Stand up for Yourself

I found this post that I originally posted some years ago on an old blog I used to have. I felt it was relevant to this website and thought I would share it as it is an excellent example of just how important mindset is, not only for helping us to achieve our goals, but how it can affect your health and confidence too. It’s so important to stand up for yourself – you’ll be glad you did!

I won’t go into detail; however, let’s just say that my day-job boss did something  that made me lose confidence in my own abilities and literally made me ill. I have had IBS,  in the past, and I know, from experience, that stress makes it worse. I have a tendency to replay any negative scenarios over in my mind even though I know it is the worst thing I can do! Anyway, I decided, after a painful bout of IBS caused by negative thinking and a temporary wallow in self-pity, that I had no option but to confront my boss. There was a horrible atmosphere in work. The thing I had in my favour was that I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I believe in full honesty and I had a clear conscience.

I took deep breaths and visualised a successful outcome in my mind where I calmly told him how unfair he had been and how I could not work in a negative atmosphere and so on. The morning I planned to confront him, I felt fear starting to build up: my heart was pounding and my legs felt like lead. It was horrible, yet I knew the worry was bringing it all on. This is mindset for you! I then went into the toilets and sat down in the cubicle. I took some deep breaths to calm myself and then I visualised the successful outcome again and I did the Circle of Excellence NLP trick where you use an anchor to remind yourself of a time when you had felt really confident. Mine was wrapping all my fingers around my thumb. I will talk about this in more detail in a later post, but I found myself feeling more and more confident, like I was ready for anything.

I then went up to my boss and told him I wanted a private talk. He was visibly taken aback; however, I told him how unhappy I was and the visualisation, deep breaths and anchoring meant I was in full control and felt strong and confident. Imagine my surprise when he actually apologised. This was the last thing I had expected. He admitted he was wrong and had acted unfairly and he told me how bad he felt about it. Obviously, I accepted his apology as I did like my day job and it was out of character for him.

The main things I want you to learn from this are as follows:

• Worrying is always much worse than the actual event
• Mindset does influence health -try to stay positive (easier said than done, I know!)
• Always stand up for your beliefs. Never let others put you down.
• Take deep breaths to calm you in a tense situation
• Create and use anchors to help you feel more confident (more in a later post)
• Never let others knock your confidence
• If possible, take some time to calm down and plan your next move before immediately reacting to a negative situation.

I hope this has been helpful. I hope to have some goodies uploaded for you soon to help you transform your life in various ways.

Bye for now,

Angie xoxo