I’m almost constantly thinking about belief. I know how important it is to believe in yourself, to believe that you’re capable, to believe that you deserve success. But how do we come about that belief? How often do we feel it? Can we fake it and still have positive results?
Could it be that our negative inner voice, the voice that everybody seems to have, chips away at our self-belief over the course of our lives? Remember how invincible we were as kids, before we learned the “rules” of how to behave? Our negative voices came from negative experiences in which we felt embarrassment, shame or repression. That voice intended to protect us from ever feeling that way again. But along the way, we’ve gotten smaller, safer and more comfortable with routine and predictability. No wonder we’ve lost our self-belief, we don’t need it when we’re living so safely. Our negative voices are still hanging onto those uncomfortable past experiences even though our memories have moved on.
A lot of it is also is that we focus almost exclusively on what we don’t have or what we don’t want. When we focus on our weaknesses and don’t do anything to either improve them or balance our focus on our strengths, we miss the opportunities to improve our self-belief.
We have no choice but to “fake it til we make it” when it comes to belief, because not believing in yourself will limit your success in anything. The quickest way to cultivate self-belief is to pretend you believe in yourself. How about trying these: replace “sorry” with “excuse me,” stand tall, smile, make eye contact, pretend you’re not afraid of being vulnerable, make yourself ask for what you want and introduce yourself confidently. As we practice pretending, we’ll notice the positive affect we have on the people around us and that can have a profound effect on your self-belief.
