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How You Can Build Confidence Through Simple, Daily Routines

Are you a confident person? Do you lack confidence and belief in self? Either way, there is a simple routine you can follow to call upon confidence and high levels of self-esteem whenever you want. That routine is … building daily routines!

We are going to get scientific for just a moment.

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) in your brain reinforces familiarity and recollection. When one of your 5 senses experiences something that you have encountered before, and it made a memorable enough impression upon you, your MTL triggers your recognition memory. Even if the thing you encountered triggers a negative memory, your brain is confident in its ability to understand the experiences that surround that memory, and to respond accordingly.

Confidence arises when you understand what is about to happen, something is familiar to you, and you responded with a positive performance or reaction in the past when that same situation occurred. You have seen this series of events unfold before, you responded, and the outcome was favorable. This makes you confident when presented with the same scenario in the future.

You can use this to your advantage to build confidence.

Because of the way your MTL works, familiar memories are accompanied by lower levels of cortisol than unfamiliar experiences. Cortisol is famously nicknamed the “stress hormone”. When levels of stress and anxiety are lower, it is easier to feel confident about yourself. Serotonin and endorphins are a couple of neurotransmitters that help stabilize your mood and make you feel calm, peaceful and stress-free. They are more prevalent when you encounter something that is both positive and familiar.

Now let’s look at routines.

A routine is simply a “sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program”. Studies show that any new routine practiced daily for 3 to 10 weeks becomes a subconscious and automatic behavior, rather than an action that has to be consciously thought about. Therefore, if you want to become a more confident person, develop some simple daily routines that eventually become unconscious and automatic, and your brain will trigger the release of chemicals which lower stress and promote confidence.

What Specific Daily Routines Bolster Confidence?

The beauty of the routines/confidence relationship means that any regularly followed pattern of behavior will help you feel confident and self-assured. The magnitude or difficulty level of the daily habits you perform are not important. Because of the way your brain makes you feel when something is familiar, like a regular, daily routine, the chemical reaction which is triggered in your body promotes less stress and anxiety, and makes you feel certain and confident in your abilities, whether your routine is simple or complex.

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Why Confident People Are So Sure about Their Values and Beliefs

Your values are the things you believe in. When something is important to you and you hold in high regard, or it is useful in making you healthy and happy, you place a very high value on it. Values can be different from one person to the next. Consider them your standards or principles of behavior.

Simply put, your values are your judgment of the things
that are important in your life.

When you are weak of mind and suffer from poor self-esteem, your values are not very concrete. You don’t look upon yourself as worthy of admiration or respect, from you or others. Because of this, it naturally follows that you believe your values must not be that important. Subconsciously you think, “If I am not confident in myself or my actions, it must be because my values are not worthy of defense or strong belief.”

Why Confident People Are Confident

Everyone has values. Some people take their value system with them to the grave, while others seemingly adopt a new set of “important” beliefs on a regular basis. The difference has to do with confidence. If you are absolutely certain that the things you judge as important in your life are as essential to your existence as oxygen, you will display an unwavering a confidence about the people, places and things you value dearly.

As it turns out, science has found that confidence is not a singularly located emotion. In other words, someone who is confident about their ability to perform their job can’t help but have a high level of self-assuredness in other behaviors and activities. Confidence spreads through your system in a good way.

As you develop a strong self-belief in one area of your life, you begin to develop confidence in other areas as well. The more self-esteem and self-confidence you accumulate, the more absolutely certain you become that your opinions, values and actions are infallible.

Confidence Bolsters a Strong Belief System, and Strongly Held Values Promote Confidence

In a way, confidence fosters and protects your values. However, the opposite is also true. If you have a concrete, well-defined value system, it is easy to be confident. Think about it. If you know without a shadow of a doubt which people, places and things are extremely important to you, confidence and self-esteem are natural byproducts.

Regardless of what anyone else thinks, when you are certain that your values are correct, you defend them without a second thought. This kind of unwavering belief in self is shown in people with strong value systems. It is also a characteristic of self-confidence. If your values are not clearly defined and strongly held, you will suffer from a weak character. It is very difficult to be confident in mind and action when you are uncertain about your own values, and when they are guarded only with weakness.

