I've been working like a man possessed for the past few months on a new project to help men build self-confidence. I know what it's like to lack confidence as a man, and frankly it sucks because every other area of your life suffers. Sure, I learned plenty of coping mechanisms so that at times I may have appeared confident, but that wasn't what was going on inside. Some days, it still isn't. And since this has been one of my greatest challenges in life, I want to help other in guys facing it too.

Self-confidence is an awareness that you have the ability to rise to whatever challenge life throws at you. It's also a sense of being at ease with yourself in any situation, and with who you are as a man. Confidence is the single most important asset that a man can possess, because it determines how we respond to challenges and how well everything else in our life goes.

To help out I've recently created The Confident Man Project site to help guys build self-confidence, including the Confident Man ebook with a step-by-step program for men who are really serious. Guys, check it out and share the articles you like with your mates.

PS: Ladies: Sorry, this is secret men's business. Nothing to see here. Move along now.

How to Become a Confident Man is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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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 keep me feeling trapped and stop me being free to really be myself. The one thing that has struck me most about the leaders and team facilitators at these workshops is just how loving and gentle they seem to be. I've been doing a lot of personal development workshops this year, and sometimes wondered whether they were doing me any good, or doing me harm. Not this one though; I felt quite at peace in the workshop and relating to the other participants.

If you're like me and have had a hard time coming to terms with your rougher edges, and feel uncomfortable about the idea of truly loving yourself, I really recommend the HAI workshops and particularly the one on Loving Yourself.

HAI workshops are produced in Australia by SPACE. They run regular introductory evenings to find out more about their courses, and are particularly welcoming to  Counsellors, Therapists and Life Coaches who would like to find out how HAI workshops could be valuable for your clients. Pathways to Intimacy is also a non-threatening way to ease your way into HAI workshops.  Check the website for details of when the next course is on.

Loving Yourself by The Human Awareness Institute is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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1. Voice Dialogue, Self Awareness and Your Inner Child

We like to think that we're consciously in control of everything we do, but the reality is that the emotions, beliefs and memories buried deep in our subconscious are running the show most of the time. And while the subconscious baggage we accumulate may have served a purpose in the past, sometimes it isn't so helpful in our present day lives. Getting in touch with our subconscious to change what's lurking down there so that it works for us rather than against us is hard because our conscious thinking gets in the way and we can end up just over-analysing ourselves.

A few years back I decided that some self-awareness was what I was missing. I just didn't see myself as positively and as capable as I seemed to be in other people's eyes. So I found a group working on self-awareness by doing inner child work. They used a simple technique called Voice Dialogue, which involves role-plays where a facilitator talks directly to each of the many different characters which make up our personalities. Our Inner Child is just one of many such characters, and the facilitator led me through a process of inviting each of these characters to come out and have their say about what they contribute to my life. Doing these role plays enabled me to bypass my usual conscious tendency to analyse everything, and allowed me to get in touch with and release some of my deeply buried emotions. You see, I didn't really feel like a grown-up; it seemed as though everything I did was dominated by some scared inner child that was totally running my life, and didn't seem happy.

The technique also included some guided visualisations involving my inner characters. In one visualisation, I created a “safe place” for Little Graham. It's on a hillside near the sea, and it's protected by a Star-Trek-like force field/shield that only I can enter. Inside, I'm protected from everything and everyone out in the world. There's a hut there where Little Graham can go when he's scared, which is so full of love that it's like jelly inside. He can wade through it without even touching the floor. And there's Lego there to play with so Little Graham doesn't get bored. There are also five animals: a giraffe who can see a long way and knows whatever is coming; a lion who offers protection; a dolphin who is fun to play with and ride; an elephant that isn't swayed or pushed around by anything; and a fox who is smart and cunning. Whenever Little Graham isn't feeling good, he can go to the safe place. He doesn't have to worry any more about trying to fix things; he can just relax and be a kid, while the grown-ups do the work of living in the adult world.

Now if that all sounds a bit weird to you, keep in mind that the aim of the technique is to bypass your conscious analytical thinking in order to get in touch with your subconscious. I needed to put aside my preconceptions, and ignore that voice in my head that kept telling me that I was being ridiculous during all these exercises. Interestingly enough, that voice sounded a lot like my mother's voice, which told me I must have been getting close to some buried stuff which it didn't want me to access. Even when a change is in our best interests, often one of our characters will resist it. I had to go with the flow in order for the technique to work, and it was amazing what emotions and different characters came up for me by doing it.

I found this technique really helpful, but I'm not an expert on it by any means; I know someone who is though, and that's John Nutting. If you want to know more, check out his website on Voice Dialogue – Inner Self Awareness.

