Sanders Says

360 Degree Confidence

Confidence is the rocket fuel for success.  

When you stamp out uncertainty in your point of view, confidence rushes in and gives you resilience, power and boldness.  Show me a successful entrepreneur and I'll show you a consistently confident persona. Confidence gives you risk tolerance.  It fills you with charisma, attracting others to follow or join you. It puts you in a creative (think proactive) state as opposed to the weaker reactive analytical state.  

The secret, though, is to create an effective system for consistent confidence.  Sure, you get puffed up when things are going great and the wind is at your back. But when the wind dies down and the tide goes out to sea, confidence ebbs away like the tide. 

That's why you should cultivate three hundred and sixty degree confidence in your outlook.  You need to surround yourself with certainty to protect your bold point of view.  Think of confidence as a combination force-field and power source.  When the world comes at you, it protects you.  When the world is your oyster, it catapults you.  One thing's for sure: Redundancy is required. If you've seen any Star Trek episode or movie, you know that primary force fields can fold under pressure.  So you need backups.  If you've seen any war movie, you know that the power source (think generator or stockpiles) are always the first to be attacked.  So you need Plan B. 

To that I offer a framework for your personal confidence system: 360 Degree Confidence.  Surround yourself with realistic reasons to belief.  I first heard about this concept in the context of brand marketing.  Rex Briggs, a marketing consultant, was visiting with Yahoo back in 2002 about the value of internet advertising in creating purchase intent.  He argued that people decide to buy something (CD, phone, etc.) because they have multiple confirmations of its value.  When you hear about a band online, then via a friend and finally on the radio -- you convert!  He suggested that brands need to surround the consumer by reaching them at work, at home and in play.  

Now let's apply that to confidence.  There are three 120 degree layers of confidence that can surround your psyche full circle: Self Confidence, Team Confidence and Higher Power Confidence.  When one buckles under heavy pressure, the other(s) serve as a backstop.  When you know you have all three, you realize that you are not alone in the fight, which can give you calm and restore your sense of confidence. 

Self confidence is not enough.  You can't do it on your own in this interdependent world of today.  When you put the world on your back, you create an emotionally unsustainable life.  When you believe in your team, you realize you have a job to do and collectively you will do well.  When you believe in a power bigger than all of you, and that your mission is worthy, you realize that you can't lose.  

In future posts (Parts 2, etc.), I'll give you advice on cultivating all three types.  For now, though, I challenge you to open your eyes for proof points that you are not alone.  For now, I admonish you to stop relying on faith alone, and start giving yourself a fair shake when you look in the mirror.  

The value of quitting bad habits

According to Dr. Max Maltz in his classic self-image book Psycho Cybernetics, our habits are worn like garments on our personality.  Whether they are good habits (remembering other people's birthdays) or bad habits (smoking), you wear them as a statement about who you are. 

That's why bad habits can hurt your self-image.  When you repetitively do something that you know is wrong or harmful, and you can't control yourself, you lose your sense of personal power.  The longer you let the bad habit continue, the more powerless you feel.  Eventually, you develop a negative attitude about the person behind the bad habit -- YOU.  It's impossible for you to believe that "anything is possible" if you can't put down the candy bar or quit mindlessly surfing the internet.  Over time, the bad habit leads to more bad habits and eventually you feel like your life is beyond your control.  You program yourself to reward any accomplishment with an indulgence of your bad habit.  Make a sale, have a smoke.  Finish a project, have some retail shopping therapy.  As you do this, you pull yourself out of the positive feedback loop and force your behavior back into the downward spiral of self-loathing and self-abuse.  Instead of basking in what you had the power to do (the task, project, etc.), you immediately sink into what you cannot control...your bad habit. 

If you want to improve your self-image, and dramatically boost your confidence, quit a bad habit.  Oh come on, you know you have several of them.  We all do.  Several years ago, I decided (over a few years) to quit my bad habit of smoking.  It was not an easy task, and I had several failed attempts -- each one made me feel foolish, non-commital and addicted to tobacco.  When I finally quit smoking, and stayed away from these coffin nails for six months, I had a tremendous feeling of accomplishment.  I had conquered one of the hardest habits to break!  It lifted how I felt about myself, my appearance, my heath, my will power and even my sense of strength.  Ultimately, it improved how I viewed myself psychologically, and I extended that positive self-image into the rest of my life from personal to professional.  