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The Positively Viral Nature of Confidence

Did you know that you really can’t be confident in just one thing or ability? When you have a high level of belief in your ability to do a particular thing, your entire being is imbued with a belief that silently says, “If I am incredibly good at this one thing, why can’t I be good at everything?”

Confidence in any endeavor naturally and automatically creates a belief system that you can probably also do other things well. This lowers levels of stress and anxiety, in addition to removing your fear of failure. You are accordingly willing to take more risks, try new things, and learn new skill sets, which leads to higher levels of achievements in any course of action you decide to undertake.

Your Confidence Helps Others Succeed

Have you ever been around a supremely confident individual? If you spend enough time around that person, you will unconsciously develop a stronger self-image. Consciously you may have thought, “How can I also develop such a high level of belief in myself?” On the unconscious level however, your mind is already going to work lowering your risk aversion, dropping your levels of anxiety and stress, and increasing levels of hormones and other chemicals which boost confidence.

You may have heard people refer to a single athlete that makes everyone else on the team better. This is how incredibly powerful confidence is. It is viral, but in a good way, leading to higher levels of achievement and self-esteem wherever it is found.

Coupled with the fact that “actions speak louder than words”, self-confidence seen in one individual shows others what is possible. When you see someone who is comfortable with who they are, a person who is always positive, happy and smiling, who seems to never let anything ruin their mood, you can’t help but begin to feel the same way.

This natural law of confidential influence can be used to elevate performance, and accordingly the achievements, or any group of individuals. You can use it to help your children feel good about themselves, a mental state which leads to improved social interaction and better grades in school.

If you’re the head of a corporation, sales group, local charity, sports team or any other collection of human beings working towards a common goal, displaying confidence automatically raises your chances of success and achievement.

Look at people who are super-confident. How do they stand? What is their body language like? How do they talk or communicate? How do they walk? Mirror these behaviors yourself, and you will notice you automatically feel more capable and successful. Once you firmly believe you can confidently undertake any task or approach any endeavor successfully, you pass this supercharged self-belief on to others around you.

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Top Five Tips for Achieving a Successful Mindset

Want to start changing your life? Then you need to change yourself. You are in the position you’re in right now because you chose to be there. You might not realize that you chose it but even through your inaction, you in fact did. The job you have right now, your financial circumstances and nearly every other aspect of your life is a matter of choice – and if you wanted to, you could go out there and change everything today. You just need to take action!
But if you really want to make a change and you want to st
art by changing your mindset, how do you know where to start? What is it you need to change in order to achieve a successful mindset? Here are five top tips that will help make that transformation much easier…

Find Your Own Path
Most of us have a clear idea of what success means but this is an idea that we have inherited from our schools and our parents. This is not really our version of success and as such, it’s not going to be what we’re passionate about and it won’t give us that fire and drive to wake up early in the morning to work on our projects.
In order to be truly successful, you need to find your own path and that is going to mean forgetting what others think and finding what makes you happy.

Take Risks
Learning to take risks is a difficult step but if you’re going to achieve the things you really want in life, you need to take the leap sometimes. Learn to take measured, calculated risks.

Be Prepared to Fail
Taking risks means being prepared to fail. In this instance, you need to learn how to manage failure and take it on the chin. Pick up the pieces and go again for round two!

Find the ‘Essence’ of What Drives You
Sometimes success doesn’t come in the form we expect. Sometimes we don’t know what we need to be happy. That’s why it can be useful to break down our dreams to their essence. What is it about that idea that appeals to you and what’s the easiest way to get there?

Invest in Yourself
Knowing how important that passion is to you, you now need to invest in yourself and be willing to spend both time and money on everything from your appearance to your skill set. There is no better investment that investing in you!

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Top Five Challenges of Creating a Success Mindset

‘Create a success mindset’ they say.
‘Just go after the things you want in life’ they say!
‘Take risks’ they say…

It’s a shame it’s not always that easy right? The road to a success mindset is one wrought with obstacles and many of these are things that nobody likes to talk about. It doesn’t fit the narrative. It’s time we addressed them…

Here are the top five challenges of creating a success mindset:

You Don’t Know What You Want
This is a surprisingly common issue and one that rarely gets brought up. How can you go after what makes you happy if you don’t really know what that is? How can you find a goal and stick to it when you fear commitment?

