Why is it essential to believe in yourself?
One thing that separates the achievers from the others is the belief they have in themselves.
If you have the urge to get the success that you have been aspiring for, the primary factor that you need to work on is to believe in you.
This will pave the way to develop confidence in yourself and improve the chances of attaining the success you seek.
But, why is it essential to instill the belief in yourself and how will this kind of thinking help you in achieving the success that has been eluding you for a long time?
One common mistake that parents and teachers do is they fill in a lot of negativity in their words without their knowledge.
This reinforces the feeling that nothing can be achieved by the person.
Everything they think of hits the obstacle of “I cannot do this” response that is automatically generated within the person’s mind.
This negativity in the mind is the prime reason why many people are not able to achieve their goals even though they have various great aspirations and dreams in life to make it big and become successful.
Since they have this instilled negativity they are not able to believe in themselves and set forth in their journey towards achievements.
They end up lamenting that they are not able to reach their goals that they perceive and start playing the blame game or seek excuses to hide behind it.
This creates a setback to efforts exerted in realizing their dreams and these dreams remain distant fantasies that they feel will never materialize.
Boost Your Self-Esteem and Believe You Can!
The strongest single factor in prosperity consciousness is self-esteem: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, believing you will get it. – Jerry Gillies
Self-esteem refers to how you think and feel about yourself. These are thoughts and feelings a person may have, may it be positive, negative, or mixed — about one’s self.
The more positive these thoughts and feelings are, the higher your self-esteem will be and conversely the more negative these thoughts and feelings are, the lower your self-esteem will become.
Feeling good about yourself is important as it gives you a sense of control over your life. It can also help make a person feel satisfied in a relationship.
With a positive self-identity, a person is able to set realistic expectations for oneself and pursue their goals.
Having a negative self-perception, on the other hand, results in a distorted view of one’s self, which leads to further lack of self-confidence, poor performance, and depression.
In recent times, low self-esteem has been one of the most popular and frequently invoked psychological explanations for behavioral and social problems.
Taking their cue from social commentators and media opinion leaders, people have been willing to accept that a limited sense of self-worth lies behind just about every social and personal ill from drug abuse and delinquency to poverty and business failures.
The result has been a huge market for self-help manuals and educational programs.
People who have a low self-esteem rely heavily on their day-to-day performances.
The positive external experience and encouragements help them to battle the negative feelings that they have about themselves.
These negative feelings very often trouble the people with low self-esteem.
In some situations, feelings of inadequacy torture those who do not have enough confidence about themselves and about what they can do.
There are many known ways to improve one’s self-esteem.
To boost one’s confidence, it may be helpful to practice the following self-improvement techniques and strategies:
Rebutting the inner critic that keeps on sending self-defeating messages;
Practicing the art of self-nurturing; and
Getting much-needed help and support from people who are close to you.
The first important step to increase self-esteem is to tell the inner voice to shut up. The inner voice might say negatively about you. In such situation, you must praise yourself.
Rebutting the inner voice that keeps on criticizing you should be done on a regular basis. However, this step is not enough to develop self-esteem.
The second step that one must initiate on a way to a healthy self-esteem is that a person should nurture himself. The most important part of this step is start treating yourself as a person who is worthy.
Seek out people who make you feel good. Remember that you get to choose your friends so why not choose people who think you’re great?
Moreover, both individual and group counseling can help improve self-esteem.
Such therapy might include assertiveness training, communication skills, and learning to recognize and understand own emotional responses in relation to others.
Therapy may also explore early and later experiences that contributed to your low self-esteem.
Group therapy is particularly effective that it helps to foster trust and build relationships, and encourages a sense of belonging-components that are important for building self-esteem.
Low and poor self-esteem is often the result of bad or a wrong treatment that was experienced in the past. Hence, you must start regarding yourself as a worthy person.
You must be able to challenge negative experiences in the past and you should start loving yourself.
Try to change yourself and show to the outside world that you are valuable, competent, and a lovable person. Learn to develop high self-esteem and believe you can do it, you deserve it, and you will get it.
Mind over matter, you are what you believe
If you could be anything and do anything, who would you be and what would you do?
Most people do not recognize the power available to them in their own mind. Winston Churchill once said: “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
He should know. After all, he led his country against all odds to fight off a bitter enemy and eventually with a little help from friends snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Where would the world be today if Churchill had not let his nation challenge Hitler and believed, contrary to all evidence, they could succeed in that battle?
Nothing is more powerful than what we believe. If we believe that we can achieve, then we can. If we believe that we are doomed to failure then we will.
Sometimes, enacting a change in our lives is as simple as changing our attitude.
Think about this quote from Katherine Mansfield:
“Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.”
That is a very powerful message but you have to really bring it to heart.
In many ways, it is the perfect pitch because the explanation for any failure on your part is simply that you did not believe enough, but maybe, if you really do believe and embrace this attitude, you can’t possibly fail.
If you change your attitude it will change your life. Know it. Live it. You see it every day. You know in your gut it is true.
If you have changed your attitude and your life before even if you do not achieve the goal you started with at that time, perhaps, it is possible to consider yourself a failure.
Words are power. Attitude is power. Combine the two and you have power magnified many times over. If you can harness that power to serve your purpose then nothing can stop you.
Too often, that power is wasted on negative rather than positive actions. You complain about your situation, job, relationships, traffic and the weather. You complain that you are sick and tired and just plain stuck.
What is stuck is your attitude. What is stuck is a thought in your minds that you cannot change anything about your lives when the truth is that you have the power to change everything about your lives.
You don’t have to work in that job, stay in that relationship, drive in that traffic, or live in that weather zone. These are all choices you make — and even more important you choose how you react to those conditions.
As the trite old saying goes, “when life gives you lemons make lemonade”.
Your attitude determines everything about you and your life.
If you choose to be angry and frustrated by your life then your anger and frustration will only continue to grow.
But if you choose to become proactive rather than reactive or if you choose to have a different attitude then you can become the person you want and you can lead the life that you want.
But you have to believe. It really can be as simple as mind over matter, but you have to believe in the power of your mind.
Thus, in order to achieve the goals and aspirations, it is essential to shed the negativity that is harboring in the mind and looks forward to reaching them by instilling positive thoughts and attitude.
This is not possible unless you start believing in yourself and see yourself as an achiever that is capable of reaching great heights that you are destined to reach no matter what.
Unless you really start believing in yourself and work towards reaching your goals, you will just end up being a nobody and end up being the mediocre person that you have always known yourself to be depending on other shoulders to shoot your gun.
Take a decision today and think carefully whether you need a life of any other average person or would you want to excel beyond everyone and live the life of a successful person. The answer lies within you.
