Belief. Perhaps one of the most powerful forces in our lives is our belief system.
What do you believe? About yourself, about others, about the world around you? What we choose to believe will shape our today, our tomorrow, and our next year.
I believe this truth and yet I still get in my own way all the time by allowing my mind to focus on negative thoughts and negative beliefs about myself. Women, especially, seem to struggle with this issue. We know that we are healthier and happier when we focus on our strengths, when we forgive ourselves quickly for missteps, and when we give ourselves kind affirmations. We are stressed and unhappy when we focus solely on our weakness, when we beat ourselves up over every failure, and when we live on an inner dialogue of negativity and self-loathing.
For years, I have wanted to believe that I am strong, capable, hardworking, smart, reliable, and creative. Somewhere in my inner depths, I do believe those qualities could describe the best version of me. But most of the time, I have the strong suspicion that I am weak, unfocused, lazy, fickle, and wholly, completely average. That suspicion took hold many years ago and has actually become my image of myself–it is the version I see when I look at myself.
When we live with a belief system based on the assumption that our worst characteristics are our strongest and most enduring, that is exactly what they become. I have lived up to my expectations of myself as being all of those things. When we believe we have nothing better to offer, we don’t try to offer anything better. We don’t strive for greatness, but rather, we huddle in a quiet corner hoping not to be noticed as we shuffle through a life of mediocrity.
It sounds corny to say that I am going to strive to be the best I can be, but that is exactly what I want to do. I don’t want to live a life where I believe I am only mediocre (at best), which is the belief I have embraced my whole life.
From now on, I choose to believe that I am strong, capable, hardworking, smart, reliable, and creative. I choose to believe that I am friendly, steady, giving, and positive.
Beyond choosing those beliefs though, I choose to put those beliefs into practice. I think it is important to note a distinction between wanting something and choosing to take steps to make those desire become realities. I recognize that desiring to be a certain type of person won’t make me that person, but I whole-heartedly believe that practicing those attributes which I most desire to obtain WILL help me become that person.
Thus, if I want to be hardworking, I will work hard. If I want to be creative, I will make time to practice creativity. If I want to become smart, I will spend my time learning. And if I want to become reliable, I will commit only to things that I believe are worth my time and then I will follow through on those commitments.
All these years, I’ve had it backwards. I wanted the results of these attributes without the practice. I took piano lesson from six years old until I was seventeen. I practiced between thirty minutes and an hour every day (my teacher even had a practice chart on which she made me record my practice time and had my mother sign it each week) and I became a very proficient pianist. I would never have become any good if I had not practiced, and it is no different with developing into the person I want to become. It does not happen overnight, and while I certainly wish I had understood this concept years ago, I can apply the same principle to my life today. And so can you.
I encourage you to take a look at your beliefs, especially your beliefs about yourself. If you feel like you aren’t making progress in your life, ask yourself if you need to reshape your beliefs about yourself. This is not about becoming rich or becoming the next Oprah because we all have different goals for our lives. But it is about learning to appreciate ourselves and striving for the best version of ourselves.
It is my goal to choose new ways to see myself and then practice my way into those new beliefs.