Having Weird Aims
Or what if you know what you want in life but your aims are just too weird or unattainable? What if you don’t want to start a business, travel or start a family. What if you want to be an acrobat? And you’re 60? What if everyone will laugh at you?

Being Conflicted
Or how about being torn between travelling and settling down with the person you love? What if your heart is genuinely pulling you in two different directions? What if going after your dream, means saying goodbye to people you love, or turning your back on the things that made you who you are?

Being Honest With Yourself
We are prideful creatures and our very psychology is wired in such a way as to protect our fragile egos. We don’t want to admit to our failures and we don’t want to feel like we’re going backward.
And so when we realize that we’re unhappy with what we have in life, it can be very hard for us to be honest and admit that – to ourselves or to others!

Responsibility to Others
It’s easy to say that you should take a leap and apologise later but what if people are really relying on you to be mature and stable? What if your goal is to go travelling but your wife just got pregnant?
Yes, there are ways around this too – you can explain how important this is to you and convince her to come with you. But it won’t always work. And at the end of the day, you’re always going to be giving your child a less stable home.

There are answers to all these problems of course – but just know that the path isn’t as simple as some would have you believe!

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Top Five Benefits of Having a Success Mindset

Are you ready to start getting more out of your life and to start getting the results you want? For many of us, success is a very slow process and one that involves a huge amount of work and effort. For others though, it all seems to come very naturally. We all know those people, the ones who seem to have the Midas touch – who seem to strike lucky no matter what they do. What’s their secret?

There are many answers to this question but the biggest thing these people often have going for them is a ‘success mindset’. Once they change the way they think, they can change their fortunes – and the rest just falls into place.

It’s making that cognitive shift that will help you to start making the progress you want to see in your life. And here are five of the biggest ways that changing your outlook can change your fortunes…

Problems Become Challenges
A success mindset turns problems into challenges. It means that you stop seeing setbacks as the end of the world and start seeing them as new opportunities to kick ass and take names! When you take this approach, nothing can stand in your way!

And Failures Become Learning Experiences
You might have this idea in your head that highly successful people can never put a foot wrong or make a mistake. That’s far from the truth though. However, what makes failure very different for those with a success mindset is that they don’t see it as failure. They see it as a chance to try again – now with new information!

You Feel Amazing
When you genuinely believe you can do anything, it doesn’t just affect the way you walk around the office and conduct yourself in business – it changes the way that you present yourself and feel about yourself. In short, you feel awesome.

You Become Instantly More Attractive
What is the secret to attractiveness in both genders? You guessed it: confidence!

You Finally Start Getting What You Want
Finally though, when you adopt a success mindset and everything that comes with that, you’ll finally start to get what you want. Better yet, it won’t seem like an impossible task anymore. Once you give off that iron self-belief, others will start to believe in you too. When you have a clear goal and mission, anything becomes possible. It’s just a matter of time.

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Ten Tips to Set Your Mind for Success

Want to give your mind a kick up the backside and put it into 5th gear? These ten tips will help you shift your paradigm into a success mindset. Here goes…

1 View failure as a learning opportunity
Don’t view failure as a crushing defeat but rather as a chance to learn and to come back stronger!

2 View obstacles as challenges
Likewise, try to view problems as challenges to be overcome. This will just make your victory all the sweater.

3 Don’t choose between two things
When trying to choose between two things that you really want, the best answer is always to find a way that you can make them both happen.

4 Don’t let others define your success
Too many of us have one set view of what success looks like and we struggle to see it in any other way. Success is doing whatever it is that makes you happy. Don’t worry if that just so happens to make other people raise their eyebrows!

5 Invest in yourself
Investing in yourself is the most important way to start achieving more. This is the best way to spend money and the best way to spend time. Develop your skills, buy a suit and fix that hair!

6 Act like you’ve already won
Acting like you’ve already won is the best way to empower yourself to be stronger and more successful. When you do this, you give off an aura of success that makes others gravitate to you!

