Three Great ways to Start Believing in Yourself

By Helena Nyman

Have you spent much of your life dismissing your talents and doubting your capabilities as many people do unfortunately? Then believing in yourself can seem to be an almost impossible goal. Since believing in yourself is such a vital part of goal achievement, you have to overcome your doubts and disbeliefs! It is crucial if you want to improve your life.

Negative thinking is a habit.

Believing in yourself is a simple matter of changing the way you think about yourself and your capabilities. 
 
Three steps to develop a strong belief in yourself:
 
Acknowledge your talents and potential
You assume you cannot succeed at your goals because you haven't succeeded at many things before, or your successes were not acknowledged by anyone around you (including yourself). You assume you have no talent because your second-grade teacher or your coach once told you so. You assume you are destined for a mediocre life because nobody ever pushed you beyond your limits.

It's important to understand that your assumptions are not necessarily true! You have accepted these assumptions as truth. But have you considered all possible angles? Be willing to revisit your assumptions and challenge them.

Just do it
Many people don't try to do anything in their lives because they only look at what could go wrong, or they imagine how they will fail doing it.

Starting right now, make a pledge to give everything your best shot from now on. Don't worry about whether you've failed in the past or whether you've got what it takes to succeed this time around. Focus on the outcome and strive forwards!

Make a promise to TRY - no matter how many obstacles there could be in your way.

Prove it to yourself
A colleague of mine had a great idea. Here it is: If you really want to shatter your illusions of inability, take a sheet of paper and make a list of all the things you believe you cannot do. They can be little things or big things; it doesn't matter. Just write down every single thing you believe you are incapable of doing.

Make it a point to prove yourself wrong by going out and doing them. Notice I didn't say "doing them well." I said simply, "doing them."

You'll never know until you try!

One word of caution with this method: be sure you don't sabotage your own efforts in order to prove yourself right. For example, perhaps you believe you can't get a better job than you have now. In order to "prove" that your belief is right, you go out and apply for jobs that are far beyond your skill or experience level. Of course, you don't get called for interviews since you weren't qualified for those jobs, and you conclude that your original suspicion was correct.
Don't do that to yourself. The idea is to move slightly beyond your comfort zones, not to overwhelm and sabotage yourself.

With every positive result you achieve, you will eventually build up a stronger belief in yourself, and you can keep expanding your comfort zones to achieve more and more!

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