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Introduction

Have you been thinking of ways to grow your confidence? Do you feel that fear has taken over a huge part of your life and is holding you back from living your true purpose? Do you want to shake all that fear and have unstoppable confidence that will leave people in awe of you? Well, this book is designed just for you!

Today, there are so many of us not living up to our full potential due to the fear of failure, or what others will think of us. In fact, that is one of the most common regrets most people have when they are near their deathbed. One thing that you have to understand is that fear will take away the sunshine in your life and leave you with so much darkness and sadness within.

The good news is that you can shake all that fear and self-judgment so that you take control of your life and live a purposeful and happy life. The one way to do this is to master the art of confidence. It is through authentic confidence that you lay a solid foundation for making better decisions, building long-lasting relationships, and positioning ourselves for success.

What Comes To Mind When You Think Of Confidence?

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi This is exactly what I think serves as a recipe for confidence. If you are going to live a fulfilled life, then you must have the confidence to go after the things that make you happy. In other words, you have to demonstrate confidence in yourself; abilities, personality, and intellect. So, what is confidence? Well, the truth about unshakeable confidence is living true to yourself. It is all about embracing your true self. To do this, you must believe that you have full control of your life, and not letting circumstances hinder you from your life purpose. You have to decide the value of your true self and never allow yourself to be defined by someone else’s opinion. The more you do this, the more it becomes effortless to express confidence. When you master the art of embracing your true self, you will realize that the doors of opportunity are all around you. You will be spoilt for choices. When limitless opportunities come your way, there is no more room for fear of scarcity. Soon, you’ll realize that you can live a life of abundance. This is exactly what I consider an effective pathway to unshakeable confidence and a fulfilled life.

Chapter 1

Three Pillars of Unshakeable Confidence

Pillar 1: Experiential Confidence

When I was a teenager, one thing that scared me the most was chatting up women, especially strangers. Making the initial approach felt impossible and made me feel like I had completely lost strength in my feet. It simply made me shut down!

Now, two decades later, I can’t wrap my head around what it is that I was so afraid of.

The truth is, you and I can overcome fear and easily do the things that we once thought impossible, simply because we now have experience. I was able to push through those frightening moments and conversation. Now, I can strike up a conversation with every person I find, on the train, coffee shop, or at the office.

I have the confidence to do pretty much anything I put my mind to. It is just like learning to drive on the highway for the first time. At first, it was scary, but with time, you adjust, and your body learns that it does not kill you.

Well, this kind of confidence is what is referred to as experiential confidence. It is the type of confidence that you gain through experience. You have developed this type of confidence at some point in your life. The first step is to have the courage to act and take risks. Each time you fail, you build that confidence because you understand that failure is not permanent.

One thing that you have to appreciate is all the things that did not work out in your life because they allowed you to learn. It is through the past failures that we have confidence today. Therefore, if you want to build your experiential confidence, the first thing that you need to ask yourself is what is the worst thing that could happen if you fail? Will you die? If not, then there is no reason to back down. You must understand that everything you act against fear, you grow your experiential confidence, and all the tasks that is difficult now will be easy later on.

Pillar 2: Emotional Confidence

This simply refers to the kind of confidence that you can turn on at will. Well, here’s an example: I started working for an International company at the age of 21 as a project assistant. One time, for some reason, I wanted to work from another city for three weeks. However, I was so nervous to ask my boss for permission to work away from the main office. Did I eventually do it? Definitely.

Well, I first had to prepare myself mentally. I started by brainstorming how I would walk into his office, present my case, and how I would handle his responses. I created a small decision tree with all the possible ifs, how and why questions he would ask and what my responses would be. This was to help me stay on top of my game so that nothing caught me off-guard. In other words, I needed this to maintain my composure.

What I was essentially doing was tapping into my emotional confidence by learning the tips and tricks of controlling my body language so that I do not send out the wrong message. If you control your body, then you will be able to control your emotions. On the contrary, if you fail to control your body, then your emotions will be running all over the place.

What I simply did was rehearse every statement I was going to say, and how I would do it, with a firm handshake, smiling face, and shoulders high. What I realize was, when you resist the urge of crossing your arms and showing your anxiety, the conversation flows naturally, and the other party eases into the discussion. That is how you gain emotional confidence.

