Growing Self-Belief

Lack of self-belief plays a huge role in many people’s lives, because it can stand in the way of personal development and sits at the root of many feelings of failure. These often focus on things like dissatisfaction with appearance or weight, being in the wrong job, and even on concerns about relationships.

Lack of self-belief centres around an inner conviction about failing to reach a goal – either one that we have set for ourselves, or one which is imposed on us from society, our history or our parents. For example, some people believe that they are not good enough to do a certain job, or not entitled to be thought attractive. The longer they hold onto those convictions, the more they stop themselves from moving forward. This makes it very hard to do anything positive to resolve things that they aren’t happy with such as shoot for a promotion or lose some weight.  

Joanna will work with you to identify those self-beliefs and convictions and explore them, so that together you can establish what is preventing you from moving towards your goals. Only then can strategies be established to help you overcome those limitations. For example, if you have not applied for a job because you assume others will be better than you are then Joanna will help you explore the criteria for the desired job and look for examples in your life where you have fulfilled those criteria or shown relevant knowledge or abilities, building up the realisation that applying for it is a perfectly feasible option.

Many people start from a position that bears no relation to reality: a basic stance that they are not ‘something’ or not good enough at ‘something.’ Coaching can help you to examine that reality by taking a step back from it and guiding you towards a more honest, clear view of it.

If you came to coaching saying: “I can’t make presentations,” Joanna would first help you turn that into a positive statement: “I can make presentations because …” Together you would then explore all the things which could possibly endorse that statement building up a list such as: “I know my subject,” “I am interested in this topic,” “I like explaining things to people” or “I like sharing my thoughts.”  Joanna may also explore evidence of where you have used skills which are also relevant to presentations, such as writing.  At the end of the process there would be clear and substantial support for the positive belief statement created at the start, demonstrating conclusively that the original negative assumption was largely unjustified.

Growing self-belief has a wonderful and enabling outcome: a conviction that “I am absolutely fine the way I am.” People who believe that about themselves can achieve almost anything.