Believing in yourself is pretty much a prerequisite to achieving many of your dreams and things that you want out of your life. Many of us can get caught up in wanting our loved ones, support network, peers and colleagues to believe in our abilities but forget that what is most important is how much you believe in yourself.
Having self-doubt and fear is part of being human but you can challenge this negative thinking by strengthening your confidence and building your self-esteem.
You need to remind yourself that you are good enough because having doubts is inevitable. Having self-doubt may never go away but there are things you can do to fight against those thoughts and empower yourself.
Believe that it’s a possibility for you. In the past, I had a bad habit of giving myself minimum standards to aim for. Instead of believing that I could soar and achieve great things, I focused on the minimum I could do.
My goals at the time were losing weight to meet the minimum standards of health because I didn’t perceive myself as athletic. I didn’t feel good about anything involving physical activity and didn’t believe it was possible for my body to look and feel a certain way.
By my early twenties, I had allowed myself to believe I would never live overseas or be in a healthy and truly loving relationship. I had given up my dream to write something meaningful because I didn’t believe that I was capable of being a good writer.
I had stopped myself from achieving great things without even giving it a shot. Because I had convinced myself that my dreams were out of reach, I never even attempted to try to reach my dreams.
Surprisingly, when I had those beliefs about myself, nothing really changed. But when I focused on making my standards very high, things started to move forward and amazing things happened.
I’ve been able to maintain a healthy weight for years, without even much conscious trying. I love exercising simply for the sake of exercising and I naturally eat well. I moved overseas several years ago and have been in a wonderful relationship. I write regularly.
These wonderful things don’t even scratch the surface. Because I believed that I could do something, I naturally tried harder, stayed focused on achieving my goals and found ways to make it happen. I also developed a better sense of my insecurities so I could take steps to address my self-doubt.
There will always be days where I feel self-doubt. Negative thoughts are part of being human. Yet, I don’t allow that self-doubt to control my actions and my life. I keep pushing past my comfort zone because I want to achieve something great.
There will be times where I fail and even disappoint myself which is okay and natural. Many things we do in life will not run smoothly and will come with their set of obstacles and road bumps. But now I know that failure and disappointment is okay. What matters is how I react to those failures.
You need to set the expectation that something you want is possible for you. When you accept that your goals are impossible, then there’s a very small chance that you will ever reach your dreams. But when you aim for something great, you have a higher chance of achieving many of your dreams.
Identify and be aware of opportunities for growth. The best way to give yourself a chance to achieve your dreams is to start working on your dreams. You might fail the first and second time and that’s okay. You might need to improve your skills, and that’s great.
Instead of allowing negative thinking to focus on your weaknesses, work to embrace your weaknesses instead. Embrace the idea that it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to not be good at something right now. The only way you can grow is with determination and effort.
If you don’t feel confident in your skills, then work to grow your skills either through work experience, coursework or independent research.
If you fail, then don’t let that failure define you. Everyone fails, including the people you believe are the most successful. View failures as lessons that you can grow from. Try again next time and learn from your failure.
Say yes to opportunities that will encourage you to grow. When making health a priority in my life, I signed up for a running race and a charity walk with friends. Being open to these events put me in a position where I could work up to a goal and start making health a daily habit rather than a chore.
When you feel like you are taking steps backwards, remember that this is an opportunity to pivot yourself forward in your journey.
Accept that not everyone will accept your journey or you. A barrier to believing in yourself, may be your desire to have other people believe in you and what you are doing. Unfortunately, there will be people who don’t understand or agree with how you live your life and don’t believe you can do it.
Repeat that to yourself. There will always be people who do not believe in you.
In my immediate family, I was the first one to actively travel. My family thought I was an oddball for wanting to travel and incorrectly believed that I had financial issues, was aimless in life and was making a mistake. After years of traveling, my family has accepted that this is part my lifestyle and has come around to seeing how great seeing the world can be, but it took them years to reach this point of acceptance.
A similar experience happened when I started to write regularly. I had someone important in my life who criticized my writing, assumed I’d be horrible at writing, didn’t encourage me and never really asked about my writing. Due to various reasons, I had to cut this person out of my life.
