Preface
How to Read This Book
Introduction
Awakening of the Confidence Within
What’s Holding You Back?
Kill the Victim Inside
The Greatest Secret of an Unshakeable Self-Confidence
The Beliefs of Confidence
Master Your Inner Communication
The Silent Language of Confidence
Master Your Sexual Self
The Secret of a Never-Ending Energy
The Art of Confident Living
Conclusion
Appendix A – The Art of Visualisation
Appendix B – Recommended Resources
Test Your Confidence

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How to Develop a Strong Belief System? There are simple questions you can ask yourself to begin, to clarify and develop a strong inner belief system, so that you can make decisions that are right for you. Having a strong value/inner belief system is very much dependent on our ability to accept ourselves – who we are, what we feel, how we see the world independent of what others say, think, feel and do. The benefits of a strong inner belief system are varied and great: * Stronger self-confidence * Healthy self-esteem * Greater life satisfaction * Comfort with self and others But how exactly does one go about developing this strong inner belief system? Here are some questions for you to consider. Finding the answers to these can help you begin to weed out the muck of "everybody else says," and get back to the purity and perfection of self-expression. 1. What are your current beliefs about work, life, people, and about yourself? Let us go and try a free-writing exercise. On top of a page write one word (work, life, etc; one for each page) and then free associate for each word. Write down whatever thoughts might be conjured up by the word at the top of the page. Write until each page is full! 2. How much of what you believe is your own? Take a look at what you wrote on each page. What messages may have come from parents, friends, family, peers, teachers, etc? Identify the recurring themes? Now, pick out and highlight the things you feel truly reflect who you are and what you believe. 3. How much of it is enabling versus disabling? Are the messages that came from others enabling and empowering? Or are they limiting? Now, look at the ones that reflect your own inner belief system – are those empowering or limiting? How do they make you feel? 4. What do you want to believe? Mull over your true beliefs. Do they reflect how you want to feel about life, work, people and yourself? Write each idea or thought down on the left hand side of a page, and on the right hand side, write how you'd like to feel/think about each instead. Reprogramme yourself by identifying these limiting thoughts as they pop into your head, and replacing them with the thoughts and ideas you identified on the right hand side instead. If you continue this exercise, you'll find the old limiting thoughts creeping up less and less, and the new empowering thoughts will begin to take their place. 5. What messages about life, people, work and yourself did you get from family as you shaped your personality? Be prepared. Messages from family members are repetitive and will keep coming up. If you have chosen to reprogramme any of their thoughts, values and beliefs, then be prepared to counter these beliefs whenever a family member articulates them. 6. What's your response when you express your belief and someone disagrees? How are you going to respond should you share your beliefs with others, and find that they disagree? Here's a hint: don't change your mind. It's ok that someone else believes differently from you–that's what makes the world go round after all. Instead, simply state that you see life/work/people etc. differently, and then repeat and reconfirm your belief to yourself. These questions, their answers and the exercises associated with each are sure to strengthen your belief system. Just like your soul that gives you life, you don’t have to reinforce or communicate your belief. Nevertheless, its presence is undisputed. As you explore your answers to these questions, and explore the exercises associated with each, you'll begin to realise that you do have a very strong belief system. You may not always enforce or communicate it, but it's there, just as your spirit and soul gives you life. The hard part then, is in developing confidence in your ability to express, in an unwavering fashion, these beliefs. There are sure to be people who will disregard your beliefs. What you have to do is test your ability to continue with your belief system and keep it intact as a part of your personal growth. If it continues to feel solid, then restate and reinforce it strongly. Moving ahead, in the process, once your belief system has been strengthened, you will find that those having less confidence in their own beliefs will seek you out. It’s a beautiful discovery, trust me. When you know you have the ability to help others, you begin to strengthen your belief in yourself even more. By helping others achieve more Self-Confidence; your own confidence will continue to develop forever at rapid speeds, for the rest of your life. Once you have identified your beliefs, you are now ready to change them for good. Question Your Old Beliefs Just like a drop of poison can infect an entire well full of clean,drinking water, questioning your beliefs can have almost the same effect on your beliefs. When you question a belief, you sow a seed of doubt. Shakespeare once said, “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” Even the most self-confident people can become a victim of doubt. And once a doubt creeps its way in, it can distort belief and destroy it. That is why you must resolutely keep yourself away from the company which tends to sow doubts in your positive, well-serving and powerful beliefs. However, we will use this particular model of distortion for destroying our old negative beliefs which harm our purpose of succeeding in life using… The Magical and Almost Mind-Blowing Art of REFRAMING Reframing is a process through which you can smash your