When you’re diving into the world of self-help and personal development, there are normally two major things (I like to call them “slices of self”) that you’ll hear mention of…
Self-confidence and self-esteem.
You’re told to work on being more confident. To “fake it ‘til you make it” – believe in yourself and then recognise and celebrate when you win.
And you should celebrate (every day) – because you’ve proven to yourself that you were right to be confident. Recognising your wins and celebrating them leads to an increase in self-esteem – where you can admit to yourself that yes, you are cut out for this, that you can do it and that you do deserve to succeed.
But there’s a third hidden component here that hardly anyone seems to consider. Something that truly brings the triangle of self-belief to a solid close and gives the first two “slices” the impact you need them to have.
Throughout my professional life I’ve been involved in many, many incidents where I’ve had to rely on very high confidence in myself – not to mention self-esteem – when I’ve been operating on my patients’ eyes.
Even if I wasn’t 100% confident – if that little voice in my head was still saying “You’re going to destroy your patient’s life!” – I had to have the belief in myself and the level of self-esteem it took to stay focused and get the job done.
Because honestly… imagine sitting in an ophthalmologist’s chair while they shoved instrumentation in your face, only to see the doctor shaking, sweating, looking frightened or furrowing their brow like they were trying to work out a tricky Sudoku puzzle.
If you’re anything like me, you’d push all that stuff away from your face and run screaming down the halls in case your eyes end up outside your head!
One of the myths of self-confidence and self-esteem is that, if you have them, you never find yourself with steam coming out of your ears.
That you never lose the rag or get worked up, flustered, confused or despondent.
Truth is, we all do – whether we’re genuinely confident or not. In some extremely tricky situations and surgeries, I sure imagined my head turning into a kettle! That’s how I felt inside, but outwardly, my confidence held. That’s the key to confidence – it isn’t a guarantee that everything will be fine, but a belief in the positive outcome.
Just because you’re confident doesn’t mean you aren’t stressed.
Another myth is that you shouldn’t psych yourself up, because you’ll always be knocked down. That if you keep yourself on a “realistic” level of expectation, then your confidence and self-esteem won’t take as many hard knocks as they would if you were an idealist.
This is the myth that traps many would-be successful people – and because of that, it gets a big two fingers up from me!
Dream big and take big action – because when you have the third secret slice of self that I’ve been alluding to here, you can’t be taken down by mistakes, temporary failures or the opinions of other people…
So what is it?
That third slice is self-compassion.
You must have compassion for yourself. Be okay with the way you are, with what you’re doing, with the way you talk and the way you look.
Be at ease with where you are in your career right now, where you are in your relationships and where you currently stand on the path toward your goals in life.
All of these things are changeable… and you may actually want to change them. That’s fine. Change will come. But if you aren’t at ease with the current state of things, those changes will feel like a fight instead of a journey.
When you add self-compassion, you gain the power to understand yourself, to forgive yourself and to forge a deeper understanding of who you are and why you do the things you do.
This understanding leads to greater confidence, an improved ability to dedicate yourself to the things you do best (time management is a major boost!) – and the natural result is more wins and greater self-esteem. Boom!
It can be very difficult to become self-compassionate – being the strange creatures we are, we humans love to bring ourselves down, criticise ourselves and downplay our achievements – but when you take the time to come to terms with who you are and learn to love, forgive and appreciate yourself, it’ll pay off in spades.
And when the triangle is complete… your third eye will open.
If you feel like now’s the time to truly take control of your life and your achievements, then head on over and contact me to arrange a FREE introductory chat where we’ll get you taking those vital first steps.
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