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Executive Education, Personal and Professional development Programmes
Executive Education, Personal and Professional development Programmes
Self-belief - Letting go of self-doubt
Bella Enahoro
It's often said we don't get what we want out of life but what we belief we can have. How many things have you shrunk back from or not done because you did not believe in yourself? How many of us realise when we are being governed by self-doubt? How often do we believe that we can be, do and have what we desire? Are we always aware that we are uncertain of our talents and capabilities, uncertain that we are indeed talented or capable enough to accomplish or attain what we desire?
Are you one of those for whom, no matter how often others point out your positive attributes or the quality of your gifts, you brush them off as 'idle flattery' or 'being polite'? Are you one of those who entertain the negativity of others when they direct destructive criticism at you or attack your capabilities making you much more inclined to believe them? Where do we learn to be so uncertain of ourselves? At what point do we choose not to believe in ourselves?
Some of us have been counselled to be modest, humble or to be retiring. Don't be 'too much'. Or sometimes more destructively, we are led to believe we have no right to believe in ourselves. So when we face questions such as - who do you think we are? What makes you think you can be, do or have 'that'? How dare you think you are good enough or able enough. Don't you know you haven't got the 'right' credentials, etc? – we begin to accept as true that we are somehow deficient in an indeterminate attribute which would otherwise qualify us to be allowed to have what we desire. Or sometimes we've just been led to believe that our 'lot' in life is to follow others, not to lead the way ourselves or independently discover how we'd like to live. Sometimes what we belief about our capabilities merely falls short of the experience we are wanting to have. Somehow we've inadvertently set a limit as to how far we think we can go in life.
When that's the case, we come up with solutions that do not serve us well. We believe in others' opinion of us, or we believe in our education, our skills, our experience, our expertise, in short everything except ourselves. But beliefs don't always reflect the real world. There was time we believed the world was flat – was that true? But it limited how far people were willing to travel for fear of falling off the end of the world. If we develop limiting beliefs about what it is possible for us to achieve, then our response will be to limit the actions we take.
If we believe we are likely to fail, our subconscious mind will get to work to create actions which support this. When the going gets tough (and it usually does at some point), we won't go the extra mile needed to succeed; an initial failure just supports our belief that we were going to fail all along and we give up.
Many ideas, theories, beliefs and opinions that we hold are completely false and they become unexamined assumptions, just because our parents or grandparents believed them. However generational 'knowledge' is not necessarily valid or indeed the final word on our lives.
But we can do something about it. Here are FOUR TIPS for building your self-belief muscles
- SELF-BELIEF IS LEARNABLE - a very young child never says: “I’m not the kind of person who could…” They haven’t yet learned to limit their own horizons or listened to people who leak pessimism.
- WHEN YOU START TO DOUBT - yourself, listen for a moment, to that little negative inner voice. Whose voice is it really? A parent’s, old school bullies? Then decide they don't belong to you. You don't need to heed them.
- FLIP A PERCEIVED WEAKNESS - into a strength for example, if you know that you can be stubborn then find the positive in this. Stubbornness used well is called single-minded determination.
- BE YOUR OWN MOTIVATIONAL COACH - Think what you’d say to someone you really believe in if they started showing doubts. Sit down and say those same things to yourself. So if you are about to go for an important meeting and you ’hear yourself‘ starting to express doubts, take a few moments to sit down, close your eyes, and coach yourself: “Look, you can do this! It’s natural to feel a little anxious, but that just means you care about what you’re doing! You have the ability and what you have is worth other's time. Even if this doesn't work out the way you want it to, you’re setting yourself up for success with each step.
Self-belief gives you the freedom to make mistakes and cope with setbacks by seeing them for what they are: temporary setbacks, not the end of the world. And something else you’ll notice: As your self-belief grows, people around you start to believe in you more, too.
Copyright ©Bella Enahoro Oct 2011
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