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The general attitude of owning your strengths can be summed up in two words: Of course. * Of course I am intelligent. * Of course I am funny. * Of course I am an attractive guy. * Of course I am kind and patient. * Of course.
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Through repetition, you can start to alter the way you see yourself, thus changing your identity. The process is simple, yet powerful. It involves taking your list and stating your strengths out loud, using a full, strong tone with slightly louder volume than you would normally use in regular conversation. You firmly assert the strength in a way that links it to your identity. The most powerful and efficient way to do this is to use the phr..
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Say each phrase out loud, with emphasis, energy, and emotional intensity. Keep in mind that you may have repeated negative statements about your weaknesses thousands of times over the years. In order to create momentum for your mind to start focusing more on your strengths, it requires emotional intensity and frequent repetition. You can do this exercise while driving, brushing your teeth, and many other times throughout the day. You can ev..
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I AM loving. I treat the people in my life so well. I am warm and affectionate with my friends, my family, my girlfriend, and my cats. People around me can feel my warmth and love.
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Much of the time, when we experience social anxiety and come to fear interactions, it is because we have not chosen or defined our desired outcome. Or, it is because the desired outcome we've chosen does not serve us. Below are questions we frequently ask ourselves before a social interaction: * How can I get this person to like me? * How can I make sure that they think I'm okay? * How can I get through this without embarrassing myself?
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Your purpose could simply be to enjoy yourself, to fully listen to another person and hear about her life, or to share something interesting with someone else. Your purpose could be vulnerability and authenticity, or to tell the other person how you honestly feel. Notice how these types of outcomes are not manipulative. In reality, they are often mutually beneficial. When your purpose is focused on the other person, or on connecting, you wi..
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Rather than being a single entity, you can view yourself as a collection of different parts. Part of you wants to eat a pizza, and part of you wants to get the salad because it is healthier. Part of you hopes something will go well, and another part is paralyzed by fear of failure. In working with these parts of ourselves, it can be helpful to imagine that inside your head there is a corporate boardroom. There's a large wooden table with ma..
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Additionally, it can help to give your critic a name or title. This not only helps you label and catch it quicker, it also helps you take some of the charge out of what it is saying by giving it a playful or silly name. For example, when I am dealing with my inner critic, I call him Admiral Doom.
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I have identified other parts as well. The part of me that is terribly frightened that something might go wrong in the future is The Blind Prophet.
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The part that is convinced everyone will dislike me because I won't meet their expectations is Double More--it always demands I do more. When I ask Double More just how much more I should do, it always says "double!" The list goes on. It can be incredibly helpful to start to notice, identify, and name the different parts of yourself, especially your inner critic. Once"
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When you name your critic, you tell your subconscious that the critic is not you. This reinforces that the harsh, negative thoughts are simply ideas in your mind. They do not reflect clear facts or the whole truth. In fact, as you have done the Awareness Logs, you may have realized that many of your critical thoughts are quite distorted or inaccurate. Once you realize this, you can start to make a distinction between having a thought and be..
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The best way to break the trance is to start asking yourself specific questions that will help you see the situation clearly.
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What is the truth? When your critic launches an attack against you, it can seem incredibly convincing. So much so that many people just accept whatever their critic says as accurate. Part of this is due to the familiarity of the critic's voice, and part is because of how certain your critic sounds. Your critic does not typically put forth a tentative hypothesis for you to check out. On the contrary, it loudly asserts a claim as if it were a..
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is what we communicate with our eyes. The way we look at someone can communicate trust, distrust, dislike, hatred, admiration, joy, and even love. When we want to connect with someone on a deeper level, we almost always choose a face-to-face interaction. This way, we can look into the other person's eyes as we talk. When falling in love, we can spend hours simply gazing into the eyes of our beloved.
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Hidden assumptions In addition to asking yourself questions, you can defend against your critic by examining your hidden assumptions about yourself and the world around you. These assumptions are often unconscious, yet lurk behind every interaction. The more aware of them you become, the less ammunition your critic will have when it launches attacks against you. Hidden assumptions are beliefs or rules you have about how you are supposed to ..
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While it might sound abrasive and harsh, your critic is actually a very scared, vulnerable part of you. Even though your critic seems tough, chances are it is terrified of
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There are three ways to respond to your critic that you might find particularly helpful: defense, questioning, and acceptance. The first way is to directly challenge your critic, saying something like: "I disagree. That seems extreme. I'm not sure that is true." The second way to respond is to ask your critic questions that highlight his logic. You can also ask for specifics when he is making a vague or extreme claim. For example: Critic: N..
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The third step of creating self-compassion is learning how to give this kind of empathy to yourself. Instead of trying to talk yourself out of your feelings, or criticizing yourself for having the feelings, you can empathize with yourself. Yes, it is really uncomfortable for me to go talk with those people. I am feeling really scared right now. Whew, this is tough. A lot of people feel this way. The attitude behind empathy for yourself is t..
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Sometimes when we attack ourselves, we feel like we are the only ones suffering in a particular way. This can lead to feelings of personal inadequacy and loneliness, which can exacerbate an already overwhelming situation. We start to believe that we are the only people who feel social anxiety, and that everyone else has no problems with confidence.
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When you believe this, you will keep most of what you think and feel to yourself. After all, who would really care anyway? As a result, if we are in a situation where we are forced to speak, we do the best we can to discount what we are saying. We speak in a quiet, hesitant manner. We may mumble or trail off at the end of a statement. This makes us difficult to hear and understand, and easy to write-off as unconvincing and insignificant. Th..
