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Introduction

We, as human beings, are a product of habits, both positive and negative. Everyone, whether we like it or not, has hundreds of patterns that are activated daily that range from taking a shower to watching a particular television show, to getting ready to work.

Every day we consciously and unconsciously we are performing habits, and whatever you call them, whether it be your routines, rituals, or behaviors, habits are a part of all of us.

Habits can be divided into three different areas. First, are those habits that we don't notice anymore because they are deeply embedded in our daily lives. These habits include brushing our teeth or tying our shoelaces.

The second kind of patterns is those that are healthy for us and that we tend to try and build upon — these kinds of habits, including eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, and exercising regularly. The third kind of habit involves those habits that are seen as unfavorable, like overspending, smoking, and procrastination.

Every January 1st, a majority of people are filled with enthusiasm for changing their lives. They hope and desire to start the new year off fresh and setting goals that will change our lives.
However, within a few weeks, we find ourselves battling the same bad habits from the previous year.

The worst part about this is that we revert back to our bad habits unknowingly and unwillingly. Over time, the ritual of setting New Year resolutions and quickly breaking those resolutions ends up disappointing use to the extent that we give up with the idea of changing our bad habits and instead choose to opt out of the yearly ritual.

Eventually, we end up with a negative connotation about change. We are made to believe that change is meant only for a few who have a lot of will power or a unique self-drive.

Unfortunately, this revelation leaves most people with questions that often go unanswered. If you find yourself in this place with lingering questions, then you can find answers here. Not only can you rest assured that you will be able to take control of your habits after reading this book, but you will also learn the necessary steps for overcoming the bad habits that are holding you back. You will gain the knowledge and tools that are needed to break the bad habits and replace them with good ones.

Since a habit is something that you acquire as a result of the influences in your life, being able to change it will require some skills. Like any other skill, it needs both effective techniques and practice to be successful. You need to equip yourself with these skills so that you can be competent enough when facing your habit. If you want to change your habits, then you have to work on developing your skills continually.

This is because your habit becomes automatic when it is practiced with consistent, repetitive patterns that are created in your mind. The only way you will be able to defeat your bad habits is by standing up and equipping yourself for the tasks.

Chapter 1 – What Are Habits?

In order for you to understand how to break your bad habits, it is essential that you first understand precisely what habits are.
According to the dictionary, a habit is a recurrent and often unconscious pattern of behavior, which is usually acquired through regular repetition.

To understand this concept, you need to know how your brain works. Your mind is created by and connected with a complex array of neurons. These neurons are fed with input from our sensory nerves and organs, which are then delivered to the brain.

These neurons are interconnected with others throughout the body and form one of the most significant frameworks of interconnected elements of the body. The brain registers, as well as maintains pathways of various neurons through the chemical impulses that it receives from the neurons. To increase cognitive ability, the brain has to keep a simple, streamlined process. This process includes setting the most used pathways as connections, which allows them to run automatically.

For example, you might find yourself in a room and can't remember what brought you there. The same applies to driving and walking. But what about bad habits?

There isn't a specific definition of bad habits. This is because a habit isn't bad or good on its own. What matters is what you do with the habit. Consider whether your habit has a positive or negative impact on your life and the life of those around you.
Asking yourself this question can help guide you in defining your habits.

A positive habit will bring you success in all areas in your life, while a bad habit is one that can ruin the success you experience in life.

A bad habit can be considered as anything that takes up your time and prevents you from achieving your immediate or long- term goals, without providing you anything in return. For example, you might have the habit of playing video games during your free time.

This could be a good or bad habit, depending on how you do it. If you usually play video games with your family, it could mean achieving your goal of spending more time with your family, making it a positive habit. However, continually playing video games by yourself every day contributes to nothing, making it a bad habit. When determining whether your habits are good or bad, you have to be honest with yourself.

Take the time to weight your habits and see if they are beneficial to you. If something hinders you from achieving your goals, define it as a bad habit, and start devising a plan to break the habit.

While you can pinpoint specific bad habits, something's you are so used to the habit that you actually don't recognize how it is affecting you. Therefore, you need to understand how you can realize your habits so that you can do something about them.

How to Recognize Your Habits

Most of us are so used to our habits that we don't actually realize that you have those habits. The first step that you need to take if you want to change your habits is being aware of which ones you have. You can't change what you don't know.

You can become aware of both your positive and negative habits by doing a self-assessment. Here are two methods that you can use to help you identify both your good and your bad habits.

