Hello and welcome to our short, beginners’ guide on boosting your confidence by unleashing the power of belief.
To believe is to achieve…
How many times have you heard that saying? While it may make sense intellectually to most people, living out this saying is another thing altogether. You know it, and I know it. There are many things we know should work in our lives, but in reality, they don’t. They don’t even stand a prayer.
Belief powers successful action. This is a reality. While we can say to ourselves that believing to achieve is possible for others, but not possible for us, we still have to confront this reality.
If you look at any successful person, from multimillionaires to billionaires, to captains of industry, to political powerhouses, it should be easy to see how their beliefs propel their actions. Let me say it again, belief powers successful action.
The most successful people in the world have amazing powers of belief. They can be like Oprah Winfrey who came from absolutely nowhere and became a female billionaire in the United States.
She did not have family connections, she did not go to the right schools, there was no army of people looking to promote her when she began her career. Through sheer force of will and unstoppable belief, she became a billionaire.
Considering all the factors working against her – black, female, a rape victim, a survivor of emotional abuse, a survivor of several rejections – she still made it. As the stoic philosopher, Epictetus said, “Circumstances do not make the man. They merely reveal him to himself.”
When you believe, you have a tremendous power core located deep within you. It doesn’t matter what’s going on outside of you. It doesn’t matter how many people point at you and laugh at you and call you crazy. It doesn’t matter how many people have it in for you to block your every step. It doesn’t matter what your feelings are. Regardless of how much access you have to resources, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have this store of power locked within you that you can access at any time.
This is the secret most successful people have. They are able to tap into the amazing powers of belief. They believe in themselves, their cause, their projects so much that their belief translates to action. Even better, when they meet obstacles and setbacks like everyone else, it doesn’t faze them… because they believe in what they’re doing and what they are trying to accomplish.
Their power of belief is so strong that it produces infectious confidence that people around them simply can’t ignore or fight off. Have you ever noticed that successful people tend to reach the highest levels of power and financial wealth because they are able to inspire people around them? That’s how unstoppable their confidence is. It is not just for them. They don’t just lock it away or keep it to themselves. Instead, it spreads far from their initial circle of influence.
Indeed, successful leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others, are able to do massive things in life because they inspire others around them to share their belief… and be empowered by the confidence this belief produces. The good news? If they can do it, you can too.
This guide steps you through the following process:
• Identify your beliefs
• Highlight positive and empowering beliefs
• Reform and eliminate limiting beliefs
• Live out your belief
• Create positive confidence feedback loops
• Infect others with your sense of possibility and positivity
Are you ready to begin?…
Let’s dive in!
Identify Your Beliefs
I know you’re struggling. If you’re reading this guide, you probably feel that you are just plodding through your life. You might even think that one day is as meaningless and as insignificant as the day that preceded it. Believe me, we’ve all been through what you’re going through.
In fact, you are not alone in your current situation because there are millions upon millions of people who are in the same situation as you. They feel stuck. They feel that the best things in life have slipped through their fingers and they are struggling with whatever is left.
They have all sorts of self-defeating beliefs as to why they cannot achieve great things in life. They feel they’re too poor, they don’t have enough money, or they don’t have connections. In other words, they give themselves an excuse after excuse as to why they remain frustrated.
What if I told you that these are all illusions? What if I told you that they emanate from the things you choose to believe about yourself?
You have to understand that there are people who have less money than you or who have severe physical disabilities who are able to do amazing things with their life. On the surface, these people have so little to work with, but they are able to rise above. Life may have given them lemons, but they sure know how to make a great pitcher of lemonade.
Now, here comes the painful question, why can’t you do what they do? It all boils down to beliefs.
We all have beliefs. You may be thinking to yourself that there’s really no overriding belief governing your life. You might want to think about that for a second. You might want to take a closer look.
You see, we all have beliefs. We just might not be conscious of them. They might not be top of mind. Accordingly, we just might not be aware of their impact on our lives. But just because we’re not aware, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist nor have an impact.
Let me cut straight to the chase. Your life is the product of your beliefs. If you want to change your life, if you want to be a winner instead of a loser, if you want to be a victor instead of a victim, change your beliefs.
It doesn’t get any simpler than this, but it also is very difficult because we are creatures of habit. It’s easier to stick with the devil you know than to take a leap of faith into the great unknown.
But the bottom line will not go away: if you are frustrated in any aspect of your life, they are linked to your beliefs. This is a straight link. This is a direct cause and effect relationship.
How Does Belief Operate in Your Life?
If you are wondering why belief is so important in your efforts at transforming your life, let me step you through the process. Look around you. Notice that there are all sorts of stimuli in the outside world that you can see, hear, taste, smell and touch. These are our five senses and, believe it or not, these stimuli are neutral.
