We read so much about self-belief – that truly believing you can do something is one of the keys to achieving success. You can do anything if you believe you can…
Napoleon Hill, guru of self-development and personal development reinforces this when he says in his famous book Think & Grow Rich: “You can do it, if you believe you can.”
OK, but how do you develop that level self-belief? How can you literally …always believe you can? Here are 3 ways I think we can build our own self-belief.
One: Have a growth mindset
That means having a positive and open approach to the world and being a life-long learner. It means being open to learning lessons from things that happen to us, like challenges, victories, and setbacks.
But it’s more than that, it’s also being committed to learning something new every day – constantly learning and understanding that if you don’t know something, you can always go out, research it, and learn about it.
That way you build knowledge, skills and abilities that boost your self-confidence and increase your self-belief.
Two: Get clear on your purpose
Knowing your purpose sets you up for clarity and direction in your life, as well as in your career, or in your business. Being clear on ‘why you exist’ and ‘why you do what you do’ and, ‘who you want to impact and how’ is the first step in uncovering/rediscovering your passions, creating a compelling vision and a true calling or direction for the future.
When you’re clear on purpose, vision and direction, it helps you find a way. You will uncover solutions or think of new ideas, and that will build your confidence and self-belief as you start to see results. They say success builds success, could it be that success builds self-belief, and that then builds more success?
Three: Know your strengths
Knowing our strengths and playing to those strengths is vital. Strengths are a combination of skills, talents, and experience. I love the CliftonStrengths™ Finder because it helps to uncover our top 5 strengths by exploring the talents or abilities that we innately possess, that we can then focus on and develop into real strongpoints by adding knowledge and experience.
Knowing my own top 5 strengths (buy the book/do the test) has been truly empowering and affirming for me. In so many ways it’s helped me believe I can …in areas like strategy and writing, for example.
In summary, be open-minded and curious – remember you can always learn about it. Get clear on purpose and direction. Finally, know your strengths, boost your confidence and the start believing you can!
(Originally published on LinkedIn 2 April 2020)
