Personal Development Tips

Self-Help – Relationship Style Copywriting Brings More Buyers

Self-help entrepreneurs need copywriting that relates to their prospects at a deeper level. The sales letter is not all about selling your product or service. The main purpose is to begin to establish a relationship.

In the self-help arena, you need to build the relationship first. You don’t make the sale first in order to establish the relationship.

When you have a message that helps people solve personal problems, it requires that a relationship and trust be established before the prospect will buy into your message of hope.

So how do you establish this relationship in a sales letter? The following keys are based upon the assumption that most self-help entrepreneurs are in their particular niche because they personally came out of that problem.

· Identify with the emotional struggles your prospect is going through relating to the particular problem you solve.

· Tell only enough of your personal story to let the reader know that you identify with their struggles. The sales letter is mainly focused on the reader, not you and your story.

· Describe the efforts you tried which were unsuccessful in helping you overcome the problem. Do you know why those efforts did not work?

· Write out some of the common frustrations of staying stuck in this situation. Now turn them into questions for the reader. “Have you ever felt . . . ?” “Are you tired of feeling . . . ?” “Have you tried . . . and . . . to overcome this problem but still couldn’t break through?”

· Identify how your approach to solving this problem is different from other approaches. This is your Unique Selling Perspective. This must be identified and stated several different ways so your reader will understand exactly how your product or service (message) is different than others and how it can help them to finally overcome their problem. Use the language of the person stuck in this problem. If you use generic terms for this problem, you’ll lose your reader in an instant. They’re looking for someone who understands the deep issues they’re going through.

· Identify the emotional blockages you and your prospects go through in order to break free from this particular problem. Since you have overcome the problem, many times the prospect is not aware of some of these blockages. Don’t assume your reader has these blockages, but you might share them as further insights for the reader to consider.

· Identify the benefits you received by finally resolving this problem. Don’t just list the obvious benefits, but go deep into your heart to find the underlying peace and perhaps a brighter outlook. Can you identify any additional benefits you received that you never thought of while going through the problem?

· Your testimonials should include specific elements of the problem that were solved by your product or service. What was the “ah-ha” moment for each person giving a testimony?

These keys will be sprinkled throughout your sales letter in the appropriate places. It’s important to remember that when you have a message that changes a person’s life, rather than selling something like a computer, it requires this deeper, heart-to-heart approach.

The goal is to have your soul touch the soul of the hurting person you want to reach. To do so requires you to be emotionally vulnerable. Sharing the above keys will put you in this position to connect with the heart’s desire of your reader.

Other ways to improve your message can be found in my free report “The 7 Missing Elements In Sales Letters For Self-Help Messages” at http://www.christiancopywriter.org

10 Self-help steps to control your drinking!

If you feel that you are drinking too much or that you would like to change or control your drinking behavior then this basic ‘self help’ formula is for you. Taking control of your own drinking habits involves a learnt ‘self-control’ behavioral approach and is as successful in reducing your drinking as it is to be receiving the same self-help behavioral treatment from professionals.

This self help approach is both proven and effective and may just be the answer to helping you live a more healthy and controlled life with alcohol.

How to Cut Back on Excessive Drinking: Write down your reasons for drinking less.

For example – I wish to make good decisions while on alcohol, I want to be less abusive/destructive, I want to loose weight, I want to look after my health.

Set a drinking goal.

Write your drinking goal on a piece of paper – For example “I will not drink more than4 drinks per drinking session and I will not drink more than14 drinks per week”.

Keep track of what you’re drinking.

Write down how many drinks you have for each day during the week. Do this consecutively over a month and use these results to figure out where you’re going wrong or if you are on track.

4.      Keep only a small amount of alcohol at home.

Reduce temptation by removing most, or even better, all alcohol from home. Try to only purchase it out at bars or on the way to social events.

5.    Keep your Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) low : When you drink, sip your drink slowly. Drink for taste rather than effect. Don’t drink on an empty stomach. Consume no more than one drink per hour. Eat food or “munchies” while drinking. High protein and high fat foods like cheese and nuts are especially good at keeping your blood alcohol content low. Drink soda, water, or juice after a drink containing alcohol.

(Quoted from www2.potsdam.edu)

6.    Learn to say “no” when you don’t want a drink

If you don’t want to have another drink then just say ‘no’. Just because it is offered to you does not mean that you have to say yes. If people do persist in buying you drinks and you feel too shy to say no then it is just as easy to accept the offer and then ‘accidentally’ misplace the drink. You could also try telling them you would prefer a non alcoholic beverage

7.         Distance yourself from people who give you a hard time about not drinking.

Again, avoid temptation by socialising with those who are controlled drinkers. Stay away from people who want you to drink more than you want to. Watch out for people, times, places or situations that encourage you to drink too much.

