While in the school of life you can learn the fundamentals that support any meaningful life, in the academy of your life you can learn how to get there by building confidence.
Learn to build Confidence
Confidence is the best commodity you have to offer in life. With confidence, you can achieve almost anything related to safety and freedom. Confidence gives you the energy to get started.
There is greater prosperity in countries or institutions where levels of confidence are high. Scientist Paul J. Zak discovered that confidence increases the production of oxytocin, favouring interpersonal relationships and generating empathy. It is the magic word that opens doors.
Confidence in oneself, confidence in the group, in leadership and in life, without losing sight of reality. Confidence means believing and leaving the fear of uncertainty behind.
Nothing sustains motivation better than having confidence in yourself and others.
Without confidence, one cannot realise that there is something worth risking for. There is no action without it. There is no courage without confidence.
Confidence generates commitment, quality and excellence. Gaining confidence depends on integrity, on respect for your neighbour, on the institution, on the hierarchy and the group.
Confidence is knowing that you are capable. It bolsters motivation. It favours learning and action.
Confidence in acquired habits helps to anticipate the future. Confidence is not hope. Confidence is about knowing that it will happen. Hope is about waiting for it to happen, it is uncertainty.
How do we develop it?
Experiences in things that work generate pleasure and build confidence. Thus, the chosen solution tends to be repeated until it becomes a habit.
Every time you find yourself in a situation where you are “doing well”, it is not just your attention (focus) that increases. Your memory also increases. There is also an emotional regulation that makes you feel better prepared for new challenges in your life. You gain energy, i.e., confidence to carry on.
Confidence is the result of witnessing successive results. Confidence is built in others by praising and encouraging their effort and their breakthroughs. It is not about praising the result, which is rather a consequence of disciplined effort that builds confidence.
Confidence is built through training in action.
Firstly, by doing the hard things while they are still easy, and the big things while they are still small.
Secondly, by embracing practices with clear and perceptible results. Confidence arises and consolidates itself through practical observation of things that work.
In this way, your (conscious) thought is aligned with your (unconscious) automatic action.
Thirdly, by developing the habits necessary to the expected results.
This is achieved by not surrendering, especially in the final stretch.
Learn to Feel
The value of something is measured by the emotion it causes in us. It is not by its price, height, weight, or any other shape or measure.
If we wish to measure the value of one thing in relation to another, we have to compare how we feel about each of them. Chemical and physical changes in the brain are induced by paying attention to emotions and feelings.
This permanent exercise makes our lives easier.
I know creative professionals who are very successful in helping clients—consumerists and hoarders—to sort out the things that complicate their lives.
In order to eliminate the superfluous things, they suggest embracing each thing and feeling whether it gives the person joy or not.
Our ability to create happiness is proportional to our ability to create expectations and set achievable goals.
Setting goals far above the limits of what is possible leads to frustration, anxiety and unhappiness.
On the other hand, goals set too low cause lack of interest, apathy and boredom. The desirable approach is to set these goals up to four per cent higher than what we can achieve, so that the challenge may bring reward.
Our ultimate goals must be broken down into intermediate goals. The latter afford us fulfilment as we achieve them.
Our goals must not be conditioned to specific decisions, people, events or organisations over which we cannot exert decisive influence. If we condition our goals in such a way, there is a good chance we will experience frustration. They must not be linked to the concept of “having”, as this can be ephemeral. It is wiser to focus on “being capable”, which is something of a more permanent and personal nature.
Safety is not ensured by having things. It is ensured by having the strategy. Having the strategy means “knowing how to do things better”, with less effort. Others might take things away from us, but they can never take away the “know-how” that got us these things.
If we are attentive to what we feel, if we know how to work by ascribing due value to positive feelings and cancelling out negative ones, we can create an environment that favours permanent motivation, so as to have an easy journey.
The shining star
My most vivid Christmas memories are from the times when I believed in Father Christmas.
There is one particular Christmas Day that I remember it as if it were today. A great party had been organised by the bank where my father worked. They provided toys for the employees’ children.
There was a big Christmas tree, with toys all around it. There were bicycles, balls, cars, dolls and many other wonders to amaze someone who did not have many toys, such as myself.
When they began giving out the gifts, I was the first to be called. I was asked to choose a gift. I looked through all the toys, and I asked for the shining star sitting at the top of the tree. It was a simple silver paper star. They insisted that I should choose a real toy in addition to that star, but I did not want to.
I kept this star for many years. I still remember it—not its design, but the emotion it caused in me. It was comparable to the emotions when I bought my first bicycle or my first car.
