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Men: Get More Confidence!
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Nice Guy Syndrome
When I start hearing the same message coming at me from multiple independent sources, that usually gets my attention. This year I've had several sources giving me the message that women want men with backbone who they can “push up against”. They get tired and ultimately resentful of Nice Guys who always yield powerlessly to them, and everyone else.
I listened to an interview by David DeAngelo (of Double Your Dating fame) talking with Robert Glover described what is wrong with Nice Guys most succinctly by quoting a comment from his ex-wife, who said “How would I know that you could ever stand up for me, if you can't even stand up to me?”. Robert calls it Nice Guy Syndrome, and has even written a book titled No More Mr. Nice Guy! He points out that while Nice Guys think that what they are doing will please other people, … Continue reading…
Resolving The Money Riddle by Paul Blackburn
Paul Blackburn wanted to call his latest book How I went from Sweet FA to $10 Million a year in 18 Months, but his wife and business partner Mary felt this was an inappropriate business title and they settled on Resolving The Money Riddle instead. Mischievous as ever, Paul still managed to slip his preferred title onto the front cover as the tag line.
The theme of the book is that the most important factor in your financial success, or that of your business, is the grey matter between your ears. As in other areas of life, our mindset is everything. For Paul, running a business isn't about the money; it's a personal development opportunity that will push your boundaries at every turn. In other words, it's about how you develop as a human being.
To be successful you'll need to believe that you can do it to begin … Continue reading…
Writing a book using OpenOffice.org
My first book, on attracting women, was created using the OpenOffice.org 3.1 Office Productivity Suite. I like OpenOffice because it's free, is community-supported, and has most of the features that I really need to get my job done. Here's my experience using it on seriously sized projects of over 200 pages.
I recently finished the 3rd draft of a 450 page book, so I know what it's like to use OpenOffice.org Writer to create and edit a significant work with over 30 chapters, a two-level table of contents, and several pictures. I also used OpenOffice.org Draw for the cover design, and PDF export to generate files to send to Lulu for printing. I was pleased to find that OpenOffice.org was up to the task, but there were a few quirks I had to navigate and some missing features which made the task more painful than I would have … Continue reading…
Loving Yourself by The Human Awareness Institute
I spent last weekend at a workshop on Loving Yourself run by The Human Awareness Institute (HAI). It's the second in a series of workshops they run on the topic of Love, Intimacy and Sexuality. While the confidentiality agreement prevents me from talking too much about the content of the workshop, what I can say is that it was an opportunity to profoundly deepen the connection that I felt with other people, and with myself.
I've always struggled with the idea of really loving myself, and when I first heard about the HAI courses I knew that this workshop was for me. I did the pre-requisite level 1 workshop about a year ago, and then had to wait a year before having the opportunity to do level 2. Over the course of the workshop I found myself gradually losing the inhibitions and fears about other people's judgments, which tend to … Continue reading…
Escaping Toxic Guilt by Susan Carrell
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Posted in Emotions Tagged Behavior, Guilt, Psychology, Shame, Social psychology, Susan Carrell Leave a comment
Shame
I recognize shame in myself as the fear of what other people think about me. While many people feel shameful about a specific event that has happened to them or something they've done in the past, for me it's more a general fear of what other people are thinking based on my own feelings of unworthiness. It makes me feel self-conscious, restricts my movements and actions, leaving me feeling trapped. It's common for many people to feel a sense of shame about themselves. At an anger management workshop I recently attended, I felt free to dance uninhibitedly at the end while I noticed the girl next to me being much more constricted. Healing shame is a process, and she was slowly releasing her inhibitions as she was making progress. Shame is still one of my main areas of frustration with myself, but I have come a long way when … Continue reading…
Happiness by Matthieu Ricard
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Posted in Mindset Tagged happiness, Human behavior, Matthieu Ricard, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology Leave a comment
Anger Management by Crockery
One of the rules that had to be obeyed when I was growing up was: Don't run in the house, because you might break something. Walk instead. Stay calm. Don't get too excited. Getting excited might cause you to hurt yourself, something or someone else. It also seemed to irritate the grown-ups; it seemed that grown-ups just weren't supposed to get excited.
Not when they were happy anyway. The only time grown-ups seemed to get excited was when they were angry; and then there seemed to no limits to how excited they could get. The rest of the time they seemed to be holding their excitement inside; but when they were really angry, they really let loose. I found that terrifying. I got in real trouble when I acted like that, but grown-ups were allowed different rules to me. And so I learned that I wasn't allowed to get … Continue reading…
Mastering Emotions at Passionately Alive
I often feel that my emotions are running my life. When it comes to happiness, joy, peace and love, that's fine by me; but when it's fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness or depression, that's not so good. We like to think that we're in conscious control of our lives all the time, but the reality is that everything we do is driven by an emotion of one sort or another. We're constantly either seeking the pleasant emotions or avoiding the unpleasant ones. Our emotions exist in our subconscious, so we often aren't consciously aware of them until they pop up strongly enough to interrupt what we're doing and make their presence felt. But they still play their role whether we acknowledge it or not; and if we ignore them, they just get louder and stronger until we start paying attention.
Our society places a premium analytical thinking and often downplays the … Continue reading…
I lied to the guy from the phone company today
OK, I admit it. I lied today. I don't normally do that; I'm a terrible liar in fact. I'm sure it goes back to when I was a kid and how my mother could always tell when I was lying. She wasn't the sort of person you wanted to get on the wrong side of. So I'm badly out of practice. But I'm working on it.
Or rather, I've actually been working on becoming a more persuasive and powerful communicator. I've joined Toastmasters. I'm doing workshops on public speaking, sales and marketing. I'm reading The 48 Laws of Power. This last one is all a bit Machiavellian for me, and if taken literally the laws involve a lot more deception than I'm really comfortable with. But I'm learning. And today it came in handy.
I decided that time to get ADSL2+ broadband is long overdue, but there's a … Continue reading…
Posted in Communication Leave a comment