Every single second, the world is sending us all sorts of stimuli. We’re just bombarded with these signals every single moment. Now, what makes them positive or negative boils down to our beliefs.
Our beliefs are like filters, and when we perceive a stimulus, whether it’s something that somebody said, something that we saw, or maybe something that we heard, we interpret these things and these interpretations are never emotionally neutral. We either feel empowered or feel discouraged and diminished and small. These emotional states that we find ourselves in, by seeming an accident, push us to certain physical actions and decisions.
Let me be clear, the world doesn’t care about your feelings. Seriously. How you feel, your intentions, motivations and everything else going inside your head mean absolutely nothing to the world.
But do you know what people sit up and pay attention to? They pay attention to the actions you take. Your decisions matter. And I hope you can see the connection between the stimuli and your beliefs and your physical actions.
If you are struggling to achieve happiness, fulfillment, contentment and other forms of success in your life, it is due to the fact that you are using the wrong beliefs as filters. You’re feeling stuck, frustrated, small, powerless and not in control precisely because you are using the wrong filters.
Let me be clear, the reason why you refuse to take full control of your life is that you are caught in a downward spiral. Again, you may not be aware of it, but its effects on your life and the quality of your decisions are all too real.
If you were to consciously change the direction of those spirals in your life, you would be able to achieve more. Here’s how it works: when you have a positive belief, the stimuli that you get from the world makes you feel like you have a choice. It makes you feel that you can take control of every single moment of your life and produce a more positive result.
When you are able to achieve that positive result, maybe you made somebody smile, maybe you did a good job at work, or maybe you impressed people during a job interview, you feel better about yourself. You feel more confident. You then are more likely to take such positive actions in the future.
The more you engage in such positive actions, the better you feel about yourself and the less likely you’re going to interpret stimuli in a negative way. In other words, you develop an upward spiral. The better you do, the better you feel, which leads to greater confidence and more positive beliefs, which leads to even more positive actions.
The reason why you’re struggling right now is that you’re caught up in the precise opposite of what I just described. You are stuck in a downward spiral. In other words, you do something bad or you perform substandard work, and people give you negative feedback.
You then perceive this feedback as a personal judgment. You feel like you’re worthless, you’re dumb, you’re ugly, you are not worthy of people’s respect, or any other negative interpretations. This corrodes your confidence and you are less likely to take action.
Even when you do take action, you are so doubtful about yourself and so shaky that you do a bad job. And the process repeats itself again. You keep getting the same feedback over and over that you start believing that it is true.
Ultimately, your definition of reality leaves you with the short end of the stick. You come up with conclusions like you don’t have the money, you’re too stupid, you don’t have the right education, your parents did not give you the right upbringing, and on and on it goes.
I’m sorry to be the one to report this to you, but you cannot eat excuses. You may have a well-crafted excuse as to why your life is powerless, small, weak and unhappy, but unfortunately, all the excuses in the world are not going to change your situation.
You’re just going to keep going down the drain, caught in that downward spiral.
And the worst part to all of this is you feel that, at some level or another, you deserve to be there because of the excuses you chose to believe about your situation. Your areas of frustration are due to the fact that you chose to be in that downward spiral.
I know, this sounds crazy because who in their right mind would want to be stuck in a downward spiral? But let me tell you, there are many abusive relationships out there. There are many husbands or boyfriends that beat the living crap out of their girlfriends physically and emotionally, but their partners refuse to leave. The same applies to your life.
Life may be slapping you around, pulling you by the hair, dragging you down, and you refuse to leave because that is the only reality you know. You feel that you are dirt. You feel that the only thing you’re capable of is failure, pain, and disappointment. You start believing that you are small and incapable of the great things in life.
But it’s all in your head. If you were to change that belief system and adopt new filters, you would be able to reverse the direction of that downward spiral.
Highlight Positive And Empowering Beliefs
Now, you may be thinking that you are a completely irredeemable and total loser. You might be thinking that there is absolutely no positive thing going on in your life. Well, you might want to think again.
If you are reading this guide and you live in the United States or Western Europe, please understand that a large chunk of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. Let that sink in for a second. Less than $2 a day, for twelve hours worth of work. These people have to feed their families for less than $2 a day.
Now, you’re probably feeling sorry for yourself. You’re probably thinking that the world is out to get you and all the best things that life has to offer has been taken. Well, you’re more than welcome to think that way, but the reality doesn’t match up with your perception because other people have it worse.
Chances are if you live in the United States, you’re making at least $7.50 an hour. That’s $60 a day. That’s $58 over the amount of millions upon millions of people are forced to live with every single day. I raise this fact with you because I want you to gain some perspective. I want to open the door for you to look at the things that are going right in your life.
Here’s another thing to think about. If you’re reading this guide, chances are, you did not get hit by a truck. Chances are, the earth did not split open due to an earthquake and you fell into the crack. Chances are, you’re breathing smoothly and your lungs and kidneys and everything are working as they should. Isn’t that something to be thankful for?
