The other day, a reader of my emails wrote to ask me an interesting question. She said, "If you had to name one, and only one, quality that makes the biggest impact on how a man perceives a woman, what would it be?"

Without hesitation, I answered, "It's self-confidence."

It doesn't matter what you look like when it comes to confidence. It's one of those must-haves.

When you become confident, especially if you have gone many years without having confidence, it's like a great weight is taken off your shoulders. The world looks different and your reaction to the world is different when you have confidence. And the world will react differently to you, as well.

Kent Sayre is well known for his hypnosis work, but I recently found out something he never told me personally:

"In college, basically what I had to do was to get as drunk as I could at parties in order to even be able to talk to people. I went overboard and repeatedly would make a complete fool out of myself simply because I lacked the confidence and social skills to be able to go up and talk to other people and begin a normal conversation.

"I cannot emphasize enough how painful and frustrating it was to want to relate to others but being trapped. The bottom line was that I wanted to be who I really was deep down inside around others and I didn't know how to make that happen," Kent said.

As a result, he wrote a book on confidence: Unstoppable Confidence by Kent Sayre

The best way I can describe it is this: hypnosis is a form of encouragement in which you are fully aware of the process. It doesn't feel like "hypnosis" but it does help me sleep!

Speaking of confidence, I have found that hypnosis audios have an unexpected side effect of increasing my own confidence. No kidding.

If you're saying, "I don't know how to have confidence!" then many people can relate to this feeling.

It takes persistence. It takes seeking out ways to have confidence. It takes refusing to belittle yourself - and stopping yourself if you ever catch yourself doing that.

Life without confidence is a great handicap. You don't need a special program to gain confidence - you can certainly do it on your own. But winners tend to listen to and read anything that can help me improve myself.

Here's to becoming the best we can be.

Kent Sayre's No Effort Weight Loss Hypnosis Audio is here: Hypnosis For Dieters.