Internal Review

Doing an internal review of your habits requires self-reflection. Self-reflection is nothing more than analyzing your daily behaviors and taking note of how they make you feel. If you always find yourself snacking on sugary foods, and feeling guilty about it each time it happens, then you've just narrowed down one of your bad behaviors.

You can also use measurement as a way to recognize your bad habits. Most of the time, we tend to lie to ourselves about our bad habits or ignore them completely. With measurement, you can quickly note your bad habits.

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Introduction

Have you been thinking of ways to grow your confidence? Do you feel that fear has taken over a huge part of your life and is holding you back from living your true purpose? Do you want to shake all that fear and have unstoppable confidence that will leave people in awe of you? Well, this book is designed just for you!

Today, there are so many of us not living up to our full potential due to the fear of failure, or what others will think of us. In fact, that is one of the most common regrets most people have when they are near their deathbed. One thing that you have to understand is that fear will take away the sunshine in your life and leave you with so much darkness and sadness within.

The good news is that you can shake all that fear and self- judgment so that you take control of your life and live a purposeful and happy life. The one way to do this is to master the art of confidence. It is through authentic confidence that you lay a solid foundation for making better decisions, building long- lasting relationships, and positioning ourselves for success.

What Comes To Mind When You Think Of Confidence?

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi

This is exactly what I think serves as a recipe for confidence. If you are going to live a fulfilled life, then you must have the confidence to go after the things that make you happy. In other words, you have to demonstrate confidence in yourself; abilities, personality, and intellect.

So, what is confidence? Well, the truth about unshakeable confidence is living true to yourself. It is all about embracing your true self. To do this, you must believe that you have full control of your life, and not letting circumstances hinder you from your life purpose. You have to decide the value of your true self and never allow yourself to be defined by someone else’s opinion. The more you do this, the more it becomes effortless to express confidence.

When you master the art of embracing your true self, you will realize that the doors of opportunity are all around you. You will be spoilt for choices. When limitless opportunities come your way, there is no more room for fear of scarcity. Soon, you’ll realize that you can live a life of abundance. This is exactly what I consider an effective pathway to unshakeable confidence and a fulfilled life.

Chapter 1

Three Pillars of Unshakeable Confidence

Pillar 1: Experiential Confidence

When I was a teenager, one thing that scared me the most was chatting up women, especially strangers. Making the initial approach felt impossible and made me feel like I had completely lost strength in my feet. It simply made me shut down!

Now, two decades later, I can’t wrap my head around what it is that I was so afraid of.

The truth is, you and I can overcome fear and easily do the things that we once thought impossible, simply because we now have experience. I was able to push through those frightening moments and conversation. Now, I can strike up a conversation with every person I find, on the train, coffee shop, or at the office.

I have the confidence to do pretty much anything I put my mind to. It is just like learning to drive on the highway for the first time. At first, it was scary, but with time, you adjust, and your body learns that it does not kill you.

Well, this kind of confidence is what is referred to as experiential confidence. It is the type of confidence that you gain through experience. You have developed this type of confidence at some point in your life. The first step is to have the courage to act and take risks. Each time you fail, you build that confidence because you understand that failure is not permanent.

One thing that you have to appreciate is all the things that did not work out in your life because they allowed you to learn. It is through the past failures that we have confidence today. Therefore, if you want to build your experiential confidence, the first thing that you need to ask yourself is what is the worst thing that could happen if you fail? Will you die? If not, then there is no reason to back down. You must understand that everything you act against fear, you grow your experiential confidence, and all the tasks that is difficult now will be easy later on.

Pillar 2: Emotional Confidence

This simply refers to the kind of confidence that you can turn on at will. Well, here’s an example: I started working for an International company at the age of 21 as a project assistant. One time, for some reason, I wanted to work from another city for three weeks. However, I was so nervous to ask my boss for permission to work away from the main office. Did I eventually do it? Definitely.

Well, I first had to prepare myself mentally. I started by brainstorming how I would walk into his office, present my case, and how I would handle his responses. I created a small decision tree with all the possible ifs, how and why questions he would ask and what my responses would be. This was to help me stay on top of my game so that nothing caught me off-guard. In other words, I needed this to maintain my composure.

What I was essentially doing was tapping into my emotional confidence by learning the tips and tricks of controlling my body language so that I do not send out the wrong message. If you control your body, then you will be able to control your emotions. On the contrary, if you fail to control your body, then your emotions will be running all over the place.

What I simply did was rehearse every statement I was going to say, and how I would do it, with a firm handshake, smiling face, and shoulders high. What I realize was, when you resist the urge of crossing your arms and showing your anxiety, the conversation flows naturally, and the other party eases into the discussion. That is how you gain emotional confidence.