Imagination
Imagination is undoubtedly the greatest tool, with which we can achieve almost anything.
It is the fantastic transformative power of our lives, capable of transporting us through time and space instantly, travelling from the past to the future, from galaxies to universes, being in several places simultaneously, or obtaining miraculous cures.
With imagination, we can make quantum phenomena real. There would be no science without it. We can frame dreams with it, live other lives, go from heaven to hell. We can use it to maintain relationships, preventing their fading over time.
Knowing how to work with imagination is an indispensable skill. It is the necessary investment for those who believe in the future. It is the foundation of creativity.
No battle can ever be won if we are incapable of imagining victory. “No farmer would sow if they could not imagine the harvest. Imagination creates a real image.”
Using our imagination, we can turn problems into opportunities and obstacles into stepping stones. We can reshape beliefs, we can create different visions for the same event. In short, we can make more pleasant associations with the things that need to be done, or we can make painful associations with the things that should not be done, developing the necessary habits.
This is the best way to manage emotions. Imagination can turn undesirable emotions into pleasant or indifferent ones, and it can turn energy-intensive emotions into lightweight ones. It can facilitate the development of habits.
Have you ever noticed that, when you have a thought, you are imagining this thought?
Imagination is our ability to tell ourselves stories. We like stories and are often inspired by them.
And stories make us travel through the most diverse worlds.
A good life is directly proportional to what we are capable of imagining.
As soon as you begin “indoctrinating” your brain, your reward system starts to work better for you.
Whenever imagination and the unconscious are at odds, imagination always wins. There are no exceptions.
We are slaves to our imagination, from the moment we are born to the moment we die.
You can love anything that your imagination makes you see as attractive, beautiful or intelligent. Likewise, you can hate that which you see as despicable, threatening or repulsive.
You can anticipate the future using your imagination. You may even find something meaningful in suffering. You can gather strength for today’s tasks by imagining the result you will get from your work. Imagining the result to be obtained stimulates dopamine and leads to action.
Imagination allows us to recall memories and associate them, so as to create a new film. Memories can be registered by means of sound, vision, smell, touch, hearing, emotions. They can be logged as a symbiosis that may even have nothing to do with the circumstances that formed them.
António Damásio said that “creativity, memory and imagination are interconnected capacities, without which it is actually impossible to conceive new models, to conceive new realisations, be it from the social point of view or from the point of view of the classical arts, or of inventions, such as philosophical ones”. They are all linked to this imagination.
The brain cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. Using magnetic resonance imaging, we have proved that the same areas used to see a physical image are used when we instead imagine this same image.
And they cause the same emotional reactions and the release of the same neurotransmitters.
Nowadays, top athletes and pilots, as well as patients with trauma and many other conditions, are trained by exercises that teach them to imagine situations that lead to the desired goal.
You can play the piano simply by closing your eyes, listening to music and imagining yourself playing.
One of the ways to train your imagination is to:
Play with it.
Perform mental experiments, as if you were in a gym or a laboratory.
Recall striking memories. Imagine the details—visuals, sound, scent, touch, taste. Use all your senses. Make it as real as possible. Repeat it several times, until it becomes a habit. Do the same thing for other emotional moments.
Imagine yourself succeeding (focus on the result).
Imagine yourself overcoming obstacles (focus on progress).
Imagine the pleasure you will feel when you succeed to such extent that it outweighs the pain imposed by the obstacle.
Imagine the outcome and focus on the action.
Imagination turns the impossible into possible, it gives us wings to fly and get where we want to go. Anyone who has tried to achieve something thought to be impossible will never forget the experience.
You will never get what you want. You will only get what you are capable of visualising.
Everything that is real was once a creative thought, and everything that is a creative thought can become real.
Focus
How many times have you been told that you need to focus?
Focusing is the homeostatic system’s greatest ability. Had it not specialised itself in focusing on threats, no living being would exist.
The problem lies in having the ability to shift the focus from non-existent threats or harmful pleasures to the real needs of modern life.
Knowing how to shift your focus is your superpower.
Where we place our attention, we place our energy. And light is cast on the target of our attention.
Obstacles are found when we take our focus off our target. Our mind wanders and ends up overwhelmed by all kinds of thoughts.
Attention and focus are now considered to be the true intelligence.
Knowing how to shift your focus means being the master of your own life. It is also a way of training multiple skills. It is about achieving better results. It is about being able to use the time you have left to build true happiness, prolonging the moments you have lived that you wish would never end.
But how many people in your life have taught you how to do this?
If everyone acknowledges its importance, how come it is not a mandatory subject at school?
