Confidence at last after years of fear

Another busy week with two speaking events, coaching in London, two networking events finished off with a coaching session on Friday afternoon junction 28 of the M1.

I’ve had a run of 6 weeks where things have been very busy and I have kept my Chimp managed the whole time with my calm, rational Human in control. This has been really important because it’s so easy to lose control when you are under extreme pressure and things then tend to go wrong.

The two speaking events went down extremely well. The Hartshaw Sheffield City Region Breakfast meeting went very well indeed. Around 70 businesses were represented and I delivered my Mental Toughness talk which was very well received and several people expressed interest in a follow up including the captain of Sheffield Sharks basketball who invited me to a game and I shall be attending the match on Friday 28^th against Newcastle which is a real treat. There is interest in me sharing some of my mental toughness techniques with the players so we will see how that develops.

The second talk was at the Medicity Innovation day and I spoke for half an hour on Mental Toughness and the benefits of having a positive mindset. This event is an annual event backed by Boots and other sponsor and the Managing Director of Medicity has asked me if I will participate in a forum to review how we develop MediCity Innovators’ Week into a premier event focussing on innovation across health, beauty and wellness, incorporating some specific themes for next year. This is a great honour and I will be responding with a yes to this.

I am connecting to a lot of people and have around 15 requests for follow ups to my three talks which include the High Growth Summit a week ago. I get a real buzz from speaking yet when I was a 5 year old boy I couldn’t speak any English because I was brought up by lovely Polish parents. However this meant that I couldn’t read very well and was laughed at by the other children when I stood up to read and this led to a real inferiority complex and lack of confidence.

When I was 18 years of age and in college I remember being asked to introduce a professor to 4 students sat round a table in a small room. This professor was going to deliver a lecture to us and all I had to do was say ‘please welcome professor Brown’. I still remember the fear I had leading up to this. All the negative feelings I had about not being able to read and the insecurities I had in this area came flooding back and there was no happy ending to this situation – I bottled it! I was sweating, shaking, my heart was thumping out of my chest and the noise in my head was so loud that I couldn’t think. It was quite simply one of the worst moments of my life and he had to introduce himself.

Yet now I love getting up in front of people and inspiriting them with my story and Mental Toughness techniques and don’t get nervous but excited. This transformation has happened with the techniques and philosophies I share in my workshop on Confidence.   https://www.jdmindcoach.com/training/confidence-building/

After a run of several weeks with less sleep than I would like I slept 13 hours last night and feel fantastic today. Most people say that they couldn’t sleep that long but it’s a combination of two things which allows me to do this. Firstly I believe that I will and this is a key belief system. Secondly I have a sleep technique which is amazing and allows people to get back to sleep when they wake up.

Have a great weekend

John