A lack of self-belief is responsible for sabotaging more
lives than any outside influence you can think of.
How?
Millions of people every day lend greater weight to the
opinions of others rather than trust their own abilities and beliefs.
They willingly allow other people to create doubt about the likelihood of them achieving their goals, thereby causing them to feel insecure and unworthy. As a result, this generally
contributes to the poor value of their self-opinion and often causes them to doubt the quality of their life in general.
But what is 'self-belief' exactly?
Self-belief is actually nothing more than confidence in who
you are, what you believe and how you feel. What you believe about yourself dictates how you act, how
you think and shapes your attitude towards your life.
Self belief is something that is in constant flux, moving
between two extremes. Sometimes you feel
really good about yourself and that you have the power to
make a difference in your life. You feel elated - life seems full of pleasure and
opportunity and the people you meet respond positively to you.
At other times, when our mood is low or we encounter
difficulties, we naturally feel depressed and worthless. Everything seems fraught with difficulty or simply seems to be altogether
too much trouble. The world feels like it's closing in on you and people around you are un-cooperative, hostile and generally a
hassle to deal with.
At times like these, you feel completely powerless to do
anything about it and just feel like giving up!
So, how do you go about maximizing the times you feel good
and minimizing the times you feel low? In short, how do you develop good self-belief?
Firstly, you need to begin by examining yourself. You will
need to know your strengths, weaknesses, skills, values, abilities and
experiences. This will probably take a few goes at 'deep thinking' but if
you are honest with yourself, you should be able to compile an accurate list without too much trouble.
Once done, you ca use this list to start developing higher levels of
self-belief.
In order to boost good feeling about your abilities,
start keeping a record of all the good comments made about you. Train your ear
to pick up on even the smallest of compliments and quietly file them
away, ready to write up later.
Similarly, Recall times when you overcame certain challenges
or obstacles and ask yourself what really made it possible for you to beat
them. Think about what qualities or skills you called upon in
order to do so.
Identify what you do best in life and the things that you do well. If you
can pinpoint what you enjoy doing and are good at, it will help you to become
more trusting in the belief that you are worthy of respect for your
abilities and achievements.
Take note of the way you habitually talk to yourself. Are
you a 'Can Do' person, or a 'Can't Do' one?
If you fall into the latter category, work on changing' 'Can't Do...' into 'Can't do this thing now but
I'll give it a go!' Start saying to
yourself, 'I Can', more often than, 'I Can't'.
Focus on what you have achieved more than on what you haven't
achieved. The past is gone and what happened yesterday can only affect today in
the way that you allow it to. Failures will inevitably bring down your self-confidence
unless you use the experience to build upon and do better next time around. Once you can master this skill,
your self-belief will rise without any further effort on your part!
"It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting
challenges and I believe in myself".
Those words were said by Muhammad Ali
and they sum up what self-belief is all about and
the immense effect it can have on your life.
Choose not to be afraid, rise to meet your challenges and
pay no heed to the negative opinions of others. You are in charge of your own
actions and it is you who will reap the benefits of great self-belief in the long run!
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