If you think that this is a small consolation, I want you to wrap your mind around the reality that this very second, there are people getting dialysis in the hospital. There are people waiting in line to get an organ transplant. Their days are numbered. Every breath they take is painful.
Thoughts about death and mortality haunt them every single second, and you choose to feel lousy? You choose to feel lost and oppressed? I’m sorry, but there are tons of blessings around you. In fact, your life is overflowing with blessings, you just refuse to recognize them.
I want you to look at the things that are going right in your life. Put more specifically, I want you to look at the beliefs that you have about the positive things in your life. For example, you believe that tomorrow you will have a home. You believe that you are a good singer. You believe that you know how to draw cartoons well or you know how to crack jokes. Whatever it may be, if it’s positive, I want you to focus on it.
Regardless of how small, trivial or insignificant, it may seem to you, the fact that its positive means it’s worth your attention. Focus on these. Again, my point here is to let you know that you already have empowering beliefs. These are the things going on in your life that provide flickers of possibility.
Now, you may think that your life is just this giant fog of negativity, disappointment, and discouragement, again, you’re welcome to think that way, but please do not ignore the things that are going right. You already have these. Everybody has these. Even a person who has only one leg or no limbs has something they can celebrate and they can tie that to an empowering belief.
I need you to take a break from this guide and look for the things going right in your life and trace them to an empowering or positive belief. You already have these. The fact that you refuse to see them doesn’t mean that they do not exist.
Let me bring it home: no life is totally devoid of positive or empowering beliefs. All of us have at least one positive belief we have about ourselves.
Two Ways to Find Your Empowering Beliefs
If you’re still having a tough time zeroing in on the positive or empowering beliefs you may have, focus on these two approaches.
First is the most obvious: you are already aware of it. They might not be top of mind, they might not even register all that powerfully, but you know that they are real. You know that you believe in these things. These are positive or empowering beliefs you are aware of.
If that doesn’t work, or if you feel that that is not applicable to you, try the next step. I’ve already brushed over this, but let me repeat it again. Find areas of your life you’re happy with and trace them to your beliefs.
For example, if you have a job, that can be traced to a belief. You believe you’re responding to a certain degree. You believe that you need to show up at that job and you need to show up on time. The fact that you have a job and haven’t been fired yet means there are positive beliefs upholding that job.
Find those beliefs. Become fully aware of these positive beliefs, regardless of whether you’re aware of them or you have to do some mental legwork. Have you spotted them? Good.
Highlight Them
Now that you’re fully aware of your positive beliefs, regardless of how few they may be or regardless of how weak they are, I need you to focus on them. Highlight them in your mind. Start picking them apart. What do you believe makes you feel capable, empowered or confident?
Again, let’s take the case of employment. The fact that you have a job can be traced to a positive belief. You believe that you are capable of doing the job. You believe that you have what it takes to go through the duties related to that job. These are good enough. You don’t necessarily have to have some sort of dramatic, gigantic, glaring positive belief. As long as they’re real, you can use them.
Pick these apart. What do you believe makes you feel capable? What do you assume about yourself that gives you the strength to show up to work day after day or take care of somebody in your relationships day after day?
When you look at yourself in the mirror, you obviously don’t recoil in disgust. It’s not like you look at yourself in the mirror and you start throwing up. There is some sort of belief there. Find that flicker of positivity. Be honest with yourself and look for the things that you are confident about.
Now, the next step is going to take a little work, admittedly, but it needs to be done. I need you to focus on these beliefs and start feeling good about them. Seriously. Start feeling good about the fact that you believe that you should show up at work on time. Start feeling good about the fact that you believe in yourself enough to do a decent job. At least it’s decent enough not to get fired, right?
Feel good about these. Again, we’re not talking about scale. We’re not talking about something overly dramatic or huge. As long as they’re real and they’re positive, feel good about them. Become fully aware of these beliefs about yourself.
Emphasize You’re Positive Beliefs
Now that you have found positive beliefs in your life and you have mentally highlighted them so their details are clear, you need to take one final step. The next step is to emphasize them. Make the top of mind. In fact, make it a point to say things about them.
For example, when you show up to work, you say to yourself, “I do a great job,” “I know what I’m doing,” “I am a skilled and experienced person,” “I am worthy.”
When you are thinking about your beliefs about your relationships, tell yourself, “I am worth loving, I am worth respecting, and I give people respect,” “I make people feel good, and they make me feel good.”
Whatever the situation may be, focus on the belief and the positivity it contains and turns them into affirmations. The great thing about affirmations is that you verbalize things that you are thinking. This enables you to keep them top of mind and to emotionally and mentally focus on them.
