Self Belief
Without this our lives can only be filled with negativity, doubt and ultimately, failure. With this precious quality, the opposite is true - our days can be filled with brightness, confidence, fulfilment and success.
Take a few moments to read this entire piece as it contains what is, perhaps, 7 of the most useful tips I have read for a very long time.:-
The crowd waits. Surely he’s going to die. How can he survive a dive from such a massive height into a tiny pool of water? But he can fly! – Only he doesn’t yet believe it. He’s been shunned all his life as a freak with gigantic ears. He’s lost his ’magic feather‘ and thinks that without it he can’t fly. Timothy mouse desperately, frantically tells him:
“It’s not the feather, it’s you! You can fly. Forget the feather. It’s time to dive.”
He falls. The crowd gasps. But just as he’s about to smash into the shallow water, Timothy’s words come back to him: “It’s you, Dumbo, not the feather!”
At last he flies! He doesn’t need the feather. Finally truly believing in himself, he escapes the captive circus.
This article is about your escape. How you can disregard ’magic feathers‘ and believe in yourself.
Why you need self-belief
Self-belief is vital. How many things have you not done or tried because you lacked belief in yourself?
Many fail to believe in themselves because others didn’t (take my friend Dumbo). But as Eleanor Roosevelt so deftly put it:
“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Yet self-doubts creep in, don’t they? Like unwelcome house guests that keep calling round simply because you played host to them before. Doubts such as:
- Can I really do this?
- Other people are better, smarter, more worthy than me.
- What will other people think if I do/say this?
- I can’t risk failure.
- Success is for others but not for the likes of me!
If you sometimes have trouble believing in yourself then read, absorb, enjoy, and practice these self-belief tips.
Tip 1 – Remember self-belief is learnable
Your level of self-belief isn’t set in stone; not unalterable. We can all be flexible and change, even ’fly’. Remember you were born into this world with no sense of what you could or couldn’t do. Then, bit by bit, life started to teach you to limit yourself. A very young child never says: “I’m not the kind of person who could…” They haven’t yet learned to limit their own horizons or listened to people who leak pessimism.
One of the first steps is to re-examine and discard many of the limiting ideas you have about yourself; ideas that you’ve somehow collected along the way.
Tip 2 – Deal with the inner negative voice
When you start to doubt yourself listen, for a moment, to that little negative inner voice. Whose voice is it really? A parent’s, old school bullies? A collection of lots of different voices from different times and people? One thing’s for sure; that little inner self-critical voice wasn’t yours originally. It may masquerade as belonging to you now, but it doesn’t really.
Tell yourself: “This is not my true voice!” Then start to challenge it and also to just plain ignore it.
Tip 3 – Flip a weakness into a strength
Dumbo, our cartoon quadruped, was humiliated by his outsize ears. He hated them at first. But, through time, he came to use them, to fulfil his destiny even, by changing his attitude.
If we just focus on what is not right about ourselves rather than what is, then we miss opportunities for self-belief. We shouldn’t assume there’s nothing to improve about ourselves, but just focusing on perceived weaknesses without either a) taking steps to improve them or b) also giving fair focus toward our strengths gets us nowhere.
For example, if you know that you can be stubborn then find the positive in this. Stubbornness used well is called single-minded determination. If you worry a lot, know that the positive flipside of this is that you have a powerful imagination which, in the right context, can be put to good use.
Take any negative belief you have about yourself and creatively flip it so that it becomes, in its place, a positive resource (think: ’ears/Dumbo‘). You’ll find this exercise fun to do.
The next tip is a favourite of mine:
Tip 4 – Develop your ‘super powers’!
Think of the typical powers of the more popular superheroes and write them down before you start your day. They may be such things as super speed, the ability to climb walls, flight, x-ray vision…whatever. Why do I suggest this? Because ‘priming’ your mind with qualities and positive characteristics can actually determine your behaviour.
Not that you’ll start flying to the rescue of stranded citizens, but the pattern of superhero powers is one of ability, courage, and competence. In one study, people asked to write down as many super powers as they could think of were more likely to give to charity months afterwards. The pattern of giving to charity is that of being able. Prime your mind with ‘able words’ before you start each day.