entire belief system in a matter of just a few minutes. The term ‘Reframing’ comes from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which provides an almost magical way of turning your beliefs around, play with them, mould them just the way you want them to be and replace them with the ones you want! Basically, reframing works on the concept of questioning your old negative beliefs and replaces them with new empowering beliefs. People having tremendous levels of self-confidence are those who keep on reframing their reactions, thoughts and beliefs to and about particular situations all the time. It’s an unconscious process for them. Your car stuck in traffic? Are you feeling angry or happy? May be it’s time to listen to your favourite CD you weren’t able to get time to listen. You could reframe this situation and view it as an opportunity to think about the things you are grateful for in your life. You may want to visualise your goals or rehearse a future situation to make it just the way you want it to be. There are countless ways of reacting to a situation. Basically, this is exactly what reframing gives to you. It provides you with tools using which you can observe a situation from many possible angles, like a director choosing the best angle for his scene. You already know the power beliefs have over our entire life. Imagine the power you’ll have when you know how to reframe your beliefs in a small time. And why you and only you will also have the ability to take someone’s belief system and literally change it within a few minutes. Talk about changing realities. Yes, you read it right. When you change beliefs, you change realities. (1) Begin by asking yourself, "What is this belief based upon?” Is it based upon a fact I know – or is it an assumption – or is it based upon something which isn’t concrete and solid enough?” Continue with the following questions: 1. Could there be a rational reason backing up this belief? Or there is none? 2. Could I be mistaken about this belief? 3. If I can be mistaken about it, why am I allowing it to run my life? (2) Tear your old beliefs apart Most of the beliefs are simply generalisations. It’s a property of our mind to generalise things for future ease and to avoid the process of re-learning. Just imagine if you had to learn to drive every day before you went to work. (Funny, eh?) However, when it comes down to beliefs, this property of mind can create belief systems which are totally out of proportion and plainly harmful. “Politicians are bad”. Now that’s just a plain statement – a belief with no reference to how, what, who, where or why. “I’m a loser.” Ahh… Now this is a powerful generalisation which massively impacts an individual’s life and literally distorts everything. Just imagine how absurd it is to know that it is just a generalisation of one or two small failures, often followed by negative comments from others and hence, forming a belief which strengthened day by day. And it happens to all of us every day. Come on, it happens to you and me too. Get Specific. Tearing your belief apart makes it lose its power upon you dramatically. Just get into the details and watch the belief melting in front of your eyes. Remember the section on the power of Questions? In order to break through your negative beliefs, we’ll access this powerful and magnificent resource. What is the cause of this belief? How specifically is it so? What has to happen in order for me to not believe it anymore? Am I willing to make that happen? How specifically can I go ahead and make it happen? (3) Apply your belief to someone else’s life. If you see someone else in a similar situation as you are in, would you believe the same about that person too? Recently a female friend of mine got into an argument about the role of men and women in the growth of the world with a gentleman. I had the opportunity to closely watch them spill their guts. It was fun, actually. The gentleman out of nowhere replied to one of my friend’s comment with “Women are the weaker sex. They are weaker than men, physically and that really matters. Physical power commands more respect”. I had not been expecting the answer my friend came up with almost instantly. The answer shocked me as well as the other person. “Does that mean that if you are physically weaker than anyone in this world, you don’t deserve his respect?” It was a killer – a complete turnaround that pushed the gentleman off-guard. You can imagine the look on his face at that moment. I was completely amused. What my friend unknowingly was able to accomplish was to deflect a ‘belief’ that gentleman had with a question that made him doubt his belief – instantly. You can do the same with your beliefs. So if you have a belief of the sort – “Since I can’t speak well on the stage, I am a loser”. Or “I must be a loser because I am unable to attract that particular person.” Just turn it around and apply it to someone else’s life. Choose someone you respect and admire as it usually helps. Or just globalise it (as in the first example of my friend). So for the above belief, ask yourself, “Does that mean if anyone in this world (or a particular person you respect and admire) can’t accomplish that (the particular action or a result) in a particular situation (or lack a particular skill), that makes him a loser?” It’s really a killer. And it happens to be my favourite way of deflecting any negative beliefs I personally encounter. You can use the above methods to deflect any negative belief somebody tries to force upon you. Just bombard the other person with your power questions and see him crumbling. It’s like having an anti-negative-belief ninja’s sabre in your hands – slashing your opponents. Guess what, you can do it with anyone’s beliefs. Just make sure you practice enough first and always do this to others with good intentions. What you do to others comes back doubled – it’s a law. Be a saviour, if you have to.

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