When you emotionally tune in to these realities, you are able to tap into the power of that belief. There’s less mental and emotional pollution between the filter of the belief that you choose and the stimuli of your outside world. This leads to a clearer cause and effect connection between what you perceive, what you choose to believe and how you feel and, ultimately, your actions.
By being as clear as possible about the connection between how you filter your reality and how you actually live your life, you can start choosing to live the life of a victor instead of a victim or a bystander.
Let me be clear, there are two types of people in this world. There are those who make things happen regardless of what other people say and regardless of what others are feeling about them, and those who constantly ask themselves and everyone else who cares to listen, “what happened with my life?”
I think I know which person you’d rather be.
Reform And Eliminate Limiting Beliefs
It’s one thing to focus on and fine-tunes positive beliefs, but let me be honest with you, this can only take you so far.
You have to understand that your total being has to operate at peak consistency for you to live a powerful life. In other words, for you to start to think and then automatically work so as to produce whatever it is that you imagine, it takes a remarkable amount of internal integrity and consistency.
Unfortunately, if you have limiting beliefs, they end up holding you back and dragging you down. They act as pollutants that get in the way of turning your ideas into a reality that you live out.
And these limiting beliefs can be quite addictive. Oftentimes, we inherit our limiting beliefs from our parents. In fact, we may have hung on to them for so long that we don’t challenge them. We believe that they are real. We believe that they are part of our lives when, in reality, they don’t have to be.
Also, limiting beliefs can be so ingrained in our personal realities that they’re at the same time everywhere and nowhere. They’re right in front of you, but you can’t see them. To reform and eliminate limiting beliefs, you must first find them.
Two Ways to Find Limiting Beliefs
There are two ways to identify limiting beliefs. First, you are already aware of them. Regardless of how faint your impressions maybe, you already have an idea that certain things that you choose to believe about yourself are not all that good.
Congratulations if you have this. Even if you have a hunch, you are definitely in a better place than others who are completely clueless.
The other way to find these is to find areas of your life that you’re unhappy with. Trace them to your beliefs. Do you think you’re ugly? Do you think you’re dumb? Do you think you’re broke and incapable of earning money? Do you think you’re always dependent on others who are stronger or more influential than you?
These are negative things, but they are not reality. Instead, what gives them the semblance of reality are the beliefs that they are founded on.
Start with areas of your life that you’re unhappy or frustrated with and trace these to certain beliefs. Regardless of how you do it, become fully aware of your negative beliefs.
I know this might seem embarrassing. You probably don’t want to go through this because, hey, nobody wants to feel small. Nobody wants to admit that they are wrong or they’re engaged in something negative. But if you want to live a happier life, you need to get your ego out of the way.
This is not a slam on you. This doesn’t make you a bad person. This doesn’t make you a defective person. Everybody suffers from this. But if you want to live a life of victory, you need to overcome by being a little bit more humble and admitting to yourself that you subscribe to certain negative beliefs that hold you down.
Understand Your Negative Beliefs
To truly understand your negative beliefs so you can start working to undermine them and achieve greater control over your life, you need to commit to a 4-Step process. You have to be both systematic and methodical about this because if you choose to attempt this based on your feelings, chances are, you probably will fail. Chances are, you probably would rather take the path of least resistance or simply give up.
Again, it all boils down to the ego. Most people don’t like to admit they’re wrong. Most people definitely feel uneasy and uncomfortable when they realize that there’s something wrong with them. Finally, what makes this really difficult is you no longer have the luxury of indulging in excuses.
The great thing about excuses is that they numb us from painful realizations. If you are poor, struggling, not too bright, not too attractive or whatever else you’re suffering from, it’s because you chose to be that way. I know, that’s an unwelcome conclusion, but that’s a reality. And when you go through this 4-Step process, you realize the power of your choice.
It can be quite disconcerting and troubling to a lot of people because we would like to believe that our reality chose us, not the other way around. This is why it’s so comforting to have all these excuses at our disposal.
Well, if you want to truly understand your negative beliefs, you have to let go of the emotional and psychological crutch of excuses. These have to be things of the past. Are you ready to take the 4 Steps? Let’s go.
Step #1: Be clear on your negative beliefs
At this point, you should have some level of clarity regarding the things that you believe about yourself that routinely hold you back. Now, you’re going to turn the spotlight on these negative beliefs and tightly define them.
What is it exactly that you believe about yourself? How does this hold you back? Is there an alternative reality? Is there an alternative reading to your situation? Ask these questions so you can tightly define the negative beliefs that constantly lead you to bad decisions and bad emotional states.
Step #2: Understand their triggers
As I’ve mentioned in a previous section, our beliefs are the filters that we use on reality. When we perceive stimuli from the rest of the world, our beliefs act like filters that unleash a chain reaction of emotional and mental states that lead us to bad decisions.
