Are you ready to believe in you?

Don’t lose who you are, in the blur of the stars 

Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing, 

It’s okay not to be okay…

— Who You Are (Jessie J) 

Life. The school of hard knocks. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you end up in the depths of despair. 

It’s difficult not to let things get to you and slowly you start to lose not only a sense of who you are, but also completely lose faith in yourself.  

In this social media era of ‘fake-ness’ it’s even easier to spiral downwards as you scroll through pictures of supposed perfect lives, perfect bodies, perfect everything and start to believe that you are not good enough, your life isn’t good enough and that something is wrong with you. 

How can everyone else get exactly what they want, whilst you continue day-after-day struggling to reach even the first step of your dreams and desires? 

And no matter how many darned self-help books you read, how many self-help webinars you watch, you may get a temporary burst of positivity, but that is very short-lived and soon you’re back to not believing in you, your talents, and more importantly your self-worth. 

The problem is … 

… that life instils in us that to ‘fit in’ you have to morph into society’s mould of what people should be. Have you noticed how all children, once they hit the teenage years seem to look exactly the same. They lose their own state of identity, their self-belief and their own dreams in a desire to fit in. 

And that darlings is where the problem starts. That constant external pressure that to be perfect you have to be this, do that, look like this and have that. 

What a croc! 

‘You gotta have faith’ 

But that my darlings will never be found in a book, or through a ‘guru’ (is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that world seems to be full of so-called ‘gurus’ these days?). 

The only place you will find that thing called faith (or self-belief), is inside of you. 

You may be in a whole heap of pain, despair and self-loathing, but like hope in Pandora’s Box, you still have faith. It may be hidden, but the spark is always there inside you. 

We are who we are. We cannot change that. Yes, you might be able to change the external façade with fake-ness, but you can’t change who you are inside. All you can do is suppress the real you in a misguided effort to please everyone else, but the only person you are fooling is yourself.  

You cannot fake the internal you! 

How to believe in yourself 

Never doubt yourself, or the talents you have. You already have all you need to believe in yourself, but it cannot come from a place of fear. 

Try becoming MS FAB!!! 

Who’s MS FAB, I hear you cry? You are darlings. Each and every one of you. The letters simply stand for: Meditate, Simplify, Forgive, Accept and Believe, which are all things that you can do to increase your self-belief. 

Meditate 

Meditating allows you calm your mind and release negative thoughts and energy. There are some really good guided meditations that teach you how to gather up and release those negative thoughts.  

My favourite one is the balloon which, in a nutshell goes something like this: 

• Sit with your eyes closed and your hands cupped at the side of your mouth 
• Inhale deeply 
• Exhale a negative thought 
• As you exhale imagine you the out breath is blowing up a balloon trapping the negative thought inside 
• As you exhale each thought your hands move apart as the balloon gets bigger 
• Repeat until the balloon is full 
• Then take one last inhale 
• On the exhale let the balloon go and visualise it floating off into the distance

Simplify 

Much as we want to be the perfect parent, the perfect partner or have the perfect career or life, no one is that perfect. Fact! 

And trying to be ‘perfect’ will just overwhelm you. 

So stop trying. 

Slow down, cut out anything that doesn’t add value to your life, make time to focus on the important things in your life and, more importantly simply be grateful for what you have, right here, right now. 

Forgive 

Forgive yourself for any mistakes you made in the past. No matter how much you beat yourself up about them, they cannot be changed. So what purpose does it serve to keep raking them up?  

Remember your chimp? Stop feeding it with the pain of mistakes past. When you do this you’ll find they should simply fade away. 

Likewise, don’t hold onto anger towards other people, because as Buddha says, the only person it hurts is you.  

Just let it go, let it all go and work towards finding yourself in a place of peace. 

Accept 

Sometimes life throws us a curve ball, and we rarely find ourselves in the place we wish we could be. 

But, at the end of the day wishing won’t change what life is for right now, so just accept it. 

That doesn’t mean for one second that you have to stay where you. No, on the contrary accepting where you are right now is just the first step, if you want to improve your situation then you must make a conscious choice to do so. 

Believe 

Like happiness, at the end of the day you have choose to believe in yourself. Believe that what you want is possible.  

And that belief ultimately comes down to your state of mind. A positive attitude is all it takes. 

Practice it every day, and soon it will become a habit. 

So, go and be the fabulous darlings I know you are. 

As for me, I’m still a work in progress!!!  

Until next time darlings. 

Claire 
Xx