how to build confidence

How to Build Confidence – Success Journal

Posted on by 4ster

I had a conversation about how to build confidence with a wonderful lady. She told me:

– I lost my confidence.

Klaus Forster: #1 Do you write daily your success journal?

– No

Klaus Forster: Do you know how to do it?

– I think I know, but I would be happy if you could give me a guidance.

Klaus Forster:

#2 Put a daily reminder in your calendar, that reminds you, about 1 hour before you usually get to sleep.

#3 If you really want me to help you, send me every day a copy of your success journal.

#4 Read your past successes in your success journal from time to time, especially when you are low on energy.

How to build confidence? 

Write daily in your success journal

Whenever you feel low on energy or unmotivated, it is either due to a lack of confidence or you don’t have clear targets. In the worst case, both at the same time!

Why is this connected with each other?

High motivation just means you got a lot of energy. That means the simple equation looks like this:

Motivation = Energy

This part of the equation is pretty obvious, and everyone can confirm that from his own experience.

But what has it to do with how to build confidence and your clear targets?

Motivation =  Targets * Confidence

This most likely needs some more explanation. But think about a situation where you had a big dream e. g. owning an own villa with a wonderful garden, a garage full of fancy cars and employees that are serving you. But you were not confident enough to believe that you can reach it. Have you been able to get started? No, your motivation and energy were almost zero. Because

Zero Confidence * Targets = Zero Energy = Zero Motivation

Your energy level after working for a while in a new job:

The other day, you got a new job and you were confident after getting the contract signed, that you will do it really well. But your boss did forget to tell you what your targets are. So you were not able to make the decision in which direction you need to work. You tried out several directions, but after a while, you realize it is not producing results. So you keep losing your motivation and energy. And even worse, after a while also your confidence. This is the frustration phase.

This was not only your fault because as an employee you are working on targets of other people. But you can prevent it by asking for clarification of your target. Actually, you must ask! Asking for it is your responsibility if they are not clear.

Let’s switch the perspective: Now you are the boss!

Have you ever had a new employee who seemed to be motivated? Sure, most employees are highly motivated when they start a new job. But after some time every new employee loses his motivation. How can you help him? Look at the second equation. There are two things for you to work on:

1. Clarify the targets

2. Improve her or his self-confidence

how to build confidence

Agree with him on targets, that seem to be achievable for him. This supports both, the clarification of the targets and – if he believes that he can make it – it improves your employee’s self-confidence at the same time. The other thing is to encourage her or him to write a daily success journal.

By the way, everyone is going through this frustration phase, each and every time when you are learning something new. The more enthusiastic you are in the beginning the deeper the frustration phase will be. You are pretty well off, if you wrote down your successes during the enthusiastic phase, to be able to read them in the frustration phase.

So how to do it on your own, just for your own motivation and energy?

On the first thing, we will work in our business retreats, where we dig deep into our values to find out about our mission, vision and break them down into clear and achievable targets. And the second thing is, to write your success journal.

How to build confidence: For how long do you need to do it?

The great news is: Not forever! I would recommend, just to do it only as long as you live!

How to build confidence: How does it work?

Thinking about your day and concentrating on your successes is a priming exercise. This is very similar to writing a gratitude journal. It makes your brain focus on the positive things of the day. The best time to do it is just before you go to sleep. So your subconscious keeps working on it all night. This brings the fastest results.

How to build confidence: Make the best use out of your success journal

Whenever you feel low on energy you can read in it, which gives you a kick for your self-confidence. Also reviewing your targets helps. Both require that you wrote it down before! By the business retreat, we make sure that you will have clear targets written down. And for your success journal, get someone with authority whom you respect, who does not rely on a good relationship to you. Have this person controlling you, that you write your success journal every day, at least 5 days a week.

During our next

Business Retreat in Bali

we will also train to write the success journal and focus on the successes. After that, you will be doing it almost automatically.

 

Experience More Happiness

Experience More Happiness

Posted on by 4ster

Achievement is not the source of permanent happiness,
but everlasting growth!

Growth = Experience More Happiness

First of all, we need to understand, to Experience More Happiness, we need to grow. And that the speed of growth is proportional to our happiness. How can we improve the speed of our growth, to feel happier along the way? If you are training hard🏋️‍♀️ at the gym, what happens to your muscles?💪 Let’s imagine, you are training with a weight of 50 kg until you cannot make any more repetitions. You feel exhausted but you are happy and proud that you made it!

