I am writing for my delivery a course on Confidence and Self-esteem. I would welcome suggestions for exercises I could use with the students or ideas for topics. I want to make this an interactive course with the students working things out for them selves - with guidance rather than just theory. You can email me at neil.gratton@bt.com
Neil Gratton
3 Responses
A Strength Building Exercise will work
Dear Neil
I give a link below to a simple strength building exercise that has worked well in lots of settings. If you use it, please let me know how you get on.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nick.heap/Strengthbuilding.htm
Best wishes
nick.heap@ntlworld.com
Get state right first
Hi Neil,
Last week I ran a presentation skills workshop specifically to build confidence. Absolutely the first step has to be to get the delegates into a confident state. Don’t just talk about confidence or the lack of it, as you focus attention on the problem rather than the solution. It’s better just to act as if they already are confident!
If you look at http://www.ciauk.com/clients under the KKP page you can download the notes for the course, in particular have a look at the Outcomes page. It uses the NLP principle of Well Formed Outcomes, delivered in an accessible way, to create a resourceful state to build the rest of the workshop on.
I suggest you first do something to get the delegates into such a state – as a minimum, so you have a reference for confidence and self esteem!
A simple and really effective idea is to have the delegates discuss in small groups a time when they felt very confident and good about themselves, paying attention to what specifically contributed to that state, and how it felt to be confident. After that, just keep building more and more resourceful states on top as you move through the course.
Building confidence
Neil, one of the areas you may wish to focus on is ‘Positive Expectations’ or self fulfilling prophecy. Ask the group about how their feelings and expectations affect the outcome of a situation. In other words, if we think we can do it, we probably will succeed. Some people don’t enter the lottery believing that there’s no point and they will never win anyway. They’re absolutely right!!
Discuss how we can jeopardise our chances of success by our negative thoughts and beliefs. I will send you a worksheet on ‘Positive / negative inner dialogue’ which enables delegates to identify negative thoughts and change them into positives.
Have a great course,
Colette Johnson