BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

OBJECTIVE:

Subconscious beliefs have a lot to to with not only driving our behavior, but it is how the brain figures things out…even if it is not true! We get most of of our subconscious beliefs before the age of seven years old. My colleague and good friend Dr. Bruce Lipton has a terrific explanation of the process…

Flexibility in your thinking pattern is critical here. Your mindset has everything to do with believing in yourself! It is a scientific fact that most human beings have from 60,000 to 90,000 thoughts a day. Of those thoughts, 80-85% of them are the same thoughts you had yesterday. Here is something you most do not know…those same thoughts are the same thoughts you will have tomorrow. It is a repetitive cycle. The reason this is vitally important to know has to do with how our subconscious beliefs are created. Here is some critical information on understanding how to begin believing in ourself…your mindset, what you think about and your subconscious beliefs…the rules that drive your behavior are crucial to this process. You have a better understanding about your thoughts and why they are so repetitive ever day. The Graph to the right shows with the green line, you need a growth mindset to overcome the repetitive thoughts, particularly the negative ones are essentially holding you hostage to keep reliving the same thing over and over again because those thoughts support your belief system…whether they are true or not does not matter. Where you learned them does not matter!

When you have a fixed mindset, the gray dashed line it gets in the way of you believing in yourself! The takeaway from that graph is that to progress, to believe in yourself it becomes crucial to have flexibility in your thinking instead of a rigid rule base where everything is one thing or the other…it is black or white, good or bad, right or wrong, light or dark, and so on.

Believing in Yourself is not the easiest thing to do. Nearly all people struggle with this issue daily. It means having faith in your own capabilities. It means believing that you CAN do something — that it is within your ability. When you believe in yourself, you can overcome self-doubt and have the confidence to take action and get things done.
When you’re drowning in fears, doubts, and self-sabotaging behaviors, success feels out of your grasp. All of the skills, training, and tools in the world won’t change your life. Overcome the obstacles in your way is what creates your self-confidence.

Movie icon Canadian/American actor Jim Carrey says, “Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them, If you aren’t in the moment, you are eitherlooking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret. When things are really bad, the only thing you can do is to laugh” He explains how he deals with belief in himself…

1. Work on your strengths (not weaknesses)
When you fail over and over at something that seems easy to others, it’s nearly impossible to believe in yourself.
Struggling with confidence, you tend to focus on things you can’t do. That’s because you feel weaknesses more keenly. They are painfully highlighted in your mind, symbols of shame, weakness, and failure.

“I’m bad at this,” quickly escalates to, “I’ll never be good at anything!”
The good news is that everyone has weaknesses and strengths.

You need to determine how to identify your strengths, so that you can get the most mileage out of them.

The solution to start building confidence right away: Stop spinning your wheels at things you aren’t wired for.
Discover what you are already good at, and work at becoming great.

Good, Better, Best…Never Let it Rest…Until Your Good Becomes Better and Your Better Becomes Your Best!

A common habit of successful people is to focus on the positive what they excel at and delegate weaknesses to others instead of worrying about not measuring up.
When you shift your focus to developing your strengths, you will effortlessly feel more competent and confident. And when you put effort into developing your natural abilities to become a badass at what you love.

Maybe you know some of your strengths.
To get some ideas, think about how people might describe you:

• Always has a grand vision, big-picture thinking
• Notices the little things, detail-oriented
• Loves learning and research
• Good communicator
• Never gives up
• Hands on and action oriented

Don’t be afraid to ask others how the perceive you. Talk to your family, close friends, and colleagues about what your strengths are? What are some things they come to you for help with? You’re not fishing for compliments, though sometimes this exercise can come with a confidence boost.

Knowing your strengths will allow you to put more of your effort into areas you’re already talented in. You can grow in the ways you’re naturally inclined.
Once you are working from a base of strength and belief in your abilities, you can find resources to tackle anything.

Recognizing your natural abilities (and inabilities) gives you permission to stop banging your head against a wall. You can do what you do best and find workarounds for the rest.
For example, starting a business requires many skills, but you don’t have to own them all:

• You’re great at marketing but terrible with numbers. Outsource your bookkeeping and hire a professional to manage the budget.
• You shine at creating content but dread interacting on social media. Use automation tools to share your work, or hire a strategist.
• You love big picture planning but get stuck when it’s time to implement. Take on a partner who can get your idea off the ground.

Use your strengths to your advantage. This approach will bring out your confidence as you focus on using your best skills. Shifting everything else off of your plate gives you the power to be awesome at what you do best.

Your strengths are what make you unique. Develop these qualities and depend on them!

2. Be Your Own Coach

If you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t believe someone who is cheering you on from the sidelines. That’s why a great small business coach leads their clients to success not by cheerleading, but by developing talent. If you aren’t sure how to do that…

Great coaches, and managers, lead by empowering people to succeed with the right tools, education, and resources to become excellent. They interact with people using approaches like Conversational Intelligence to put people at ease and bring out the best in everyone.