“Happiness is when what you think,
what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
– GANDHI

You know your muscles will be hurting the day after your training, they got sore. And as long as they are hurting, you are less strong than the day before. Due to that, you won’t be able to do the same exercise anymore with 50 kg. Maybe you are still able to do it with 40 or 45 kg at the most. But if you do it again after 2 days relaxing your muscles, you will be able to do the same exercise with 52 or even 55 kg! So you gained quite a bit of strength during relaxation.

So what happened?

Experience More HappinessAfter your physical workout, you got weaker, but after a rest, your muscles grew stronger! This principle is well known for physical training. And everyone knows how to relax physically. Having a refreshing drink, putting up your legs, having a massage and some delicious food, which is rich in essential oils and protein.

We can learn from athletes to get the right balance between training and relaxing. If you train too often your power goes down and you damage your muscle. But if you do not train often enough, you gain much less than possible. To find good timing for the next training session the key is to improve the speed of growth. For the average person, 2 times a week is good for physical training. If you are more active it can be 3-5 times a week, but the training should be less intense. If you are in good shape already, training once a week with high intensity can be enough to maintain your form.

Why do top athletes train each day 2 units a day?

They concentrate on every training on a different section of their body. No marathon runner goes for two marathons a day during his preparation for a competition! And we can learn how to adapt this strategy as well, by switching between different kinds of training.

But how about mental growth? Can you apply the same principles? Of cause, you can. But most people don’t understand how to train and relax mentally.

What is mental training?

Mental training is learning, being creative, and – you probably won’t like this: working under pressure and stress, for example, participating in an exam, competition or finishing a project until a fixed deadline! Anything that brings you out of your comfort zone and increases your risk tolerance. If your head is getting hot because your brain seems🧠 to burn all of your energy, while you can smell your own cold sweat.😓

That is the stress you need as a trigger for mental growth. You will gain a higher stress tolerance. Similar to the physical training, which stresses your muscle and sets a growth impulse. And yes, it hurts!

Due to avoiding the pain, most people rather try to avoid stress, so they hardly ever get a growth trigger. Other people feel permanently stressed. They feel under pressure at work, are afraid that the taxman gets them, think that the kids are too demanding, having no time and never enough money!💰 They are caught on a treadmill, like a runner who trains by running two marathons each day. They are getting weaker and weaker and finally end up in burnout and in depression.

How to relax mentally to Experience More Happiness?

This can be done through meditation, breathing exercises or sleeping, dancing, and physical training. Actually, everything that gives your brain a break, which makes you almost stop thinking. 🤔 Sounds easy, but in fact, it is a challenge to think nothing! Especially during rem sleep, which is the deep sleep phase in which you sink right after falling asleep, and periodically later during the night, puts your brain into standby. That’s why one gets around with a hand full of shot sleeping phases per day.

How to find the right balance between mental training and relaxation?

If you are working and working or learning and don’t see any progress, this is like the hurting sore muscle after the physical training. You feel uncomfortable and😣 try to push harder. But this is time to take a rest! You need it the most when you think you can afford it the least. It seems, that our bodies are giving clearer signals than our brains! But this is not true. Especially in western society, you get more honor if you are looking stressed and overworked than for taking a break at the right time, having faster growth and harvesting the success of it. This gets rather considered as luck! So it is just a bad habit to overrule it.

Taking a break is good airmanship

Fortunately, there are also good examples of this awareness: Air traffic controllers and pilots get trained for listening to their signals of getting tired. And it’s called good airmanship when they say: “I am tired and I need to take a rest.” So another air traffic controller or the co-pilot takes over. They get encouraged to take a break from their education programs. Even this is basically done for the security of the passengers, crew and flight devices, as well as for the security of flight traffic in general. And we can utilize this strategy for our growth and happiness. To avoid a reduction in your stress tolerance levels, you need to change the habit of constant stress.

For me, it was a great improvement to take each month for one week of holiday. I booked a cheap charter package tour in a basic hotel. And I chose the dates in the offseason in a low priced region. So it hardly did cost more than my life back home. So I started working remotely, only a few hours a day. While spending my days with sports, meditation, and walking along the beach. So I kept sleeping long and enjoyed the freedom of mind away from the daily business.

Scheduling breaks to Experience More Happiness

After coming back I realized how much progress was done in my abstinence. And even better, I felt so happy about the gained effectivity, because I learned to get many things organized in a short time after my return back home.

