Remindher - Self Belief
We all have dreams and goals and ambitions and plans on the habits to achieve that goal, but sometimes our actual behaviours don’t always match our intended behaviours.
It can be common to find ourselves procrastinating, finding excuses and stalling ourselves from making progress, even though we have the plan and habits laid out to move towards our goals.
Why is this? It is our level of self-belief.
When you have high levels of self-belief you tend to be more confident and trust your own judgment and abilities, and are more likely to try new situations.
However if we have high levels of self-doubt that have developed from past experiences, we often hold ourselves back and have more reservation, fear and critical thoughts. You are probably experiencing self-doubt if you find your self saying:
“Can I really do this?”
“What if I fail?”
“What will other people think/say?”
“I’m not the kind of person that can...”
It is normal to have self-doubt and to feel nervous about something new or when you push your comfort zone. Your brain is just trying to keep you safe and out of the unknown.
However, if you always choose to do the behaviour your self-doubt wants you to do it will keep you stuck in old patterns.
Self belief is practising choosing the habits and actions that you truly want to, over choosing fear or doubt.
The great news is that self belief is a skill that can be learned and worked on over time!
With conscious attention, you can practise the habit of self-belief until it is your automatic action in a challenging situation or day to day choices to back yourself rather than doubt yourself.
But easier said than done, here is a few ways to develop your self belief:
Stop comparing your journey to others and find internal motivation, not external.
While it is great to look to others for inspiration, their lives are completely different in circumstance to yours and it can be easy to crumble your self belief if you are comparing your journey to another persons highlight reel. Social media in particular is a minefield, so many beautiful successful people whose lives are curated to be perfect, it is pretty hard to maintain healthy self belief if you are always drawing inspiration from there!
But firstly, this is their highlight reel and secondly, your journey is your own, and YOURSELF enough to live the life you want. If you truly know you want something, go after it! Your journey is different to others, and the only person you should compare yourself to is the person that you were yesterday!
Make sure your motivation to achieve a goal comes from what YOU want to achieve, and how it is important to you. Being motivated only by external sources such as other people, external pressures or expectations is fleeting, while being motivated by an intrinsic reason is everlasting!
Celebrate your wins and see mistakes as lessons
Your brain subconsciously moves towards what feels good and pleasurable, and away from what doesn’t feel good or painful. If you see situations where you made a “mistake” as a huge failure, you will have a subconscious negative emotion attached any you will probably avoid that situation again. Dwelling on how painful a mistake or rejection was and labelling it a “failure” is a surefire way to shut down your self belief. But there are always going to be challenges on your journey, and you need to be able to face them to overcome them. See mistakes instead as lessons, taking away what you have learned and can improve from and celebrate your wins with pride. By really highlighting the behaviours that help you improve, and by framing a “mistake” into something you learned and grew from, you are subconsciously much more likely to try again. Instead, gather what you have learned, don’t take anything too personally and try again!
Seeing your experiences in this light builds up self belief because subconsciously you see any new challenge in a positive way whether you succeed or learn a lesson! Of course not every situation is as simple as this, some extremely difficult or traumatic situations may require coping, healing and help to move through with a professional. This is more about the way you show up daily to your goals.
Don’t fake it til you make it, face it until you ace it
Showing up and doing the actions is what builds your identity as the type of person that you are. Every time you do an action that supports who you want to be, you are putting in a vote for your self belief, every time you do an action that reinforces your old patterns, you are voting for your self doubt. (Although remember you don’t have to be perfect all of the time and of course slip-ups happen!)
What happens when you are pushing your comfort zone and challenging yourself into new territory, your brain tries to keep you back in the comfort zone by using confirmation bias to “prove” and reinforce the beliefs that you already have. Confirmation bias is when your brain looks for all the “evidence” in the world to support what it thinks is true. When this comes to self-doubting thoughts you will often see yourself backing out, excusing yourself and finding reasons why you cannot move towards something you really want.
”I’m not experienced enough”
”I’m not good enough”
”I can’t do that because of XYZ”
When you recognise your brain searching for all the reasons why you are not able to succeed, instead ask yourself a rhetorical and reverse psychology question WHY NOT?
The more practise you get and the more times you choose self-belief over self doubt the easier your beliefs about yourself will be ones of confidence.
But you don’t have to pretend to be someone you are not, choose honestly. Keep showing up as the best version of yourself is a vote towards the person that you are becoming. Know that in every new situation, things will feel uncertain, difficult, but if you have the belief in yourself that you will show up and give it the best you have nothing can hold you back.
When you’re really not feeling it (unless sick or run down!) show up anyway, choose yourself and choose self-belief over and over again until it becomes easier.
Remember what we receive and what we believe we deserve. Your beliefs drive your thoughts, your thoughts drive your actions, and your actions eventually create the result. Recognise when your brain is looking for reasons to keep you safe.
Journal
Journalling is literally putting your mind on paper. When I start my day with journaling it focuses me on what I want, rather than starting the day drawn all over the place by social media, looking at other peoples lives like I mentioned in point 1!
Here is a simple four stage process I use. I start with a little brain rant, if I need one, as if there is something I need to get off my chest it will cloud over the rest of my journaling.
Then I delve into gratitude, there are so many studies out there on gratitude, celebrating my wins, what I have to be thankful for. When we believe we are and we have enough, we can attract more of that into our lives!
Then I visualise, imagine what you really want, as if it is happening. You can do this in any area of your life, health, business, relationships, experiences. If you are struggling to comprehend how you’re going to get there, I spend a few minutes asking what WOULD I do to get there?
Then lastly I finish off with some affirmations to reinforce the beliefs. These are statements that affirm my self-belief.
So go on and build that self-belief - do the workout, cook the meal, apply for the job, ask the guy out, start the business, and keep growing, moving and continue to #bepowherful!