7 Know yourself
Know yourself and be honest about what you want, who you are and what your strengths and weaknesses are.

8 Avoid toxic people
Avoid the people in your life who are constantly telling you what you can’t do, who are making you feel bad about your dreams…

9 Surround yourself with positive people
Likewise, surround yourself with positive people and surround yourself with people who share your vision and can help it grow!

10 Do what you are most passionate about
The simplest way to be successful in life, is to put more effort it. That means being willing to get up earlier, to work harder and to work smarter toward that goal.
But this shouldn’t feel like work. Why? Because it should be something that you absolutely love. Spending your life working hard on something you don’t care about is a waste and when you find your passion, you’ll find it unlocks boundless energy and enthusiasm.

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3 Self Esteem Activities for Adults

Low self-esteem is an issue that almost everyone encounters at some point in their life. Unlike most real world problems, self-esteem isn’t always the easiest issue to solve, and can often be difficult to talk to others about.

There are many activities to help people overcome their self-esteem issues, and here are three easy steps to a higher self-esteem. First, you have to realize that with a low self-esteem, you are more prone to looking at all of the negatives about yourself rather than focusing on what you have going on for you.

Make a list of a couple of positive aspects in either your life, or just your day to day events that went well for you. Physically writing down these positive notes will make you focus more on the things that are going well in your life, rather than emphasizing all of the negatives.

Writing down events or traits that you like about yourself will also show you what makes you happier and when your mood is elevated, which could lead to more positive habits if you continue to chase these positive moments and traits.

Now that you have set up a base level of positive traits about yourself, begin to set short term goals that you can reach, and will benefit you as a person. These goals can be anything that you put your mind to – whether it’s walking more to get in better shape, generally eating better, learning something new at work, picking up a new hobby such as painting, or reconnecting with positive people from your past.

Not only will you feel better about reaching goals, but if the goal is set to bring about a positive outcome in you, then you will also reap self-esteem growth, too. Don’t be afraid to make the goals as small as you want.

Even cleaning the kitchen or mowing the lawn can be a win as long as you know it’s achievable and you feel good about making progress. These smaller goals will pick up the momentum to grow your self-esteem even faster.

After acknowledging your positive traits, things that are going well for you, and achieving wins for yourself, you now have the ball rolling, and it’s time to reward yourself as the third self esteem boosting activity.

Go do something that’s fun or relaxing for yourself because overcoming self-esteem isn’t an easy task and you’ve earned it. Not only do you get to treat yourself to something nice like a pedicure, ballgame, or your favorite restaurant, but you also set yourself up to be in a good mood throughout the week.

Being in a better mood will give you a higher chance of thinking positively about your life, and raise your self-esteem. Seeing things in a positive light helps you see everything with less negativity.

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Do You Feel Worthy of Being Paid for Advice?

Low self-worth is a problem that most of us have to deal with at some point in our lives. For others, it can be a nagging problem that affects your entire life. It can keep you from achieving important goals and becoming all that you can be.

The results are that you’ll be decidedly unhappy with your life. There are several things to keep in mind and constantly work on if you don’t feel worthy of being paid for your work.

You may feel that you’re not good enough at your job for people to pay you for anything you do. Or, you may underestimate (or overestimate) the work you do. Many of our unworthy feelings may come from what we experienced in childhood and others from negative life experiences as an adult.

Whatever the reason you feel you don’t deserve a fair price for your work efforts – it can be overcome. Make it a practice to replace those negative voices with positive ones so that you feel worthy of earning and gaining wealth.

You Don’t Have to Be an Expert to Earn Money

This is a problem that’s especially true with beginning entrepreneurs. You may not have the same amount of experience under your belt as some of the successful gurus, but something led you to this place of wanting to build a business and helping others.

Rest assured that you’re at least a rung ahead of others climbing the ladder – and with time and experience, you’ll be sought out by those who need your advice and expertise if you chose to provide it.

At first, you may think you spend most of your time proving yourself. But if you’re helpful and display a strong intent to help people solve their business problems, you’ll gain trust and a loyal following.

There’s actually no such thing as an expert in entrepreneurship. A heart surgeon is an expert as an electrical engineer is. They worked hard and received an advanced degree in their field, so you can call them experts.

