WellBeing and Building Superior Confidence Workshop 1.45pm to 4.00pm

Wednesday 19th November saw us celebrating International Men’s Day in the wonderful surroundings of Birmingham City University. One of our ‘Manbassadors’ – Jonathon Cash, has kindly provided a summary of the event this time…

As many of you will know it was International Men’s Day on Tuesday 19th November. As part of the celebrations on the day the Women in Banking and Finance (WIBF) Birmingham group organised a workshop around Wellbeing and Building Superior Confidence at Birmingham City University. Representatives from all genders and backgrounds were invited to the event and I was lucky enough to attend the workshop with a number of other LBG colleagues. The aim of the work shop was to increase the attendee’s awareness of physical and mental health and discuss building superior confidence inside and outside of the workplace by looking at the key elements of confidence.

The work shop started with a brief talk around physical health conditions that affect men in particular and how to prevent them. Although the best way to stop physical health conditions is to prevent them before they occur it is fascinating to hear about the amount of small changes that we can make (which we all know already) that can reduce our chances of getting ill but many of us ignore, such as reducing the amount of red meat we eat, reduce the amount of alcohol consumption and exercise more often. There was also a mindfulness session, when I think I may have dozed off at some point, but I felt very refreshed afterwards. I would definitely consider giving it a go, there are loads of mindfulness apps available such as headspace to help improve your mental wellbeing.

The second part of the workshop covered building superior confidence hosted by Abstract. The 6 key elements to building confidence covered were Self-acceptance, self-respect, self-admiration, self-belief, self-assurance and self-determination. Each one of these elements was broken down and discussed with the attendees, with a number of exercises completed during the workshop to look at how you can improve your own confidence. Another interesting topic that was covered was your table of beliefs. This is a theory into your beliefs, which have been built up during your life, with your strongest beliefs being supported by the most amount of legs, the more legs that your belief has, the harder it is to remove and rewire in your brain.

The workshop also covered the three compartments of the brain, the Neocortex, Limbic and Reptilian mind. The Reptilian brain is your primitive fight, flight or freeze instinct, the limbic your emotions and behaviour and the Neocortex is your conscious thought. The key to increasing your confidence and focus is to supress the Limbic compartment and ensure that your Neocortex compartment is always in charge, if you know how to do this let me know!

One quote that I will take away from the work shop is “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are probably right” which is a famous quote from Henry Ford the founder of Ford Motor Company. This quote resonated with me as it is normally your mind set and confidence in yourself that limits your ambitions. There are also a number of books that you may want to check out if you’re interested in the topic of building your confidence “Let it go” by Stephanie Shirley and “the Chimp Paradox” by Steven Peters.

Overall the workshop were very interesting and informative and I have definitely taken away some key learnings. There is another exciting WIBF Birmingham event coming up on Saturday 8th February 2020, more details will be available on www.wibf.org.uk very shortly.

By: Jonathon Cash
Manbassador
Manager, Lloyds Banking Group