Building Self Belief

I think self belief is one of the most important qualities anyone can have and building self belief is one of the most important things you can do for your self.  This is because whatever you believe you make real. If you believe in yourself then life is something that you can engage with because you know that you will find the answer or find a way past challenges as they come up. If you don't believe in yourself then life becomes a much more scary place because you won’t feel like you have the tools or the ability to handle what comes up in life. I spoke about this in the last blog on resilience but it is not just in this area where having a strong belief in yourself is important. It is important in every area of your life. In fact when my kids started school my one desire for them was that when they finished school that they would believe in themselves then they would be able to face anything in life and know deep down that they would be able to thrive and life would be an exciting journey of exploration. 


If you have low self belief this is not the end of the world as self belief is something that you can develop and grow and I will give you a technique later in this blog that will help you do just that. Firstly I want to dive a little bit deeper into self belief and into beliefs in general so that you can really understand how what you believe you make real.  


When you believe something to be true your subconscious creates thoughts and actions that align with that belief. If for example I believe that I’m not particularly clever then I will have resistance to taking part in things that challenge my mental capacity and because I believe that I'm not good in that area I will avoid doing things that require me to use this faculty. I might even get fearful when I am put into a situation where it requires me to be clever. And this is the catch, when you are scared and you feel fearful your brain responds by putting you into fight, flight and freeze mode. When this happens the focus of your brain moves to survival and to the reptilian brain which takes focus away from your higher thinking. This means if I believe that I am not particularly clever and I am put into a situation that challenges my cleverness my brain in the panic will shut down and prove to me that I really am NOT very clever. The subconscious is so powerful at convincing us of our beliefs that we truly believe that they are the truth. 


Another example might be if I believe that I am not loveable and I start a relationship my partner might pass a comment that to other people does not mean anything but because I have pain around this I might over react by getting angry or by withdrawing. Either of these responses will cause distance between me and my partner and over time with many more incidences like this my partner will most likely leave proving to me that indeed I am unlovable.


There are all sorts of beliefs that you have created both positive and negative which generate thoughts and actions that perpetuate the belief. 


There are people in the world who have very little other than self belief and they have achieved phenomenal things. People like Hellen Keller who was blind and deaf but has written books and is widely quoted for the wisdom she has shared and Nick Vujicic who was born without limbs and is now an internationally famous inspirational speaker and has also written at least one best selling book. When I look at people who have bounced back from all sorts of incredibly challenging situations only to succeed in the most amazing ways the one thing they all had in common was self belief.


Now that I have hopefully impressed upon you how important it is I am sure you want to know how to develop it. 

1. Set Challenges that streatch you 20% - The first step to developing self belief is to set yourself challenges that stretch you at least 20% out of your comfort zone. The more you create these challenges for yourself and achieve them, and that's the most important thing you need to acheive them. The more you will be successfully reprogram your subconscious mind to believe that you are somebody that can  acheive things. 20% is the streatch I suggest because 20% is enough for you to feel like you are doing something that is uncomfortable and stretches you but it’s not so great that the challenge is going to be too daunting. This is important because however much you challenge yourself you have to realise there's going to be pushback from your subconscious beliefs in yourself and from life. 20% is a doable amount and it creates enough examples or enough feedback for your subconscious to start developing self belief. I do not wish to say you should not stretch yourself more and if you want to. You are welcome to, but, just remember that the more you stretch yourself the more pushback and negative feedback you are going to get from your subconscious and from life so make sure you can handle it. 

    
For instance if I decided I was going to go and run 10 miles ( I am really, really unfit at the moment and there is no way I could run 10 miles) I would start dreading it immediately.  These thoughts of dread would be my subconscious already manipulating me to start doubting myself. I would be quite fearful because I would know that I wasn't up to the challenge. I would also physically find it impossible to do a 10 mile run and all of these things are the feedback that I'm talking about from the subconscious and life that would make it incredibly hard for me to streatch myself this far from where I am. 