And why is it so difficult?
Firstly, because when it is intentional, it uses up a lot of energy. You cannot stay focused for more than 10 to 20 minutes.
Secondly, because we were never taught how to turn it into a habit.
Also, because most of the methods we have tried are difficult.
And finally, because we do not practise it.
If you need to practise for six to eight hours a day to become a skilled sportsman, writer, pianist, or some other professional, just imagine: what would it be like if you practised focus (concentration) for this same amount of time?
On the contrary, we practise distraction, digressing for an average of 16 hours a day.
And when we are distracted, we find ourselves in the past or in the future. And this creates anxiety.
A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
If you wish to be good at something, you need to practise
The analysis of the behaviour of ordinary people showed that they are interrupted between seven and eight times every hour. If we consider how long each interruption lasts and how long it takes to get back to an adequate level of concentration, the result is an average of 10 hours of distraction. We can therefore conclude that we are pretty good at daily distraction.
Being able to busy yourself with what matters to the fulfilment of a task brings about radical changes. A chaotic mind brings about all sorts of problems.
It is desirable to maintain serenity while focusing on what is important amid difficulties.
We naturally reach this state during the first few months of training for war, without even intending to. Our (homeostatic) regulation system takes care of that. The focus required for action training forces us to detach ourselves from everything that is unimportant.
A good exercise for shifting focus is deep reading.
Reading stimulates creativity and imagination.
It helps to improve memory.
It expands the vocabulary and increases general knowledge.
It helps to develop writing and logical thinking skills.
It awakens critical thinking and promotes analytical flexibility.
Reading can take the reader to different worlds and realities.
Those who practise meditation also achieve similar results after some time spent focusing on the present.
To be the master of your attention means to be the master of your life. Remember: your emotions and energy will be wherever your attention is.
How do you train it?
Firstly, you need to understand how the human mind and consciousness work.
Suppose your mind is the ceiling of your room, where you have your memories, emotions, etc. You are lying in the dark and you have a torch with a concentrated focus. You switch on the torch and start looking through the ceiling. The light is cast wherever the focus is, and that sector is what you see, with all the information in there. So, these are the things you are currently aware of.
It is necessary to know how the mind works in order to control it by shifting focus.
Control of the focus can be intentional, through your thoughts, or instantaneous, through unconscious regulation systems.
When you are concentrating on a particular task or thought and your consciousness drifts off, i.e., your focus moves to another area, you intentionally bring it back to where it started. And as you do this over and over again, your ability to concentrate gradually increases.
This practice is nothing more than meditation. It is about being in the present. This is what happens to the survival system, or any other system of bodily regulation.
With this skill, you can achieve emotional management and mental resilience.
The development of habits of thought driven by triggers (neural associations) makes focus instantly shift to a different target, as soon as the relevant trigger is set off.
This allows you to educate your inner voice. It allows you to trade the triggering of the survival mechanism for the triggering of the adaptation mechanism.
It enables you to stop seeing unrealistic threats. To see a scenario where there may be dangers, but also opportunities.
You can trade stress for tension (Yerkes and Dotson, Harvard, 1908).
Meditation
There are various types of meditation. Some of the main ones are:
Meditation on the move. This is when you are doing something, with focus on the action. The focus can be on breathing, walking, the scenery, the taste of some food, or any of the five senses.
This is the easiest form of meditation. It is natural practice in war training.
Yogic meditation. It is completely focused on the point you choose to meditate on, a mantra, an idea, an object. This type of meditation uses more of the frontal lobe (executive functions).
This kind of meditation can be used to achieve happiness.
Rambling meditation. This can be done by relying on a mantra, focusing on an anchor or exploring thoughts relating to past events that caused strong emotions. This is the best way to build the “palace of emotions”.
Guided meditation. The guide leads the focus so as to reach a state of increasing relaxation.
Start by trying the method that best suits you or switching between them.
Meditation is not about controlling thoughts. It is about not being controlled by them.
Controlling attention is the most important way to train focus.
When some experts recommend choosing a secluded, quiet and comfortable place to meditate and close your eyes, the aim is to reduce the information coming in from your senses, as much as possible, so that it is easier to focus on your breathing or on something related to your body.
That does not mean it is impossible to meditate while walking in the centre of a city. It is not impossible to practise the “Five Rhythms” therapy, developed by Gabrielle Roth. The difference is that, for a beginner, the first approach is much easier. Meditation is about being focused on the present.
I learnt to meditate in the midst of chaos.
When you are tired, drained of energy, in an environment with lots of noise, images and smells, and you nonetheless have to focus on a difficult task, the only alternative is to forget everything that is unimportant and direct what little energy you have left to that task.
