Confidence pocketbook

This little yellow book from self-help guru Gill Hasson is a cheat sheet for life!  I like the book because it's short and portable;  Hasson's guide could just as well help us navigate Big Life Changes - like coming back from medical events, or changing towns, churches, families, jobs.  Although her overall objective is to build confidence and reduce anxiety and self-doubt swizzles, what this easily pocketable book gives us is a way to look at more than fifty life challenges, including:

*  Understanding confidence

*  Understanding self-esteem

*  Avoiding the comparison trap

*  Thinking positively and having hope

*  Having confident body language

*  Stepping out of your comfort zone

*  Letting go and moving on

*  Taking risks

*  Turning in to your intuition

*  Changing your job or career

*  Making mistakes

*  Coping with setbacks to your confidence

*  Making small talk

*  Asking for what you want

*  Helping other people

*  Making new friends

See, Hasson ramps up the degree of difficulty as she moves through the challenges!  Although the billboards may be blasting us with "Change is hard," the author makes it feel a little more simple and less impossible.  Each challenge is accompanied by a one-page cheat sheet.  Here's an example:

Stepping out of your comfort zone...

"Staying within your comfort zone could mean, for example, not making a journey or travelling somewhere.  Far more comfortable to stay at home.  Moving outside this comfort zone - travelling somewhere on your own - is too stressful to even think about!

The thought of stepping out of a comfort zone can make you feel stressed and anxious.  But there is another zone - the confidence -building zone.

In any one situation, if you push yourself too hard and too far out of your comfort zone you can find yourself in a panic zone; overwhelmed by anxiety and stress and totally unable to do something.  But step just outside a comfort zone into the 'confidence-building zone' and the lower level of anxiety and stress can actually help you to focus, concentrate and achieve things in a controlled, managed way.  Although you'll feel challenged, you won't feel too stressed and retreat back into your comfort zone."

The sections on networking, and travel after an injury or a long absence are dead on.  I love this little book so much I think I am going to rip out my favorite pages and laminate them.

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,