This sort of resistance also happens when you start something completely new as your subconscious has no data that you are able to do what you set out to do even if logically you should be able to do it. 


For example (I am gonna stick with the exercising because it's in my head) if I haven't exercised for a really, really long time and I decided I'm going to start exercising. Just that  initial step into exercising will cause my subconscious to produce lots of resistant thoughts.   Thoughts such as I don’t need to do it today I could do it tomorrow, uncertainty, or making something else a priority. All of these thoughts are your subconscious creating doubt because the streatch is too great. This is important for you to know so that should you decide to do something new (even though logically you think it's not a big thing) make sure that you make the steps small so that the resistance from your subconscious is something you can manage without giving up.

1. Ensure you acheive your challenges 80% of the time - Setting these challenges and being in action of them is all well and good but you also need to make sure that you achieve those challenges. And you need to be achieving them 80% of the time. Anything less than 80 percent will not help you build your self belief sufficiently to notice a significant difference. The reason for this is that you are reprogramming your subconscious mind from one of believing that you can't to one that believing that you can. And the only way to do that is by feeding it data that shows that you can. This is what these challengers are doing. Achieving these little challenges gives your subconscious mind information proving you are someone who can. You might think that the challengers need to be in alignment with whatever it is you are trying to achieve and yes that would be great but they don't necessarily have to all be in this area because your main focus is on building self belief which is such a broad category that the challenges could be in any area. 

1. Keep Your Word - It is really important for you to notice if you are keeping your word or not because your subconscious takes note of this. If you are stetting challenges that streatch you 20% and are ensuring you acheive them 80% of the time but outside of this you are not keeping your word you will be giving your subconscious data that says you are someone who does not do what you say you're going to do and this will go against everything you are trying to acheive. When I talk about keeping your word I mean every time you tell someone you will do something or be somewhere this is giving you word. It is also important that you are precise as well. If you say you will meet someone and you are a minuet late your subconscious knows this and will record that you did not keep your word.  And, you cannot argue or make excuses with your subconscious because it simply records the data. So be careful when giving your word and something I learnt the hard way is not to give you word when you are relying on someone else as you cannot account for their ability to keep their word. Instead you can give your word to get something done when so and so completes their task.

Finally I found when I started becoming aware of all of this that I was quite good at keeping my word with other people but I was not as good at keeping it to myself. Watch what you say you are going to do internally as well as externally.

1. Make time to be accountable to yourself or another - You will stand a better chance of achieving this if you make time in your diary to purposefully set challenges and to reflect on the ones you set before so ensure you are achieving them 80% of the time or if not to adjust what you are doing so that you are. This is why coaching is so incredibly powerful in helping people get where they want to go in life because each session we check in with our clients to see how they did with the actions they committed to from the last session. If this is of interest to you and you are really committed to developing this in your life I would be happy to have a free chemistry call with you. Just pop me an email through my website - https://www.britttanya.com/connect-with-me.html 

To summarise - if you want to increase your self belief you need to be setting yourself challenges that stretch you at least 20%. You need to be achieving those challenges and completing them at least 80% or more of the time to be able to increase your self belief. On top of that you also need to be very aware of what you commit to and what you promise because these are also like mini challenges. The more that you are your word and the more that you keep your word the more that your subconscious will believe that you’re somebody who can and does and that’s really all there is to it! 


It sounds really simple but I know it's not always as simple as it sounds. Don't be too hard on yourself in the initial stages you might fall down and you might slip up but if you keep trying then you will find this an incredibly powerful tool that can transform your whole entire life. Not only that but there is magic in playing in this space and when you can consistently acheive your challenges 80% of the time or more it is as if life starts playing with you as well. You will notice that there are more synchronicity’s and coincidences than ever before and who doesn’t want some of that in life! 


If you want access to more of my resources you can find the on my website which is listed below in the first comments. 


So much love from me to you

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