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Self-doubt is one of the things that most holds people back from achieving more success in their life and business. It is something that everyone, even people who appear very successful may battle with self-doubt. The further ahead you are towards reaching your goals the more you will have conquered self-doubt. With more success comes more confidence and less self-doubt, but you need to eliminate some of that self-doubt before you can succeed in the first place. There are several ways to help defeat the demons of self-doubt from your life.

1. Make Small Promises and Keep Them

One of the best ways of fighting self-doubt is by making small promises. These may be promises to yourself or to others. This can be an effective technique in creating momentum in your life. What is a task that you need to accomplish? Set a plan for completing that task, give yourself a deadline and then promise yourself that you will do that task. Once you have made a promise to yourself in this manner, make sure you do everything within your power to keep your promise.

Making yourself promises has the opportunity to build fantastic momentum but if you make promises you do not keep it will result in increased self-doubt not diminished. That is why you should make small steps in your promises. The promise needs to be something that is easy and manageable for you. It might be as simple as making one sales call each day, or writing one blog post each week.

After you have completed what you have promised yourself you will build on that success by making another small promise to yourself and keeping that. Keeping one small promise after another eventually leads to momentum and big success in your business.

2. Turn the Promises Into Small Achievable Goals

Once you are comfortable choosing tasks, promising yourself that you will complete them and then finishing them by the deadline you have set, it is time to move towards setting goals. Make sure that you focus on setting small achievable goals. Nothing helps to erase your self-doubt than reaching a worthwhile goal. Start with small goals, achieve them and then slowly increase the challenge of the types of goals you set. As you progress you will build momentum and confidence in life.

3. Put Others First

Another way of getting rid of self-doubt is to take the focus off of yourself and place your focus on others. Instead of focusing on what you can do for your own business or to achieve your own goals, focus on how you can help others. One of Zig Ziglar’s most famous quotes is that,

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

Notice here that the focus is on other people, not on you. Further, by focusing on others there is no time to dwell on your own limitations and concerns.

4. Focus on the Positive

Many times the reasons for our self-doubt is that we are focusing on the negative things of life. You may be focusing on everything that is going wrong rather than what is going right. We are focusing on our weaknesses rather than on our strengths.  Simply reversing this process can go a long way to eliminating much of the self-doubt from your life. You need to train your mind to only remember the positive. Focus on your success not on your failure. You need to learn from you failures and move on.

Successful people face rejection everyday. You face rejection when seeking financial funding for a business, you may face rejection when trying to make a sale, or you may face rejection from a boss or coworker. The reason for your success is your ability to completely forget about most of this rejection. Successful people learn from all of their mistakes but focus on their victories. After all if you dwell on the negative things that have happened to you in the past, you will never be willing to move forward. This same principle applies throughout life. If you focus on all the car accidents that happen in the world there is no way you’ll be able to drive your car – instead you focus on the fact that most times you go for a drive nothing happens.

5. Focus on Your Strengths

Make sure you are focusing on your strengths not your weaknesses. During periods of self-doubt you will likely find that you are irrationally focusing on all your weaknesses and ignoring your strengths. Chances are you have you have many more strengths than you realize. Work on continually thinking about how your strengths can be contributing to the growth of your business or achievement of your goals. If you have trouble with this take some time and meditate on all the strengths you bring to the table. Write these down. Take this even one step forward by having people around you tell you about the strengths they see in you.  You can also use this technique to lower the self-doubt in those around you. Many times you will see strengths in others that they do not see in themselves. You can make a big difference by helping them see the strengths that they might not see easily.

6. Attitude

Although the above ways of defeating self-doubt all are to some extent or another reliant on your attitude, it is important enough that it deserves attention on its own. One of my favorite sayings in business is that “attitude is everything.” Nothing affects your self-doubt more than your attitude. In fact self-doubt is an attitude of its own. It is a very limiting attitude that you place on yourself.

Thankfully attitude is a CHOICE. Each day you can choose what attitude you are going to follow. Make sure you start each day with a positive, “I can do it” attitude. Always believe that you can achieve your goals. Always believe the best in people, and always focus on the positives. Learn from the struggles and focus on the victories.

Always be working on your attitude. Manage your attitude by reading positive material, listening to motivating audio tapes and choosing to make it a daily goal, become the leader in attitude for your team. (See my article 10 Tips for Maintaining a Positive Attitude)

By making and keeping small promises, setting and achieving worthwhile goals, putting others first, focusing on the positive, focusing on your strengths and managing your attitude you can greatly diminish the effect of self-doubt in your life. Now take the focus off yourself for a minute and think about ways you can help eliminate the self-doubt you see in those around you. Encourage them to take these steps towards eliminating self-doubt.

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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There is more to you than meets the eye. I know there is. Inside you are gifts in abilities that only you know about, and some that you don’t even know about. You have been created with a unique set of gifts and abilities that come in a combination that no one else has.

Paul Potts is a great example of this. Watch this clip from Britain’s Got Talent:

Paul Potts’ performance is indeed incredibly inspiring. It is wonderful to see a performance that you don’t expect from someone. The thing is each of us has that kind of a performance within them. No, maybe not as an opera singer, but in something; we all have some talent that will awe and inspire others.

But talent alone doesn’t make the difference. You have to do something with that talent. Look at what Paul Potts did:

• He took a big risk. — Paul could have easily kept his talent to himself, singing in the shower, or maybe before a small group of friends. He certainly did not need to take the risk of going in front of a large live audience, a much larger television audience, and of course judges like Simon Cowell! What an intimidating group. Paul’s big risk requires a significant amount of bravery. Sometimes making use of our talent will require this kind of risk. But you can do it! You can be that brave!

• He pretended to be confident. — Through the interviews we can certainly see that Paul Potts was anything but confident in himself. And yet, if you look at the video of him on stage he portrayed a large level of confidence. No, he wasn’t cocky or over-the-top, but he went out there with a clear purpose. When he was asked what he was there to do he replied very matter-of-factly that he was there “to sing opera”. Notice he didn’t say that he was there to “try to sing” or that he “hoped he would be able to sing” etc. He stated his intention with confidence. It is possible to pretend to be confident, even when inside you are very scared. No one else needs to know how scared you are.

• He knew what he was born to do. — Paul stated that he wanted to sing opera because that is what he felt that he was born to do. What were you born to do? Look at your skills and gifts. Learn about yourself and how you can shine. Likely the gifts and abilities you have are pointing at the type of thing that you were born to do. You will only be truly happy, and meeting your full potential when you are using your talent in that way.

• He shared his talent with others. — Knowing your talent is one thing, but success and fulfillment in life comes when you share that talent with others. That talent may come through your job, your business, or what you do on the side. Just be sure that you don’t hold it in. By sharing his talent with others Paul was able to entertain people, inspire people, and make their lives better. You can to. When you use your talents, you can make a difference in other people’s lives.

What are your gifts? You have been made with a unique set of talent that you can use to make a difference in this world. By using your talents each day you will feel more fulfilled and you will impact others in a positive way. Once you know your talents, take a risk, be confident and take the next step. The rewards will follow.

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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