Self-belief is the basis of how our lives turn out. Our beliefs are in turn the product of our conditioning since childhood. Yes, we will face challenges, hardships and difficulties, that's just life. However, it is our self-belief that will influence our choices and responses to those challenging situations and in turn how our lives ultimately turn out. Our self-beliefs impact us in three significant ways. These are:
⤠Our Thoughts and Emotions
⤠Our Performance
⤠Our Achievements
The first thing that our beliefs affect is our thoughts. What we believe has a direct impact on how and what we think about and consequently, how emotions (or how we feel about things). Healthy self-belief allows us to approach life and challenges in a healthy and confident manner. On the other hand, when our self-beliefs are unhealthy or limiting, we tend to perceive life to be more difficult and challenging than it actually is - reason being that our focus shifts from our potential to the problem and by implication, the problem appears far greater than our potential to overcome it. This unhealthy self-belief often manifests in the form of stress, anxiety and often depression as we become at a loss as to how to overcome our problems.
Secondly, our thoughts have a direct effect on our performance. The relationship between beliefs and our thoughts also create a €self-fulfilling€ prophecy effect, where we get the results we expect to get and so subconsciously, we perform in accordance with our expectations. Where our expectations are high, our performance and efforts will be correspondingly high and where we have low or negative expectations, our performance will be aligned as such. To illustrate, where a person has healthy self-belief and self-confidence, they generally expect things to turn out all right eventually and a result, they tend to persevere, be resilient and apply themselves, until they achieve their expected result - thus further increasing their self-belief. On the other hand, those with unhealthy self-beliefs, generally have a negative view of their abilities, circumstances and others. They also generally expect things to turn out bad; consequently, they tend to give up all too easily at the first sign of problems or challenges. This action of giving up at the first sign of trouble or justifying giving up only further serves to reinforce their beliefs that they don't have what it takes to succeed, life is hard and everything is against them. Furthermore, after experiencing a setback, people with healthy self-beliefs generally do three things:
⤠They objectively evaluate their circumstances and instead of making excuses for themselves, can generally pinpoint the cause of their setback as being inadequate effort on their part or the lack of the prerequisite skills to achieve their goals.
⤠Following this objective evaluation, they decide to apply more effort or gain additional knowledge or skills to better equip them to achieve their goals.
⤠They bounce back much quicker from a setback because their focus is far less on the temporary failure and much more on the solution and the ultimate goal.
Finally, the extent of our achievements is largely determined by our self-beliefs. Our self-beliefs don't just influence the size of our dreams or what we believe to be possible or impossible; but in addition, our self-beliefs directly impact every choice we make and the courses of action we choose to take in relation to our dreams, life's challenges and ultimately our accomplishments. There is also a €reverse effect€ that between our accomplishments and our self-beliefs - this that, human beings have little incentive to take the necessary actions and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve their goals, UNLESS, they believe that their goals can be achieved in the first place. Action taken towards any goal that lacks strong self-belief, will almost always be weak, inconsistent and produce poor results.
⤠Our Thoughts and Emotions
⤠Our Performance
⤠Our Achievements
The first thing that our beliefs affect is our thoughts. What we believe has a direct impact on how and what we think about and consequently, how emotions (or how we feel about things). Healthy self-belief allows us to approach life and challenges in a healthy and confident manner. On the other hand, when our self-beliefs are unhealthy or limiting, we tend to perceive life to be more difficult and challenging than it actually is - reason being that our focus shifts from our potential to the problem and by implication, the problem appears far greater than our potential to overcome it. This unhealthy self-belief often manifests in the form of stress, anxiety and often depression as we become at a loss as to how to overcome our problems.
Secondly, our thoughts have a direct effect on our performance. The relationship between beliefs and our thoughts also create a €self-fulfilling€ prophecy effect, where we get the results we expect to get and so subconsciously, we perform in accordance with our expectations. Where our expectations are high, our performance and efforts will be correspondingly high and where we have low or negative expectations, our performance will be aligned as such. To illustrate, where a person has healthy self-belief and self-confidence, they generally expect things to turn out all right eventually and a result, they tend to persevere, be resilient and apply themselves, until they achieve their expected result - thus further increasing their self-belief. On the other hand, those with unhealthy self-beliefs, generally have a negative view of their abilities, circumstances and others. They also generally expect things to turn out bad; consequently, they tend to give up all too easily at the first sign of problems or challenges. This action of giving up at the first sign of trouble or justifying giving up only further serves to reinforce their beliefs that they don't have what it takes to succeed, life is hard and everything is against them. Furthermore, after experiencing a setback, people with healthy self-beliefs generally do three things:
⤠They objectively evaluate their circumstances and instead of making excuses for themselves, can generally pinpoint the cause of their setback as being inadequate effort on their part or the lack of the prerequisite skills to achieve their goals.
⤠Following this objective evaluation, they decide to apply more effort or gain additional knowledge or skills to better equip them to achieve their goals.
⤠They bounce back much quicker from a setback because their focus is far less on the temporary failure and much more on the solution and the ultimate goal.
Finally, the extent of our achievements is largely determined by our self-beliefs. Our self-beliefs don't just influence the size of our dreams or what we believe to be possible or impossible; but in addition, our self-beliefs directly impact every choice we make and the courses of action we choose to take in relation to our dreams, life's challenges and ultimately our accomplishments. There is also a €reverse effect€ that between our accomplishments and our self-beliefs - this that, human beings have little incentive to take the necessary actions and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve their goals, UNLESS, they believe that their goals can be achieved in the first place. Action taken towards any goal that lacks strong self-belief, will almost always be weak, inconsistent and produce poor results.
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