This made it easy for me to break with my habit to stay busy permanently. And I utilize this practice as well as my junk food day each Saturday. Because always eating only healthy stuff is like being in permanent stress. On junk food day my appetite tells me what is missing in my diet. And it is easy to start, to take scheduled breaks, every 4, 6 or 8 weeks from your work routine. With this increase in mindfulness, you will become more sensitive to listening to your needs. And you will find your own optimal rhythm between stress and relaxation.

Learn more about taking breaks to improve happiness

increase the value of your business

How to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business?

Posted on by 4ster

To my big surprise, I found the question “How to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business” in an audiobook I was listening to: “The Road Less Stupid”. Actually I enjoyed listening to it because it added a lot of new ideas to my entrepreneurial thinking time. Anyway, I spent some of my thinking time on the question:

How to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business?

How to Ruin Someone's Life or Business

Today is the most essential day of your life. Thinking time is the most valuable time of your day.

One controversial question about how to ruin someone’s life or business I got out of the book is:

“If I would be my competition:
What would I do, to create the biggest damage to my business?”

It means: My own company is A, and my competition is B. What would I do, in the role of company B = my competitor? If I would be company B, what could I do, to damage company A’s = my business?

The first thing to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business that came to my mind was not very charming: “A shit storm on Facebook” 😮 So I posted the following question to the members of my mastermind group:

Klaus Forster:
“The best thinking time question I got today is: If I would be my competition, what would I do if I’d be my competitor to create the biggest damage to my business?”

This started a lively conversation about it with a lady, who was working for television. Where they need to attract a lot of attention. Due to the fact, that bad news is selling better, they need to come up with bad news.

Let me share her story about how to ruin someone’s life or business:

“It kinda remind me of my argue with one of my producer long time ago, probably 14 years ago. So one day our competitor TV series got into number 1. My producer said “So what can we make to take them down?” My reply was I don’t want to create something to take someone down, that is not a good intention. If I want to create something my intention should be to make something good that people can enjoy and add value to their life.

He was angry. So we created something and we only managed to get into top 10. He was even more angry when my other TV series, which I made with another TV company made it to number 1. He thought I paid more attention to the other company.”

Thinking it from a different perspective about  how to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business:

“If I would be my competition:
What would I do, to create the biggest damage to my business?”

The truth was, when I created that TV series I put all my heart into it. I did my research about the hospital, medical doctors, met survivors, that was why the series seemed real and touched many people’s heart. The story was about a teenagers having leukemia having to deal with her sickness. Her family breaking down because of it, her boyfriend and friends going away. And at the end she realized, that the only person that will stand up is herself. And when she finally did, it pulled all her beloved back. Because they look up to her. So for me what important is your intention, success, attention, everything will follow.

The reason why I put all of my heart was because the producer had the same vision of creating something to add more value to life, not to take someone down. So we did what we could to make it good by spending time on research and stuff.

Other mastermind members added to these thoughts on how to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business

  • I like that intention and believe, that if you go around trying to damage others, you damage yourself, in the long term.
  • Yes, there is no point of going out, to taking one down.

Klaus Forster:
I agree, and it is NOT the direction I like to think 🤔 either, because it NOT conforms to my business ethics. Because I think it is not a good idea at all to ruin someone’s life or business. Even though, I want to encourage you to keep on thinking about dirty tricks, illegal or non ethic methods!

It is NOT at all about implementing these ideas, but rather to find the real weak point of your own business. So that you can act on it.

  • I see, now I get it, it is more thinking of what your competitor could do to damage you. So you can improve in that area.
    Good thinking Klaus, thank you for making us seeing this.

Switching perspective on how to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business

Switching the perspective really gave me some good inspirations, which are worth thinking about deeper:

  1. “How to get as much attention as from a shit storm?”
  2. “How can I provide more customer benefits by doing it?”

After thinking about that for a while, I came up with the ideas:

  1. Posting something, that is so funny that it goes viral, instead of a shit storm.
  2. Sending a test buyer to my competitor, instead of sending one only to my business.

So I would be able to create positive attention and to get the information, in which field we are doing worse than our competition?

Before I stepped into my competitor’s role, I was only able to think a test buyer checking my own business. Changing into company B’s perspective, enabled this idea. Doing this, I can learn about the customer experience they provide. Which brings me nearer to the answer to the initial question. So please, hare your ideas about how to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business in the comments below.