As well as superhero powers, write all kinds of other positive characteristics (whether you think you have them or not). Do this before you go out. For example, I might write:
- Strength
- Dignity
- Calm
- Intelligence
- Humour
- Generosity
- Quick wittedness
- Charisma
- Sex appeal
- Approachability
- Popularity
- Determination
You’ll be amazed how doing this will powerfully prime your unconscious mind.
Tip 5 – Be your own motivational coach
If you notice doubts rearing their ugly heads, imagine you (the clear-headed part of you) are the coach and the anxious part of you is the person you need to talk to.
Think what you’d say to someone you really believe in if they started showing doubts. Sit down and say those same things to yourself. So if you are about to go for a job interview and you ’hear yourself‘ starting to express doubts, take a few moments to sit down, close your eyes, and coach yourself:
“Look, you can do this! It’s natural to feel a little anxious, but that just means you care about what you’re doing! You’ve got all the relevant experience and qualifications! Now get in there and stop whinging! Even if you don’t get this job, you’re going to make me proud by giving it your best shot!”
Picture the decent, friendly, straight-talking coach in your mind. Is it someone you know or would like to know? Talking to yourself in these times as if you were another person (in the privacy of your mind J) can ramp up your confidence fast.
Tip 6 – Do ‘hero training’
Hero training is a great way to increase your own self-belief.
I once treated a young boy for emitaphobia – fear of, in his case, other people vomiting. He told me about a time his sister had been sick and how terrified he’d been. Later I discovered he loved Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. We talked about how Arnie would have coped with his sister being sick and I got this little boy to hypnotically watch the Austrian muscle man heroically dealing with other people vomiting. I then got this little boy to strongly imagine that he was Arnie and what it was like to deal with sickness and so on.
He overcame what had been a severe phobia by ’borrowing‘ the traits of his hero and making them his own. It was easier for this little boy to believe in Arnie dealing with other people being sick than it was to imagine himself dealing with it.
Bit by bit, he transferred the cool, calm, collected, decisive action from his hero to himself.
Think of a situation in which lack of self-belief holds you back. Now think of your ’hero‘ – who could be a world leader, a movie hero, or the guy or gal down the street. Now close your eyes and strongly imagine them dealing with the situation ’heroically‘. Now imagine being them for a few moments, experiencing that time in their shoes. Keep doing this until you notice you can start to transfer a sense of their qualities to yourself.
Tip 7 – Create a powerful vision of yourself
Self-belief comes not just by trying to convince yourself you can do stuff. True self-belief actually comes from developing the vision that you can relax socially, start that business, write that book, or whatever it is you need to believe you can do or be.
Get into the habit of sitting down, closing your eyes, and watching yourself behaving decisively, calmly, and strongly. This powerful visualization exercise means you can learn from yourself how to be confident, have self-belief, and behave in ways which maximize chances of success. Imagine you are viewing yourself on a TV screen. The ‘you’ in the screen is showing the you watching how to act with self-belief. The more you do this, the more you’ll find that you’ll quite naturally start to become like the ’you‘ in the movie.
Self-belief doesn’t mean arrogance or blindness to one’s own shortcomings. Then again, it doesn’t mean believing that you are perfect as you are, either. Your self-belief really needs to be focused on what you will become. And an important part of self-belief comes from knowing your weaknesses and being relaxed about them.
Article courtesy of Mark Tyrrell
www.uncommonhelp.me
Quite a lot of wisdom here. You are exactly what you imagine and allow yourself to be. No more, no less.
ReplyDeleteLoved it. Particulary this bit, "When you start to doubt yourself listen, for a moment, to that little negative inner voice. Whose voice is it really? A parent’s, old school bullies? A collection of lots of different voices from different times and people? One thing’s for sure; that little inner self-critical voice wasn’t yours originally"
ReplyDeleteI really agree with this sentence/statement somebody had to put that inner self-critical voice there in the first instance.......
DeleteGlad you liked the article Supriya - I think it is one of the most revealing articles I've come across. So many people live their entire lives by 'other people's rules' when all they need to have is the courage to leave them behind and find their own voice. The person you truly are is all you need to be :)
ReplyDelete