But entrepreneurs don’t need degrees to be successful. They simply need a passion and the desire to learn as much as they can about a chosen niche. You come by that expertise gradually and with experience, others will see you as qualified to advise them with information they need.

Being honest with people who seek your advice is another virtue that entrepreneurs need to have. Don’t pretend to know about things and make up an answer. Say you don’t know, but offer to find the answer to the problem.

This strategy alone will propel you forward and let people know that you don’t just say you want to be helpful – you actually live it. And remember, you only have to know a small amount more than others to help them with content and information.

Get to know others who are further up on the success rung than you. Interviewing an entrepreneur on a podcast or having them write a piece for your blog is a good way to draw others to yourself and your site because their audience will come listen or read it.

And it helps them expand their list, too. Find ways to learn and get the word out that you offer helpful and succinct information that others can depend upon and you’ll keep moving up the ladder of online success.

Don’t Overestimate What You Can Do for Others

You may be the type who underestimates the value of your work and your true worth, but you also need to be cautious about overestimating how much you can do. Underestimating your value can hold you back from success, while overestimating it can let your customers down and cause a rift that will never heal.

The trick is to find a healthy balance in what you project – and what you know you can deliver. If it’s a matter of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, it may be worthwhile to accept more than you’re used to.

But if you know you’re incapable of providing certain information within a grueling timeline, it’s not worth the stress and the possibility of letting your customer down. Perhaps you could recommend someone you know who has the expertise and experience the customer is looking for.

The customer will appreciate your honesty and will likely reach out to you again for another issue. You may truly believe that you can do the job and then find out later that you underestimated the magnitude of the project or overestimated your ability to do it.

That’s why it’s necessary to think through any project you may want to take on and make sure that you’re up to the task before you embark on it. You don’t want to ruin your reputation by announcing a project you know you can’t complete or engage in properly.

If you’ve ever worked for a company where periodic performance appraisals are the norm, you may have had the experience of receiving an average rating when you thought you had done a stellar job that deserved praise – and a raise.

Or, you might have been confident you turned in a perfect essay for an English project and received a C or D. In both cases, it’s possible that you overestimated your ability to achieve in a particular situation.

Honest feedback on your job performance is helpful for you to work on the areas where you may be lacking. If overestimating your ability happens too often, take time to step back and reassess your talents or the time you need to accomplish certain tasks.

It’s always possible to improve and work on your shortcomings so that you have a good idea of your competence in every aspect of what you do. A healthy balance of confidence and caution can help with any problem of overestimating your worth.

Has Your Past Impeded Your Feelings of Worth?

When self-esteem takes a nosedive in childhood or other times in your life, you may have difficulty in overcoming it and realizing true success. Self-esteem problems often begin in childhood when you may have been ridiculed or made to feel inadequate.

These problems can haunt you forever if you can’t heal yourself, let go of the past and be there for others who may need your advice and help. Negative thoughts about yourself may be the norm for you and may have become a bad habit.

Getting rid of those thoughts of inadequacy and replacing them immediately with thoughts of what you have accomplished or what is truly good about you can give you a self-confidence boost. It just takes practice.

When in doubt about a project or question you’ve been asked, ask questions until you feel secure that you know what you’re up against and what’s expected of you. When you have the necessary information, you’ll be armed with what you need to do your job well.

Life sometimes gives you lemons, but when you’ve been subjected to something traumatizing, it can also make you a strong person – when you make lemonade from it. Letting go of the anger and resentment you may still be holding tight in your heart and mind can help you get on with the future and the happiness and accomplishments ahead.

Surround yourself with people who support the person you’re striving to become. Negative people will only foster negative thoughts. Create a new you by taking care of yourself, learning something new and begin to love and accept yourself again.

When you do accept a difficult project, go above and beyond what is expected. The appreciation you’ll receive from a job well done can boost your self-confidence and make you want to take on even more toward your quest for success.

Above all, don’t ever give up. You may find yourself falling back into despair or doubts during down days. The old self sometimes has a hard time giving up on making you miserable.

Meditate, exercise or do things that you know have the effect of boosting your self-esteem. Take care of yourself and do what you need to do to lift yourself and your mood up again.