I started submitting my poetry to various journals, experimenting with short stories, writing these blog posts and making a solid effort to write my book. Yes, I wasn’t great at writing and had to improve (and am still improving) but I needed the courage to put my work out there regardless of what other people thought. I realized that I can’t become a stronger writer or even know my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, until I share my work with others.
Part of finding this courage to put my writing out into the world, was ignoring people who didn’t support or believe in me. It didn’t matter how much other people believed in me, because I always believed in myself.
Surround yourself with a strong support network. Just like there will always be people who don’t believe in you, there will be people who support you and even inspire you to be better than you ever thought you could be.
Find these people and keep them close. Don’t take these people for granted no matter what. Supportive people aren’t difficult to find. I’ve found some wonderfully supportive people online, in forums, in my family, with my friends or even just reading books and articles.
Pursuing your dreams isn’t easy and it’s important you surround yourself with people who have positive energy and genuinely want to see you succeed. Even when you make mistakes and fail, these people will be there to remind you that you made the best decision at the time, can try again and do better and that they know you can do better.
Teach yourself that you are stronger than you think. When pursuing a dream, you will put yourself in uncomfortable situations. There will be times where you dread pursuing your dream or never pictured yourself doing something that you must do to progress.
You might need to wake up two hours earlier to learn programming before work so you can make that career change.
There will be days where you need to exercise and eat well, even when you would love to eat junk food and stay home on the bed. Or maybe you need to get that gym membership, when you never pictured yourself as the type to go to the gym.
You might need to take a course in public speaking to develop the confidence you need to progress in your career.
You might need to quit your job or go part-time to seriously pursue a business idea that you are passionate about.
Going to college may be your only option to pursue a career in a field that you find meaningful and exciting.
The best way to teach yourself that you are strong and can get through the discomfort, is by repeatedly doing it. Yes, there will be days where you fail, make mistakes or feel like quitting. That’s normal but the more you push yourself to keep going, the more you will teach yourself that you can do this.
When I started running, running over a kilometre felt near to impossible. I kept going. Then I could run just under 5 kilometres and suddenly running a couple of kilometres seemed easy. As I kept pushing myself through the discomfort, I noticed that my body can get stronger and that I can run long distances. I can get faster. I taught myself that I can achieve my dreams if I keep pushing and trying and don’t give up.
Moving forward can be uncomfortable, painful and you will make mistakes along the way. You will also grow, progress in ways you never expected, be talented in ways you never anticipated and be able to bounce back when things get hard.
Show yourself how strong you truly are by giving yourself a chance, never quitting and finding ways to push yourself forward.
Keep track of your achievements. Part of negative self-talk is forgetting the accomplishments you have made and focusing on your mistakes rather than the ways you have succeeded and grown. Your mind naturally wants to focus on the bad but it’s important to remember all the good things happening in your life.
I love using lists to keep my negative thoughts at bay. Whenever something good happens or I accomplish something, I add it to my list. And whenever I feel particularly down about something happening in my life, I refer back to the list to get reminders of how I’ve progressed and am doing well.
You can even reach out to trusted friends to help you get the boost of confidence you need. Your loved ones have seen you grown and watched you achieve great things. A close friend or family member can quickly remind you that you are doing great and can keep going.
There are no guarantees but learn to be comfortable with the unknowns in life. Nobody in this world can tell you that your business idea will succeed, that you will create a masterpiece or that you will get that black belt in a martial art.
There are no guarantees that your efforts will be a success, but there are definitely no guarantees that you will fail.
Trust in the unknown and accept that right now you don’t know how things will turn out.
However, trust that taking a risk and doing your best is worth the effort. Trust that even if things don’t work out the way you expect them to, you will find new opportunities, grow as a person and find other exciting ways to move forward on your path.
Also trust in yourself. Trust that you can handle whatever unknowns happen. Trust that just because you don’t know what will happen, doesn’t mean an unknown is a bad thing. An unknown situation can lead to something amazing, so trust that everything will work out as it should.
Self-doubt will never completely disappear so it’s important to find the courage and strength to believe in yourself. Remember to never give up nor stop believing in yourself. You can get through whatever challenge you are going through right now. Even when you fail, you can pick yourself up and try again, and do better next time. Keep persevering and believing that you can get through this, because you absolutely can!