“Believe in yourself” – Unknown. “First say to yourself what you want to be; then do what you have to do” – Epictetus.
Have faith in yourself. Without reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy. But with sound confidence, you can succeed.
Self-belief is a very important and key is in achieving personal development and success. Most of us fail because of the disbelief we have in ourselves.
The biggest difference between failure and success is the level of self-belief and confidence exude.
Here are a few tips that can help enhance your self-belief.
Positive Affirmations
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” – the Bible. This is one of my favourite quotes. For me, this is the magic sentence.
Every time I feel down and out; when everything else has failed and I need to get on. I always remember that “I can do all things through Christ…” Believe me, it works for me.
I know that we all fall down sometimes in our lives but the most important thing is how you get up. One best way to help you improve your self-belief is to use positive affirmations.
Keep telling yourself, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. This will build some form of self-belief and the results can be amazing.
To get more benefits from positive affirmation you need to change your mindset from being negative to positive. Look at the positive side of everything.
Encourage yourself to believe more in yourself. Positive affirmation requires that you change your way of thinking from “I can’t,” to “I can,” remember the magic sentence?
Many of the time we let great opportunities pass by because of our negative and mediocre thinking. We lack the courage and are ill-prepared when opportunities come around.
There is power in positive thinking and affirmations. The bible says “as a man thinketh so is he in his heart.” “You shall know them by their fruits” – the Bible.
This goes to show how important our thoughts can influence our well being. Change your thoughts with positive affirmations.
“Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny” – Mahatma Gandhi.
Know Yourself
The starting point for your journey of self-development is you the person you see in the mirror. Yes, know yourself, your likes and dislikes, preferences and skills; it is the very basic need for your self-development.
Here I have listed a few tips that can help you know yourself better:-
- Journalise and diarise your daily activities. This will help you analyse the events and how you reacted to them.
- Look in the mirror and notice what you see. Yes seems funny but most of us have never noticed what is in the mirror. That’s you a “millionaire” in the waiting. A champion in the making.
- Get feedback on your work and behaviour from the people around you especially your colleagues at work. In order that you have a balanced view, ask your critics as well. I have a belief that in order to make a good leader you need both sets of people, that is those you can easily influence and those that can stand up to your face and tell you no when you go wrong. Often times this is lacking in our leaders.
- Study your relationships and how they make you feel. You may realise that no man is an island. We all have some sort of relationship be it at work or home. Relationships play a very significant role in a person’s life. Those in more strong healthy relationships exhibit some level of stability than those in unhealthy ones.
Have Positive Expectations
Numerous experiments have confirmed that when you expect the best oftentimes, you get it and when you expect the worst the same will come to pass.
So at the start of any enterprise or at the start of a day or start of the year or season, look forward with the expectation of the very best. Here is a quote from Kalidasa (Indian dramatist).
Look to this day For it is life, the very life of life; In its brief course Lie all the verities and realities of your existence The bliss of growth The glory of action The splendour of beauty For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision But today well lived makes every yesterday A dream of happiness And every tomorrow a vision of hope Look well therefore to this day! Such is the salutation to the dawn.
This is a life-changing poem. In a nutshell, we must look forward to today and enjoy it in a positive and constructive way, because tomorrow we will reflect on it and have happy memories.
Like the man who had too many lemons and turned them into lemonade, or the man who bought a snake-infested land and learned how to make snakeskin into shoe leather, every seemingly negative situation can be turned around into something positive. You must learn to turn negative situations into positive ones.
Mix With Positive People
One of the biggest drains on our enthusiasm is mixing with negatively-minded people. I am sure we all have come across or have such people in our lives. Try this out and see what the results will be for you. Identify someone who has a positive attitude towards life and one who has a negative attitude, spend some time with both of them at separate intervals, and note what you will be feeling after spending some time with either of them.
According to my results, I feel more at peace and relaxed with the positive person than the negative one. Positivity is actually infectious. The more time you spend positively the more confident and happy you feel.
You have two choices though if you want to survive being positive; avoid them, this though I would not encourage or better still train them and they will appreciate you when then get over it and you will have made the world happier by one person.
Conclusion
Perhaps the greatest gift in human history is the discovery of the power of your mind to create almost every aspect of your life. You see, everything you can visibly see was conceived in the mind of someone as a thought or an idea before being translated into being. Your thoughts are creative; your thoughts form and shape everything around you. Think about your goals and have belief in yourself.