It is important to note that, emotional confidence serves a great purpose especially when you are caught in a situation that you already anticipate; for instance, a presentation, a difficult conversation with your superiors or parents, a performance, etc. Unlike experiential confidence, emotional confidence is not limited to just a single domain.

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In the United States, over the past few decades, if you were to look at the top ten prescribed medications in the country, anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications will always make the list. This is not an accident, nor is it a fluke.

We live in a very stressful world. In fact, a lot of Americans are struggling with anxiety disorders at some level or another. It may have different manifestations, but make no mistake that it definitely gets in the way of a more effective life.

Whether you want to be more successful in your relationships, or you just want to be a happier person, or you would like to be more effective in your career, you need to deal with anxiety.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done because the vast majority of people cope with anxiety in all the wrong ways.

If you are reading this book, chances are, you are struggling with anxiety at some level or another, or you have a loved who is. Please understand that this book teaches you alternatives that will help you overcome anxiety.

Ultimately, anxiety is a combination of your environment, your genetic predisposition, as well as your chosen coping mechanisms. Never underestimate the amount of control that you have over your situation.

A lot of people are under the impression that if they have some sort of genetic predisposition for any kind of condition that they basically have no say in what afflicts them. In other words, they really have no choice over their situation.

This really is too bad because the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry benefits when people continue to believe this.

Because if there is no individual control over anxiety and it's just a foregone conclusion, and your only choice is to go through some sort of counseling paired with psycho-pharmaceutical intervention, there is really not much you can do. You really don't have much of a choice.

Well, please understand that you have a lot more control and say over the matter than you give yourself credit for.

Now, please understand that I'm not saying that you should not get professional help in terms of psychiatric or psychological guidance. I'm not saying that at all.

I suggest that you work with a professional, but please understand that you can supplement whatever they give you or prescribe to you with things that you can do on your own. These are mindset resetting strategies that would enable you to retain control over your life.

The reason why you're struggling with anxiety is that, ultimately, you feel that you're not in control. You feel that you live in a world you didn't create and, for a variety of reasons, there is just something bad that's about to happen or you're struggling with guilt, remorse, doubt and other negative emotions about the past.

Well, please understand that the past is the past. Those facts already happened.

It's not like you can jump into a time machine and reverse what happened. Those are facts. They happened already. There is really not much you can do about them. That milk has been spilt.

By the same token, if you're worried about the future, there's really not much to worry about because things haven't happened yet. The things that you fear have yet to unfold.

The only choice that you really have is to deal with your mindset in the here and now. The more you maximize your control over your present mindset, the better your relationship with your past becomes and the better equipped you would be to handle the future when it happens.

This book teaches you how to overcome anxiety without drugs, without professional and expensive psychiatric counseling, and by simply helping you rearrange your "mental and emotional furniture."

List Down All the Things that Cause You Anxiety

This assumes that you know what anxiety is and that you have certain feelings towards certain things in many areas of your life.

This is not always the case. A lot of people have undiagnosed anxiety. They really can't quite put their finger on it, but whatever it is, it is upsetting them.

They won't label it as anxiety, but it may function like anxiety. So, to the best of your ability, write down all the things that you are aware of that cause you anxiety.

Write Down All the Things that You Fear

Since a lot of people are unclear about what causes them anxiety or what anxiety exactly is, we're going to just go by a self-audit regimen that uses strong emotions or strong feelings as a guideline. So, in this instance, you're going to list down all the things that you are afraid of. List them all out. There's no such thing as a wrong answer. If it seems irrational or almost cartoonish or funny, write them down anyway.

This is all about you. Nobody's going to read your answers. The key here is to help you get a full picture of the things that weigh you down and hold you back.

List Down the Things that You are Guilty of These are things that you are remorseful of. These are the things that you wish didn't happen. Maybe these are things that you did in the past or said in the past. Write them all down.

There's really no intensity level here. As long as you can remember it right now, and as long as it does come up in your mind from time to time, that's good enough to write down.

Write Down the Things that You are Doubtful of Do you have relationships that you are doubtful of? Maybe you feel like you don't love your parents? Maybe you feel that your parents don't love you?

Maybe you feel that you don't really believe in the religion of your parents or the religion you've chosen, or you don't have much faith in your partner? Whatever it is, write down the things that you're doubtful of.

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Experts salesmen have always known that it's about selling the benefits, not the product. While it may seem counter intuitive online, the same strategy is still the most important strategy to generate sales for many of the same reasons. Selling benefits appeals to people more than selling features of a product. They directly show what a person will gain by closing the deal. They leave a small opening for imaginative sales pitches, and they clear all objections that are uttered.

