The Importance of Believing in Yourself As mentioned in my opening welcome statement, believing in ourselves is necessary in order to build confidence and self-esteem. When we believe in ourselves, it can help us achieve our goals, live our dreams, and make us a healthier individual. But the flip side is also true. Lack of belief in ourselves means we are less likely to act, to change, or to push to make things better. In fact, when we expect we will fail, we are actually more likely to fail. That can be detremental when we didn't believe in ourself in the first place. If we are already depressed or sad about not having self-belief, not believing in self can take you deeper into those negative thoughts and behaviors. Believing in ourselves is kind of like the key that turns the ignition and starts the car. We can't really move forward without it. Try as we might to push ourselves forward, we're blocked because our thoughts, attitudes, actions and behaviors aren't in alignment with our goals. In fact, without believing in yourself, goals are not really goals, but only a wish to do or have what could be an accomplished goal. So, we either don't do what we need to do or we sabotage ourselves along the way, sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in not so obvious or unconscious ways. So, how do you believe in yourself? Believing in yourself includes things like: Self-worth is the sense that you have value as a human being. Self-confidence is a positive attitude about your abilities, qualities, and judgment. Self-trust is faith that you can rely on yourself. Autonomy is feeling able to choose and direct your own behavior. Environmental mastery is your belief that your efforts will result in the changes you desire. These are some of the key components involved in believing in yourself. Maybe you struggle with just one of them or maybe you struggle with all of them, but one thing for sure is that you will never reach the level of self-esteem you want, desire and deserve. By understanding where your struggles lie, it'll be easier to start shifting your attitudes about yourself. (Barriers to Self-Esteem) Questions to Ask Yourself Ask yourself these questions to better understand if there are things that are getting in the way of you believing in yourself, which ultimately gets in the way of raising your self-esteem: Self-worth: Do you value yourself as a human being? Do you agree that you no worse than any other person? Self-confidence: Do you feel good about your skills, strengths, and abilities? Do you feel good about your personal qualities? Do you feel good about your judgment and level of indecisiveness? Self-trust: Can you rely on yourself? Can you trust that you'll do what you say you'll do? Autonomy: Do you feel free to do what you want to do? Do you believe that no one can stop you from reaching your dreams? Environmental mastery: When you take action, do you believe that it will lead to the results you desire? Do you believe that you're able to get the things you want? If you answered "no" or were leaning towards "no" to any of these questions, those are likely the areas that thwart your ability to believe in yourself. Spend some time thinking more about how you might shift these self-beliefs to believe in yourself more. In my class, Building Self-Esteem, I spend a lot of time on belief systems and how beliefs interfere with your ability to believe in yourself. How to Believe in Yourself 1) Change your self-talk Once you've identified your unsupportive self-beliefs, question these beliefs by talking back to your inner voice. If you think you have no value, take a look at your self-talk. As I mentioned in other articles, I don't believe in saying positive affirmations or forcing yourself to tell yourself something that you don't believe is true. But what you can do, is find one or two things you do like and believe about yourself and start to validate those beliefs. You may see that once you give energy to those beliefs, it may trigger other things you find positive about yourself. Turn those into beliefs. (I have an entire class on Negative Core Beliefs and aother on Negative Self-Talk, which is part of the first class entitled Building Self-Esteem. These classes are free. Be sure to read articles: Self-Esteem Matters and Learned Helplessness.) Remind yourself of your positive qualities and skills daily, if not several times throughout the day. Positive self-talk, even if it's just a couple of true positive statements about yourself, has been shown to improve performance. By saying positive things to ourselves as long as you believe what you are telling yourself, you can start to rewrite your internal scripts. You can slowly but surely start to develop new scripts in your mind that are a bit more like cheerleaders and a bit less like someone who appears not to care. And this helps us shift our beliefs. But, beware. If there are any negative aspects of your thinking and believing in yourself, don't force yourself to believe something that you truly believe is untrue. Those beliefs come from some place that is deep in your psychic that need to be rooted out. Build self-trust We often think of trust as something we have for others. But we can also have trust in ourselves. Having (or not having) this trust in ourselves has similar implications as having (or not having) trust in others. For example, when we trust someone, we're honest with them, we can count on them, and we are confident in them doing what's best for us. So, what might it mean when we don't trust ourselves? Well, maybe we don't want to be honest with ourselves because we're not sure what we will do with that information. Maybe we can't count on ourselves to do the things we tell ourselves we will do. Maybe we don't trust ourselves because we have been taught that our way of thinking can be trusted. Or, maybe we're afraid that we will do things to harm ourselves instead of help ourselves. It may sound odd when spelled out like this, but many of us do indeed have self-trust issues. For example, maybe we've told ourselves a thousand times that we are going to start exercising... but we never do it. So how likely is it that we would trust ourselves to start a new exercise program? Not very likely. Another example may be that we commited to do something with a friend only to not follow through. Not once, but several times. Here are some tips to start building trust within yourself. Trust is one of the steps to building self-esteem. - Do what you say you're going to do. Maybe this means reducing your number of commitments, learning to say "no," or setting stronger boundaries. Experiment if you need to see what you need to do to stick to your word. - Be honest with yourself. Engage in self-reflection to get to the truth of what you really think, feel, and need in life. Try not to focus so much on what other people want you to do. - Do what you believe is right. Live your values and follow your inner compass. If you're on a path that is true to you, then it'll likely be easier to believe in your ability to walk it. - Be clear. Get clearer about who you are and what you want. Know the things you are willing to do and the things you are not. That way you can trust yourself to make good decisions and communicate them effectively. Conclusion Believing in ourselves involves a bit more than just forcing ourselves to develop self-love and start pursuing our goals. It's more a matter of seeing where we're stuck and compassionately exploring how to get unstuck. You may want to consider taking a class on Barriers to Self-Esteem and Building Self-Esteem to learn more about believing in yourself, which is just one step to building your self-esteem. No matter what caused you to not believe in yourself and contributed to your low self-esteem, it can be "fixed" with the proper tools. Believe me when I say I know. I had low self-esteem to the extent I wished I wouldn't wake up in the morning, every morning as a teen and young woman. That is what finally led me to focusing on and creating the Master Your Self-Esteem program. Hopefully, these were some useful tips to get started.