We all know a person who is really confident, successful, seems to be able to turn their hand to anything, and willing to just give things a go. The kind of person we might look at and think, ‘I wish I could be like them!’
For me, I admire modern day girl-bosses like Beyonce and JK Rowling, but also women from history like Rosa Parkes, Katharine Switzer (the first female marathon runner) and Margaret Thatcher. Women who have stood up for themselves and others, and worked their backsides off to get to the top of their game. My admiration isn’t limited to women. The men that have my respect are people like Richard Branson, Mohammed Ali, Princes Harry and William – individuals who work hard, show respect to others, deal with whatever life throws at them with dignity and grace.
More than that, I admire real people, the people who do every day jobs, but get out there and get stuff done – soldiers, police officers and fire fighters who put their lives on the line, medics who work 15 hour shifts without so much as a hot cup of tea to keep them going, people who serve others selflessly just for the love of it.
I have worked with a number of people in the past who spent years honing their craft and then sharing their knowledge with others for the greater good – not keeping it to themselves, to appear superior, treating other people with respect and never looking down their noses at others no matter where they are in society.
A common thread running through all of these individuals is they all have self-confidence and self-belief in abundance. Don’t get me wrong I am sure they all have their crises of confidence occasionally and they perhaps aren’t as confident in other areas of their lives. But the reason they are so successful is that they believe in themselves enough to have a go. They step up and do it!
Whilst there might be areas of our lives where we don’t know if we can achieve our goals, there will be aspects in all of our lives where we are extremely confident. Whether that’s in a job that we have done for years, making our favourite dish, or singing the words to our favourite song. That confidence and belief comes from the fact that we know we can do this regularly performed act. The process is clear, we know what we want to achieve, we know how to achieve it, and we are well practised in the steps it takes to get there. There are no negative voices in our head telling us, that we can’t do it. We just can!
Building self-confidence
Self-confidence and belief comes from small achievements in the area we are working on. Once we know we can do one thing, we have to be brave and try something that’s a little more difficult. We start to learn that if we try hard and persist, we will achieve. And it’s this belief that makes us continue with the struggle when we experience set backs.
Some ideas to help you to build some self confidence in your ability to win at this game might be:
- resisting the urge to order a take away on a Friday night
- going out for a meal but trying a different restaurant with healthier options than your usual haunt
- batch cooking meals for the week on a weekend
- only drinking alcohol for one night a week
- tracking your calories for one whole week, then two, then three
- writing a sensible exercise plan and sticking to it
- swapping snacking in front of the TV for a walk in the evening
- an early morning exercise session to set you up for the day, and keep you on track with your food
- always take the stairs instead of the lift
- run upstairs instead of walking
Once you start to achieve, you will start to believe that you can achieve other things too. The most important thing is to start!
Look to your past for some inspiration – what have you been successful at before ? Have you smashed it in an exam, or are you brilliant at art? Write a list and keep it somewhere safe. Get it out and read it when you need a bit of reassurance that you are capable of achieving things.
Take a few minutes to have a really good think about what your strengths are. Write them down and use these qualities to help you on this journey to success.
Set your goal!
How can you achieve anything if you don’t know what it is you want to achieve? Be specific about exactly what it is that you want to achieve, because when you’re specific you can measure how well you are doing.
Write down your goal and most importantly why you want to achieve it. Your sense of purpose will keep you focused.
Develop a plan as to how you will achieve your goal, with mini goals built in every day, to help build that confidence. Every time you have achieve a mini-goal, give yourself an inner high five and start building on the confidence that it gives you. You might have ten stone to lose or you might have 2 stone to lose. Every big achievement is an accumulation of small achievements, so aim for 1lb, 2lb, 3lbs a week, and celebrate these little wins, because they all add up.
Think positive! Do away with all the negative self-talk and leave the pity party, you’re not doing yourself any favours feeling sorry for yourself. Be positive that you can achieve your ambitions, every single day. And if you make one bad decision, or have a bad day. Write it off, shrug your shoulders and move on.
Write things down!
When we write things down it becomes real and tangible. Write down your goal, write down your plan, and most of all write down your progress and your successes. Mapping your progress and your success in a visual way allows you to look back on the things you were doing when it was going well. So when times get hard, you can look back for some inspiration on how to make some improvements.
Don’t get comfortable!
Once you start to experience some success, the trick is to keep pushing yourself. Don’t let yourself get complacent. You have to keep challenging yourself, to keep the momentum going. Keep expanding that comfort zone, ever so slightly. Challenge yourself to bigger, more difficult goals. This will see your self-confidence and self-belief soar, and before you know it, you will be that person that you always wanted to be.
This week!
Work on building that self-confidence and self-belief. Let go of negative feelings and thoughts in your head and focus only on the positive. See what a difference it makes.