They cement us in that downward spiral that we can’t seem to break out of.
Understand that the first step to getting out of this sad situation is to be clear as to what triggers these beliefs. In the course of a day, note when you start thinking those negative beliefs. What external events have to happen? What do people have to say? What do people have to do? What other external event has to take place for you to start remembering these beliefs?
You have to understand that when triggers occur, your negative beliefs flash in a split second and you are caught in an almost automatic or instinctive course of emotional, verbal, mental and physical activity. Be aware of how quickly this all plays out so you can instantly “freeze” the trigger and dwell on it.
Step #3: Understand their effect on you
When you froze that moment in time where you got triggered, focus on the effect. What do you start thinking about yourself? What do you start thinking about your ability to perform, your capability, your skillset, as well as certain truths about who you think you are?
When you perceive that trigger, do you start, for example, thinking that you’re too stupid to understand or you don’t have the money or you are not worthy? Again, these flash into your mind in a split second. You have to really freeze these and slow them down.
Now, you may be thinking that these are just statements that flash into your mind. They’re not. They do have an effect on you. The program you to perform and feel a certain way. And ultimately, these depress your confidence levels.
Keep going back to the trigger and focus, in slow motion, on the effect it has on you. Keep tossing this around in your mind until you see the clear connection.
If you are frustrated with any part of your life, believe me, this is happening. It takes place over and over again, and the result is your life.
Step #4: Get a sense of urgency about conquering these beliefs
Now that you have gone through Steps 2 and 3 enough times, it should be clear to you that your negative beliefs’ effects should be clear enough to you. Once you see the connection between the things you choose to believe about yourself and their triggers as well as the results they produce, now is the time to take action.
You have to allow yourself to get a sense of urgency about conquering these beliefs. Be clear that you need to change. Be clear that you need to break out of this negative downward spiral. However, that sense of clarity must rise to the level of emotional urgency.
Make no mistake about it, all of us are capable of intellectual realizations, but these are not going to change your life. You can come up with all sorts of amazing insights, but until and unless you feel so pumped up about making certain changes based on these realizations, your life is not going to get any better. Focus on getting a sense of urgency about conquering these negative beliefs that hold you back and drag you down.
Conquer Your Negative Beliefs
comes the good stuff. In the previous steps, you have become clear as to certain beliefs that hold you back and prevent you from operating at peak performance levels. In this section, I’m going to step you through the process of getting out from under these negative beliefs.
Remember, your life is a product of your beliefs. Change your beliefs and you change your life. I know, that sounds so easy, but what makes it so hard is the fact that people do not use a systematic and methodical way of undermining their negative beliefs. Instead, they go with their feelings. They just “jump at the opportunity,” and they end up failing again and again.
If you want to conquer your negative beliefs and start living a life of possibility and victory, you need to follow the steps I’m going to share with you below. Stick to them. Follow them to the letter.
Step #1: Trace negative beliefs to memories or past situations
Let’s get one thing clear here, people will not believe certain things about themselves if they cannot trace it to some sort of memory or some sort of past situation. It’s not like somebody just told you that you’re stupid or you’re weak and incapable. It’s not like somebody told you that you’re going to die poor and powerless. These conclusions must have come from somewhere. That somewhere is traced to a series of events or certain memories.
Your job with Step #1 is quite simple: Find those memories. Find those situations.
Now, understand that there is such a thing as a false memory. These are events that we choose to believe happened, when, in reality, they did not happen as we remember them. How do we know and how do we deal with these? Check out Step #2.
Step #2: Are the facts behind your memories complete?
This is the most basic question you need to ask yourself because if you believe that you are afraid of taking risks because you got burned before, maybe the facts behind your recollection are incomplete. Maybe you jumped to the wrong conclusions. Maybe you assumed that certain things were there when they were not there.
You need to believe that you jumped to the wrong conclusion. Look for a missing piece. Look for a fact that you assumed was there, but it turns out that it wasn’t there at all. You need to zero in on this fact to diffuse the power of your negative belief.
For example, when you were growing up, your father may have called you an idiot once, but you hung on to this negative memory and assumed that you always thought that you were stupid, dumb, and will not amount to much.
Now, think back to the time when he called you an idiot. Was he talking about you or was he saying something instinctively? Was he reacting?
Do you see how this works? It turns out, oftentimes, that people who love you would say certain things out of place and out of character. In fact, you may have even jumped to the wrong conclusion because they may have been referring to something else. Whatever the case may be, believe this to diffuse and dilute your negative belief.
Stop assuming that certain things are present when, in reality, they may have been missing. For example, if you were in junior high school and this very pretty blonde girl that you’ve always liked turned around and, in your general direction, said you’re ugly or called you an ape. You may have carried this negative belief with you for the rest of your life. You may have even suffered from low self-esteem because of this.
