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In my first post on self-belief I gave you four reasons why self-belief is important for your success and achievement. Those four reasons are the following:
- If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.
- Everyone is paying attention to themselves, you must communicate a noticeable belief to get their attention.
- If you fail to take action because of lack of self-belief, you will languish.
- Self-belief is the fuel to keep you going.
Clearly, failing to have self-belief will sabotage all of your goals and undermine your dreams. I think we can agree on that.
This post is going to give you the tools you need to reinforce self-belief. Before I give them to you there is something you need to know: this I going to require work on your behalf. It requires effort, you must take action. A coach can create the greatest game plan for his team and if no one shows up and executes it then it isn’t worth the paper it is written on. If it is executed it is worth a championship. I’m giving you a championship game plan for self-belief. If you want comfort close this right now and go back to whatever you were doing before you landed here. This game plan requires work…and lots of it. The good news is, with consistent application the work will get easier and you may come to enjoy it.
The work I am prescribing for you is to be done regularly. Some of it is daily and some of it can be performed monthly or quarterly if you wish. The people who change their lives are intentional in their approach. Moving from self-doubt to self-belief does not happen by itself. This game plan for self-belief will do the job if you work the plan.
As part of your daily routine you must prime yourself for self-belief. The reasons why you must continually work on yourself are well documented. Priming yourself for self-belief means continually telling yourself that you believe in yourself. It means that you are putting yourself in the mental state that when a challenge arises your default response will be one of self-belief.
Steps to instill self-belief:
1. Start your day affirming your desire for self-belief.
Every morning when I wake up, I follow the same steps. One of those steps is to say aloud all of the things that I want to be. These are known as affirmations. They are statements I make to embed into my subconscious mind the vision that I have for myself. Affirmations are simply a statement that begins with “I am” or “I’m” and is followed by whatever attitude or trait you want more of. It is simply a command to your subconscious mind to make yourself behave in that specific manner. The subconscious mind does not know the difference between real and imagined. When it hears me say “I am confident in my abilities” or “I am getting better and better each day” it starts making those things happen for me.
In order to get the maximum effect from affirmations here are the guidelines:
Say them first thing in the morning and last thing at night before bed.
- Say them when you’re feeling anxiety or fear
- Any statement beginning with “I am” or “I’m” is a command to your subconscious mind. Be mindful of your self-talk.
- Speak them in the present tense “I am.” Not “I will be.”
- Always positive; never negative “I am a clear communicator.” Not “I do not stutter.”
- Have emotion and energy behind your words. The more emotion and belief, the more it sinks in.
2. Make a List of ALL your Accomplishments.
There are thousands of things in your life that you have already accomplished and forgotten about. There are countless things that you won which you now take for granted. You and I have the exact same first win. The sperm cell that made us won a race against millions of other sperm cells and fertilized that egg. Then nine months later we won again when we were born. Simply put: there are so many wins we have experienced that we cannot tally them. You learned how to read, tie shoes, or drive cars (most of us), style your hair, and makeup, etc. All of these are wins.
Write out 100 wins in your lifetime. When you are done expand that list to 500. This exercise will bring the successes you have experienced back to the top of your mind. Review this list daily, weekly, and monthly. Write a new one quarterly. It is a law of the universe that thinking about these wins must bring the self-belief back, and, or re-inforce it. What you focus on, you find more of.
3. Clap for Yourself.
Celebrate your successes. Celebrate your wins. It doesn’t matter how trivial they may seem to others. A win is a win no matter how seemingly insignificant. Take a moment to acknowledge yourself for achieving it. Take a moment to tell someone who was instrumental or supportive of you. It’s not braggadocious, it is simply advertising your win. Clap for yourself. Be your biggest cheerleader because we know that if you aren’t going to clap for yourself, no one else, except for your loved ones, will.
Each day as part of your routine, write down at least three wins in your day. It can be a simple as making the phone call you needed to make or meeting your daily steps goal. Acknowledge it. In order to have self-belief you want to be like a TV lawyer and have all of the evidence supporting your case. Stack the deck in your favor by writing your daily wins.
4. Erase Doubt with Affirming Statements
No one, not even certain boxers with swagger coming out of their ears, is always on. You are going to have times of self-doubt. Managing that doubt will be crucial. It’s ok to visit “Doubtsville” but it is not ok to stay there. Have awareness that you are experiencing doubt. I’ve found that I am most subject to doubt when I am tired or when I have not prepared sufficiently. This awareness keeps me in touch with myself. When I catch it, I can cancel it out with affirmations I say as part of my morning and evening routines. I can even simply tell myself “I like myself.” Or “I got this.” Doing this interrupts the pattern of thinking in the brain that self-doubt has taken over
Action Items
- Write out affirmations for traits, attitudes, or beliefs you want to embody.
- Say them aloud before bed and upon rising. Say them with energy and emotion.
- Write out 500 wins you have had in your life.
- Write 10 each day for 50 days.
- Review them on a regular interval. (Weekly, monthly, quarterly)
- Put a reminder in your phone to say your affirmations when you wake up and when you go to bed.
- Say affirming statements like “I like myself” and “I can do it” when you feel doubt.
- Email me for a list of my current affirmations and my wins.
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