The research shows that positive thinking, goal setting, and performance reviews don’t create results on their own. When you don’t believe you have what it takes, none of those things are a magic bullet.

So how can you take advantage of this knowledge, and coach yourself?

Seek out the tools and education to develop your talent. Take action. Each step you take, moving closer to your goal, is evidence of your ability to succeed. Believing in yourself will become easier and easier, the more you see your success reflected back to you.

The secret is you don’t need another person to work through this process. You don’t need to possess qualities of leadership to coach yourself through it.
The level of success you see in your life is a direct result of your belief system.

I’m not talking about religion or philosophy here. What I mean is your belief in your ability to succeed.

Believing in yourself means having faith in your own capabilities. It means believing that you CAN do something — that it is within your ability. When you believe in yourself, you can overcome self-doubt and have the confidence to take action and get things done.

When you’re drowning in fears, doubts, and self-sabotaging behaviors, success feels out of your grasp. All of the skills, training, and tools in the world won’t change your life. Dealing with the adversity life offers is where you learn and change your life. If you run from adversity or hide from it…you will remain stuck in the box you have made for yourself…having the same experiences repeatedly.

The trick is to learn more about yourself without being judgmental.

Journaling on where you want to be in life is a helpful tool. Write out all the things you want to have, and the kind of person you want to be. From this, you can come up with strategies to get to that point.

Choose ideas that suit you and working with your strengths they can propel you towards your own vision of success.

You can also write out the parts of your life that you’re unhappy with. Create action steps, and find the resources, to improve any of these areas:

• Feeling overwhelmed with responsibilities
• Wanting more purpose in life
• Craving more free time for things you love (reading, gardening, hiking)
• Stress about finances

By identifying the parts of your life that you’re least satisfied with and keeping an eye on where you ultimately want to be, create long term goals that are manageable for you.
Set one big goal at a time and break it down into smaller parts. Succeeding in taking each small action step, no matter how tiny, leads to visible progress.
Ultimately, these consistent small successes add up to self-belief and massive confidence.

Over time, you start to see that you can achieve anything you put your mind to — because you are already doing it.

3. Embrace Who You Are

The pressure to fit in, to “be normal,” is strong, and it starts early. That’s fine if you want to live an unremarkable life. But you’re here, reading this blog, because that’s not the life for you. You want something more.

To start believing you can have the life you want, you must dig deep to discover what that will look like for you. You must understand what makes you unique and celebrate those things.

When you begin living true to your identity and core values, you will start believing in your worth, your abilities, and your human potential. Core values are the foundation for forming your personal philosophy to guide your actions going forward.

Embracing yourself can be done in smaller steps. You may find that doing this several times over weeks, or even months, you’ll get closer to uncovering your core values. This will help you to see through the things you’ve been conditioned to believe in. When you’re finished, you’ll have a list of traits that represent your truest self.
Consider this, do you often cater to others at the expense of your own values and feelings? When you think you’re being nice or keeping the peace…you can ask yourself “why.” The end result is that you dull your own shine and live for other people’s approval.

When you feel this internal conflict happening, work on addressing it. You can kindly say no, assert a different opinion, or let someone know that what they’ve done has hurt you.

Some people might not like the “new you,” and that’s OK. They can play a more limited role in your life. Fortunately, when you’re authentically you, the right people will be drawn to you, and real friendships will grow even stronger.

Being authentic sometimes it feels like a big risk, and you might be afraid of criticism. Remember that your experience of life is about you, and their experience of life is about them.

Doing things that scare you will solidify the confidence you need to be your truest self. It sounds counter-intuitive, but being vulnerable — accepting your fear and not hiding it — is the surest path to building strength.

Make time for adventures that are completely out of your normal routine. It could be jumping out of a plane, taking a fitness class, or picking up a paintbrush. Pick something that seems fun but scares you at least a little bit and jump in.

4. Believe You Can and You Will

You either see possibilities, or insurmountable obstacles.

Which will you choose?
To start believing in yourself, you have to stop believing you are stuck with the skills and abilities you have right now. This is called a fixed mindset, which is a limited thinking pattern that’s fatal to your success.

Instead, start believing you can change. This way of thinking is called a growth mindset. It means that you believe change is possible.
It may be true that you don’t have what it takes to accomplish your goals — right now. But if you believe you can improve, develop, and learn, then you will get there — even when nothing goes right

You Will Grow!
Deeply believing that you and your life can change for the better is the driving force behind all of your efforts. You will then be more willing, and even excited, to put in the work required to make those changes.

There is no greater confidence booster than seeing the results of your work. But you must believe it’s worthwhile or you will never put in the effort.

Don’t waste another second thinking:

I’m not qualified for anything.
I don’t know what direction to take.
I’m not getting anywhere in my life.
I thought I’d be someone by now.
Building identity capital means doing things that add value to who you are. Start investing time and effort in becoming that “someone” you want to be.
I think this advice applies to everyone, even if your 20’s are long gone. In fact, it’s entirely possible to start a new career at 40 or older? It’s never too late to refine your identity.