What if it turned out that she wasn’t referring to you, but the guy behind you, or she was referring to something else? In other words, you jumped to the wrong conclusion. You did not realize that there were missing facts in that memory.
You have to examine the factual basis of your negative beliefs and ask yourself whether you’ve jumped to the wrong conclusions. Are you imagining things that were not there? Again, you have to believe this to diffuse or dilute your negative belief.
Step #3: If the facts are complete, did you exaggerate them?
Let’s assume that your father did call you an idiot and he was referring to you. Now, ask yourself, are you exaggerating things? Are you blowing things out of proportion? Was it really as bad as you imagined?
Now, it’s one thing for your dad to say, “you’re an idiot,” the same way he would call his friends or even himself an idiot or stupid if he or somebody else made a mistake. Now, does this mean that he thinks that you’re not going to amount to anything? Does this mean that he thinks that you’re borderline retarded?
Because you have to understand that those two lines of logic are very different from each other. People do say things that they shouldn’t say. It is true that when you’re around children, you have to be very careful about what you say because it’s like writing on wet cement.
And that may have happened with you. Your father or mother may have said something negative, but you blew it out of proportion. You made your life miserable because it became the central fact of your life. You may be living a life of defeat and misery because of that one time where your mother called you a bitch or you may have found yourself in a rough situation and had an abortion, but let me tell you, one mistake doesn’t define you.
Everybody’s capable of a bad day. You may have been laughed at by your class or you may have even been thrown in jail, but all of us are capable of that one bad day. Does it really make sense to define your life based on that one bad day?
These facts happened, but it’s up to us whether we’re going to exaggerate them and blow them out of proportion because the more we do this, the worse that memory becomes. The emotional cascade that it triggers gets worse and worse over time.
Stop exaggerating your failings in life because, believe me, all of us have failings. If you’re really honest with yourself, those bad memories are not really as bad as you imagined them to be. You have to believe all of this so as to diffuse and dilute your negative belief.
Yes, your mother or father called you an idiot, but it’s not what you think it is. It doesn’t justify you automatically concluding that you’re not going to amount to much in life or you’re completely and totally worthless.
Step #4: If the facts are complete, did you overreact?
Now, understand that there is a big difference between overreacting and exaggerating. I know, they may seem identical in certain situations. In fact, a lot of people think they’re one and the same. They’re not.
When you exaggerate a fact, you blow it out of proportion. When you overreact, you read into the fact all sorts of things you shouldn’t be reading into it.
Take control of your reaction right here, right now. Even if it’s true that your father called you an idiot, it doesn’t mean that you should overreact and assume that he thinks you’re worthless and, even worse, assume that you ARE worthless.
Stop overreacting. Take control of your reaction to these past events right here, right now. Because if you don’t, your negative beliefs will continue to erode your confidence. It will continue to eat away at you and you will be unable to live life in a way that ensures you perform at peak levels.
Step #5: Imagine If You Did Not Have These Limiting Beliefs
Regardless of whether you take Step 2, Step 3 or Step 4, focus on the negative impact of your limiting belief. Put in another way, imagine how much happier and powerful you would feel if you did not have these limiting beliefs.
Imagine all the things that you could have done with your life if you did not have to carry that heavy weight. Focus on your confidence levels. Realize that your level of confidence is due to what you choose to believe about yourself. Get that sense of urgency to do something—anything—to knock the facts out of your limiting beliefs.
You have to remember, these limiting beliefs get their power from the fact that you think they are real. You think that they are a reality. When you operate with a heightened sense of urgency, you will find a way to start picking at them.
If you can’t knock them out by going through the front door, you can try the side door. If that doesn’t work, go through the roof or the back. You can dig a tunnel. Whatever it is, do not give up because, with sustained effort, you would be able to pick apart these facts and come up with a view that enables you to neutralize the power of your negative beliefs.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you’re going to pretend that these did not happen. I’m not talking about self-delusion here. All it means is that you’re going to relegate these to the past and tightly define them in such a way that they no longer have a negative hold on you. They’re still important life lessons, but they do not have to define you.
Measure Your Success to Boost Your Motivation
Remember, what you focus on grows. That’s right. Where your focus goes, energy flows.
I don’t want to sound lyrical, but these two statements are absolutely correct. The fact that you feel small, powerless, unattractive and are convinced that you’re not going to amount to much in life, all flow from what you choose to focus on.
You’re focusing on your negative beliefs. They get bigger and bigger until, eventually, they “define” your reality. They are all you see. Everything that you perceive around you is filtered through these negative beliefs and you feel smaller, less powerful, less capable and less confident than you should.
It all boils down to this basic principle of what you focus on grows. Isn’t it time that you focus on positive things?