If you’d like to improve your business and share inspiration with other female entrepreneurs, sign up for the

Entrepreneurs Mastermind Group

How to Ruin Someone's Life or Business

 

Probably you are curious why I chose the almost misleading title: How to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business. The reason for it is, some considerations about …

How to Ruin Someone's Life or Business

the search engine optimization for this blog. After checking the most frequently used keywords in my initial text, I found out that business, competition, and damage were the most frequently used once. So I put them in Google Adds keyword planner and played around with some phrases that contained these words.

Entepreneur SEO

One suggested phase was: How to Ruin Someone’s Life. It is getting seared for between 1.000 and 10.000 times a months and has low competition. Further, I considered this issue as controversial, that it has the chance to go viral. And many people will read it, and – hopefully – benefit from it. So without doing anything bad to the competition, I implemented both of my ideas from my thinking time about in this blog.

Review on “How to Ruin Someone’s Life or Business”

(Sept. 20, 2018) Three months after publishing this blog, I analyzed with Google Webmaster Tools which of my pages and blogs are appearing the most frequently in the google search results. And it turned out, that this one appeared most frequently! It also had the highest click rate. But I learned that the visitors of this blog stayed about 2 minutes on average, which is about 40% below the average time of the pages. This only lasts, to read half of it. And that almost all visitors left my webpage without referring to another page of it. So I learned, that I need to make the first part of the text more appealing. And that I need to offer more value to the visitors of the blog, by adding links to other related issues on my webpage.

Search Engine OptimizationHow to Ruin Someone's Life or Business.

You can find the audiobook “The road less stupid” here: http://a.co/5oUfXNm

Take your thinking time about: How to Ruin Someones Life or Business

Source: Amazon

Sex is no option

Sex is no option

Posted on by 4ster

Sex is no option.

It is a basic need.

And that’s why: Sex is a must!

Source: kimanami.com Thank you, Kim, I couldn’t explain it any better!

Sex is no option: Sex is not love

No, it is not the same. But sex is the strongest component of love. And the desire for sex is the strongest driver for love. It is probably the best if both come together. Both participants, as well as sex and love. Actually, one person cannot satisfy all the needs of another one. That’s why we work with teams and do not love exclusively one person. For some reason, sex gets called “making love”, pretty wise words.

Sex is no option: Is Sex bad?

To consider sex as something bad is nothing than religious brainfuck. Each and every one of us, and any creature on the planet is a result of sex. So, what can be bad about Sex? Everyone is a part of the universe and some people interpret the universe as one infinite creature. Sex is sourly needed to rebuild and maintain the whole universal creature.

Sex is no option

Sex is no option: Sex Sells

The strongest driver any being got, is a sexual attraction. Sex sells! Why? Because our desire for sex is embedded so deeply in our reptile brain, that we cannot ignore the feelings it creates. And it is the greatest source of energy, tantric– or kundalini-energy. Show me an unmotivated person, and I show you someone, who hasn’t had good sex for a long time. And he or she has probably times of depression, because of not feeling loved. The fear of not feeling loved is the strongest fear we can experience. Because already as a baby we rely on it to survive, so not feeling loved includes the fear of death.

Sex is no option: Monogamy is a fallacy

Because monogamy is against (human) nature. There are no animals, that are living in monogamy, and the human being is nothing like another species of animal. There have been good reasons to invent the idea of monogamy. In times, when sexual deceases were spreading around the world, and killing the majority of the population, it was a smart idea to recommend everybody to stay monogamous. But nowadays, where the diseases can be treated medically and condoms are available to prevent them, there is no reason anymore for this rule. We only keep this rule, because we are used to it.

Sex is no option: Sex only for married people

A marriage is nothing but a financial contract. It does not protect love, not even sympathy. Hollywood makes us believe that romantic love needs a marriage, but hardly anything is further away from the truth than that. A relationship is a game between harmony and tension. Most people enjoy the time at the start of a relationship, the first flirt, conversation, touch, kiss, another date, first sex, playfully trying out what is possible. As soon as they try to conserve this, by getting engaged or married the playfulness gets lost. Having a secure relationship means boredom and kills the relationship in the long run. Now another flirt becomes interesting, maybe more …

Sex is no option: That’s just an opinion

Of cause it is only an opinion. But everything we think that we know is only an opinion. There is no objective truth. Anything we see, hear, feel, smell and taste go through the filter of our frontal leap. Everybody got a different filter, which determines what is essential for us. Out of 2,000,000 junks of information, our senses are receiving every second, our frontal leap deletes anything our brain cannot process.