You can have this too.  First things first, isolate two bad habits you need to break.  A bad habit is any practice that produces more harm than good over the long haul. Usually the bad habit has a short term value proposition such as pleasure, convenience or novelty.  Of the two habits, pick the one you'll wipe out before October 31.  Here are a few ways to kick the habit: 

1.  Fall in hate with the habit and in love with yourself -- Do some research to confirm why this bad habit has bad health, relationship or financial impacts.  Look down at your behavior and see this habit taking control over your life like a controlling friend.  Develop an attitude that you don't like the habit, and you can't stand its smell, taste, look or feel.  See others that have the bad habit and notice how the habit is ruining them.  Give the bad habit a negative nickname.  I called cigarettes my dunce-sticks.  

2.  Quit your habit in public.  Tell your family and friends you are giving this up.  If possible, recruit a trusted friend to help you and ensure you'll keep your word.  If you try and quit a bad habit in private, it is easy to cheat on the program.  When you say you are quitting smoking or round-the-clock sports viewing, it's easy for you to get nailed by a supportive friend when you backslide.  Seek out a support group and join a community.

3.  Set a concrete date for the habit to be completely gone.  Even if you miss the date, the goal is likely to give you a reason to quit now and not just "some day". 

4.  Each time you backslide, give yourself a chance to redeem yourself by quitting again.  You can't see quitting as all or nothing.  By noting when you've had the courage to get back on the quitting train again, you are reinforcing your belief that you have tenacity and don't give up easily on a goal.  

5.  Celebrate when your bad habit is gone.  Have a party, reward yourself with something constructive (or fun).  This will inform your psyche that you've done something right and have control over your own behavior.  As others participate in your celebration of power, you'll fall into a positive feedback loop.  

6.  Pick another bad habit to slay.  In the world of sales, there's an old saying: The best time to make a sale is when you just made a sale.  This applies to personal power too.  The best time to kill a bad habit is when you just eliminated one.  Trust me, you'll always find more habits to change in your life, hopefully they'll get smaller and smaller in impact over time. 

Your ongoing commitment to own your behavior will give you a sense of life-momentum.  You'll feel like your maturity is soaring and self-respect will surely follow.  Who knows, your willpower example may lead others to shun their bad habits too.  Then you'll feel like a leader, which can only grow your confidence more -- and paint you into the "I don't do that anymore" corner. 

The recession is over in this house

Here's another story from my childhood.  This experience deeply influenced my point of view and helped me to understand the power of family or media or culture.  

When I was eight years old, one of my house chores was dusting. My nemesis was a green wicker horn of plenty, overflowing with sticky rubber fruit, sitting on top of the dining room table. One day, as I was attempting to dust these bulbous round grapes, I asked my grandmother, “Why do we keep this?  It’s old and it stinks.  Can’t we get something new?” She sat down at the table and told me a story about the Great Depression, something I’d never heard of at that young age.

The Great Depression began right as she was finishing high school and filled her 20s with gloom and despair.  Sometime in the early 1940s, my great-grandmother brought this wicker basket home from the five-and-dime and sat it on this dining room table. That night great-grandmother announced to the family, “We’ve had enough of being poor.  We’ve had enough misery and worry. As of today, we have everything we need. There is enough to go around!”  

“You see,” grandmother told me, “the Great Depression didn’t end ceremoniously one day when somebody announced it in 1942. It ended family by family and city by city as folks like my mom made declarations of abundance like this,” as she gestured towards the horn of plenty.  So it stayed and I learned to love it. 

Please share this story with others that would-should-must declare that the recession (the end of growth) is OVER.  Regardless of what Wall Street says or does, we need to invest, self-educate, dream and give again.  You have a choice to be the Phoenix or the fodder.  And you can't lift others up laying face down!

