One day, I was 
playing golf with Kevin, a good friend of mine. Now Kevin and I have been golfing buddies for a long time. So I don't coach him the way I might coach somebody else. On this particular day, I saw him do something I had
n't seen him do before. We came to a par 3 hole about 150 yards over water. For those of you who don't play golf, that means you have to stand on a tee box, then hit the ball up in the air and get it to land on the green without falling into the water. Otherwise, there will be a penalty.
As soon as I saw Kevin reach into his bag, I said, "Hey, Kevin! Looks like you're going to hit the ball in the water." I wasn't trying to give him negative coaching. I was just stating a fact.
"No, I'm not," Kevin said, getting into position on the tee box. "Oh, yes, you are," I said. "No, I'm not," he muttered. But by this time, he was mad and he said, "Jackson, you travel all around the world coaching people to be positive. Why would you tell me I'm going to hit the ball in the water?"
"It's simple," I told him. "When you walked up on the tee box, you reached into your bag and you pulled out your bad ball. You pulled out your water ball. You didn't want to hit your good ball in the water, so you were thinking about going in the water before I even said anything. You were coaching yourself to fail before I said a word."
A lot of us do this every day. We coach ourselves to lose! Whether we're going on a sales call or talking to our spouse, we pull out our bad ball, because we've already convinced ourselves it's not going to work.
Pulling out your bad ball means you're playing it safe – and playing to lose the game. Like Kevin, you don't want your good ball to get wet, so you use the bad ball - just in case. And you tip the scales toward failure.
You always have a choice. The next time you're tempted to take out your bad ball, stop and ask yourself: why not choose to win?
Learn how you can coach yourself to win with Jim Jackson’s top-selling ‘Coaching Yourself to High Performance’ CD.
Building self confidence
As I watch American Idol there seems to be a common theme from the judges. They coach the participants by telling them they need to have more self-confidence.
I can only imagine what the contestants are thinking. It may sound something like this, I am not projecting self-confidence and I am on national TV. Are they kidding me? I will just run down to the drug store and buy a bottle of self-confidence. Yea right so they try to fake it until they make it and give the judges a little attitude to demonstrate confidence.
I have been there myself until I learned what I am going to teach you. Just so you know I had 37 different jobs by the time I was 27 years old. I can remember people telling me just have more self-confidence. My self-doubt would go into overdrive trying to learn how to have self-confidence right now and why did I not have it whatever it was. I was coaching myself backwards by asking myself what is wrong with me.
The Power of Suggestion
Why is coaching yourself so important? Because we, as human beings, move towards what we think about. Whatever we're thinking about, we move toward-whether it's what we want or what we don't want.
It's like driving down the road. Have you ever tried to cross the white line and not hit those little bumps?
What do you focus on? You focus on the bumps. It's almost impossible to go between the bumps until you learn the art of looking for the spaces while you're driving down the road.
We move toward what we think about. Say you're on your bicycle, riding down the road. You see the rock in the road up ahead. You don't want to hit the rock, but if you see it and keep focusing on it, what will you hit?
In our minds, the power of suggestion is absolutely powerful. You use it all day long, whether you know it or not. Either you're coaching yourself or someone else is coaching you by telling you how you are.
And it's working. Your life is turning out exactly like the coaching you're receiving all day long. It's very powerful stuff.
Coaching is so powerful that I'm going to tell you to do something that's very important. I can't emphasize it enough. Listen very carefully: Stop the negative coaching!
Do this for the next couple of days. Only say positive upbeat things to yourself about yourself and others. Your days will seem much brighter. Do this one positive coaching exercise for yourself. Focus on what you want!
You can go to my website http://jimjacksonlive.com and download the chapter on coaching from my book Power to Change free.
Back to the American Idol, self-confidence starts before you ever walk on stage or in the door at work. You coach yourself forward by saying this statement as if it has already happened. I am confident in who I am and I know I am very good at what I do, I need only my opinion to be happy and successful. The key is to visualize this in your mind walking in and performing at the highest level. I do this each time I go on stage to deliver a keynote in front of 1,000's seeing success before it ever happens and when it does in real life that is called self-confidence.
Discover the secrets to building your self confidence and more with Jim's inspirational BREATHE program!