Are there particular people you identify with in your life? Someone you really connect with without much
effort at all. Can you identify with yourself in the same way? There was a time that I felt completely lost
about who I was. I felt like someone who was stuck in a body that wasn’t mine and had so much potential,
but certain things had to happen first. Then I learned that absolutely nothing has to change and I had all the
power within myself to reach that potential, regardless of what was going on around me. Here’s 3 ways
start your journey on believing in yourself:
Figure out your story. To start believing in yourself, you must first uncover all the things you believe that aren’t serving you. We all have stories that we’ve made up about who we are, that we think are true. What we don’t realize is that they’re optional. They are thoughts we’ve consciously or unconsciously rehearsed in our brains for so long that they’ve become a belief. For example, one of my stories used to be I was a terrible mom. Another one was, I’m always going to struggle with my weight. These were stories I’d identified with based on past events, but when I realized that I didn’t have to believe these things, that I could just change how I was looking at them, my whole world opened up. Figure out what you believe to be true and then question it. Is it really true? Can I find instances to prove this isn’t true?
Enable the power within you. The best part about believing in yourself is that nothing outside of you has to change for this transformation to take place. I thought for me to be deemed as a good mom my kids always needed to be happy, have good manners, good grades, and got along with their friends. I was basing my worth as a mother on their behavior, not mine. I was delegating my feelings to their actions. Here’s how I took my power back. I decided what a “good mom” looked like to me. If I meet that criteria, no matter how my kids behaved, I’m a good mom. It feels so empowering to know that I have control over my own feelings, based on my own actions, instead of hoping someone else will act a certain way so I can feel a certain way and believe in myself.
Love all of you. It’s easy to love the very best parts of us, but what about the messy,
disheveled, human parts? We all have them. Instead of seeing the unwanted parts as
something to get rid, can you find compassion for them knowing that those are the pieces that make us real human beings? Start with, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are exactly where you need to be.
Thinking that you should be one way, but you’re not, is the best way to kill the belief within yourself. You
were born with complete worth and nothing you do can diminish that worth. It’s like a $100 bill. No matter
the condition of it, crisp and new or dirty and crumpled, it is still worth $100. Believing that you are whole,
complete and worthy of all the best things keeps you moving forward from a place of love and power. If we
all saw ourselves as someone with infinite worth, can you imagine how different the world would be?
Want to learn more? Listen to the expanded version as I dive deeper into this topic and share stories and
examples on my podcast here.