Generosity is a wonder drug

Much of our emotional pain comes from an obsessive focus on lack, where our mind identifies with what we don’t have, what we want others to do for us and what others have.   As we hammer away at our mental shock absorbers with this thinking, we get closer and closer to depression.  When we consider our greatest fears, we often relate them entirely on their impact to our lives and livelihood.   Very seldom do our greatest fears concern outsiders, strangers or even associates and friends.  

Generosity, the act of giving to others in need, reverses our thinking patters from have-not to got-enough.  If generosity achieves a powerful moment of contribution, making a difference, it can snap you out of your poor-me trance.  

Jonathan Schwartz, a Yahoo executive I worked with for several years, demonstrates the healing power of being generous with your time.  In 2002 and 2003, he served as regional vice president of sales for the ad team.  His patch was the west coast, which had been hard by the tech-meltdown. He was getting a few hundred emails a day with a workload that exceeded his waking hours -- counting weekends. His therapy was simple: Give time.  Sounds crazy, but it worked. He signed up for the Yahoo-For-Good project that entailed working with local schools in need to install computers and teach kids how to use the internet to find-connect and research. The impact on his psyche was immediate. When he got back to the office, he scrambled to catch up and started to push back to the info-hogs and worry warts that were gobbling up his precious time. He realized that whenever he felt down and out, without any personal time, he could lift himself out of the doomloop of the day by spending some time at the school project.  He realized there was enough to spare if he'd own his schedule and value his time as a place to make a difference and not just run on the treadmill. 

Time is one thing, precious money is another.  During these times, giving money is harder than ever.  We’d rather give time, old junk or advice.  If money is an obsession to you, though, you’ll have to give it away to achieve the wonder drug results of redirecting your mind to your abundance.  Money is the hardest thing for us, even during good times.  It’s the rocket fuel that we equate with power, luxury and security.  

I have a good friend that just gave away tens of thousands of dollars to help a school in need.   He’s not a billionaire either, just an average millionaire that lost about a third of his value last year.  And it was driving him crazy.  One day, late last fall, he found out about a school in Africa that some friends were raising money for.  The school was funded during the go-go days of 2005 and 2006 and due to the market pullback donors were bailing out left and right. 

The school didn’t have enough cash for much of anything but the buildling, some books and some bargain priced train-the-teachers.  The kids didn’t have computers, qualified teachers or hot lunches.  For a small amount of money, dozens of lives could be changed forever.  He prayed over the opportunity, wrote the check and later took a trip to the school for a ribbon cutting.  The emotional results were surprising:  He felt free.  He felt powerful.  He realized that even at two thirds of his paper-wealth, he was still rich enough to give.  He reports that he's sleeping deeper.  He scrambled around to replace the cash, and fell into a lucrative consulting arrangement that will more than cover for his donation. 

He told me that this one act of painful charity, giving until it scared him, will likely change his life forever – permanently immunizing him against the markets ups and downs.  He realized that when he lost, he was not alone.   He also realized that money is either his master or his weapon-of-good.  By giving it, he owned it.  He’ll never think of his net worth the same again.  

What does this mean to you?   

- Giving is an opportunity.  You need to keep your ears open for it, and respond every time it comes into your life. 

- Giving should be programmed into your life, as an exercise in consistency. 

- Give what you feel you lack if you are depressed.  Give what you feel you have a surplus in if you are grateful. 

- Giving should be a way you connect with the world.  Don’t make a presentation, generously give a speech that informs, inspires and validates.  Don’t do time at your next charity function, give all of yourself including your talents and energy.  Don’t perform obligations or routine tasks, give your very best to help everyone on the team.  Once you get into the giving mindset, Big-Gives will come easier to you. 

- Whenever possible, give to others that cannot pay you back. This way, you know you are being truly generous and not simply "strategic".  By giving to those without the power to reciprocate in kind, you can give until it hurts -- which is the key to retooling your mind.  When you give to the needy, you dial into their lack which then becomes your opportunity.  This forever reframes lack from something imposed on us to something we do something about. 

READ: The Power Of Giving by Azim Jamal and Harvey McKinnon

Reconnect with your zest via a picture

Photos of yourself will confront you with your true nature

I admire photographers, in fact, many of my Facebook friends (and best friends) take photos for a living. Photos capture so much more than an image, they capture an emotional point in time with respect to humans.  

