We have all heard the expression ‘Believe It and You Will Achieve It’ but in a world that continuously likes to knock us down, keeping that belief can be a struggle.
But believing in yourself is one of the most critical factors when it comes to success. It has the power to limit us or empower us and the wonderful thing is you can choose it, every single day.
Now I know self-belief is not easy. I have been there, struggling with obstacles, frustrated by lack of progress, feeling like a failure and hearing that inner critic asking me ‘what’s the point’ and ‘why do I bother’ on repeat… But, through a little work and commitment, you can improve your belief in yourself and consequently make whatever it is you want to change become a reality.
Here are some ways that really helped (and continue to help) me:
Awareness – Everything starts with awareness. No one is born full of self-belief and self-confidence. It is something that has to be worked on. For sure, external factors can have a negative or positive impact but becoming aware that YOU are the one who has the ultimate power to believe in yourself is a huge start.
Affirmation validation – We all know about affirmations and they work for some of us and not for others, and that’s ok. It is about what works for you. I used to struggle saying kind things to myself and for every positive affirmation I would say, a voice inside my head would laugh and tell me how stupid I was. So here’s what I did to help this. I WROTE DOWN THINGS THAT VALIDATED MY AFFIRMATIONS and this helped me massively in believing in them and myself. So for example, if you want to affirm ‘I believe in myself’, ‘I believe I can do…’ take a pen and paper and write reasons why this is true. Challenge yourself to write 5 things if it’s hard at first. If you need a few affirmations to help, here are some of my favourites here.
Self – Recognition – This is a little similar to the above in the sense that it involves a little writing and reflection. In my experience, I have seen time and time again people handing their worth to someone else and waiting for it to be fed back to them…which it often isn’t. It can be in work, where you need a manager to tell you how good a job you’re doing, or in a relationship where you need them to validate you as a partner, or a parent to recognize your achievements… and it is rarely given back as we need or want. (That is not necessarily out of badness – sometimes others don’t even realise how much power we have given them). So, own this – make a choice to recognize your own achievements, contributions and worth as a person and validate yourself! Start simply by writing a list of a) what you like about yourself b) your achievements, big and small c) your contributions d) what you are good at. You will likely come up against the inner critic here again, but challenge yourself and dig deep. Tell that voice to be quiet and tune in. This gets easier with practice.
Growth – A massive part of self-belief development is about acknowledging you are not perfect and that you may not have all you need right now to make the change you want. And that is ok. You don’t need to have all the answers to start – accepting this removes a huge amount of self-doubt and increases our belief. All you need is to be open to growing, learning and developing. So thinking about your goal or dream, what might you need to work on to help move you closer? What skills might you need to develop?
Fail – Yes, honestly, fail! Failure is a normal part of the process and if we choose to learn from it, it can actually improve our self-belief. The quickest way back to self-doubt is to think you have failed, but a simple mindset shift to a new perspective will help this. Ask ‘what is it teaching me?’ ‘what can I learn from this?’ and you’ll find your self-belief is actually lifted instead of knocked.
Compassion and kindness – This one is largely tied with the previous point about failing. It is so easy to criticize yourself when something goes wrong or you feel you have made a mistake. Especially if you have a tendency to speak unkindly to yourself already. So remember to be kind and compassionate to yourself. Change can be hard. Hurdles and challenges are going to happen, that is life, but when you view them from a place of belief you can find the opportunities in them instead. To help with this, take a pause when a challenge presents itself. Connect with the affirmations you have created. And remember, no matter what anyone has told you, including yourself, you can do it. You do deserve it. And you will make it happen.
Connect to the vision – Get really clear on the outcome you want, spend time visualising what it will look like and more importantly how you will feel when you accomplish it. Having something to connect with vastly improves our belief as we can see it already being a reality.
Small steps - Last but by no means least, is taking small steps. Success doesn’t happen overnight. And in fact, real, lasting change takes time because you need to put the groundwork in, starting with belief! By taking small steps, you are much more likely to experience progress, which in turn means you can celebrate the small wins and feel better about yourself. Small steps also eliminate a lot of the inertia and procrastination we experience at the beginning of change when the road ahead seems so tough we get overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin. So focus on only the step that is immediately in front of you and trust the rest will become clearer.
So make the commitment to yourself to work on your self-belief. It takes time and conscious effort, but little by little you can improve it. You will quickly notice a change in your energy and spirit as you connect more with it and start to shift your mindset. You will start to see opportunities where before there were obstacles.
And when the time comes to fly, I believe you will soar.
Love Claire x
If you are interested in coaching to help with belief, change, creating the life of your dreams or more, drop me a message. Or check out the upcoming online workshop ‘Planting Seeds of Change’ which is a 5 week workshop full of kindness and compassion, to help like minded people come together to work on transforming their mindsets and lives – see here for more information! I would love to welcome you.
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