We made it to the new year! Now what? Some of us have new year resolutions, some have goals and others, dreams they would like to accomplish. All of these are relative, one to the other and all began as a dream. If you really want to turn your dream into reality, achieve your goals and accomplish your resolutions, there is a process to make it happen but there is one thing that you MUST do. This one thing is belief in yourself and your ability to achieve it. If you doubt yourself or your ability, you will develop a fear of failure. Fear is the biggest reason that people do not achieve what they set out to do.
To build your confidence, make a list of all of your accomplishments, regardless of how small they may seem. Today riding a bike may not seem so difficult but when you were learning it was the hardest thing you had ever done. That was a great achievement and all of the little things that you have done are great achievements. You probably don’t think much about graduating high school or learning to play a musical instrument, or playing your favorite sport. All great achievements. A college degree, finding your first job, learning a second language, a promotion or raise. Great achievements! When you begin to compile all of them and list them you will begin to feel very good about yourself. Confidence helps you to continue when it looks like everything is against you and when you feel like there is no progress.
Another important element in believing that you can do it is being able to envision it. When you think about your dream, goal or resolution, can you see it in vivid color? Where are you, what do you look like, what are you wearing, who are you with, what are you doing, etc? The more detail that you can see in it the more likely you are to achieve it. If you are a very visual person, it may be a good idea to make a vision board, compile photos that resemble the things that you are working for and put them in places that you frequent like the bathroom mirror, refrigerator, car, desk at work, or the computer screen. The more you see it the more real it will become to you.
To remove fear you simply need to take a step to conquer it. That can be as simple as taking the first step to start the process of reaching your goal. IT will not go away immediately but will gradually disappear as you take the steps and see that the thing you fear was simply the unknown. Fear will rear it’s ugly head over and over as you encounter new things that you are not familiar with so you just need to remember that fear is only as big as you will let it be and when you stand up to it by taking steps in the direction that you fear, you will become more confident and fear will subside. Zig Ziglar said, “FEAR has two meanings, Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise.”
Napolean Hill said, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.