As a result, you can focus on the task at hand while keeping the muscles on your body in a state of rest.
Mentorship
Knowing how to look for mentors, inspiration or information are individual skills. Only you can know which mentors are right for you.
In fact, understanding something depends on how we analyse the information provided by our truths.
Your own truths are the result of your emotional memories and your beliefs.
Having good mentors is the best way to save time. To get more things right.
Information is analysed by applying the logic you use to interpret the world, i.e., how you organise information so that it makes sense, so that you can understand it.
The logic we use also depends on the context and mood at the time.
Regardless of the credibility of your mentors, the quality of what they propose and the reasoning behind it, their intended message will be of no use if it cannot set off an emotion.
Communication is about exchanging emotions.
It is ineffective to refer other people to your mentors. It is just like wishing your children to heed everything you tell them. People only make use of the information that sets off their emotions, and this depends on each person, on the “dictionary” they use to interpret it.
Even though every communicator’s dream is to teach, the best things cannot be taught. They are more than thoughts.
You can only learn what you can feel.
Nobody can spare the time to study all the things that scientists publish or the things that great thinkers advocate in order to live a better life.
Today, thanks to the ease offered by social media, there are scientists, journalists and other researchers who follow and share insights on various topics, in many fields of knowledge.
For this reason, it is increasingly easier and quicker to find credible mentors. However, it is important not to fall for the baits that advertise infallible solutions, that make people attend every single lecture they can, and that make these people seek every place offering easy solutions.
The frustration brought about by such behaviour means that, once the excitement of the moment has passed, around 70 per cent of these people either do not begin any endeavour at all or fail to conclude it if they do begin.
They feel like they have a thousand pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that do not fit together. These pieces can amaze these people, but they do not fit together.
This process is not just ineffective. It also strengthens your inner voice, which says “it’s not worth it, this isn’t for me”.
It is up to you to choose how to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. The words we read or hear have a different emotional meaning to each of us. It depends on the context in which they were stored and the neural network they use.
Benjamin Lee Whorf put forward the theory that language determines the nature and content of thought.
That is why any given mentor—or their recipe—does not work for everyone.
Personally, I think that all honest self-help proposals are important.
We can divide them into two types: those that inspire us, that switch on the light inside us and make us see things we previously did not see, and those that give us the knowledge we need.
Since they use creative arguments, they propose methods that are capable of setting off triggers. These triggers lead to thoughts that reshape beliefs. However, they will only work if they work for you.
Criticism of self-help stems from its attempt to sell the same solutions to everyone. There is no generic formula. If you believe in it, you will be frustrated.
Only your own formula has a chance of working.
How do you find mentors?
First — Pick the important issues for your change process. Start researching each one.
You will find several works on each issue.
Secondly — Among all the communicators who speak of the given issue, look for those who are doing responsible, quality work. Check if there is any consensus among them in regard to the people who they mention as legitimate sources.
Third — Identify those who give you the knowledge you need, with clarity. Identify those who make you better understand the subject.
Once you feel inspired by the proposed solution, write it down, re-read it. If it is in video, watch it again.
Think about it, reflect on it, find examples in your life, make associations with what you need in order to reshape your beliefs, change your course or find new ways to follow your current path.
Fourth — Pick and write down the techniques and solutions that work best for you within your plan. Concentrate on what matters. Do not digress.
Try to assess whether you have applied a consistent selection criterion. Are these mentors mere peddlers of ideas? Or do they actually have the legitimacy of someone who knows the things they propose, using them and achieving them?
Fifth — Always be wary of easy propositions and effortless miracles. Make sure that you are not choosing them on the basis of a discourse that matches the things you like to hear, i.e., the discourse of your tribes. Tribal sense often prevents us from being open-minded.
You are biologically equipped to survive, by hunting, fighting in all conditions, weathering rain, wind, cold and illness.
How can someone use their entire arsenal to propose methods that they never used?
Would you like to become somebody’s guinea pig?
You need to choose recipes offered by those who have enough authority to speak on the subject, even if they think differently.
Do not forget that your brain always prefers people who think like you, and this is not the best way to learn new solutions, to create, to break paradigms.
Be humble. Silence that inner voice that always wants to be right.
Having good mentors allows you to avoid wasting time repeating old mistakes. It also gets you faster to the life that is worth living.
Learn to Listen
The most sensitive organ in Westerners is their “wallet”, while the “ear” is undoubtedly the least sensitive one.
