Do You Believe: Yes You Can

I’ve seen a meme going around lately, “if you can believe in Santa for 8 years, you can believe in yourself for like 5 minutes”. Personally it’s a little odd for me but I understand the sentiment. You see, I never believed in Santa but I have always believed in myself. I know that is different from what many people think. It’s incredible how people talk themselves out of doing what they want to do. Most of the time, it’s fear, fear of failing, fear of what others may think, fear that we will not be enough.

Allow me to make the case for why you should believe in yourself. The strongest factor for success is self-esteem. Believing you can do it, believing you deserve it and believing you’ll get it. You can not be successful if you don’t’ believe in yourself.

Sometimes people confuse self-confidence with pride. The difference is humility. It’s ok to show others that you believe in yourself. It’s like when you take your first steps in life. At first you are a little unsure about what you are doing, then those around you start to cheer. You gain more confidence and end up clapping for yourself. The next thing that happens is amazing, once you believe in yourself, others will follow.

Here are my top 3 tips to help you get there:

1. Believe it: You must convince yourself, you are the only person who can. You have to believe that what you want is possible. Positive expectation is everything, it is a choice. You can discipline your mind to expect the positive. It’s the difference between Eeyore and Tigger on Winnie the Pooh. Eeyore is always expecting negative and that is all he gets. Tigger is always expecting positive and that is what happens. What you come to expect is what you will get. Train your brain!
2. Visualization: See what you want and get what you see. Spend some time each day visualizing what you want to achieve and you will notice a motivation to move in the direction of achieving those goals. You will start taking more risks and finding you are experiencing bigger pay-offs. Vision boards have become popular. They are great to give you a physical representation of where you are going.
3. Take action: This is where most people get stuck. You understand the principles, you can set goals and visualize but you don’t know what to do next. Most people don’t reach their goals because they are afraid. Fear ruins more dreams than anything else ever will. Fear is normal, as soon as you feel it, that’s when you need to take action.

Follow your dreams, believe in yourself and you will not regret it. As Atticus says in To Kill a Mockingbird, “the hardest step she ever took was to blindly trust in who she was.