I’ve decided that I’m going to start believing in myself. Yeah that’s it, I know it seems like I’ve been inspired by a weird motivational thread on Instagram and just “decided” to start believing in myself. But in reality, it is that simple isn’t it? I want to use the next 30 days to try something out. Everyday, I will write about a few actionable practices that can help me practice believing in myself and report back at the end of the day as to how those mindset changes affected my decision making.
I think this is a great way to document a self improvement journey and a thought exercise. And 10 days seems like a good starting point, its a low commitment and I think I can extend it as time goes on.
Recently, I spent some time with a good friend of mine. He’s the kind of person who thinks he can do absolutely anything in the world and believes in himself like no one else I’ve seen before. He never seems to care what anyone thinks about him, who’s judging him, and never believes that he is “dumb” and that there are things he “just won’t understand”. The funny thing is that I’ve taken classes with this friend and I’d say my capacity to think, analyse and produce is just as good as his if not better. But something he has, that I think I am yet to fully master is unwavering faith in myself.
And I want that. I want to live up to my potential and I’m 100% sure I can get there, it’s just a matter of effort. Hence, this little experiment that hopefully has massive returns.
Action 1: I’ve decided that I’m going to approach every single task I do with an absolute “can do” attitude. What that means is that, I will completely ignore any negative self-talk telling me that I can’t do something or that something is hard. Instead I will turn that into a positive dialogue on how I can absolutely achieve something, have fun while doing it and that it was always in my reach, just a mere gap of effort remained.
Action 2: If I want to do anything in life, I have to let go of what people think about me, so I’m going to take conscious steps to refrain from limiting myself due to the fear of being judged. I will catch that dialogue that makes me self-conscious and work in the opposite direction.
Every person that has ever done anything worthwhile worked against the thought processes and judgements of the masses. If I want to be one of those people, who does something out of the box, I have to let this fear go. People will always judge, they will judge by changing their yard stick to measure your success, they will judge based on what they lack, they will always judge, you just have to let go.
Action 3: Self judgement. One thing I really liked about that friend of mine is that he had a commendable ability to bounce back from failure. He didn’t wallow, he didn’t believe he was “dumb” even when people around him did, and he just simply didn’t judge himself for messing up. He would get up, and go again and learn, with full confidence. Maybe sometimes he came off as a little overconfident but that served his purpose and never hurt anyone else. So dropping that self-judgement can be a real game changer.
Yesterday was the first day I attempted to embody these philosophies and I had a pleasant day. I went about socializing with ease, making new friends, worked a little bit…not too much but enough and went to the gym. At the gym, I first hesitated to speak to trainer to help me use a machine I knew I wanted to use but didn’t know how to. I consciously forced myself to go up to her and ask her how I can use that machine, she was so kind and helped me out and I had an amazing booty burn from that exercise. So that’s a moment I want to remember because these little actions eventually compound into big results and that really makes a difference. Moreover, practising quashing the negative talk in my head and highlighting the benefits of the positive attitude can actually help rewire my thought process. Had a successful day one! Onto the next one.