Put Your Focus on Helping Others

Focusing on your own inadequacies and inabilities will only make you feel more unworthy for the payments you receive for helping others. When your focus is skewed, it’s easy to drown in self-destruction and sabotage your efforts to achieve success.

When you’re in the business of providing people with advice and guidance, it’s imperative that you turn your attention to the needs of your customers and the solutions you may be able to provide.

If you’ve made the decision to become an entrepreneur who offers a product or service which will help others succeed – and boost your own earnings – it can be the most rewarding time of your life.

You’ll learn more, be more fulfilled, become truly engaged and passionate about what you’re doing and begin to realize all of your dreams and desires. As you begin to add to your growing list of customers, your business will begin to grow.

Self-confidence and feelings of empowerment will give you the boost you need to build your business even more by focusing on how you can better serve (and add to) your list.

When you put the needs of your audience first, you’ll begin to branch out and success will come naturally. It’s easy to become distracted by other things like our own problems and concerns, but when your thoughts are mainly focused on sharing knowledge and helping others, your own needs will automatically be taken care of.

Sharing knowledge is one of the easiest and best ways to help others. Your expertise and experience can be a gold mine of information for those attempting to make their own businesses successful – and also a gold mine for you, because it enhances your reputation and increases your own knowledge base.

Discovering what valuable information needs others have is the single key that can propel you to a level of success you may never have thought you could achieve. Ask your customers about their wants and needs and then seize the opportunity to find and share what can help them most.

Recognize your customers when they succeed in part by taking your advice. A mention of a newly successful client or customer in a blog post or podcast will not only make the customer feel appreciated, but will boost your own reputation of offering stellar information to others.

Success Doesn’t Require You to Suffer

You don’t have to sweat buckets and work 24/7 to make a success of your business as an entrepreneur. The key is to work smarter rather than longer and harder. Customers don’t care how hard or long you worked on a solution for their problems – they only want good advice.

It may only take a minute or two for you to find exactly the answer they need to solve their problem, but because of your expertise and experience, you were able to find the solution and translate it to the customer in record time.

When you focus on what will help your customers and know your advice is the best, others will be willing to pay for it. What is the advice worth to them? That’s up to you to decide, based on research you can easily find online. Set your price and stand firm, but offer more than they expect.

You may compare yourself to other entrepreneurs who seem to brag about staying up all night to work on a project or who went to great lengths and spent a great deal of time solving a problem.

But you don’t have to suffer constantly to make your business a success – or to help others turn their businesses into successes. Your goals and dreams naturally take time and effort to achieve, but when you decide what your main goal is and know how to achieve it, you’ll take less time to get it all done.

All success takes time and effort, but if you plan wisely and schedule your time to reflect your best efforts, you’ll soon develop trust in yourself that you can ultimately achieve what you want without having to give up anything or anyone you enjoy.

Remember that success is like planting an apple tree. You have to wait for the fruit to appear, but watching it grow and flourish is part of the fun and fulfillment. You’re gradually planting seeds of success among people who ask for your advice and your efforts will eventually bear fruit.

Also, make sure you focus on what you want to achieve rather than possible failure. Time will fly when you’re working on something you’re passionate about. The accolades you’ll receive from your customers as you work to help them solve problems will help you realize your own self-worth and set your prices accordingly.

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Do You Feel Guilty About Success?

One of the worst things we can tell ourselves about accomplishments and success is that we don’t deserve it – and then feel guilty about it. These feelings may have been plaguing you since childhood and kept you from the success you’re very capable of.

Rather than celebrating and touting your success, you may feel unworthy or afraid that you’ll come across as bragging. But when you’re an entrepreneur and in the business of helping others, your accomplishments should be touted.

If your potential customers don’t see you as a success, they won’t have much of a reason to follow your advice. You may even take your feelings of guilt so far as to give away your advice and information – great for the freebie seekers, but bad for your business.

That doesn’t mean that everything has to have a price on it. Successful entrepreneurs usually go the extra mile and provide more solutions and guidance for their customers than necessary. But it should be your choice, not a result from feeling guilty.

Feeling Guilty Doesn’t Serve Your Customers’ Best Interests

When guilt about your success or how much money you make overwhelms you, it may cause you to abandon your career pursuit of helping others. That leaves your customer base that you worked so hard to build without a leader they can depend upon.

