10 things that help me believe in myself.

One of the neat things I've learned in the past six months is that if you 'put yourself out there', you inevitably get a response.

I first experienced this when I wrote and delivered the speech Can We All Have a 4-hour Work Week.  I had been trying to make the ideas from Tim Ferris' 4 hour work week come to reality, but most of my efforts had been locked in my head... I had thought a lot, but done little.


After I gave the speech, however, a fellow Toastmaster Matt Zinkus approached me and said that he wanted to implement his ideas and wanted work with me to bring our concepts to reality.  And since that first meeting, we have formed a Dream Team, and begun working together to bring our ideas to reality.

More recently, I've experienced this by the writing of the article: What if I don't believe in myself?

I wrote this because I was frustrated with not seeing any progress with my ideas.  And it turns out that this has been the most popular article on my fledgling blog.

I've been thinking, what can I do to help out those of you who are like me, who are struggling to establish that core need: belief in self?  Here are a Ten Things that are helping me right now and may help you as well.

1. Talk with a professional -- either a counselor, therapist, or life coach.
2. Talk with truly supportive friends/family/people -- I mean, the ones that actually listen to what you say, and don't shoot down your ideas, even if they sound 'stupid'.
3. Listen to motivational speakers -- Zig Ziglarand Anthony Robbins are my favorites so far.
4. Read inspirational books -- I love the The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth.
5. Watch inspirational movies -- I like In Pursuit of Happiness; or any video on www.ted.com or www.wimp.com
6. Join a positive, supportive environment such as Toastmasters.
7. Learn to track your successes and acknowledge yourself for your achievements -- as much or more than you would punish yourself for your 'failures'.
8. Set achievable goals.  Sometimes we want great success, so we set huge goals, but they're too big for us at the moment.  The key, I've learned, to succeeding is to build momentum -- you can do this by achieving lots of small goals.
9. Volunteer with an organization that is doing something you are passionate about.  Preferably, do something there that YOU are passionate about vs something that you are good at that but don't really like doing.
10. Spend 1 hour, three times a week, with people you like.

And number 11:  Work on figuring out who you 'be'... who you are.  So often we are in a 'doing' mode -- we try to do a lot of things to get success.  But if you're anything like me, you probably do a lot of things that just don't benefit you that much.  You can do things that benefit you more by understanding who you 'are'.  This is a much more complicated process, and would best be achieved by working with a professional.. a coach or a therapist.  But I'm sure there are plenty of self-help techniques/books you can read to support you on this path too.

Often we overlook our own techniques and methods -- so ask yourself, when you DO believe in yourself, what do you do?  What are you thinking?  What things did you do beforehand?  Do you have any habits that promote your belief in your self?  For example, do you exercise regularly?

Read more about setting goals....
Also consider watching my videos here: Coaching, Counseling, Depression, Anxiety

~Dave Brown, April 24, 2011