Traditional Way To Sell Benefits Offline

There are differences in how those benefits are reiterated online. For one, in a traditional setting, a salesperson is offline, engaged directly with a customer, who can interact with him/her one-on-one. This allows the salesperson to hear the objections that most customers have to buying the product. As any good marketer knows, the minute an objection is raised, the sale is almost finalized. That's because people generally want to be convinced to buy a product; they just have some small issue or objection that they haven't been able to resolve themselves. When a salesperson hears an objection, he/she typically will have a ready response as to why that objection is not the way it is perceived, and frames it differently to produce a statement of benefit for the prospective customer. This allows the customer to rationalize or harmonize his/her feelings so that the final sale is accomplished.

How can you do the same thing online, though, when the customer is anonymous; you don't see him/her and he/she doesn't see you? How do you know what his/her objections will be and what benefits to list when you can't even engage a website visitor to talk to him/her directly? The key is to brainstorm every possible objection that a customer might have and list the benefits of your product on a sales page that includes ALL of them.

The online sales page is the equivalent of your sales introduction to the customer, and it better clearly list the benefits for them to read. If human nature is taken into account, though, you know that no one wants to read a long list of benefits. In fact, they may not even bother to read past the first two sentences of your sales page before deciding that they don't want to read further. What do you do? There are ways to write these sales pages so that the attention is grabbed and gently led down the page in a way that elicits an emotional response that keeps them reading and eager to buy. The next few

The Difference Between Features And BenefitsFeatures And Benefits

Features Are Comprised Of:

- The actual components that make up the product.
- Descriptive paragraphs about the qualities of the product.
- Explanations of a product's performance.
- Pricing for a product.

Obviously, your customer is going to want to know the features of a product, but that isn't what is going to ultimately sell him/her on it. To get him/her to buy the product, you have to list the benefits, not the features.

Benefits Are Comprised Of:

- An explanation of how the product improves the customer's life.

All benefits will answer the simple question that a customer has in mind: What's in it for me? Any statement that answers that question can be considered a benefit to the customer. From this quick explanation, you can see that telling someone who wants to buy eyeglasses that are for nearsightedness and that darken when exposed to sunlight is a feature of the glasses. However, if you tell a customer that he/she will be able to read to his/her grandchildren now and don't have to buy a spare set of sunglasses too, these are both benefits.

In the end, they say about the same thing, but the benefits will highlight some emotional appeal that is part of the reason that the customer went shopping in the first place. He/She didn't go to get a specific prescription for his/her eyes. That he/she leaves up to the optometrist to decide. He/She didn't even go there for the sunglasses; it was just an additional benefit that could appeal to him/her. Very rarely does a person go in with only a specific budget in mind; that budget is flexible when enough benefits make it reasonable to pay a higher price.

Stick to elucidating the benefits of a product or service, and you will sell more, increase your average sales price sold, and have more satisfied customers. Understanding your customer's needs is the basis of all good business, and finding the right

How Demographics Will Help You

If we were to brainstorm benefits for any one product or service, the list could be endless. The problem with this approach is that a benefit is only seen as beneficial if the customer has that need to meet. If you are brainstorming benefits for a new toothpaste, and you come up with the possibility of using it to patch nail holes in the wall, you'll probably elicit peals of laughter, not a sale. Is it a benefit of white toothpaste? There are some people who do use it like a compound, but not that many people would solely go out to buy your toothpaste based on that. The demographics that have a need to fill a hole with toothpaste is pretty small. Obviously, it's not a benefit that you would choose to list online. How do you decide to pick one benefit over another to list on your sales page then? In one word: Demographics.

What Benefits To Highlight

Every website has a specific demographic that it is trying to attract. Your core audience may be comprised of people within a specific income level, educational level, or heritage. You should know as much as you can about the demographics of the people you've attracted so that you can market to them better. If you don't know who is visiting your site, set up some surveys to help you define the demographic better and to reward people for participating with a sales coupon or discount.

The demographics will tell you the amount of money your customers have and what their most pressing concerns might be. It will also give you ideas of what products and services are most important to people who visit your site. If you don't have any idea about income levels, you can always set up three different product lines: cheap, mid-priced, and expensive product lines. You can see which are selling best and to whom and then set up your customer lists this way.