Recently, I stumbled across a few of my pictures from 2001 and 2002, when I was just releasing Love Is The Killer App and moving up at Yahoo!.  What a time.  What momentum.  And the economy was in the tank, especially if you lived in the Silicon Valley.  I had a sense of zeal: Mojo.  I saw the crash as an opportunity to be a leader instead of just a grunt in the cash pile.

Here's a pic a photographer took of me on the day of my book launch on 5th Avenue in New York City. 

This was a time in my life when I was getting paid, exposed to the public and rewarded for giving.  When I look at it now, I peer into it to reconnect with my gestalt: You get only by giving.  You succeed by growing other people.  I can see it in the pics.  You can too.  Pull out old photos from a time you were on top of the world or in the positive feedback loop.  Find the sentence or two that sums up your winning philosophy at the time.  You'll learn, as did I, that you can do it again -- it never expires. 

The other thing I noticed about the old pics I found, is that I was bubbly and exuberant.  It was like I had found the Secret (not that one) and it gave me a Cheshire Cat grin about life.  Here's a pic taken by James Bland back in 2001 at the Magnolia Hotel in downtown Dallas.  

This really jolted me because it made me realize that I've grown far too serious. I need to find the gonzobiz sense of humor again and make people laugh, not just think.  Find your happiest pictures, and look into them deeply to discover the joy behind the smile.  Was it because of material gains?  No.  It was because you were tapping into the possibilities of life and loving it.  

Finally, remember that there are waves of success in your life.  You have had one big moment, but it likely led to after-shocks of plenty over the years.  Love Is The Killer App made its way to other countries, and by 2004 it became a big hit in Brazil.  It was 2002 all over again for me and I rekindled my spark and fell into a South American positive feedback loop.  Here's a pic taken for the largest newspaper in Sao Paulo.  

In fact, as I look through my pics, every year or two an after shock comes along that offers new opportunities to stoke my Mojo and keep the Lovecat alive (and growing).  You can too.  I've already shared this with a few friends, and they all found the exercise invigorating.  One person looked at pictures of her and her marriage to kids to first business.  It shook her out of the recession-trance she'd been under for months.  Another person that did this exercise looked at a range of photos from his winning season in high school football to the 2006 sales rally at his company where he won top rep of the year.  He found some spring in these pics that he realized was missing in his 2009 life.  

So try this, you might have the same positive results.  Here's my Flickr set from 2002=2004. 

Feed your mind good stuff - a manifesto

If you feed your mind poison, you'll eventually poison your mind. 

Today, it's easy to feast of negative news, gruesome events and scare-talk.  The commercial media has no incentive to be uplifting.  Bad news draws headlines.  Macabre coverage goes viral.  Social media is much the same -- other people's fears surround you like sharks, circling your psyche.  

Think about the number of negative events we could obsess in, if we cared to: GM goes bankrupt, millions lose their homes and savings, record setting deficits, tragic deaths...etc.  And then there is the economy, rife with layoffs, foreclosures and credit card defaults.  We are so busy trying to survive the times, we don't feel like we have the time to read fluff or about the future.  This is prescription for disaster.  Not watching your mind diet is like not watching your food diet.  Eventually, you'll get spiritually flabby and you just might go into personal growth-arrest.  Think of the negative information as sugar, fat, carbs and chemicals.  They all taste good, fill you up with stimulation.  They also kill your point of view, and eventually your confidence. 

Last week, I blogged about a confidence boosting reading plan, and now I'm going to expand on this even more.  I believe that the key to having confidence, abundance and positive vibes is to feed your mind good stuff.  If you balance your outlook with reality and hope, you'll rise above the times and emerge as a leader of people.  

The proper diet: 

 It starts with being aware of what you are putting into your head each day.  Write down everything you read next week: Newspapers, magazines, TV and radio.  Take note of the the people you follow online (blogs, social stream, emails you read).  Count the positive ones and the negative ones.  Keep track of this and it will open your eyes.  You'll often find that you are loading up on Chicken Little speak.  The reason that self-monitoring is important is because it gives you a 3rd party perspective that will help you break free from your current habits.  Many food diet coaches use this technique (food diaries) as the essential first step. 

