Believing in Yourself – Removing Self Doubt

There are times in our incarnate existence when have trouble rationalizing our abilities versus our tasks. We question why we are in the position we are in, and how we can succeed in the face of adversity. We focus on the negative and not the positive.

Moving forward and letting go of this mindset can be difficult, especially when we are in the position of vulnerability, which is inherently created by this mindset.

When we do not believe in ourselves we should stand back, adopt a neutral mental posture and reflect on what we have achieved to date and how we achieved it. In this way we are able to see the routes we took, the skills we used, the new skills we gained and the growth within us. At the same time we can also see what we wanted to achieve based upon our own expectations versus what we actually achieved. We can also see the praise, criticisms and accolades we have accrued from those we expose ourselves to.

Lack of self belief is based upon the negative comparison of our expectations, the expectations of others and our actual performance. We focus on the one or two people that criticize us and add it to our short fall in expectations, especially if we did not specifically meet them in our actual performance.

We focus on the negative feedback.

However, this is usually only a small percentage of error if we look at what we have achieved to get to where we are now, especially if we look at our growth pattern. Looking at our growth pattern we can see what a success we have been, where we have come from, where we are, where we could go to, boosting our self belief. Adopting a mental posture that rationalizes the criticisms for what they are, opportunities for personal improvement, (only if we feel the criticism is relative though, and not third party jealousy) whilst re-aligning our expectations into a goal, we can see how far we have come, and, what we may need to do to meet that goal.

The important thing here is to SEE HOW FAR WE HAVE COME, because this is the motivator. We can see how we have grown, how we have developed, how much more confident we are in certain arenas now, that we can and do adapt, that we are capable and that we have POTENTIAL – and recognizing that we have potential makes us believe in ourselves and see our path in a clear way, removing self doubt.