Boldness and manliness

[sheherezade]

I'm starting a small business and I need help with overcoming intimidation and believing in myself. This may be the best forum to ask for this kind of advice. Right now I admit I am a pussy. I need to step outside my comfort zone and challenge myself. My business will require pounding the pavements and doing what I can to sell my idea (myself) to people. For some reason I am intimidated, and I'm not sure why.

[Thai Bri]

Go here - www.geoffthompson.com and check out the forums. There is a special section on Motivation etc. Good luck.

[sloppycoder]

i felt the same as you a little while ago, maybe not quite so bad. i always felt intimidated by people who i now realise were no harm at all.....

i thought a lot about fear (im saying really that intimidation is your fear of a person) and i think that ive come to the conclusion that fear is one of the biggest problems of all time.

my thinking on these lines stemmed from being bullied a lot in school. now that i know a lot of these people as adults i realise that 95% of them were peacefull and friendly. the remaining 5% were proactivly violent, if not physically then verbally and mentally. my theory is that right from the start of primary school this truly violent minority scared the majority, who mostly put on a harder exterior to stop themselves being victimised. the minority at the other end of the scale (victim mentality), like me, saw only a majority of violent people because of the show the majority put on to protect themselves from the minority. of course that does not mean that the majority were aware of this, they too were afraid of each other but less so.

next time your walking down a street try seperating out the people you see into alphas and betas.....

Alphas = people who you think might be willing to be violent (physically, verbally or even just in body language) without provocation

Betas= people who could be violent if provoked but will be docile otherwise (this is almost everone)

if you like you can also look for non combatants..... those who wouldent hurt a fly. what i find is that almost everyone you see is a beta, mostly i think i can spot this through body language. doing this helped me get over being intimidated in street situation quite a lot!

all of this i hope will help you but its not totally relevant to what you want to do. perhaps if you just think along these lines....

1) whats the worst that can happen? you try and convince someone of your idea and they put you down.... dont take it leave the insult at their door and walk away, its their loss and now you can try the next person

2) even if people are often hostile and unfriendly somebody has to break the cycle by effectivly exposing some kind of weakness, in your case this is your business idea which you cherish but which others might stomp all over. you have to risk this.

3) this works for me and if it works for you then thats great. think of activly supressing and overcomming fear and intimidation as a benefit to your life and to the lives of those you interact with. since i have taken this fear supression route i have made friends with people i couldent have thought of approaching without these ideas.

oh yeah this helped me too http://www.senshido.com/spmt1.html in fact most of the stuff on that site is pretty good.

anyway i hope that wasnt just meaningless drivel and good luck with your business. remember nobodys opinion is worth more than your own.

Alf

[begins]

next time your walking down a street try seperating out the people you see into alphas and betas.....

Alphas = people who you think might be willing to be violent (physically, verbally or even just in body language) without provocation

Betas= people who could be violent if provoked but will be docile otherwise (this is almost everone)



in my opinion... doing activities such as this while your walking down the street dont help what-so-ever... how can it when the root of being scared IS trying to sort through each person who you come in contact with or simply walk by.

being scared comes from making the stereotypes and images that go through your head everytime you see someone with a mo-hawk or muscle shirt...so tring to categories will ed up being "is this guy going to hurt me right now?? or later in some alley...hmmm"

but anyways, adressing the thread-creator now... sheher, intimidation is natural, everyone has their soft spot, you admitting straighforward, outfront, right off the bat, that your a "pussy" was interesting... it shows that you really dont take charge... and maybe thats why your so scared right now, making your own business = taking charge, you gotta be the one telling people what to do... theres not much help i can really give because telling an individual something and him doing it are complete opposites... so maybe some hints could be build up your confidence, hit a punching bag, maybe run a little, lift some wieghts, join a gym...often times feeling better about yourself is half the battle to getting rid of being afraid...

other than that, learning first hand is the best medicine,

just one other thing though, about judgement, though this wont help much, try not to judge people, being afraid, thinking your weak, is because you put people on these peddistles, practice not... clear your mind abit...

walk down the street, dont cross it with every "frightful" individual you see

peace n' good luck

[osopardo]

My business will require pounding the pavements and doing what I can to sell my idea (myself) to people. For some reason I am intimidated, and I'm not sure why.

You're not talking boldness and manliness, you're talking salesmanship.

Some people are natural-born salesmen and can sell dog turds and have you thanking them for the privilege, others can't. Mostly because they think their sales effort are an imposition on the prospective client and they fear rejection.

The very best thing you can do is know your product or service well enough that you can talk about all the good aspects of it for hours. This is especially true if what you're selling is your skills. It's something often overlooked. Just exactly what is it youre offering? How well do you know you?

The other important thing you need is to wholeheartedly believe in your product or service. Why would I want what you're selling? Why would I want yours and not your competitor's? Would you use your own product or service or go to the competitors?

Once you've got those two things nailed, it becomes a lot easier to do people the favor of improving their lives by sharing what you have to offer. They'll be thanking you.

Get out there and do it. It only gets easier.

[leon]

getting over fear...

When faced with a fight, U have two battles. One with yourself and one with the man standin infront of you. The first battle is crucial cos without it there's no way u can win the second. Pyschologically u have to overcome this fear. Ways of doin this is to BELIEVE in the training you are doin, in your technique. UNDERSTANDIN that this man is out to hurt you, so u have to hurt him first.