CB011 - Fuelling Your Confident Smile

Hi there,

It’s Stuart again with another episode of Confidence Bytes and today I want to talk to you about ‘doing’.

You see:

You won’t get confident from reading books.

You won’t get confident from listening to tapes.

You won’t get confident from watching videos.

You can only get confident by doing.

Now, reading books, watching videos, listening to tapes can help, yes. They can give you a better understanding of different behaviours and how other people have got confident but unless you actually step out and do something it’s not going to make you confident on its own.

Now, I understand that just ‘doing’ can be very scary because, you know, it’s a big thing to change from being, you know, from having a lack of confidence to going to be be more confident. So we’re going to talk today about doing things in baby steps.

You know, do the smallest thing you can right now…

Now, obviously, one of the big things that’s going to make you feel better about yourself is to smile, ok, because smiles fuel your behaviour. It’s not for nothing that for many sales trainers, many people that interact with the public, they have a time that they are asked to practice their smiles because it makes people interact better with them.

In fact, I was listening to an audio tape of a, a mentor of mine and he said that when he was working for a non profit - in the morning he, they had to practice their smile fifty times before they were able to interact or allowed to interact with members of the public.

Think about that…

You know, if you practice your smile fifty times every single morning it’s going to change your whole mood, it’s going to change your whole demeanour. You know, a smile is infectious.

It also stimulates your feelings in yourself.

Now, think about smiling. If you just, you know, say you’ve got a bad mood and you just go mmmmm, put this crazy smile on your face, you know, it doesn’t help you.

You need an emotion to drive that smile, to make the smile ore genuine.

Now, I like to talk to you so it’s easy for me to put a big smile on my face right now and talk to you. And, as I do that it makes me want to smile more and more and more because I’ve practised my smiles, I’ve made them work.

And what is it about the emotion, what emotion is it that makes people smile?

Well there’s humour, you know, if you think of a TV show or a movie or just some funny incident. That can make you smile on its own.

There could be love, maybe from a parent, maybe from a child, maybe from a friend, maybe from a pet, it doesn’t matter, but the love that they show you makes you smile in a different way. It makes you appreciate being you because they’re showing the love for you.

So, what I want you to do. I want you to go out and think about all the different situations that you’ve smiled.

Now let’s take a funny incident on a TV shoe, show a comae, a comedian or maybe even a movie or something like that, something that you found very, very funny.

Get that memory now, think back to it. Get the feelings starting to burst through you, get that smile on your face, ok, and just feel it. Let it permeate, let all the goodness come from this emotion.

And now - keep the emotion, keep the feeling, keep the smile but let the memory go, ok. Just let the memory drift away but keep that emotion, keep that smile and use that as a fuel that you can take with you anywhere to power that smile.

And it’s going to take practice, you need to be doing this many times a day ok. And do the same thing with other, other things that have made you smile. As I say, feeling appreciated, feeling good because you did something that makes you smile, all these things, start capturing them, start remembering them and relive in that moment and how you felt, how good you felt and how you smiled. OK.

As you do that, allow the memory to just drift away and get less and less and less but keep that feeling, keep that emotion, ok, because what you’re doing is you’re collecting the emotions that make you smile more. OK. The emotions that make you smile more.

And they will power your smile and they will infect other people and they will make your day so much better.

So. Practice that religiously every single day. If you can, you know, it might sound crazy at first but practice it fifty times every morning before you set foot out of your house, before you interact with other people - get that smile on your face.

Maybe you’re one of the people who needs a cup of coffee in the morning… if that’s you, grab that coffee, drink a sip or just smell it and, mmmmm, smile because it makes you feel good.

It’s so easy, but not enough people do it that’s why we get all these miserable faces walking down the street.

And once you’ve done that, just get those feelings, get these emotions and whoever you come interact, into, you know, face to face interaction with, just smile at them, maybe it’s a shopkeeper, just smile…

You know, a few years ago I went back to the UK, because I live in China and I hadn’t been there for a long time, and I was visiting friends and family and I went to the supermarket.

And as I’m at the supermarket I was waiting in the queue the checker, the girl smiled at me with this really wonderful warm smile and I was like - “What?” - I looked behind me, (laughs) because, you know, I’d forgotten what it was like for people to smile in the supermarket because where I live there’s not many smiles in the supermarket. It seems to be a thing that doesn’t happen so often.

But, there, the girl, she just said “Hi! How are you?” and it made me feel so wonderful to be appreciated because, you know, that’s what it was, she was just appreciating, she was happy to see me. I’ve never seen her before, I’ve never met her before, I was just another customer but she made me feel like a million dollars because she smiled at me in a genuine way.

So you practice that.

You go out and you do that, you capture those emotions, you capture those feelings and you put them into your smile, you put that smile in your pocket, you take it with you and whoever you come into contact with you take it out and you put it on and you make it genuine and it will make the biggest difference to your confidence and it will make the biggest difference to their day.

Because you are showing appreciation.

