Today, I considered starting with a song, I began singing while writing,

“Just a small town girl,
Livin’ in a lonely woooo-rrld,
She took the midnight train
Goin’ anywhere….”

I got wrapped up in the whole thing, played the YouTube clip to myself a few times, got unnecessarily pumped up, went and hugged my kids before they left for pre-school, told my wife how much I love her, did a couple of air punches, whooped a bit and then returned to and sat back down in my office to write about how we can all ensure we don’t stop believin’ in ourselves.

The internet is awash with impressive folk who have something to say on this;

“Some people say I have attitude – maybe I do… but I think you have to. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does – that makes you a winner right there.” – Venus Williams

To be a champ you have to believe in yourself when no one else will.” – Sugar Ray Robinson

You know, you do need mentors, but in the end, you really just need to believe in yourself.” – Diana Ross

You can have all the tools in the world but if you don’t genuinely believe in yourself, it’s useless.” – Ken Jeong

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” – Norman Vincent Peale

Turning dreams into reality requires effort on the part of most of us. To start the process, however, you have to believe in yourself and your abilities to actually do it.


For example, when a client comes to see me for hypnotherapy to overcome an issue or employ me as a coach to make some major shifts upwards in life, they need to believe that their desired outcomes are possible. Any student of my college has to believe they are capable of qualifying to fulfil their dream of becoming a high quality hypnotherapist too. If there is ever a deficit of such self-belief, there are certain ways I help them to develop it and build it.

In general terms for us all, the world we are living in can be highly competitive and challenging, so having belief in yourself builds powerful foundations. Though every day, even the most successful have doubts about themselves that require some tonic at regular times. If you don’t believe you’re going to succeed, then it is tough for anybody else to believe in you… Except your Mum, she’ll always believe in you, often blindly… bless Mums!


Some might say that to believe in yourself is key to any successful endeavour in your life. Here are a handful of ways to help you advance and enhance the belief you have in you…

1. Control Negative Influences:

Being negative and thinking the worst about oneself is the easiest way to dent self-belief. Therefore, choose to be discerning about what you allow into your mind and what influences it. The toughest time to convince ourselves that “I can do it” is when we have a negative mindset.

Therefore consider if you have any overly negative people that play a major role in your life, choose to limit your time with them or cut them out altogether. Having a positive attitude enables you to achieve belief and confidence in yourself. Be thankful for whatever you are and whatever you have, accept yourself and then look to develop and build. I am not suggesting that you just be indiscriminately positive all the time, this is unrealistic on a number of levels, but when you choose to think positively in general, it is easier to think positively about you.

According to research published by Fredrickson, a positive psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina, negative thinking and negative emotions prevent your brain from seeing the other choices and options that surround you. It’s like your survival instinct kicks in a blinds you to much about who and how you are. In contrast, positive emotions broaden your sense of possibility and open your mind up to more options. Including how you perceive yourself.

By tackling any sabotaging messages, influences, thoughts and behaviours, you can put yourself on a path toward greater satisfaction and fulfilment.

2. Communicate Effectively To Yourself and Your Loved Ones:

You are the person ultimately responsible for creating who you are and who you will become. It’s really important that you talk to yourself effectively and motivate yourself. You don’t ultimately need others’ approval. You deserve your own self-approval and supportive self-talk. Your support network starts there.

As you examine your own extended support network from there, know that how you communicate with others have a direct influence upon you and your own self-belief too. Give away how you’d like to become. That is, communicate with your close friends and family in a way that enhances their self-belief and it’ll work wonders on you too.

Encourage those people, support them, serve them by boosting their self-belief and it’ll do the same for you. Strengthen others’ belief in themselves and you’ll strengthen your belief in yourself.

Self-esteem is described as a confidence in one’s own worth or abilities and pertains to a personal appraisal of ourselves. Therefore, make someone’s day a bit better. Nothing improves self-esteem and self-respect more than realising that you’ve helped someone, especially if you made their day better by boosting their self-belief.

3. Recall Your Victories and Develop The Ability To Believe:

To strengthen your belief, you have to strengthen your skill of believing. Always be a learner, even the highest achievers remain lifelong students of life. Remind yourself of past successes and victories and use them as resources for building your self-belief. Remind yourself of former challenges you overcame, difficult situations in your life that you found your way around.

Actively seek new challenges, stimulation and information. Embrace and relish challenges and problems. The more you do, the more self-belief and confidence will come naturally.

4. Give Yourself A Break:

Do forgive yourself for any mistakes that you have made in the past and allow yourself to move on. Though you cannot change something that has already happened, you can change the way you allow it to effect you and your life. All you can do now is accept your actions and see them not as reflections of who you are, but as representations of what you might need to learn, or changes you have effectively made.

Learn to be compassionate towards yourself. Research supports the claim that self-compassion drives us to take more responsibility for our actions. So, we can see ourselves more clearly and do what’s needed to make things better.

Be strong and keep moving on making progress forwards. It is senseless to continue flogging yourself, go easy on yourself, heal, learn, develop and move forward.

5. Train Your Body and Mind:

Health has a great effect on your self-confidence and belief in yourself. When you take care of your health, you naturally increase energy and can apply that zest and vigour when tackling challenges and improving your self-confidence.

Eat well, engage in physical activity, take the time to enjoy nature and breath fresh air. Such things bring about wellness from which self-belief thrives.

Once you have the attitude that you’re worth the effort, you’ll find it easier to start taking care of you too. On a very basic level, physical fitness can boost self-esteem and improve positive self-image.

Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Ratey, author of the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (among other books) suggests that “Exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of mood, memory, and learning.

Remember that your body is the vehicle, and you are a treasure. Oh yes you are. You are unique, precious, a real one-of-a-kind. Learn that truth for yourself. You are worth it! (Enjoy that little pep talk?)

Everything is easier, and the world is a better place when you believe in yourself. Play the below video clip while repeatedly reminding yourself that you believe “Hallelujah, I believe!” I love this song, and the cast of Glee do a very good edition (these guys are a guilty pleasure of mine – do go and google their performance on UK’s X-Factor of this song from a few years ago too, it is another 6 minutes of joy, well invested time in my book).

The very evidence-based notion of self-efficacy is such that when we believe we are capable of doing something, we actually advance our competence in that regard. I have written about how to directly raise self-efficacy here. However, if you work on your self-belief, if you learn to believe in you, you’ll build self-efficacy as a natural bi-product and you’ll naturally become better at doing things that will help you achieve more.

Learn more about advancing self-belief:
Ways to Advance Self-Belief

Learn more about self-efficacy:
Self-Efficacy Advances Self-Hypnosis

If you’d like to learn more or if this has resonated with you in some way, then visit these pages:

1. Has self-doubt held you back and is it still doing so now? Do you need to believe in yourself more?
Coaching with Adam Eason Or Hypnotherapy with Adam Eason
2. Would you like a satisfying and meaningful career as a hypnotherapist helping others overcome self-doubt and believe in themselves more?
Adam Eason’s Anglo European training college.
3. Are you a hypnotherapist for whom self-doubt is negatively effecting the success of your business? DO you need more self-believe to fulfil your career ambitions?
Hypnotherapist Mentoring with Adam Eason.

Go for it!

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