“All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.”
– L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz –
Today I woke up and needed to give myself a pep talk (something that happens from time to time). After all, we all need a good pep talk every now and then.
I have set myself a few goals recently that I am currently working towards, and every now and then I get a little worried or scared that I might not achieve them. The same thing happened a lot last year when I was pursuing my goal of gaining sponsorship status for my company, so I could sponsor myself and get a visa to stay in Australia. It’s a long (and very awesome story) and you can read the whole thing on my About Me page.
The fact is, sometimes when we want to achieve something more than ever, and its something that is really important to us and we would absolutely love to achieve it, we allow the little voice in our head to plant the seed of doubt. And this voice, if we allow it, can sometimes get louder and louder the more attention we give to it. This is not cool, because if we’re not careful, we actually end up sabotaging the thing that we’re trying to achieve, because we’ve convinced ourselves that we can’t actually achieve it, despite that we set the goal in the first place. So it can become one big paradox.
I watched a really great TED talk this morning called ‘The Skill of Self Confidence’ on this exact subject by Dr Ivan Joseph. He talks about how important it is to believe in yourself, especially when perhaps no one else will. And he also gives some helpful hints and tips of things you can do to build your self-confidence.
My favourite piece of advice that he gives is to write a self-confidence letter to yourself – I LOVE this idea, and I’m going to write one today. He says that when you’re feeling particularly good about something you have done, write a letter congratulating yourself on all of the awesome things you have achieved in your life, and pull it out whenever you need a pick me up. I used to do this with my Linked In profile when I was feeling particularly rubbish at work, or if someone had criticised me. I would read all of the beautiful recommendations that people have made about me throughout my career and focus my energies on all of the good things about myself.
Another thing that I have in my life, that gets me through the tough times is a positive motto or mantra. My motto is ‘Onwards and Upwards‘. Whenever things get a little too tough, I do whatever I need to do to improve or fix the situation I’m in, get over it as quickly as possible and move onwards and upwards. I even have a Pinterest board that I go to for inspiration if I’m having a particularly tricky day.
We came up with an awesome motto for the festival that I’m working on at the moment yesterday, which is ‘Keep bouncing‘. We were talking about how if you’re at a gig moshing, or on a trampoline or bouncy castle it’s impossible not to feel happy or have fun when you’re bouncing. And more importantly, you can’t continue to have fun, without keeping bouncing. It’s the same approach to life that Tigger has too.
And I’ll leave you with a beautiful quote from J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan which brings this post back to the importance of believing in yourself:
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
Have a fantastically positive day, brimming with self belief and confidence. x x x
Inspiration for this post
Dr Ivan Joseph’s TED talk – The Skill of Self Confidence
Kat Kinnie's Blog 