It is important to note that, emotional confidence serves a great purpose especially when you are caught in a situation that you already anticipate; for instance, a presentation, a difficult conversation with your superiors or parents, a performance, etc. Unlike experiential confidence, emotional confidence is not limited to just a single domain.

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Introduction

Making more money with your website doesn’t necessarily require making a big change or taking on some monumental task. Sometimes, all you need to do is spend a few minutes creating another opportunity for your prospects to join your list or buy something from you. Check out these seven ideas for doing exactly that…

1. Direct Visitors to You Lead Page

The idea here is to insert more of the following:

Opt-in forms on your website.

Calls to action to visit your lead pages.

In short, you want to give your visitors more opportunities to join you list. Because if people leave your site without joining your list (or buying something), there’s a good chance they’ll forget about you.

So how do you put more of these opt-in opportunities on your site? Like this:

Insert a call to action at the end or even within your blog articles. Ideally, the lead magnet you’re offering should be closely related to the particular article the visitor is reading. In other words, create multiple lead magnets so that you can embed targeted lead magnet offers within your content.

Embed opt-in forms in your blog sidebar. Be sure to let visitors know the top benefits they’ll receive if they claim your lead magnet and join your newsletter.

Place calls to action in multi-media. If you distribute podcasts and video content on your website, don’t forget to include calls to action within this content (along with a

link or opt-in form next to the multi-media so that people can take immediate action).

Test a lightbox popup. Most of us aren’t thrilled when we see popups on a website, especially if it obstructs our access to the content. However, a well-placed exit popup with an enticing offer can certainly get more people scrambling to join your list. The best way to find out if it works for you is by testing it.

Next up…

2. Insert More Product Offers

Many times marketers create a new product, announce the new product over several posts on the blog, and then don’t do a whole lot of promotion after that. However, you can make more money with your website simply by inserting more product offers across your website.

Here are three ways to get more sales:

Insert product offers in your blog sidebar. You can even create a “featured product” section, where you feature a new product each week. Or you can set up a plugin that rotates several products, so that visitors see a range of offers.

Place offers on your subscriber confirmation page. At this point, you have a prospect who is interested enough in what you offer to join your newsletter. Now is a good time to put an offer in front of them. For best results, place an offer that’s directly related to the lead magnet the prospect just requested.

Put offers on webinar registration pages. Do you offer live webinars? If so, you can place an offer on the

registration page. Try something like this: “Get up to speed before the webinar by watching this video…”

Next up…

3. Offer an Upsell or Cross-Sell

If you’re selling something on your website, then every order form should include an upsell or cross-sell. What’s the difference? Take a look:

A cross-sell is when you offer something related to the main purchase. This extra offer should enhance the enjoyment or benefits of the main products. The classic example here is when a fast-food clerk asks if you want fries with your burger.

No matter what you’re selling, you can do something similar to this. For example, if someone orders a dieting book from you, you can offer a cross-sell for a related item such as a low-calorie cookbook or even a meal-planning app.

An upsell is when you offer something that expands the order. The classic example at the fast food restaurant is when the clerk asks if you want to “biggy size” an order (which means you get a bigger fries and a bigger drink). You’re not adding any new products to the order, you’re just expanding what you’ve already ordered.

Again, you can do this in your business too. For example, if someone orders a video from you, you might offer the transcripts of the video as an upsell. Or if someone orders three months of coaching from you, then you might offer an additional month at a really good rate.

TIP: To really boost conversions on your upsells and cross-sells, offer a good deal. Make it clear that this discount or other special offer is only available at checkout. If someone wants to purchase the product later, they can. They’ll just need to pay full price.

Here’s the next set it and forget it way to make more money with your website…

4. Embed Offers Directly Into Blog Content

If you have a blog, then you probably put offers in your sidebar, header, footer and maybe even at the end of each article. Those are all good ideas. But be sure to embed offers directly into the content.

This doesn’t mean you need to do a hard sell within the content, although occasionally you can do that too with direct-response ads, product reviews and product comparisons. Instead, what it means is that you recommend related products directly from within the content.

For example, let’s suppose you’re writing an article about how to set up a mailing list. You can drop an affiliate link to your favorite email service provider, along with the benefits of that ESP and the reasons why you personally recommend it.

Here’s the next idea…

5. Create Easily Shareable Viral Content

Every piece of content you place on your website should have a specific goal. These goals might include creating sales, establishing you as an expert in the field, or even generating traffic.

When it comes to that last point, one of the very best sources of traffic to tap into is your existing visitor base. That’s why you’ll want to create viral content that’s easily shareable.