If guilt and unworthy feelings are something you contend with, it’s time to nip it in the bud before it grows into an obstacle you can’t overcome. Think about why you feel guilt. Did someone – a customer or loved one – make you feel guilty or berate you for wanting to better your life?

Or could these feelings come from childhood experiences? Unless you find a way to bury the guilt and remove it from your thought process entirely, you won’t be able to fully help your customers succeed – and you will fail, too.

You must have done a number of things right to be at the place you are now. Others are seeking your advice and experience because you’ve obviously accomplished enough to be considered worthy of offering solutions for their problems.

They view you as a person to look up to and emulate. If you let your customers down by becoming indecisive and letting them down, you will lose the business that could eventually make you a success.

First, know that no one has the right to make you feel unworthy of success. Don’t let others beat you down and make you feel that you just got lucky with your success – that it wasn’t a matter of your knowledge, drive and past experiences that led you to triumphs.

And even if you did luck out in some areas, you had the good fortune to know when to take advantage of a situation. As an entrepreneur, you have to tout your own successes.

This doesn’t mean you’re bragging, but that you’re stating the facts. You are good at what you do and you do have the knowledge and experience to help others gain their own success.

Sometimes it’s difficult to fend off criticism from others – especially those close to you. But you have a choice on how to respond. You can either sink deeper in guilty feelings and apologize for the success you’ve had or celebrate what you have and do what makes you happy.

Remember: “Your value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~ Unknown.

Everybody Has Hardships

It’s normal to feel empathy or sympathy for those who are struggling financially. Luckily, with the career you’ve chosen of providing useful information, you can help those people succeed.

You’ll feel good about yourself and the ones you help will be lifelong customers. You’ll both benefit from the help you give. As an entrepreneur who is in the business of helping others achieve success in whatever niche you’re leading, you should go above and beyond.

That doesn’t mean giving away all of your knowledge and secrets for free, but the products you do offer should have meat in the content and go beyond a simple freebie that you secured from the Internet.

You can use much of the free information you research on the ‘net to help others. There’s so much data on just about any topic you can imagine that you can share it with others and they’ll be grateful for it.

When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re considered a leader – and leaders can be assured of their continued success by helping others. One of the best ways to be a leader is to share the knowledge and experience you already have.

Your customers are looking for something of value, so you have to be able to discern what they consider valuable. It’s a waste of time to try helping them with something they don’t need or want help with.

Well thought-out blog posts, an easy-to-maneuver website and periodic specials where you offer past information products at a premium price is a good way to share your resources and make your customers aware of unique products and opportunities.

Another way to help others struggling for success is to offer feedback. The criticism should be constructive and transparent, helping improve what they’ve already accomplished rather than destructive criticism that can shatter their dreams.

Introducing your customers to other entrepreneurs and websites or blogs is also a great way to help others. If you know of another entrepreneur or guru who specializes in or offers something your client may feel is important, make sure the client knows about it.

When a client has overcome a particular obstacle or has come up with a new way of doing something, recognize him by mentioning him in a blog post, inviting him to a podcast presentation or any other method that will extol what he’s accomplished.

It’s not always easy to help others who are experiencing hardships. You’ll have freebie seekers who will test your patience. But the connections with those willing to work hard toward their goals and pay a fair amount for the guidance are the foundation of your success and it makes sense to cultivate those relationships.

Beware of Chronic Freebie Seekers

Just as there are unethical entrepreneurs, there are also unethical customers who constantly want something for nothing. You have to realize that you’re worthy of getting paid for the solutions and guidance you offer and find a way to help them see that – or send them away.

The true freebie seeker has no intention of paying for anything. It seems that their goal in life is to waste your time until you give them something of value just to get rid of them. When you offer a product online, you do it as a way to accrue clients for future products and to create interest in your product from paying customers.

But there are always a few freebie seekers who show up, looking to grab anything free you might offer – plus the products you expect payment for. You can try to convert these freebie seekers into paying customers by helping them see the value of your product and how it’s going to help them succeed, or attempt to protect your business from wasting time and effort on them.

