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.
But as Eleanor Roosevelt so deftly put it:
“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Yet self-doubts creep in, 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. I will look bad.
- Success is for others but not for the likes of me!
1) Remember self-belief is learnable.
- Your level of self-belief isn’t set in stone.
- We can all be flexible and change.
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.
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.
3) 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 whining!
Even if you don’t get this job, you’re going to be 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) can ramp up your confidence fast.
Keep doing this until you notice you can start to transfer a sense of their qualities to yourself.
4. Self-belief stimulates action and persistence. It’s hard to take action towards a goal if deep down you don’t truly believe you can achieve it.
When you fail to accomplish your goals, or worse don’t at least take action on your goals this unfortunately confirms your lack of belief.
However, if you believe in yourself, you’ll feel motivated to take action, you’ll stay motivated over long periods of time, and you’ll be less discouraged by mistakes or setbacks.
You’ll be inclined to simply see them as a part of the process, and you’ll keep going despite them, until you get what you want. This, of course, will reinforce your self-belief.
5. Self-belief makes others more responsive. Other people frequently play an important role in achieving your goals.
If you ask a person for something and you believe they’ll give it to you, they will sense the conviction in your voice and they’ll be more inclined to respond to your request. Conversely, if you lack belief, your request will be hesitant, which will make it more likely to become rejected.
If you talk to someone and you believe they will like you as you are, you’ll have a positive vibe, which will likely make them like you. But if you lack belief, you’ll act shy or you’ll try too hard to impress them, which will make them not like you.
So that’s how self-belief works. In my view, it’s not sufficient by itself in order to get what you want. You still need to take action, persevere, and learn from your mistakes. Nevertheless, it opens up a wide path towards getting what you want.
Developing Self-Belief
There are four ways to develop self-belief that work especially well.
1. Set bold but realistic goals. Sometimes when we set unrealistically high goals and we try to achieve them, we fail and our self-belief plummets. We demand too much, too fast, and it backfires.
The key for building self-belief is to set bold but realistic goals, and seek to achieve them.
2. Learn to see your accomplishments. In my experience most people who lack self-belief have a strong inclination to filter out the positive aspects about themselves.
Do you see or acknowledge your achievements, or do you obsess about all your failures?
Consciously work on identifying and acknowledging your results and strengths.
Spend some time each day thinking about them, even if you’re not used to it and it feels unfamiliar.
This will help incorporate your strengths and successes in your self-image and thus you’ll gradually begin to believe in yourself more and more.
3. Cut down on comparing yourself. Comparing yourself to others is a losing battle, because no matter how good you are at something, in this vast world, you will always find somebody who is better than you.
Thus a lot of comparing yourself to others will make you feel as if you’re not really good at anything, which will sabotage your self-belief.
You will never eliminate it completely since it’s part of human nature.
Keep it busy with meaningful tasks and challenges, and it won’t have time for making futile comparisons.
4. Develop yourself.
Be a life-long learner and continually aim to better yourself. Self-belief is a reflection of how good you are at handling the various aspects of life.
The more you grow as a person, the more of a reason you have to believe in yourself.
Today matters!
Work on being a person of your word not just to people around you but also to yourself. It will change your life.