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The most basic way to begin this practice is to consciously increase your speaking volume to a level that is in the normal-to-loud range. This is the volume that is loud enough so that everyone can hear what you are saying, but it is not so loud that it seems unusual. In addition, you can practice counteracting the tendency to trail off or mumble at the end of a phrase by consciously increasing your volume as you speak a phrase. When you do..
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Speaking in front of a group was one of the worst experiences I could imagine. As I worked through the same process that you are working through now, I began to move towards what scares me, rather than away from it. I started seeking out places to practice speaking, including a local Toastmasters chapter. I continued down this path for many years, regularly moving towards what scared me most.
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During my public speaker training, I learned it is inevitable that I will sometimes misspeak, stumble over my words, or make some sort of mistake. This prospect used to terrify me, and it was one of the reasons I avoided speaking so avidly. But what I realized was that it did not seem to matter when I made a mistake, if I applied the principle described in this section. I discovered I could mispronounce a word and even say something that di..
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The first time I stumbled across this principle, I thought it was a fluke. But as I practiced doing this each time I made a mistake, it became very clear to me that people did not seem to notice the misstep, as long as I concluded my sentence in a confident manner. This
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if you do not plan on speaking publicly, this communication secret can help ensure that others are hearing you clearly, and are listening to what you're saying. It will also help you gain greater respect in your relationships with friends, coworkers, and life partners. In order to get comfortable with the volume of your voice and speaking with conviction, I highly recommend you find a private place to practice, whether in your car during yo..
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When anxious, you might tend to look away frequently, and keep your eyes cast down towards the floor.
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By now, however, you have realized that the pattern of avoidance produces relief in the short term, but tends to cause more fear and restriction down the road. One simple way to shift your pattern of eye contact is to consciously walk with your head held up high and your eyes on the level of the horizon. It is so common for us to walk and move with our eyes cast slightly downward, lost in our own world of thoughts. Instead, you can practice..
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A powerful way to overcome your fear of eye contact is to engage in the Smile and Hello Practice discussed earlier. This involves walking down a busy street and making eye contact with as many people as you can. You can get their attention by smiling and loudly saying "hello!" or "hi there!" You can also choose to increase eye contact with strangers throughout the day. You can experiment by looking at people's eyes as you walk down the stre..
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A final way to experiment with exposure to eye contact is to decide to sustain eye contact with people when you are listening to them. As they are talking, allow yourself to look directly into one of their eyes. As you do this, you can focus some of your awareness on the sensations in your feet on the floor, and the air coming in and out of your lungs as you breathe. This will help you remain present while you practice making sustained eye ..
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Susan Jeffers' book, entitled Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (New York: Random House, 1987) is a quick, powerful read that can help you dramatically change the way you see fear.
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Les Brown is an incredibly inspiring speaker who strongly encourages people to pursue their dreams with passion and persistence. His book It's Not Over Until You Win (New York: Fireside, 1997) contains many of his core teachings. In addition, a YouTube search will provide you with access to dozens of full-length video recordings of his lectures.
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For a list of recommended Les Brown materials, see the Recommended Resources section at the end of the book.
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The final, and deepest form of exposure is to actually learn how to reveal your authentic self to the world around you. This involves revealing yourself as you actually are, not as you think you are supposed to be in order to be loved.
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The mask is an essential part of life that helps us function in our world. Is there a problem with the mask? Yes. When we believe we have to wear the mask at all times because of our fear of judgment, then we are unable to reveal our true selves. This leads to the circular fear of social anxiety: I am afraid people will judge me, but if they knew I was afraid of being judged, they would judge me even more. This fear blocks us from revealing..
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The old propaganda campaign will slowly influence you over time to believe that things cannot change and you are stuck the way you are. This door is open only for a short while, and you must make the decision to leap through it to the unknown that waits on the other side. I encourage you with all of my heart to make the jump. While the potential fall might be scary, the world around you will hold you up. There are thousands of people out th..
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Self-Esteem (Oakland: New Harbinger, 2000) Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning
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Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (New York: Random House, 1987) Susan Jeffers
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Radical Acceptance (New York: Bantam Dell, 2004) Tara Brach
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Something powerful happens inside of us when we make the shift from avoidance to approach when it comes to fear. Your fear hierarchy is precisely designed to help you make this shift. Instead of viewing each item as a threat that demands your focus, time, and energy to avoid, what if you saw each item as an opportunity to face your fears?
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Personalizing is a term used to describe taking too much personal responsibility for a situation that involves multiple people and multiple elements. It occurs when we conclude that the rejection was totally our fault and it reflects our personal inadequacy. Somewhere in all of our minds we have learned this formula:
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The main takeaway here is that rejection not only could mean something else, it most always does. The key is to first become aware of the fact that your idea of its meaning--that you are at fault, that you are a loser, that she simply doesn't like you--is not the truth. From there, you must seek alternative meanings that do not involve personalization and heavy self-criticism.
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The more you can simply feel the emotion without going into a story about why you were not good enough, the more quickly it will pass through you. This disappointment can serve to remind you
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When we face rejection, it can be a poignant time to tap into our desire, motivation, drive, and passion to pursue what we most want. * Why do I want this? * Why does it matter to me? * Am I willing to do whatever it takes to get there?
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The same holds true for social anxiety--which we can also call social phobia, or social fear. In this case, you're afraid that others will judge, ridicule, dislike, or reject you. As you work your way up your fear hierarchy, you will expose yourself to greater levels of judgment and rejection. It's important to realize that the purpose of completing these activities is not to succeed without any negative responses or rejections, but to actu..
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