A free offer can be one of your best marketing tools. But you should know that the word free will attract those who never intend to pay for anything you offer. It’s a mindset most of us don’t understand and it can truly damage your business efforts if you don’t protect yourself from it.

First, you should know how the freebie seekers operate. You’ll see them as repeat responders to free offers, but can drag your conversion rates to lower levels than they truly are.

Free offers that are only targeted to your paying list of customers (through a newsletter or blog post) reduce the amount of freebie seekers you may receive. But when you post free offers on social media, you can expect the percentage of freebie seekers to increase considerably.

When you post a free offer that’s contingent on a subscription to your newsletter, be prepared for the freebie seekers to immediately unsubscribe as soon as they download the free offer.

Research methods that other successful entrepreneurs use to stop freebie seekers from wasting their time and effort. For example, check out alternatives to free offers when trying to attract clients. By reducing your percentage of freebie seekers, you’ll be taking a big step in helping your business grow and prosper.

To Alleviate Guilt, Serve Your Audience Well

As an entrepreneur, there are many tried and true ways that you can serve your audience and help grow your own business as well. You don’t have to feel guilty about your own success when you know your clients are prospering from your efforts.

One way you can know that your audience is benefiting from your efforts is to define a particular group rather than attempting to appeal to everyone. It’s like shooting an arrow haphazardly without really aiming. You’ll surely miss the target and hit something you didn’t mean to.

But when you have a target audience, you’ll know exactly what to offer that they will like and enjoy. It’s the best way to invest your time, money and efforts and accurately promote your own business, too.

Having empathy for your audience is another way to alleviate guilt. When you show empathy, you’ll build a group of customers who clearly appreciate what you’ve done and what you’re doing for them.

When you do everything you can to help others in the business, you’re likely going to alleviate any guilt you may have for your own successes and be able to focus on improving your own goals for success and happiness.

Defining your target audience helps you know exactly what to offer them. You won’t be wasting your time and effort going down the wrong path of research and development, but will accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.

The relationships you strive to build within your targeted audience also help alleviate any guilt you may feel for your current success. Watching others’ businesses grow with help from the information you offered is the surest way to boost your confidence and take your business to the next level.

Serving your audience as well as you can also means that you can better identify opportunities for yourself and for them. You’ll be able to gradually build your business to the level you want and achieve goals on the way up. There’s no guilt involved when you learn how to serve your audience well.

Were You Raised with An Entrepreneurial Spirit?

If you can’t seem to get ahead or make progress with your business because you lack an entrepreneurial spirit of giving, it may be time to assess your upbringing. Many parents raise their children to be giving while others are intent on having their children focus on earning money.

The reality is – you need a balance of both. Children who were raised to give with a free spirit may have difficulty grasping the importance of receiving money for what they do – especially those who offer advice and guidance.

When you have an entrepreneurial mindset, you strive to change yours and others’ lives for the better. You seek change, rather than sitting back waiting for things to happen. Giving is an important part of the entrepreneurial spirit, but it should also enhance the growth of the entrepreneur rather than just the person being helped.

Entrepreneurs can never think of what they do with a negative mindset. Positivity and enthusiasm is key to having others look up to you as a leader and advisor. Entrepreneurs are empowered and are capable of teaching others to become empowered.

A sense of being worthy of success is also important to the entrepreneurial spirit. Giving away all of your advice and guidance information for free doesn’t enhance an entrepreneur’s path to success at all – in fact, it may hinder progress.

If you don’t think your advice is worthy of payment, no one else will. This attitude can’t be taught, but may be developed over time. By fostering passion and enthusiasm for what you do, the entrepreneurial spirit will grow and you will prosper as a result.

Potential customers sense the passion and enthusiasm in your voice and in the helpful information that you offer. Even if a person comes into their relationship with you skeptical at first, they sense your conviction and will react by becoming a loyal customer.

And while some people accept things as they are, entrepreneurial spirits are researching how it can be done better. They’re usually on the forefront of all great innovations – because they care.

Entrepreneurs are naturally optimistic and tend to enjoy life to the fullest. They take risks and push past the lines where others have stopped. Even though you may not feel you’ve developed a true entrepreneurial spirit over time, you can begin now to turn the tables and eventually consider yourself worthy of all good things that come your way.