I enjoy reading books on motivation, habit formation, positive psychology and the like. Self help. I suppose I always felt a touch self conscience about my love for this genre of books but there it is just the same. Over the years I choose to shift the way I look at why I love these types of books. Before, I think I subconsciously felt that something was wrong with me and that I needed to find a way to fix myself. The funny thing is, nothing changed in my life even though I read many good books (and some bad ones, too) in the self-help genre.
The two main reasons for this were that, one, I lacked the belief that I could change myself, and two, I didn’t actively try to make any changes.
I was missing some of the most important ingredients in the ability to move forward and create success in life. Belief and action go hand in hand, but if you don’t have both of these factors working in your life, you aren’t going to get as far as you want. If you take action but don’t believe you can accomplish your goals, you will eventually stop taking action. If you believe you can accomplish your goals but you don’t take action to achieve them, well, the point is moot, isn’t it?
I think a lot of women struggle with belief. We want to believe in ourselves but we struggle, some certainly more than others.
Whatever your dream is, whatever your goals are, you have to believe that you deserve to accomplish them. I used to spend a lot of time delving into my psyche and trying to understand why I didn’t believe I deserved amazing things in my life.
I sometimes go back to my childhood and young adulthood and try to unpack my family dynamics, my circle of friends, my changing environments, and even certain specific experiences to figure out if something triggered this lack of confidence in myself. And while I do think that some reflection on the past can certainly shed light on the way we behave today, I have realized that spending too much time in the past usually has the opposite effect to the one we want: it keeps us stuck.
Instead, I now try to focus on telling myself why I do deserve good things in my life. Most importantly, I focus on working to become the best version of myself, the kind of person I know is deserving of good things. The belief that I have the ability to choose who I want to be makes all the difference. Taking ownership of myself has led to the ability to believe in myself and my potential.
Ultimately, it isn’t about what happened in my past or who I chose to be back then. It is about making a conscience decision about who I want to be today and every day.
