Believe in Yourself

We find ourselves at times looking over our lives evaluating our personal performance. We critique ourselves with the firmness of Simon critiquing American Idol candidates. There is no problem with being hard on yourself. I mean, it makes complete sense to push yourself to do better. Nothing wrong with desiring to be your best self. There are, however, two issues that immediately stand out with this course of action.

1. The critique comes after the action.
2. The critique can sometimes end with us losing belief in our abilities.

The post-critique is normally followed by the cliche, "Hindsight is always 20/20." Yes, you can see clearly after the fact. The Monday Morning Quarterback Syndrome is the philosophy most people take during the evaluation. I challenge you to have a great post-game interview as a winner! How? Evaluate early and often prior to performing. Sometimes we venture into things without practice. Forget the old saying, "Practice makes perfect." This is not true. How many times do people practice singing, dancing, sports, running, and testing only to end up on the losing or failing side? But you practiced! So what! Practice does not make perfect! Perfect practice makes perfect!

If you have a presentation, practice perfectly. How? Go to the venue where you have to present. Put your slide presentation up, make sure everything works and the slides are clearly visible. Go through your presentation right on stage prior to performing. Race coming up soon? Find a closely matched track to run on in the same climate, elevation, and game time uniform you will wear during the race. Dance competition? Practice on the stage you will perform on prior to the real deal. No your distances to perform your movements. Get used to how the auditorium is set up and wear the same attire for the performance. Taking these steps will help you critique yourself prior to going live. Lastly, video record yourself in those final practice sessions. Work out any details you see during the video review of your pre-performance.

What about the day-to-day living? Many days you can try to have a routine and it just falls apart. You can feel like you are losing control of the simple things in your life. Bills, kids, arrival time to work, school assignments missing and it seems like there is not enough time in the day. Sometimes it is like you have more month than you do money, but you balanced your finances. Home routines with the kids just seem to become like trying to fight King-Kong. Yet, the clock keeps ticking ever so loudly every second passes. At the end of the day you can feel like an utter failure!

But, remember, home is a practice ground for the world outside of the home. The house is your sanctuary to recover from the rough week of work, school, and life. You can become overwhelmed with home life just as easily. Set weekly stretch goals. This will give you something to feel good about during the week. Don't set goals for things you have to do anyway. It's supposed to be a stretch. Organize something in the house. Find that cabinet, closet, or drawer that has just accumulated too much stuff and set a goal to clean it out this week. That's a great small goal. Help your self-esteem by doing little things to keep yourself feeling challenged yet accomplished. Your daily home-life is your stage. Guess what, If it's not right, it's alright. Keep doing the little things each week. By the time a year passes by, you will have accomplished 50 or more little goals! How's that for some success?

Life only gives you one chance to get on stage at times. Be prepared by perfectly practicing. If we learn to push ourselves prior to the final act, we will do much better. Find ways to critique yourself before hand. If you have a tough meeting to go into with your boss, your kids, or your client prepare for all of the possible ways the conversation can go and be ready to respond. Have someone role play for you because there may be things you are simply not thinking of at the time.

Losing belief in yourself could be a common result if you are not tough-minded and thick-skinned. You can critique yourself right out of future opportunities, if you do not have mental fortitude. You can be hard on yourself but it should not be to the point you give up on your life. Challenge yourself to do better next time, but there must be a next time. Even if you have to go back to the drawing board and reinvent yourself, you are not losing faith in your abilities, you are simply adjusting. We all need a little re-calibrating from time to time. Corporations do it all the time to avoid dissolving. You can do it too.

Go to battle with the inner-person and demand greatness from your life. In failure find the truth about why your failed. Believe you can adjust. Believe you can reinvent yourself. Believe in yourself to the point you never lose confidence. Your belief in you must establish a strong buoyancy in your character. If you do not believe in yourself, how will you inspire other to believe in you?  You are the epicenter of belief. It must start with you. Face calamity, hardship and despair with your head held high and shoulders back. Then get into your lab and go back to square one. Figure out where the mistake came. Correct it. Believe in the new you and forge ahead to new horizons! No matter what, do not lose your faith in you!