Next, manage your allocation of media consumption.  Online guru Chris Brogan, for example, is a voracious reader of books -- he likely reads them more than tweets or blog posts.  It shows in his confidence and forward thinking.  Books provide much deeper content than micro-publishing or weekly/daily pubs.  Here's a good formula for information consumption: 

* 20% current events (from even keel publications such as NYT, WSJ etc. NOT USA Today or screaming head cable TV or pulpit pounding radio).  

* 50% Good Information (see below) 

* 30% Social stream, work stream and misc.  This includes your surfing, email inbox and conversations.  

Now you've blocked out half your time to build your perspective, your mind and your arsenal of intelligence.  What is good information?  Four categories: 

Rah (inspiration) 

Go! (instruction, how-to) 

How (information on how the world works, including history and bio) 

Next (what will likely happen in the future from tech to social) 

If you consume those four categories, you'll soon find that you are evenly informed.  You are positive, but practical.  You are in the moment, but future proof.  You are out of the doomloop, but growing your personal resume each and every week. I've been on this plan for a decade, and it has changed my life in every way.  I am supremely confident, even when the market tanks and the world is crying gloom-doom and destruction. 

Final note about your social stream:  Don't follow, friend or listen to people with a negative perspective.  If they are hateful or lack confidence, they will eventually infect you with their mind-virus.  You cannot resist their hate/fear/cynicim.  Actively delete them from your life.  Unfollow and unfriend them.  Confront them.  Cut them out of your lunch loop.  Hopefully, they will get the message that there is a growing number of people that don't appreciate Chicken Littles or Towne Criers.  Whatever you do, don't be passive about the people in your social stream -- manicure it like a banzai tree.  Or better yet, keep it clean like a nature lover.  Some of you might have a polluted social stream filled with waste, poison and dredge.  If you clean it out, you'll likely have a fountain of youth and positivity instead.  Make your social stream affirming and you'll likely climb into a virtuous circle of practical-optimism, instead of the downward spiral of depressed thinking.

Get up on the right side of the bed

The first few minutes of you day sets its tone.  

Do you jump out of bed, grab the paper, turn on the coffee pot and go onlineIf so, you might have wildly inconsistent early morning moods -- often driven by your inbox or the day's headlines.  Don't leave your attitude and mood to chance, they are important! When you are in a great mood, filled with gratitude, your day will be more effective (and enjoyable). 

About six months ago, I put myself on a new wake-up plan that's changed my life.  When I first wake up, I lay back down and close my eyes and concentrate on three people I should be grateful for from the previous day.  

It could be a helpful co-worker.  My wife.  A friend who gave me good advice.  I think and think until I've come up with three people.  I focus on their positive intentions to help me be successful or happy.  I say outloud "Grateful for ____."  Then, I get up and over coffee, write down one sentence to capture my gratefulness for those three people.  In the beginning, I struggled to always find three helpful people from the previous day, especially if I was writing in seclusion.  But soon I realized that everyday is filled with people helping us along.  Now, I struggle to limit myself to three. 

Start tomorrow off with this exercise, and you'll see how deeply it colors your mood. Filled with gratitude for those who intend to help you, your total confidence will swell and you'll feel like you've got a strong tailwind for the day. 

Sure beats reading the newspaper or checking out the headlines on Yahoo!.  

Scarcity thinking will take you down

I believe that scarcity-think is the root of most unpleasant human behavior.  

While we might say that a person has a bad attitude, we should really say that they have a case of Scarcity. When an executive bull barrels over a granny to get on the plane first, he’s just experiencing a perceived scarcity of overhead storage space for his roller bag.  When a coworker snipes at you after you’ve received a sales award, she’s not necessarily a jealous person; she’s experiencing a scarcity of recognition.  When your partner fails to show up to help you out of a jam, he’s not necessarily uncaring; he’s just wracked with a perceived scarcity of time to deal with his needs.  And so on.  