If you don’t have confidence in your skills or abilities, even your appearance, get to work improving:

• Explore new work or educational opportunities.
• Learn new skills or improve the ones you already have.
• Make new connections to uncover new opportunities.

By believing that change is possible, you’ll be consciously choosing ways to grow.

There is nothing stopping you. Whatever your dream is, once you wholeheartedly believe that it’s possible for you, that’s when the adventure truly begins.

5. Be Uncomfortable

Do you find that what you did today looks a lot like what you did yesterday, and last week, and three years ago — you’re too comfortable. You’re in a pattern and it’s getting you exactly nowhere. To make real change in your life you must get uncomfortable. You must step out of your cozy box and do things differently.
This means making a greater effort and even feeling a bit weird doing things that are out of the ordinary.

You have this whole life to experiment with who you are. It’s your life and you don’t need to live it to anyone’s expectations but your own. If you want a different life, make it yourself.

Through experimenting and acting on your ideas, your capabilities and potential are reflected back at you.
Experimenting with different skills, approaches, and tactics in your life is one of the best ways to build confidence and foster mental toughness. Sure, it’s uncomfortable! New things always are.

Fortunately, when you start to do more new things, the fear becomes fun. You get to learn so much from trying new things, whether you succeed in the attempt. There are challenges. Part of the process means getting over negative self-talk, fear of failure, and imposter syndrome. You may have to face genuine anxiety and work on ways to manage it.

Every single person who has done any kind of self-improvement will tell you that these feelings are very real. They’ll tell you it’s scary, but the results are worth it.
Each time you step into something new there will be fear. Your power lies in walking through that fear and doing the thing anyway.

The Power of Believing You Can Improve
The magic happens by simply believing it’s possible. Your belief in possibility is necessary to the work, the experimentation, and the consistency needed to change your life.
This belief in possibility is what provided rock stars with the single-minded intensity to get on stage every night, in the face of ridiculous odds.

It’s what gave famous authors the tenacity to keep writing and editing after countless rejected manuscripts.
It’s what kept star athletes training, through pain, injury, and loss, until they made it to the top.

Now you have some tools to start believing in yourself. Work on these steps consistently, and you will begin to see amazing things happening in your life.

RECAP:

1. This blog is a journey not a destination. You are the destination!
2. Most human beings have from 60,000 to 90,000 thoughts a day.
3. 80-85% of them are the same thoughts you had yesterday. Here is something you most do not know…those same thoughts are the same thoughts you will have tomorrow. It is a repetitive cycle.
4. Believing in Yourself is not the easiest thing to do, but it is achievable!
5. When you fail over and over at something that seems easy to others, it’s nearly impossible to believe in yourself.
6. A common habit of successful people is to focus on the positive — what they excel at — and delegate weaknesses to others instead of worrying about not measuring up.
7. Good, Better, Best…Never Let it Rest…Until Your Good Becomes Better and Your Better Becomes Your Best!
8. A common habit of successful people is to focus on the positive — what they excel at — and delegate weaknesses to others instead of worrying about not measuring up.
9. Your strengths are what make you unique. Develop these qualities and depend on them.
10. If you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t believe someone who is cheering you on from the sidelines.
11. The research shows that positive thinking, goal setting, and performance reviews don’t create results on their own. When you don’t believe you have what it takes, none of those things are a magic bullet.
12. Identifying the parts of your life that you’re least satisfied with and keeping an eye on where you ultimately want to be, create long term goals that are manageable for you.
13. How can you have faith in yourself when you don’t know who you really are? Or worse, you are trying hard to be someone you’re not.
14. Self-confidence comes from embracing who you are and what’s important to you. It does not come from being inauthentic or trying to impress people.
15. When you begin living true to your identity and core values, you will start believing in your worth, your abilities, and your human potential. Core values are the foundation for forming your personal philosophy to guide your actions going forward.
16. Being authentic sometimes it feels like a big risk, and you might be afraid of criticism. Remember that your experience of life is about you, and their experience of life is about them.
17. Doing things that scare you will solidify the confidence you need to be your truest self. It sounds counter-intuitive, but being vulnerable — accepting your fear and not hiding it — is the surest path to building strength.
18. Believing that change is possible, you’ll be consciously choosing ways to grow.
19. There is nothing stopping you. Whatever your dream is, once you wholeheartedly believe that it’s possible for you, that’s when the adventure truly begins.
20. The magic happens by simply believing it’s possible. Your belief in possibility is necessary to the work, the experimentation, and the consistency needed to change your life.

There is hope for us all…Breaking Out of the Box is a way of changing, a way of creating the best version of ourselves. It is a way of breaking down the walls and barriers we have created for ourselves. It is a way of accomplishing your dreams, your desires, and all that you hoped could happen. In these blogs, I will explore, not only the reasons why, but also the tips, tricks, and solutions you need to break out of the box you have built which is keep you from progressing. You are encouraged to subscribe to the Breaking Out of the Box Blog. You can get more information or subscribe to the blog at Thought Genius.