perfection; I just have something of my own to add.

Confidence and life purpose are not always best expressed outwardly. Indeed, those things always start as an inside job.

On dark and dreary seeming days, in stormy times of the soul, it is good to take some time to slow down, go within, and see what’s there. Be your own storm watcher. Get the lay of the interior landscape. Become aware of the mind clutter, and release it. Let it be washed away in the restorative rain, swept away in flooding torrents of debris no longer useful.

Do not resist Nature. Let your storm seasons wash you clean. What remains is fresher and revitalized. From that flash flooded place, confidence born of purpose naturally blooms like the desert after the rain, colorful and vibrant.

Ask yourself this question: What part of my life could use a cleansing storm?

One confidence tip of the day from the Queen of Confidence

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”- George Eliot

It’s never too late to live a purpose driven life. Really. Start now. Continue ‘til you die.  Confidence ensues naturally in this purpose driven way, and can continue unabated for as long as you live.

After all:

• Georgia O’Keefe was an old lady painter, happy and successful.
• Michelangelo designed St. Peter’s Cupola when he was 83.
• Benjamin Franklin was past 80 when he helped draft the constitution.
• Artist Pablo Picasso as well as cellist Pablo Casals were both active into their 90′s.

Don’t you want the rest of your life to make a difference, be rich and fulfilling, and contribute to the betterment of the world somehow?  How about starting that now?  Now is a great time to start living the parts of your life that you’ve deferred. There’s nothing better you could do with your one precious life than to live it with gusto, after all. And now you’ve got the wisdom and perspective necessary to avoid oh so many mistakes that you’d have made when you were younger.  Cool, huh? These advantages alone should boost your confidence!

Sure, taking action in service of your dreams can seem a bit scary, but think of the satisfaction to be gained. Think of the truly stellar example you’re setting to those younger people all around you. Don’t THEY deserve to live a fulfilling life? Of course they do. Living a purpose driven life gives your children, students, friends and colleagues the example they need to go out and live their own version of a purpose driven life. They’ll know it’s possible to live a purposeful life themselves because they see you living your own wildly satisfying, fulfilling life.

Your life experience is tremendously valuable and useful. Claiming, owning the wisdom that age brings confers greater and greater confidence to those willing to claim the lessons of their history. No matter how old you –think- you are, how over-the-hill you’ve deluded yourself into believing that you are,  the kind of immediate energy shift that taking meaningful action provides can immediately propel you forward into a better, more satisfying life if you’re not doing that these days.

You can demonstrate every day by your own actions that a purpose driven life is the only kind of life that’s really worth living…

Affirmations: “All my dues are paid in full.” “I have everything I need to move forward.” “I serve best by living my truth”

Don’t you need to really LIVE for the rest of your life?

Molly Burke, CPCC MSU
Queen of Confidence
http://mollyburkeonpurpose.wordpress.com
“I’ve bottled confidence, and it’s for sale!”

3 truly terrible ways to appear more confident PART 2 (Queen of Confidence series)

Talk the Talk Too Too Much: Big Talkers

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” –Ernest Hemmingway

Listening skills and the lack thereof is the topic today.

Hoo Boy! Here’s a lollapalooza of a blunder. You’ve met these misguided souls. They have no listening skills. They talk the talk and talk the walk and then continue to talk and talk. They talk over you, they hog every conversation and make it a monologue all about themselves. They’re pushy and overbearing and sadly unaware of the impact of their actions. They mistake self talk for self confidence.

I assume that they’d have to be clueless, because no one would deliberately shoot themselves in the foot like this, would they?

They’re the people for whom this joke was coined, “But enough about me. What do you think about me?” I call these people Big Talkers.

Big Talkers think they’re educating, informing, selling well by overtalking. They think that if they can just say enough, barrage you with enough facts and information and sales pitches, you’ll be convinced that they’re an expert, that you want to buy what they’re selling, or somesuch. They think that more yammer means more confidence. Oh, so wrong.

Those verbal steamrollers have no idea that what they’re REALLY doing is profoundly alienating their audience. They’ve no clue that their potential customers/friends/connections end up walking away, tossing aside the business card or phone number or resume and remembering only that they felt uncomfortable at the very least, and pissed off at the worst.  The Big Talkers fail to establish rapport through the simple act of listening. Listening MATTERS.

As my wise grannie said more than once, “You’ve got two ears and one mouth, because you should listen twice as much as you talk.”

“If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.” -Goethe

When you listen, you demonstrate interest and engagement. You encourage rapport. You make a dialogue possible, and that is the place from which real possibilities spring. And you never, ever act like a Big Talker, because you know that Big Talkers are big losers.

The skill of listening is one of the hallmarks of the truly confident. Truly confident people know that there is nothing at all that someone else can say that will diminish them. Therefore they never fear dialogue, indeed, they welcome it for the connections it enhances and the rapport it facilitates.

Confident people listen.

Are you listening?

Molly Burke, CPCC MSU
Queen of Confidence
www.lifepurposeworks.com
I’ve bottled confidence, and it’s for sale!