When you truly believe in yourself the things you can achieve are limitless
If you’re reading this article it’s possible that you’re stuck in a rut, uncertain of the future or wondering why your life is where it is today. Before we get into the ‘meat and potatoes’ of this article we’d like you to stop for a moment, get up out of your chair and look around you. Take a slow walk through your home or apartment and look closely at everything there; your car, your clothes, your things, pictures of your family and friends, even your pet. Go ahead and do that right now, then come on back. We’ll still be here.
OK, if you’ve done this little exercise and taken a close look at everything in your small slice of the world, realize this; everything you have, from the smallest tchotchke to your car and even your home is there because you believed it into existence. Not just your things but your relationships, your job, your savings account, everything. It’s all there because of your current belief system and, if you’re unsatisfied with what you’ve just seen, unhappy with your life and relationships, job or anything else, there’s only one way to change it; by changing your belief system and believing more (maybe much more) in yourself.
When You Believe in Yourself You Can Change Your Entire World
This isn’t just an empty statement. If you look at any very successful person, no matter who they are or what they do, you’ll find a person who deeply believes in their own abilities, with a self-belief that is strong as hardened steel and a confidence level to match. These are people for whom negative thoughts are banned from their brains and never allowed into their stream of consciousness, people living a life that they’ve created for themselves because, in their mind, they knew that this life was the life that they deserved.
The good news is that you too can do this! You (and only you) have the power to change your belief system and start believing in yourself right now, today! Self-belief is an incredibly powerful thing, with the ability to forever change the person you are, the life you lead and the joy and happiness that you experience. When you believe in yourself you can achieve any goal, big or small (or huge!), whether that goal is to have a million dollars in the bank, be a best-selling author or be the owner of the most popular restaurant in town.
The key is simply that you believe that you are capable of doing whatever it is you want to do, you put that belief into action and expect that what you believe will happen. Let’s take a closer look at how this can be achieved and how you can start believing in yourself from this day forward to change your life for the better.
Getting Rid of Negative Thoughts
As with practically everything in life, believing in yourself is not something that happens completely overnight. We humans can, unfortunately, be wracked with self-doubt, pity, fear and even self-loathing. In many cases, we’ve been conditioned to believe that we aren’t worthy of anything good or fine in life by the people around us, both unwittingly and on purpose.
We’ve all heard it before; “don’t get too big for your britches”, “you’ll never be able to do that“, and the old standby “that’s impossible!”. Statements like these, from family, friends, colleagues, teachers and others, can have a cumulative effect on your psyche and condition you to doubt yourself and your abilities. They can rumble around in your mind for days, weeks and years, creating self-doubt that can stifle your creativity, muffle your voice and have you believing that you’re not worthy of the finer things in life.
If you’re surrounded by people who have nothing good to say about you, that’s the first thing you need to change. We’re not suggesting that these are ‘bad’ people but simply people who don’t believe in themselves and project their negativity onto others, including you. Imagine for a moment that you wanted to start a YouTube channel and become a famous YouTube influencer, but everyone in your life told you that it was impossible, implausible or, ugh, stupid. We think you’ll agree, it would be much more difficult to achieve your goal if all you were hearing was that it wasn’t possible.
That’s why the most successful people surround themselves with other successful people, and it’s why you must do the same. It might not be easy and it could be painful too, but getting rid of negative thoughts sometimes means getting rid of negative people and surrounding yourself with people who influence you in a positive, affirming and joyful way. (We’ll talk more about this later.)
Believing in Yourself Is a Process
Yes, you can start believing in yourself more right now but, frankly, it’s a learning process that takes a little bit of time and effort. It’s well worth that time and effort, however, when you’ve achieved your goals and turned your dreams into your new reality. Below are 4 activities that you should use and, just like a successful concert pianist, practice them every day over and over.
1- Believe that what you want is possible and that it will, eventually, happen
Erase negative or self-doubting thoughts and think positively, believing that what you want will happen because you deserve it. If a negative thought starts, stop it cold and replace it with a positive thought. Pay attention to your thoughts and keep them positive day and night.
2- Act as if the things you want are going to happen, or are happening
Do the things that need to be done in order to shape your new reality and, if you can’t do those things exactly, act as if you can until you can. Don’t worry about what others think or say. You are the master of your own reality and the only voice that matters is your own.
3- Visualize.
Take time every day to close your eyes and see what you want to achieve in your mind’s eye. This is a powerful tool that all of the most successful people use to achieve everything they want. See yourself living a life that is fun, exciting, outstanding and rewarding.
4- Take action.