Voice Dialogue, Self Awareness and Your Inner Child is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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See larger image My Life So Far (Paperback) By (author) Jane Fonda I am a generation too late to really know much about Jane Fonda, and started reading her autobiography when a friend recommended it. There is lots of name dropping; clearly Ms Fonda was well-connected in her prime, but I don't recognise most of the names since they were just before my time. Nevertheless, it's a compelling story. I was fascinated to read how such a successful woman could be haunted all her life by feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Despite her feminist leaning and her courage (or was it foolishness?), there's a strong theme that without the support and approval of men, she felt worthless. I found her description of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese war a disturbing indictment on the power wielded by the American military and the way in which the U.S. President of the time used it to play out his power games in a foreign country about which he had no understanding. The parallel between Vietnam and the current Iraq war became more startling to me the more I learned about what had gone on in Vietnam. I grew up with the belief that the U.S. were unquestionably the "Good Guys". After all, they were instrumental in saving Australia from being invaded by Japan in World War II. To realise that they had been batting for the wrong team in Vietnam, and now Iraq, I found truly disturbing. The other theme that struck a chord with me, whether Fonda intended to or not, was that naivety and courage sometimes go hand-in-hand. It was clear that some of her actions, such as her visit to Vietnam to highlight the U.S. bombing of dikes in the river delta, was amazingly naive. She put herself in considerable danger, and was at times manipulated by her hosts. Yet it was also enormously powerful. It reminded me of times in my life where I have thought "I'm really being very naive here", yet gone ahead anyway because I thought there was a more important cause than just avoiding my own foolishness. And these have been some of the most invigorating times for me. I found some of Fonda's off-hand comments about perceived differences between the experience of women and men rather polarizing. She appears to believe that men are largely immune from the sort of self-esteem and sexuality issues that she sees so many women suffering from; if only this were the case. In fact, men suffer from these things too; but it shows in different ways. Hers manifested in an eating disorder and deep-seated need to please men. Nixon had a deep-seated need to create an enemy in his mind out of a peace-loving people on the other side of the planet so he could try to wipe them out. These are both manifestations of the same thing: poor self-esteem. They just came out in different ways. One inwardly destructive, the other outwardly. But even this isn't necessarily a gender-based difference. Fonda make the compelling point that aggression and war are generally seen as masculine and active, while peace is seen as feminine and passive. The U.S. Presidents who initiated and supported unwinable wars in Vietnam and Iraq were doing so because they had a point to prove: that they would be strong in the face of a perceived threat. Big boys playing with toys to prove who was the bigger man. The lies and deceit necessary to maintain the charade belied what was really going on. Fonda gives a fascinating account of a meeting she initiated with a group of disgruntled ex-Vietnam vets who were angry at her anti-war activism. They still harboured terrible grief about the war, but felt it unpatriotic to be angry at the government despite the lies it had told; so they aimed their anger at anti-war activists like her instead. She diffused the situation by getting them to talk about what was really going on for them. Vilifying anti-war activists like Fonda was just part of the governments' efforts to sustain the war so that the men in power could prove how manly they were, and the veterans were just some of the victims. You would think the people in power would have learned something; except for the obvious parallels with the current war in Iraq, which those in power are oblivious to. Fonda points out that at the same time the U.S. Were sending troops into Iraq, their government was also slashing benefits for returned servicemen, and that at the time of the Vietnam war, anti-war activists were actually more supportive of returned servicemen than were pro-war activists. Reading the press you would have got the opposite viewpoint. I don't know if Fonda used a ghost writer; the story gives the impression that she wrote it herself, and that some of the pieces of the puzzle of her life didn't fit together until she spoke to other people about issues during the writing process. I was surprised to find that her book held my attention through all 600 pages. I rarely make it through books that thick, and had no particular interest in Jane Fonda at the outset but nevertheless found her biography quite interesting. List Price: $18.00 USD New From: $8.01 In Stock Used from: $0.50 In Stock Release date April 4, 2006.

My Life So Far by Jane Fonda is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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See larger image Help Yourself for Teens: Real-Life Advice for Real-Life Challenges (Mass Market Paperback) By (author) Dave Pelzer Real-Life Advice for Real-Life Challenges This is a self-help book aimed at teenagers by the best-selling author of A Child Called "It". The book gives practical advice on a number of life issues and is interspersed with stories from Pelzer's other books concerning the horrendous abuse he suffered at the hands of his alcoholic and psychotic mother. I'm not a teenager by a long way, and I found this book a bit too preachy for my liking. I wondered how the average teenager would take it, not to mention one that was headed off-the-rails. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of wisdom in this book certainly the author has the runs on the board, so to speak, when it comes to working with adolescents. For me though, I found his trilogy of books A Child Called It, The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave more inspiring since his personal story speaks for itself. List Price: $12.95 USD New From: $4.77 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date August 30, 2005.

Help Yourself For Teens by Dave Pelzer is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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