There are four ways in which we communicate: reading, writing, speaking and listening. A recent survey found that we spend 9% of our time reading, 6% writing, 20% speaking and 65% listening. But we are taught to speak first, then to read and write. What about listening? Has anyone taught you to do that?
Be an active, conscious and disciplined listener. Try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. This is an exciting mental exercise.
The most valuable information can be found in suggestions, complaints and criticism.
It does not matter if these are constructive or destructive, polite or impolite, from above or below, targeted at you or someone else. In feedback you will find a real treasure, which will point out where you made mistakes or what you expect from things, people, life and the world.
Most of the time, you only figure what others want when you listen to their criticism.
If you wish to be different, embrace suggestions, complaints and criticism as your working material. These must be encouraged.
Be ready to listen. Train yourself to raise a shield that protects you emotionally as you listen.
When people lack this kind of training, they react emotionally to criticism or complaints.
Emotion clouds your judgement and your senses.
When training military personnel or people for risky missions, violent and unfair criticism is used to cause strong emotions in the recruits.
Over time, they stop reacting emotionally. This ables them to listen to orders and think, even in the most adverse conditions.
In our case, all that it takes is to listen to the actual message, written between the lines of said criticism.
If the criticism is unfair, it could be the result of miscommunication or misinterpretation.
If it is aggressive, it reflects how important the relevant fact is to the other person.
Identify and take notes of:
- Fear, anger, outrage and disappointment.
- The expectations conveyed.
- The other person’s perceptions of what you conveyed.
- The advice.
Encourage criticism. Ask creative questions.
Avoid asking things such as “are you satisfied?”
A Forum Corporation survey for a California bank showed that 40 per cent of people who rated the service as “fair”, or “poor” said they were nonetheless “satisfied”.
“I am satisfied” means “this is acceptable”.
Ask indirectly. “What do you think of our trip to…”
Read between the lines. Read the room. Study them, study yourself.
Ask hypothetical questions.
“If you…”
Observe family and friends. Ask yourself: “What would they have to say about…”
Confide in them. Mention something important in your life that relates to what you wish to know.
Pay particular attention to adversaries, enemies and competitors. And to sycophants—give them nothing more than the level of importance they deserve.
Teach yourself to keep secrets.
Have a Golden Ear.
Train yourself to hear “the sounds of the jungle”.
Be on the lookout for opportunities.
But how do you identify them? Listen to what your heart has to say, and then break it down.
Break it down by asking questions.
The power of a question is to provoke insights.
- To draw on the unconscious.
- To find information.
How should you make up these questions?
If your goal is to encourage creativity and innovation:
- What if we did the opposite of what we are doing now?
- What can we learn from our mistakes?
- How can we combine different ideas to create something new?
- What trends and opportunities could we take advantage of?
- What inspires us to do the things we do?
If you wish to solve problems and make decisions:
- What is the root cause of the problem?
- What are the possible solutions and their pros and cons?
- What is the most important criterion to choose the best solution?
- How can we test and validate the chosen solution?
- What can we do to avoid or minimise the risks involved?
If you need to develop skills and abilities:
- What skills and abilities do you wish to develop or dismiss?
- How can you measure your progress and performance?
- What resources and tools do you need to achieve your goal?
- Who can guide you or give you feedback on your development?
- How can you put into practice the things you have learnt?
Learn to tell stories
Make a habit of telling stories.
- A good story should attract attention, arousing the curiosity of those who hear it.
- It should contain the principles you wish to convey.
- It must be in line with the audience’s ability to understand.
Writing short stories is a way of showing your creativity, imagination and emotion, quickly and briefly. To attract your audience, you need to know how to choose a theme, develop characters, create a plot, use humour and suspense, and give it an unexpected or unforgettable ending.
Some suggestions for writing short stories:
- Choose a topic that is attractive, relevant or original. You can base it on your own experience, as well as real events, legends, dreams, fantasies, or any other source that entices your curiosity.
- Create characters that are believable, well-developed and interesting. You can use techniques such as physical description, personality, dialogue, conflict, motivation and transformation to give personality to your characters.
- Create a plot that has a beginning, middle and end, following a logical and interesting structure. You can use techniques such as mental hooks, progressive action, climax, fading action and resolution to give flow and consistency to your story.
- Use humour and suspense to keep the reins of your audience’s interest and attention. You can use techniques such as irony, sarcasm, surprise, expectation, mystery and dilemma to provoke laughter, tension and interest in your story.
- Give your story a surprising or meaningful ending. You can use techniques such as a plot twist, a moral lesson, a reflection, or some emotion. This allows you to make an impact or convey a message to your audience.