Punch-And-Kick Your Way Through Anxiety and Pressure into Confidence and Success

Since we can all inwardly confess to the bad effects of anxiety and pressure, I won’t dwell on it…

But I assume you would rather have less of it. Less anxiety. Less pressure. And on the flip-side, more confidence.

Anxiety, pressure and low confidence come from 2 basic factors:

• First, is that you might not be able to get done that which you want to get done. I.e. you might fail.
• Second, is that other people are watching and you have regard for what they think. I.e. you might look bad.

It’s quite clear that those 2 factors as the causes of most anxiety in general situations.

So let’s dig a little deeper here and build a diagram to really get under the hood of this thing.

Consider this 2—2 matrix: with the top being ‘positive expectation of success’ and the side being ‘regard for what other people think’.

So to interpret the matrix:

• With HIGH regard for what others think, but LOW positive expectation that we will succeed, our anxiety is high and our feeling of confidence low.
• With HIGH regard for what others think, but HIGH positive expectation for success, our anxiety might be considered ‘medium’ and our confidence considered ‘reasonable’.
• With LOW regard for what others think, and LOW expectation of success, we must be pretty miserable… a flat confidence and medium to high anxiety because we think we can’t achieve the thing that we want to do.
• With LOW regard for what others think, and HIGH positive expectation, we have low anxiety and high confidence.

Doesn’t that make so much sense?

• A low expectation for success comes from the perspective that you might not have the ability to succeed.
• High regard for what others think comes from our socialised collectivism in which we lack the freedom of individuality and independence.

So the goal for building confidence and reducing anxiety and pressure is two-fold:

1. Don’t care so much what others think of what you do and whether you succeed or fail
2. Have high positive expectation that you will succeed

Easier said than done?

Sure, so here’s HOW to do it…

Meditation? Visualisation? Positive affirmation?

Noooo!

Sorry to say, but you can not have certainty of outcome (confidence) without relevant experience in reality.

Certainty of outcome without relevant experience is a mind created reality (mysticism).

As such, you can not simply meditate on confidence and achievement and expect to be genuinely confident in reality.

Synesthesia (visualisation combined with the other senses) is indeed a good way to train the body and mind. But reality brings elements of experience that your narrow scope meditation did not include, hence the reality is more complex than the fiction that you prepared for.

Only by immersing in the actuality of the situation that you wish to build confidence in can you really do so. You can only know that you can do something, once you have done it, or something very similar.

I have witnessed for years that people think by reading self-help or personal growth books, that they expect the inspiration gained to transform them into a success power house.

Ain’t gonna happen.

If reading Think & Grow Rich was the key to becoming rich, why are most of the books readers still not rich, after 5 years, 20 years, 50 years?!

The book should have been titled ACT & Grow Rich, seriously.

I’m not denying the mental component to it, but sorry folks. Reality is reality. You gotta build genuine positive expectation through complete psychological experience. And that only happens through action in real situations. Not through the ‘mental masturbation’ of meditation.

To help understand the real solution, consider these quotes from an article on surviving extreme physical pressure during freak accidents:

“Anytime you take purposeful, directed action, you suppress panic.”
“The more you practice creating organized plans and executing them step-by-step, the better you’ll function in an emergency.”
“There are three important steps to take to suppress panic: breathe, organize, act.”

This relates to the 3 keys presented in my guidebook The Missing Principles of Mind Control, which are: Clarity, Preparation, Action.

Building these 3 mind-body ‘muscles’: clarity, preparation, and action are the keys to confidence: becoming independent in thought and able in body:

1. Clarity: Know who you are, what you want, and what you are currently capable of. The more you do, the less you will care about what other people think, and will develop the focus for the next 2 keys of confidence.
2. Preparation: Break down what you want into the steps for achievement. Become clear on the mechanism of success. The more you know about the situation, the higher will be your positive expectation of success. (There is also another important tool for preparation, but it’s not the visualisation or meditation that the self-help guru’s teach. It’s a visceral bodily experience that imbues your being with confidence within reality — explained below).
3. Act: Again, only through the reality of experience do you build genuine certainty of outcome.

Your Visceral Microcosm For Building Confidence

• Visceral? — Relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect
• Microcosm? –A little world

One of the most potent little worlds of deep inward feelings is strenuous physical activity.

Socially acceptable forms of that include sex and sport. Let’s focus on sport…

And not just watching it!

High adrenaline sport provides the opportunity to focus, prepare and act, through a full-immersion mind-body experience.

Sport clearly presents a complete little world where the rules are defined, the environment is set, and the goal is both clear and obviously achievable.

When you try different sports to experience their different psychological effects, you will find a few that best suit you for the purposes of building confidence.

Categories of sport include:

• solo sports such as sprinting or inline skating or cycling;
• team sports such as football or volley ball; and
• highly aggressive sports such as martial arts or arm wrestling.

Each sport requires dedication to be clear on what you want to achieve, to prepare for success through practice and training, and to act by participation.

From the psychological experience of physical sports you will be able to bring increased clarity, preparation and willingness into various areas of your life, for higher positive expectations of successes and less regard for what others think of our decisions and actions.

With the confidence you learn in the microcosms of sport, you will carry your mind-body confidence muscles of clarity, preparation and action into the macrocosm situations of your life through THE 7 dimensions of life management (explained in full elsewhere):

1. 1st dimension of life management is AWARENESS and FOCUS
2. 2nd dimension of life management is DIRECTION and CHOICE
3. 3rd dimension of life management is STRUCTURE and ENVIRONMENT
4. 4th dimension of life management is ORDER and SEQUENCE
5. 5th dimension of life management is CONTROL and CREATION
6. 6th dimension of life management is SYNERGY and COLLABORATION
7. 7th dimension of life management is CONTRIBUTION and INFLUENCE

The ultimate goal of course, is to eliminate the anxiety-of-influence and become the person we are meant to be.

Confidence by nature comes from the clarity that one is able to prepare and act on a purpose and achieve its outcome.

As a final note I include the words of Frank R Wallace, author of Neo-Tech:

“the anxiety of influence presses corruption upon the brow of consciousness to smother honesty, rationality, and self-responsibility.  That anxiety — that fear of responsibility and honesty — constitutes the barrier to endless riches and romance.

“in an anticivilization of mysticisms and irrationalities, the resulting corruptions bring mounting compromises and torpid diminishments that shrivel the passions for life.

…German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) postulated that man dwells in three realms: (1) what he is, (2) what he has, and (3) what others think of him. In today’s anticivilization, realms 2 and 3 control — realm 1 is derivative. In tomorrow’s business/science/art civilization, realm 1 controls — realms 2 and 3 are derivative. …What causes the difference between those two civilizations?

Re-read this article to clarify your plan, prepare your actions, and then take those actions to reduce anxieties and build confidence.

See the page Anxiety and Influence for a continuation of the research.

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Tagged as: anxiety, confidence, frank r wallace, influence, positive expectation, pressure, schopenhauer, self-esteem, sport, visceral