Sometimes it can feel like the Grand Canyon is between you and those who you perceive to be oozing with self belief and confidence and wonder how the heck they got there. As a coach, I help my clients to have more self belief and this is how I do it.
I’d like to invite you to play a game for a moment, come with me. Imagine you spent your life wearing glasses with green lenses, your world around you would obviously be seen through those lenses. If you were to switch those glasses and try on a pair with pink lenses, you would obviously see the world through those lenses now. But what about if you didn’t wear either of those glasses and saw the world without the frame of green or pink lenses? You wouldn’t have any filter, just what you see.
Seeing the World Through a Filter
We enter the world without any filter, we see what we see. As we go through life, we become, consciously or subconsciously, conditioned and pick up behaviours, patterns and habits in response to life around us, like wearing those pink or green glasses impact how you would see the world. No two people will see the world exactly the same as their life experiences have been uniquely different. We are influenced by caregivers, peers, acquaintances and our environment and so much more, whether we realise it or not. How many times have you found yourself repeating something you heard an adult say when you were growing up? Sometimes the behaviours and patterns serve us as we go through life, others don’t. Sometimes we grow out of, or drop habits or patterns yet others we still put into practice day in day out, again consciously or subconsciously – despite some of them not supporting us to our fullest potential.
When we look at the world, we see the world through our own filters impacted by past experiences and our responses to them. It may sound simplistic, because it is, but we can find either positive or negative evidence to support how we see the world and ourselves.
We can use this to our advantage. In terms of building self belief and confidence, we can look at past situations where we have been successful. This obviously varies as to what you regard as success. Some examples that may come to mind may feel small, to you, but nonetheless you experienced them. It is easy to overlook, play down or even forget our successes along the way. It doesn’t have to be something that was overly public. Even waking up in the morning is a pretty good win to start with!
Building Self Belief Through Appreciation of Past Successes
Appreciate these wins and you will find that what you appreciate appreciates, it builds up. More examples will come to mind the more you allow yourself to think about them. What this helps you do is to see yourself as a successful person. You know you have been successful in the past and you can continue to do so, no matter what size the wins are. Allow your mind to be expansive and remember and enjoy the feeling of how you felt when you experienced those successes.
What we have done here is to reaffirm that you are successful, at whatever level and it reaffirms that you can continue to be so. You have done it before, you can do it again.
If you begin to doubt that you can sustain this new way of looking at your life, you can be your own cheerleader. You may notice that if some around you are still wearing their negative lenses, their, ahem, well intended opinions won’t have so much impact on you from now on. Have fun with this, allow yourself to enjoy the expansive, emerging version of you. The one who remembers and builds on past successes, the successful you!
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