Building Self Confidence By Crushing Self Limiting Beliefs And Launching Into Action

• Peter Pan

The negative labels that others hurl at us can certainly weigh us down, but only when be believe them to be true.

What does your own voice tell you? Are you giving the haters' words power over you?

Do any of these sound familiar?

"LOSER!"

"STUPID!"

"UGLY!"

"WORTHLESS!"

"YOU CAN'T!"

So often, we think that it is other people's negative opinions about us that hold us back and keep us from accomplishing great things.

It's definitely hard when others make us feel inadequate. Words can hurt. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" is a myth; the truth is that words can definitely hurt us.

But the main point of "sticks and stones" is definitely true. Someone might beat you with actual sticks and stones -- and they will hurt you, regardless of your attitude -- but words can only hurt us if we let them.

The key, then, is to not let them.

So let's take full responsibility here and not sit back and blame the haters. No, it's not fair. Yes, they suck. But if we want to break free of their power over us, then we need to wrestle that power back away from them!

By caring about what they think, we've given them the power to lift us up or bring us down. Nobody should have that power except you, so take it back!

Resolve today to say, "Bullshit!" to those who tell you that you can't. "Bullshit!" to those who tell you that you're not good enough, or smart enough, or strong enough, or pretty enough, or talented enough. And "Bullshit!" to that little voice in the back of your own mind that keeps whispering in your ear..."You can't."

Don't believe it.

You can...and you will.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

• Eleanor Roosevelt

"Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy."

• Norman Vincent Peale

“I have great faith in fools: 'self-confidence,' my friends will call it.”

• Edgar Allen Poe

“Why should I care what other people think of me? I am who I am and who I wanna be.”

• Avril Lavigne

“You have within you, right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.”

• Brian Tracy

Pessimism, cynicism, self-doubt and self-limiting beliefs are all basically just negative thinking, in some form or other. Those negative thoughts might have their origin in real-life outcomes from your past, but when it comes to your failures, the truth is nowhere near as impressive as the lie.

Your past failures are not predictors of your future results. Can you imagine a baby giving up on trying to walk...because he keeps falling down? How ridiculous! They are just attempts that failed. Failure is not really a big deal. It's not permanent, and it doesn't prove anything.

Everybody fails. Everyone falls short.

The only people who never fail are the ones who never try.

"Your self-worth is determined by you. You don’t have to depend on someone telling you who you are."

• Beyonce

“If my mind can conceive it, my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it!"

• Jesse Jackson

"People will stare. Make it worth their while."

• Harry Winston

"If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome."

• Michael Jordan

"The path to success is to take massive, determined action."

• Tony Robbins

Your actions -- and the beliefs that drive them -- are the keys to changing your life. Dreaming about it and thinking about it and planning it all out are helpful exercises -- necessary, even -- but nothing happens until you take action.

Nothing changes until you make it change.

Whether your goal is to earn more money at your job, build your own business, improve your marriage or lose weight -- the solution is the same.

The solution is you.

This is your life. You are responsible. Nobody is coming to the rescue. Nobody will do the hard work for you. Nobody else is going to make this happen. It's all on you.

You have to take action today to achieve your goals. Then you have to take action tomorrow. Then you have to take additional action the next day, and the next day, and the day after that.

At what point are you planning on quitting? If you answered anything except, "Never," then you're going to have a hard time becoming successful. It takes continuous action on a massive scale to accomplish anything meaningful in life.

This will not be easy.

You cannot quit. If you know where you want to go in life, and you know what you have to do to get there, then it just becomes a matter of continuously putting one foot in front of the other in order to reach that destination. You don't stop.

Let the haters ridicule you. Let them tell you you can't make it. And adjust your path of travel from time to time if you must, but don't just stop.

1. ACHIEVE CLARITY -- Start by taking the time to really thing through your goals and determine what it is that you want to be, have or do in your life, to determine what is really important to you. You must be absolutely clear on what your goals are, if you are ever going to make real progress.

Sometimes we think we know what we want, but in reality we are really just chasing goals that someone else has chosen for us.

What do you want?

2. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF -- True, permanent self-confidence must be based on real-world success. You have to give yourself a reason to feel confident, and this will only happen when you can point to specific victories in your life. Some of those victories are in your near future, but for now you'll need to look back (possibly way back) to find a solid foothold to push off from.

Think back to things you've accomplished in your life that you're proud of. These past wins, no matter how small, will act as footholds you can fall back on...like anchors to keep your own self-doubts from throwing you off course and to remind you that success is not impossible for you.

Ignore the voices that tell you that you won't succeed. Let them be grumpy and cynical. Let them hate. Love yourself and believe in yourself, then follow up that self-belief with action.

3. MAKE A PLAN -- Once you are clear about your goals and values, then it's time to think through and plan out the long process that will get you there. You can't foresee every obstacle that will arise or know every single thing you will have to do -- and sometimes it can be good to be flexible and not plan out every little detail -- but with some thought and research, you will be able to identify the key objectives along the way that you simply must accomplish to reach your goal.

This is where you plan it all out. Make a list of every single objective you can think of that you know you will have to reach to achieve your goal. What will you have to do first? What will you have to do second? Third?

Another way to do this is to practice what author and life coach Brian Tracy calls "Back From The Future" thinking. With this method, you imagine your life a few years in the future, where you have achieved all your major goals and your life is perfectly awesome. Then, starting from that point, retrace the steps you took to get there. Work your way "back from the future" to see all the things you did, all the way back to the present moment.

That path is your roadmap to success.

4. DAILY ACTION -- Now that you have a plan mapped out, it's time to take action. Start today. Don't wait til tomorrow. Don't take the first step tomorrow (you're supposed to take the 2nd step tomorrow). Take the first step today!

Resolve to take action every single day. This commitment to daily action will move you forward at an incredible rate, if you keep it up consistently for weeks and months on end.

5. MASSIVE ACTION -- Consistent, daily action is good, but you know what's even better? MASSIVE action! What is massive action? Well, it's kind of self-explanatory, but the idea is to really shake off the self-limiting beliefs you've been shackled in and launch forward with an energy and passion that you once thought impossible.

If success was guaranteed -- GUARANTEED -- what would you set out to do? And if you had all the skills, training, knowledge, and resources needed to be the very best in the world -- THE BEST -- what kinds of actions would you take?

Massive action (massive in both quantity and quality) is needed to be truly great at anything. So throw off the self-doubts and boundaries that contained your imagination when you first started reading this section...when I first asked you, "What do you want?" Whatever your answer was a minute ago, it was too small, and it only required a reasonable amount of action.

Now I'm asking you, what do you REALLY want? If there were no limits to what you could accomplish...what would you really want to achieve in your life?

You can have it, but you must pay the price. Massive success in life -- however you measure success -- requires massive action. So decide what you want, determine what price you need to pay to have that, and then get busy paying that price every single day.