Stay Focused on Your Positive Beliefs
In Chapter 2, I helped you identify the positive things happening in your life. I also helped you trace these positive things to positive beliefs you have about yourself. Stay focused on these. What do they say about you? What do they say about your values, about your priorities and your character? Ultimately, what do they say about your purpose?
Again, this may feel like they’re small and almost insignificant. I really can’t blame you for thinking this way because you haven’t been focusing on them. They haven’t had the opportunity to grow and become top of mind, but they are still there.
Now, it’s your chance to focus on them so they get bigger and bigger. Kick around the questions I raised above. Keep asking them to yourself until the answers become clear.
Use Your Positive Beliefs as Your Personal North Star
Everybody has a North Star. Seriously. It’s as if we have this invisible compass that we carry around with us and it directs us to our life’s directions.
Be clear about your positive beliefs and constantly refer back to them. Keep them top of mind. Draw comfort from them. By focusing on them, they become bigger and bigger and it becomes easier for you to feel comfortable the moment you start thinking about them. Eventually, you would reach the point where you would be able to draw energy from them.
You might think that you’re a good singer. A lot of your friends might say you have a great voice. That’s good enough. Stop belittling yourself by saying, “what does my singing voice have to do with me being a good employee or a good leader or a good public speaker?” The fact that you believe enough positive things about yourself to be a good singer is good enough.
You are worthy. You are capable. Now, isn’t it time to focus so much on that positive belief that it spreads to all areas of your life? This is how you draw energy from your positive belief. This is how you turn it into your North Star.
Acknowledge the Fact that Your Positive Beliefs Produce Results
No matter how small your positive beliefs may be, and no matter how seemingly insignificant and meaningless they may appear to you, they do have positive results.
Going back to the singing example, when you sing a nice song and your friends smile at you or give you fist bumps or pat you on the back, feel good about that. Feel good that it produced a positive result.
You may be in a small space, there might not be too many people around, but the fact that you were able to make something positive happen is enough for you to feel good. You performed well in that specific situation, you can choose to perform well now. You performed well in the past, you can start to perform well now.
If this is clear to you, one key realization should sink in. It should become loud and clear to you that you are able to positively impact your reality. People send you positive feedback.
Again, it doesn’t matter what the activity is, the fact that you’re able to produce something positive is enough. Focus on the positive beliefs that enable you to do that. Grow them. Draw comfort from them. Get them to pump you up with energy.
Learn When To Scale Up
I don’t want to be a downer here, but let me tell you, all the intellectual and even emotional realizations in the world are not going to change your life unless you turn them into a habit. Until and unless you plug them into some sort of self-sustaining process, you’re probably going to end up where you began.
The key to higher levels of sustainable self-confidence involves plugging in the beliefs that underlie this confidence into some sort of feedback loop. Here’s how I do it:
Look back to some sort of great performance you did in the past. Maybe you sang well, maybe you showed up on time at the job, or maybe you produced such awesome work that your boss complimented you. Find something that you can objectively say was a great performance. Trace it to a positive belief. This should be fairly easy after you’ve done Chapter 4. Got it? Good.
Now, realize how confident you felt when that happened. I want you then to look back or remember that great performance so you can feel confident now. The logic here is that if you were able to perform things in the past that had such a positive impact, there is really nothing holding you back from doing the same thing now.
If that’s the case, you can think back to past great performances to feel good now. If you were able to do it back then, you can do it now. So draw that heightened level of confidence. Are you there? Good.
So you’re feeling pumped up, you’re feeling that you’re able to do a good job, you’re feeling that things are possible, you’re feeling that something positive is going to come about from all of what you’re about to do. The next step is to do it. That’s right. Just do it. Achieve something based on the high confidence level you’re feeling.
Again, this can apply across the board. It can be you doing a project at work, it can be you talking to a member of the opposite sex, or it could be you closing a sale. Whatever the case may be, you’ve achieved great performance in the past and you can draw confidence from that.
Apply that increased level of confidence to present action. If you’re really pumped and all your pistons are firing, you should be able to achieve something right here, right now.
When you achieve something positive because of the great confidence that you feel, you start creating a mental association between peak performance levels and your ability to trigger that confidence.
How are you able to get that surge of possibility and positivity? By remembering the past.
Keep doing this and you start creating a close mental association between performing well and feeling really good. Accordingly, when you just think back to performing well in the past, this is enough to feel confident in the here and now, which enables you to perform well again and again.
This is the Key to Confidence in Demand
If I haven’t been clear before, let me do it now. The key to unstoppable confidence is that it must come from within you.
You have to trigger it on demand. You can’t wait for people to say the right things. You can’t wait to wake up feeling good. You can’t assume that you will wake up on the right side of the bed. In other words, you cannot rely on external triggers.
When you do that, you’re back to square one. You’re simply reacting to whatever life throws your way. And that’s why you’re so miserable. That’s why you feel weak, powerless and incapable. Who wants that?