So that’s one thing. Now going on to what I said at the beginning or going back to what I said at the beginning - take baby steps. I don’t want you to take baby steps with your smiling because that’s important to get right. It isn’t easy to get right but obviously you can’t spend the whole day going around like a, you know, grinning like a ‘Cheshire Cat’, so jut do it with a couple of people. If it doesn’t make, you know, if, if you’re a little bit nervous about it, just do it with one person everyday.

Just make a point, one person a day - see how they change, then do it with two people and then just multiply from there.

And, you know, you are not alone in not feeling confident about yourself. Some of the greats, some of the most famous people in the world have a lack of confidence, you know, people like Fred Astaire.

You, you wouldn't believe, but if you read his history, he was not happy about his performance ever. he was a perfectionist because he didn’t have the confidence that he was a great dancer, probably one of the best dancers in the world.

Marilyn Monroe - she had lots and lots of problems with stage fright because of a lack of confidence in her abilities but you wouldn’t see that when she acted.

They managed to get over it. It took time, it took effort, and you can do the same.

So, let me assume that you want to have a meeting and you don’t like meeting new people because, I was this way, you know, I was this way at one time. I’d go into a room with people and I’d just stand around.

I didn’t like to be there, I didn’t know what to say to anybody, and I saw them all talking and then I wished that someone would invite me over but I didn’t so I kept being left out.

So what can you do?

Well you can go to this meeting and if you’re very, very uncomfortable and it’s something, you know, you, you’re going to be going back again, you can just sort of sit there, blend in or stand there and blend in a little bit and just walk around and just smile at people. Ok.

You don’t have to say anything. But you just walk around and you get comfortable with the area.

Now, over time, this comfort allows people to get comfortable with you and you to get comfortable with them and then you can start talking. But, you know, maybe the first time you don’t have to do that, maybe the second time is, is when you want to do it.

But just practice with a smile, start with a smile and say ‘“Hi, how are you?” - That’s it, ‘Hi how are you?’ and they will respond and when they respond you’ve got an introduction, you’ve got a little bit of a, you know, a reason to talk. And then you can ask a genuine question, you know, “Why did you…” you know, “Why did you come here?”

If it’s a meeting you have to come to or you’ve not met this person before in the company or whatever then you can just ask, you know, ‘Where do you work, what do you do?’ Just ask a simple, simple question, show genuine appreciation, have a smile and then carry on.

And you’ll be surprised how quickly this can change your demeanour, your behaviour because that smile is driving you and you’re taking small steps. I mean you don’t have to meet a person for the first time and discuss Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity…

You know - “How are you?”, “You know, the weather’s not so good today is it?” you know, just talk about anything innocuous and then listen, appreciate the other person, listen to their answers. They will give you the things you need to talk about.

So, think about the situation that you don’t feel confident in and I don’t want you to think about “I’m never confident!” I want you to pick a situation that’s important to you now and it’s something that you want to work on.
OK?

And think about the smallest, smallest thing that you can do now to go out and interact with the people or to act differently and remember it’s going to start with that smile. So that smile is at the practice, the beginning and then think about ‘What’s the smallest thing I can do?’

Maybe I’ve got a meeting with my co-workers and I don’t know who they are, you know, because some of them, you know, it’s a big company, some of them I’ve worked with, some I haven’t.

I can say hello to those and I can, can just walk up to the other people, smile, “Hi, how are you?” “Nice to meet you, what’s your name?”

“Oh my name’s Fred.”

“Oh, my name’s John. I work in the, the erm, accounts department. Where do you work?”

Simple things. And then you’ll start to get to know people.

So think about what it is. The smallest thing you can do right now. Think about the area you want to be more confident in. Take the smallest steps, go out there with that smile that you’ve been practicing and make it happen.

And, I tell you, by going out by going and doing things, you’re going to be building your confidence all the time, all the time, all the time and soon you’ll be supercharged with confidence because you learned to smile.

Now, if you are a very, very, very shy person, if you have a really big problem with confidence, I understand a chall, what a challenge it can be. And, you know, sometimes you might need some professional help.

One of the tools which is very, very good and very powerful at helping you build confidence is hypnosis. You know, if you go to a qualified hypnotist or hypnotherapist like myself they can give you some, you know, really powerful help to get you more confident.

But you can also get it by talking, you know, interacting with other people, maybe your friends, maybe a family member. So think about, you know, the people who could help you and, you know, you have to be specific.
Where is it that you want more confidence? And, you know, there’s many, many areas - just focus on one now.

Is it ‘I’m too shy to go out?’ Well how are you going to get past that, ok?

Well, the easy way is to put on clothes that make you feel good, smile at yourself, look at yourself and then just go for a small walk. Go to a couple of shops where, you know, there’s plenty of people that, you know, you can just hide amongst the crowd.

There’s so many ways… we don’t have time for all that right now though but, if you want to get hold of me, if you want to talk to me, at no charge, you just get hold of me from going to my website, look for the ‘Contact’, send me a contact message and then we can take it from there and I guarantee that you can change and become a more confident person any time you want.

So, see the smile, practice it, get it on your face, let it make you feel good and I’ll speak to you next time with another exciting ‘Confidence Byte’

Thanks for watching.