Small steps or big, the only way to change what happens in your life is to take action and make them change. Read, study, learn and do whatever it takes to get you from where you are now to where you want to be. Spend time doing the little things that will make the big things possible.
If You Believe it Will Happen, It Will Happen
Here’s a fact; the subconscious mind is incredibly powerful, and you are the person who makes it work. Scientists have shown that what a person thinks about in their subconscious can have a real-world effect on what they do, what they say and the actions they take. If you subconsciously believe, for example, that you’ll never become a great artist, a successful entrepreneur or a famous concert violinist, there’s very little chance that you will because your subconscious mind will prevent you from achieving those things.
The good news is that you can train your subconscious mind to believe whatever you want by actively believing in yourself and believing that what you want to happen will happen. That’s why activity #1 (above) is so important. What you believe in your conscious, waking mind (i.e. the thoughts you have while you’re awake) have a direct influence on your subconscious, the thoughts you have when you’re sleeping, listening to others, studying or otherwise not thinking in real-time. Here are a few great examples to follow and train your subconscious mind.
- Believe in you
- Believe that you will achieve your goals
- Believe that you are a confident person
- Believe that you have the right skills, or can learn them
- Believe in your ability to do the thing you want most
- Believe that you deserve to have the things you want
- Believe you are a successful person
- Believe that you are a great student who can learn anything
- Believe that, whatever the task, you can complete it
Believing in You Means Learning About Yourself and Learning How To Be Yourself
Many of us don’t know who we really are, and that’s OK. Life doesn’t come with a handbook or a set of rules. That being said, to start believing in yourself you need to know as much about who you really are as possible, and that comes with introspection, spontaneity and open expression. Below are a few exercises that you can do to get a better idea of who you are, what you want and what drives you. Take your time and think about them because the answers will help you in many ways as well as help you to jumpstart your self-belief.
- What are the activities you love to do most?
- What are the things that bring you the most joy?
- What are the things that make you the saddest?
- When are you most content?
- What are the things about yourself you like the most?
- What are the things about yourself you like the least?
- Who are the people that matter most in your life?
- Who are the people that make you the angriest?
- What are the things in life you think are most important?
- If you could be anything, what would you want to be?
Keep in mind that there are no wrong answers. Also, you will be the only person seeing these answers, so answer them with brutal, unflinching honesty. When you have your list, study it. Then, start doing things to increase the positive things and decrease the negative.
Forgiving Yourself – The Big First Step to Believe in You
Here’s a universal truth about humankind; nobody is perfect, and everyone has made mistakes. From United States Presidents to Popes, paupers and everyone in between, humans are about as imperfect as mammals get, and there’s no person who hasn’t done something stupid, immoral and even illegal.
What these mistakes create for many of us is one thing that, above all else, can hold you back and keep you from believing in yourself and achieving your goals; guilt. Guilt is a confidence killer and a dream smasher, capable of drowning your mind and your subconscious in negative thoughts. Guilt is a huge stumbling block to success and needs to be eliminated from your life, and the only way to do that is to forgive yourself.
The truth is, whatever you’ve done it’s in the past and there’s nothing you can do to change it. However, there are many things you can do to change your future (including all the things we’ve been talking about), so the best (and, truly, only) thing you can do it to forget those things, forgive yourself and don’t make those mistakes again. And if you do make more mistakes, because let’s face it, mistakes happen, forgive yourself and move on from them immediately.
Surround Yourself With Positive, Successful People
One of the last things we’d like to talk about today (we touched on it above) is simply that, if you want to have a better chance at success and want to keep the positive thoughts rolling in your mind and in your heart, the people around you must be a positive influence in your life. There really are no two ways about it, because negative, gloomy, fatalistic, cynical or hateful people will project all of those negative feelings on you, even if they don’t mean to do it.
Instead, surround yourself with positive, hopeful, cheerful, assured and uplifting people who are living the life that you want to live and doing the things that you want to do. Want to be a famous chef? Go work for a famous, or at least successful, chef. Find yourself a mentor who’s achieved the kind of success and the kind of life you want and get their sage advice. (Follow that advice too, of course.) If you can’t find these people nearby make friends with them or follow them on social media but, whatever you do, stop spending time with people who drag you down, even if they’re your family or best friend. It may sound harsh but, unless you’re surrounded by winners, it’s hard to become a winner yourself.
In Closing
Practicing self-belief is one of the most important things you can do to reach your goals, find success and live your best life. We hope that this article, and the advice we’ve given, will jumpstart your belief in yourself and lead to a better, stronger, more confident you. Practice them, take them to heart, tack them on the wall and look at them every day until you wake up one day believing that the person staring back in the mirror is capable of achieving anything!
