Please join me in welcoming the newest addition to our family, Katya Skye, born March 1st at 7:20am (yes, that's yesterday). She's beautiful and healthy, weighing 7lbs, 12oz. The story of her birth is quite incredible (I gave birth alone), so stay tuned within the next few days for the story and pictures on my blog.

In the meantime, enjoy this month's installment, prepared just for you!

Negative performance will never affect your self-confidence again, after making one small adjustment I describe in this month's article.

I hope you find the article helpful as well as entertaining.

A hockey coach on "Making the Cut" (a Canadian reality show) this week gave his team a lesson about putting confidence and performance in their respective places. He compared it to a person steering a boat while pulling a water skier. When the driver steers the boat to the left, eventually the water skier will follow to the left too.

Using that illustration, he showed how most young or inexperienced players allow their performance to take the wheel of the boat, thus dictating what direction their confidence takes. This is all fine and good when you're on top of your game and doing well -- the result is your self-confidence increases and you play better. But the danger occurs when your performance takes a turn for the worse -- your confidence decreases and you begin to create negative momentum.

The hockey coach gave his players a simple solution -- change the order. Put your self-confidence in the driver's seat and your performance will follow.

This is a good lesson for entrepreneurs. Some will allow a bad month or a negative occurrence to affect their self-confidence. As their assurance wanes, so do their accomplishments thus creating a destructive downward spiral effect. If you change up the order -- letting your self-confidence direct your performance -- you'll find that you can more easily get unstuck during low periods and more quickly regain momentum.

How do you put your self-confidence in control? Easy. Remember why you started your business in the first place. Do whatever it takes to remind yourself that you really are the best at what you do and you really do make a significant positive impact in your clients' lives -- why else would you be doing it?

You hear me speak a lot about attitude and how it really does make a difference. You attract what you think about. If you dwell on negative experiences or on what you DON'T want, guess what the results will be? Negative and what you don't want, which WILL negatively impact your performance and productivity.

Each morning starts a new day, full of possibilities. What's more, you can choose to start your day all over again if you notice negativity creeping in. Even if you're a new entrepreneur, you have a lot of optimistic and constructive points to help build and sustain your self-confidence -- like the fact that you actually took the leap to starting your own business.

Like the person steering his boat, look ahead more than you look behind. Put your self-confidence in control and your performance WILL follow.

Copyright. Cristina Favreau. All rights reserved.

ABOUT CRISTINA
Cristina Favreau specializes in helping passionate and motivated service professionals who love what they do, but struggle with running and marketing their business. In these 3 areas, Cristina will help you: (1) discover simple ways to increase your visibility and credibility, (2) get more clients by identifying where you're stuck in the marketing cycle, and (3) get unstuck and regain momentum. To read more articles like this, visit her site at http://www.cristinafavreau.com/.

NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered, including the "ABOUT CRISTINA" info above. Please send a copy of your reprint to .

If you are using e-mailings to get people to visit your website, chances are at least some of your messages are considered as spam. A recent study indicates that 93% of all emails we receive are spam. How can you make sure your message is not perceived as such?

Read Eve's entire article here...