Sex is no option: The brain lottery

The processing speed of our brain is 7 (+/-2) junks of information per second. Imagine 10 people are watching and experiencing the same soccer game. And each of their frontal leaps deletes 1,999,993 junks of information. For everybody something different is essential. So everyone got his own unique filter. How much will have the remaining 7 junks in common? They got as much in common as the lottery numbers from last week, with the numbers of this week! Based on this selection our brain builds a picture of what is happening around us. I am more than surprised that by the end of a soccer game most of the visitors can agree on the same team that won.

Good for us, because not all of us do not consider the same person as attractive.

Sex is no option: Sex creates jealousy

Being jealous is not inborn, but only a sign of low self-confidence. Not love nor sex can improve or fix that problem. Only working on your self-confidence can solve it. And there are methods available, to improve your self-confidence. And some of them are so easy to execute, that you will have a hard time to believe that it will work, for example writing a daily success journal. But it workes, it just needs some time and does not show instant results. But in the long run, it makes you so much more confident about yourself.

Learn how to improve your self-confidence

How many ounces can you bring on a plane? 

How many ounces can you bring on a plane? 

Posted on by 4ster

How to get around with max. 7 kg of luggage

Since mid-2017 I am traveling with carry-on luggage only, whenever I am going on a flight. This means you need to know, how many ounces can you bring on a plane? To stay below the 7 kg or 15 pounds limit of the airline, and depending on the type of airplane, sometimes it is only 5 kg on domestic flights.

Traveling minimalistic = freedom

How many ounces can you bring on a plane? Travel with light luggage is very convenient and this minimalism gives me a feeling of freedom. For me, it’s not the freedom to buy and keep everything I want. I rather save the money an live on its interest. In fact, the most material stuff keeps dragging us down. It rather satisfies the need for security, but this is a fallacy:

  • If the tiger spots the two of us, who can run faster?
  • You with a lot of luggage or me with a little?
  • Wouldn’t it be smart to leave it all behind?

That’s ok in the jungle, but not if you are in a hurry running to your gate, after getting stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the airport, in case the security control took ages or after hopping on the wrong tube on my way to London Gatwick airport. I experienced that last year and it was convenient to run to the check-in counter – it was even less convenient that the gate was already closed by the time I arrived.

Reduction of luggage saves resources and money, due to the trend that most budget airlines ask you pay extra already for the first piece of check-in luggage, some of them up to 40 €. So it saves you 80 € on a return trip. For that kind of money, you can buy the things from the drug store at your destination e. g. sun protection, insect repellant, shampoo or toothpaste, a second pair of shoes, another pair of pants and a rain cape in rainy season if needed. You can leave all of it behind on your way back. In most Asian countries those items are anyway much cheaper than in Europe.

How many ounces can you bring on a plane? 

The international size limitations in economy class are mostly:

  • one bag
  • up to 7 kg and
  • a size of 55 cm x 36 cm x 23 cm, or 22 inches * 14 inches * 9 inches
  • which slightly varies depending on the airline, here some examples:
Cathay Pacific 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 56cm x 36cm x 23cm 7kg
China Airlines 1 cabin bag 56cm x 36cm x 23cm 7kg
Emirates 1 cabin bag 55cm x 38cm x 20cm 7kg
Etihad Airways 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 50cm x 40cm x 25cm 7kg
Fiji Airways 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 55cm x40cm x 23cm 7kg
Garuda Indonesia 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 56cm x 36cm x 23cm 7kg
Japan Airlines 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 55cm x 40cm x 25cm 10kg
Jetstar 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 55cm x 36cm x 23cm 7kg
KLM 1 cabin bag 55cm x 35cm x 25cm 12kg
Lufthansa 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 55cm x 40cm x 23cm 8kg
Malaysia Airlines 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 55cm x 35cm x 25cm 7kg
Qantas 1 cabin bag + 1 personal item 48cm x 34cm x 23cm 7kg

How many ounces can you bring on a plane? 

How to reduce your luggage by another 2 kg?

How many ounces can you bring on a plane? I found a way to reduce the weight of your luggage by another 2 kg, to get even on a flight with a 5 kg limitation. This trick shown in the video can be used as well to reduce the weight of the luggage from 9 kg to 7 kg, e. g. on the way back home if you added some souvenirs to your luggage. So far it worked for me always, even on the airlines, who don’t explicitly allow one additional personal item.

how many ounces can you bring on a plane

Navigation at your destination

To be able to navigate with Google Maps upon arrival, independent from a WiFi/UMTS connection, it is necessary to download the maps onto your mobile phone before your departure, preferably using a WiFi connection. This video explains how to do it: