Developing belief in yourself and your skills

- Our success is deeply connected to whether we believe that we are capable and deserving of that success. An ever growing body of research suggests that our perception of our abilities is hugely influential to how we pursue our goals. Healthy self-belief can keep our hopes high, help us develop resilience and increased persistence. In practice though, it can sometimes evade us. It is important to acknowledge that humans aren't necessarily built to have unwavering self-belief. We have something called the negativity bias, which means that you are genetically predisposed to focus on the negative. If you go into a meeting, for example, after the event, your brain is more likely to remember and attach to any potential negative experiences, more than the positive. It is an important evolutionary survival mechanism that can sometimes mean that, we have a blind spot to our own brilliance. Increasing belief in your skills is not a one and done type process. It requires practice, patience and persistence. Here are three practices, you can begin to start really feeling as though you have the capabilities to succeed in anything that you don't yet know, you can easily learn. Number one, keep a success log. If you are ambitious, driven, wanting to learn and grow, which by the way, I know you are because you all here with me now dedicating the time to watch this course, then we can sometimes be so focused on moving forward, we forget to see how far we've already come. Create a folder on your desktop and call it whatever you like. Mine is, nice things people say about my work and start screenshotting, when you get an email that says great job, screenshot those job offers, any positive feedback you receive, any positive comments or shares on your work on social media. Begin creating a visual repository of your success and habitually look back on it. Before big events, I will nearly always look into my success log and remind myself that I can do hard things that people do resonate with my work and I have achieved success in the past. Because honestly, it is so easy for us to forget. Number two, identify your strengths. If I said to you, in what areas do you totally excel, would you quickly and easily be able to answer that question or would you have to take a moment to think, or even struggle to come up with anything. In order for us to have self-belief we have to get really comfortable with the things that we are already good at. Pause this video now, and take 10 minutes to write out the things that you are already excellent at. These may be defined specialisms like data or marketing, or they may be more quality such as listening or connecting with others. Start getting to know your strengths and allow yourself to lean into them even more. Number three, end every single day with three things that you have done well. This is such a simple yet really powerful practice. If when you complete your day, take a moment to acknowledge the little victories. These don't have to be big, often they won't, but spend a few minutes every day, shining a cognitive torch on where you are already doing an excellent job, because I have no doubt that you are. Developing belief in yourself won't happen overnight, but it is a process, a process that will always be worth it.