8.    Get support. It is always much easier to change your drinking behavior (or any behavior for that matter) when you have the love and support from your family and friends. If cutting back seems to be a loosing battle then ask your loved ones to help you where they can. For example ask your family/friends to accompany you to social events where there may be a lot of temptation for example work do’s and friends birthdays. If you are having trouble cutting down then try consulting your doctor as there are some medications available to help make it easier. 9.    Drink non alcoholic cocktails and beverages. There are plenty of drinks that resemble alcoholic drinks such as alcoholic cocktails or more commonly ‘mocktails’ (moch cocktails). Mocktails can be a refreshing and entertaining way to feel like you’re still part of the fun. There is also an extensive range of non alcoholic beers and wines such as Ariel wine and Warsteiner Premium Fresh. (go to www.clarety.co.nz for an excellent full range of non alcoholic beverages).

10.       Don’t give up!

If you don’t get it right the first few times then keep trying. Controlling your drinking is all about practice and practice takes time. Remember there are plenty of people out there like you who have successfully managed to use this exact same self-help method to control their drinking so use your support systems and don’t give up!

How much can be drunk safely?

The World Health Organisation defines a safe level of drinking as six standard drinks for men and four standard drinks for women per drinking occasion.

Great Tips On Developing Self Confidence And Eliminating Self Doubt

Self confidence is a crucial aspect of one’s mental well being. It enables people to be self assured about their own abilities, and gives them a measure of self worth that is imperative for them to continue with their daily lives. People who suffer from low confidence tend to feel worthless, and do not look forward to living their lives to the fullest, and instead they drag their feet and try to get by each day, feeling terrible about themselves and the world around them. If you feel that you have low self confidence, then this article is just for you. This article will show you some great tips on developing a great sense of self confidence, and ways on how you can eliminate self doubt so you can stand on your own two feet and seize every opportunity for success and live your life the way it is meant to be lived.

Firstly we need to address self doubt. Self doubt is a prevalent problem in a lot of people these days, as they doubt their abilities to succeed or even to live their lives the way they should. It is the limiting belief that prevents you from realizing your goals. Once we know the factors that contribute to our self doubt, only then can we build and develop our self confidence. Remove self doubt, and your self confidence will grow.

How do you remove your self doubt? You need to understand that self doubt is bred by repetitive negative thoughts, and so in order to eliminate self doubt you need to replace the negative thoughts with that of positive ones. While it may not be possible for you to do this overnight, you can however do it over time.

For example, if you have always thought that you want to start your very own home business but you have been unable to because you simply do not have the time because of your busy schedule, then you need to change your train of thought by repeatedly convincing yourself that there are others out there, thousands in fact, who have been successful in starting their own home business and are raking in thousands of dollars in extra income every month while still working their day jobs. This emphasis on how others have succeeded in what you seek to achieve will serve as an impetus for you to get motivated in achieving what you desire and stop you from dallying any further.

Fill your mind with positive thoughts and only good can come out of it.

Use positive affirmations to stay positive. It’s a great technique to reprogram your subconscious mind into a more positive state. The concept of positive affirmations is based on the repetitive drilling of positivity so that you can replace any negative limiting beliefs from your mind.

Another useful method you can employ is to surround yourself with positive people. Allow them to provide positive criticism and encouragement in your journey toward success, and you will find yourself blossoming into a more confident person.

5 Unbeatable Ways to Improving Self Confidence

In order to get ahead in life, we need to have a healthy dose of self confidence. Very rarely will you find someone who is successful in life but has a terrible sense of self confidence. This is because in order to succeed you need to first believe in your own ability for success, otherwise you will never get ahead in life. The thing you need to remember is this: Even the most confident person would have, at some point in their life, wish that they could be more confident, because with confidence comes success. Here are 5 great tips on how you can improve self confidence.

The first thing you should do is to stop being negative. You know how it is, it always begins with some minor little flaw that you think you might have. It may be excess weight here, some facial imperfection there, and then before you know it you start hating yourself for the way you look, thinking that people must think of you as some hideous freak, which would explain why no one loves you.

Chill!

Learn to love yourself for who you are. What others think of you is not nearly as important as what you think of yourself. If you constantly put yourself down then you will never be able to build a healthy sense of self confidence. Whenever you feel that negativity start creeping up on you, the best thing you can do for yourself is to banish it from your mind and focus on the positive.