Scarcity will complicate you life adding unhappiness, unattractive behavior, conflict and loneliness.  You’ll waste precious time scaring yourself with your obsessions of lackism and dread.  You talk about what you lack so often, you’ve become a lackey.  You are such a crumb counter these days, you’ve become a crummy leader. 

The worse is gets the worse it will get, as you go into a tailspin and lose spiritual altitude with each passing day.   Unless you find a way out of this, you’ll soon join the rest of the fodder in the ashes.  

Scarcity thinking is one of the greatest challenges to your organization today – be it company, church, non-profit or even family.  Eric caught his case at work, you can catch it anywhere people create communities of misery (commiserate).  

When your people are afraid, and believe that there is not enough to go around, they become ineffective and prone to freak-outs.  Fear sets in and the group culture becomes reactive and self-protecting.  When scarcity think is prevalent, any change triggers selfish reactions.  It’s a quiet as a morgue in your office, these days.  Does this sound familiar?

Book me to speak at your next event on this topic.  See a preview here. 

Today we are rich

My grandmother, Billye Coffman, raised me on a farm in eastern New Mexico.  

She took me in after my mother abandoned me in a motel room in Odessa TX.  At the time, she and her husband were breaking up after twenty years of marriage.  Tough stuff.  He left us in less than a year.  He cleaned out the accounts, ran up the bills and told everyone in town his wife was crazy.  A few months after he left, two men came to our house and repossessed the stove and refrigerator.  That was the first time I ever saw my grandmother cry. 

A few years later, while eating breakfast, she and I saw a mountain of a man walking through our wheat field.  He was heading straight for our house.  She and I met him halfway in the orchard.

   “Can I help you, sir?” she volleyed. 

   “I pray so, mam,” he confidently replied.  

   “I need a day’s work and a meal," he continued.  "I’ve been walking for over a week, making my way from Oklahoma to my relatives in Winslow, Arizona.  I lost everything to a swindler in Tulsa, and all I have is my winning smile.”  

Billye agreed to give him a job for the day.  She gave him a few tasks only he could perform, such as pruning branches on tall trees, painting the trim on the barn and chopping some kindling.  He dove into the chores like a new-hire.  I followed him around the entire time, peppering him with questions. 

Around noon, Billye brought us two paper plates loaded with franks and ranch style beans, along with some fresh mustard potato salad.  He dug into the plate with his plastic fork like it was a steak dinner.  Between bites he waxed philosophical.  

     “Your grandmother is an angel, sent from heaven to have faith in a stranger," he told me.  "I’m glad I walked this farm’s way"

At the end of the day, Billye thanked him and paid him in cash.  She fished out a twenty dollar bill from her clutch purse, a small fortune to us at the time.  She prayed with him, and asked God to find him more work on his way to Arizona.  She noticed that his shoes were dogged out, with holes in both soles.  She told him to wait as she went to the house and found her deceased father’s barely worn black wing tips. 

    “There, now you have new shoes for tomorrow,” she said, beaming.  

He thanked her, with tears in his eyes.  He put his new shoes on and strutted off to the west, carrying his possessions in a pillowcase.  My grandmother put her arm around me, and pull me close to her side. 

    “Today we are rich,” she told me.  

And since that day, I’ve never been poor. 

Thinking confident is not enough

If you want total confidence, you'll have to live it. 

I call this the power of Think-Say-Do.  Think of a triangle, where your thoughts are confirmed first orally, then physically by your actions.  Collectively, the three paint you into a positive corner, reinforcing your inner belief in yourself and your team(s).  By uniting thoughts with words with deeds, you powerfully reinforce your confident point of view. 

Thoughts are not enough. They are private and easily revocable.  They might expand (ala The Secret), but unless they manifest in the real world, they don't leave your random-access-memory and penetrate your mind's core.  Words are not enough.  Talking about your confidence spreads the idea around and likely generates a response in others -- but words are just words.  It's easy to say you have financial confidence, but to double down for your favorite charity is the real deal. 

Action is not enough. You won't bolster your confidence by being mindlessly grateful in private.  You need to think about it, just like when you work out at the gym.  By connecting your mind to your action, you focus your energy.  By talking about your actions, you commit yourself to them and likely influence others.