Instead, the system that I’m teaching you all boils down to internal triggers that you call on demand. This how you are able to feel confident about demand. It’s in you. You call the shots. You think about the right images, and this is enough to trigger you to perform well enough to do what’s needed to produce the right Compare this to how you normally do things. You rely on external triggers like people’s feedback, being in the right location, doing things at the right time or feeling the right feelings, which is usually based on external triggers. I’m telling you, those things may not be available. What happens to you then? Are you going to sit back and wait?
You have to have it “in you.” Trigger that confidence on demand.
Take control.
Infect Others with Your Sense of Possibility and Positivity
Being able to trigger confidence on demand is great and everything, but only your performance will be enhanced. Now, for a lot of people, this is good enough. A lot of people think that it’s all about individual achievement, and if they just work hard, they will go far in life.
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work that way. Hard work can only take you so far. I know that you’ve probably heard otherwise, but this is the absolute truth.
How many hard workers are out there? Believe it or not, there are a lot more than you care to realize. Hard work is not the issue. People get promoted based on their leadership skills. In other words, how can you inspire others to perform at a peak level?
You have to make sure that all the things that you’ve learned from the previous 5 Chapters must transcend yourself. I know that’s highfalutin talk, but there’s really no other way to say it. You have to move past yourself.
Your sense of positivity and possibility must project outwards. This is how you will achieve greater success. It’s one thing to be excellent individually, it’s another to inspire other people to take it up a notch.
How does this work? Well, the good news is, people are always looking for guidance. You probably have heard the old saying that people are sheep, well, there’s a lot of truth to that.
People are always looking for external triggers. Most people are reactive. When you stand out from the crowd by being internally powered, you become a ray of sunlight. You’re no longer a part of this flock of sheep plodding along, watching the clock and hoping the 8 hours are up. Instead, you’re the ray of sunlight.
You influence people to rise up to their fullest potential. You become a constant source of optimism. People can’t help but feel that things are possible and that things can change when you’re around.
Unfortunately, you would be only able to do this if you’re internally powered. You can’t be reactive. Eventually, you would be able to rally people to you.
Rally Others Too
When you are internally powered, you will be able to remain confident, even if people are laughing to your face. Even if people are calling you abnormal, crazy, weird, stupid or are constantly conspiring against you, you still rise above.
Why? Your power comes from within, not from them. It doesn’t come from outside. It doesn’t come from external validation. It doesn’t come from external circumstances.
And, believe it or not, people are drawn to this. They start looking at you as some sort of rock of confidence because they themselves are usually shaky and insecure. They would like to hang on to a rock that would remain firm despite whatever is going on.
Remember, people are sheep. And when they start rallying around you, a self-sustaining dynamic starts to take place. They see that you’re confident, so they start slowly becoming more confident as well.
When you see this, this pumps you up and they get inspired more and they become even more confident. Eventually, they start drawing their power from you. Not necessarily you, personally. Instead, they are empowered by what you represent.
This is how you become an organic leader. This is how you become a mover and shaker and enable people working as a group to achieve common goals. Eventually, you will get recognized and this will bolster your confidence even more.
At some point, it should become clear that the road in front of you is wide open. The only obstacles that are placed in front of you are the ones that you chose to put there.
Conclusion
Congratulations on making it to the end of this short, introductory guide on building confidence by unleashing the power of belief.
You may be surprised to know that the majority of people who start something never complete it.
Take your time and progress at your own pace. This is not a race. The more you understand and comprehend about changing your belief systems the better.
If you really want to succeed, then everything you do for your life must be with long-term planning in mind. These changes you’re making are not meant to be temporary. They’re meant to be part of a new lifestyle that you follow.
You can’t think of self-belief as simply as something that you add into your day once or twice a week. Positive belief systems must instead be something that your life is about all the time…and only then can you truly reap the benefits.
This guide contains very empowering truths on how to get out from under a life of negativity, limitations, and weakness. However, just like all other self-improvement articles out there, if you don’t choose to act on these ideas, nothing is going to change in your life.
While I appreciate the fact that you spent your time and read this guide, I would be happier if you actually implemented these steps. I’ve broken down these steps in the simplest and most basic levels possible. Everyone should be able to wrap their minds around these steps and implement them.
Start taking action on them. Stop giving in to the idea that you can “change tomorrow.” I’m telling you, tomorrow will never come.
When the sun rises tomorrow, you will realize that you have other obligations that are more pressing, and when you take care of them, you run out of time. Tomorrow becomes next week, next week becomes next month, next month becomes next year. If you keep doing this enough times, you would quickly realize that tomorrow is your last.
Live your best life right here, right now. Nobody can do it for you. Take action on the truths that I shared with you here, right here, right now. You will only thank yourself for it later.
I wish you nothing but the greatest happiness, success, and joy.