Speaking of focusing on the positive, the next step you can consider is to focus on your strengths. This can mean anything from your talents to your positive traits. Expand on your talents by joining some hobby group where you can get the acknowledgement and recognition for your talents that you deserve, and this will go a long way in boosting your self confidence to phenomenal heights.

The third way you can build on your self confidence is to set for yourself some small goals or milestones. You may have some dream waiting for you in the horizon, but along the way it is good to have milestones which you can achieve in order to get a boost of self confidence as you trudge along towards your eventual big dream. Remember, visualize your big dream as a mountain, and your milestones would serve as checkpoints where you can stop and evaluate yourself as you pass each one in your journey ahead. The accomplishment of each milestone will serve as encouragement for you to keep working.

The fourth way you can improve self confidence is to remember your past achievements. Recall how great you felt when you last achieved some great event in your life. It doesn’t quite matter when you might have achieved it. It could have something to do with your childhood, or perhaps it had happened when you got your first job. Focus on the happiness derived from the event, and you will find yourself craving to achieve that same sense of happiness and satisfaction, and this will serve as motivation for you to keep building your self confidence.

The last way for you to improve your confidence is to celebrate your failures. This may sound absurd to you initially, but think of your failures as milestones to success. To paraphrase a certain celebrity, you should always prepare for glory by failing until you don’t. Success doesn’t come overnight, so learn to see your failures as you getting one step closer to success. Each failure is just another way for you to learn a new, better approach of doing things.

Improving Self Confidence Will Change Your Life

Self confidence is extremely important for you to succeed and achieve great things in life however many people struggle to find it. The good news is that there are many ways of improving self confidence.

Self confidence is made up of two key factors, self-efficacy and self-esteem. We gain a sense of self-efficacy when we can see ourselves doing well in something and reaching our goals. This does overlap with self-esteem which is a more general idea that we are able to cope with the things that are happening in our lives and that we have a reason and right to be happy.

People who are self confident believe in themselves and evaluate themselves realistically. They believe that they are in control of their lives.

One way of improving self confidence is positive self-talk. If you make yourself feel good about yourself you will eventually start believing it and it will show in your actions. You can even try looking into the mirror every morning, smile at yourself and say something nice to the confident person looking back at you.

Body language is a dead giveaway of someone who lacks self confidence. People who are feeling good about themselves use open body language. They carry themselves with pride and hold their heads high. They look people in the eye when speaking to them and use a firm handshake.

Always make sure that you feel well put together. Grooming is important and there is no doubt that a new haircut and a close shave will make you feel better about yourself. Even if you don’t feel like you look good, dress well and dress comfortably, this will improve your self image. Exercise is important; a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. If you feel good about yourself, that will shine through and people will feel good around you.

One of the most important tools to improving self confidence is to be positive. Learn to think positive things about yourself and your situation. Set your own standards and stick to them, stand up for what you believe in. When you feel down speak to your family or your friends, they will understand and lift your spirits to put you back on the right track.

Self Help Anxiety

You’ve heard it said that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Maybe that’s not true in all instances, but surprisingly enough, you really can help yourself defeat anxiety attacks.

Anxiety self-help is something more than yoga and meditation, reading books and taking notes. Actually, none of these methods really cures the problem, if you want to know the truth. Anxiety self-help is designed to offer you a straightforward approach to getting over your anxiety quickly and permanently, but only if you gain access to the right course and follow an accepted, proven and consistent format.

Before moving onto the specifics of anxiety self-help, it’s probably necessary to describe what anxiety is and how it affects the sufferer. Only then can it be understood that there is only one real cure for anxiety disorders like panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorders, agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Anxiety is related to the flight or fight instinct that every human being possesses. A small part of the brain known as the amygdala governs this instinct. Think of the amygdala as the anxiety thermostat or anxiety control center in humans. In the event of a real external danger, the amygdala prepares the body to flee or defend itself.

As we have seen, appropriately directed anxiety offers a natural protection against external threats. However, inappropriately directed anxiety can lead to a number of undesirable physical and psychological responses, the most unpleasant of which is obviously anxiety attacks.

When a person suffers from anxiety attacks, he is essentially the victim of an amygdala that cannot differentiate from a real or imagined threat. In other words, the mind effectively scares itself into believing in a threat that just doesn’t exist. What, then, does anxiety self-help do?

Basically, it teaches you to recognize the unreality of internally directed scare tactics and teaches you how to break the cycle. Those who have used anxiety self-help to cure themselves have found that only this method has worked for them.

But you won’t find this method in a bottle of pills or on a psychologist’s couch. Rather, the answer is provided in a structured, supportive and continuous process.