6 Great Ways to Believe in Yourself

[A collaboration post – all thoughts are my own.]

As a self-employed person, it’s a serious struggle when it comes to remembering how to believe in yourself, even when nobody else does. You’re sometimes not sure whether you’re that good at what you do. Some people, including myself, have trouble convincing the clients that I’m the perfect person for the job.

As a freelancer, sometimes I feel like I’m working non-stop. Other than that, I don’t have a boss or coworkers to give me professional feedback. All of this can really negatively impact your belief in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, though, who else is going to?

Inability to believe in ourselves holds us back. It hurts our careers. Because we spend so much of our lives trying to prove ourselves. To prove that we matter. To stand out from the crowd. But billion people trying to do the same thing, and it’s no wonder why our insecurities present themselves. In life, you’ll always find at least one person who will support you when it’s you against the world (I’m lucky I have one!).

So, whether you’re a freelancer with a bunch of projects or an entrepreneur with people working for you, believing in yourself is extremely important. Here are tips that can help you believe in yourself.

Accept your current situation

The first thing you need to do if you want to believe in yourself is to accept your current life situation. Our lives and personalities get blended with other people so it’s hard to know what aspects of our personalities are truly our own. Perhaps, if we locked ourselves from others we’d get clues about what we like and what we hate.

There are a few moments when I hate myself because of the situation I was in. I try to make peace with how my life looks at the moment and what led to this situation that I’m in. When it comes to believing in yourself, you need to be aware that you’re changeable. Being resistant is pointless, so we must accept our current situation first. Only then will we have enough energy to change our life.

Life is constantly about evolving and exploring who you actually is.

Look how far you’ve come

When we are feeling down, we often forget how far we’ve come. If you look to your past, we all have things we never thought we would accomplish that we did. I never thought that I could start my own side hustle as a freelance translator and offer my translation service to small and big companies. I thought I’ll work in the office for years before retiring.

I never thought that I’d be a content writer and create my own blogs – devoting my energy to working with brands and meeting with people from other countries. When looking back, I’m extremely grateful for everything that I had now and it helps me to believe in myself!

So, let’s try this. Take a piece of paper and write down all the amazing things you’ve done in a couple of years. Things you’re proud of, big or small. It can be about buying a new house, a trip to your dream place, getting into your favorite university, buying gifts for your parents with your own money, etc. For me, I successfully passed the test to join a TV program subtitle translation for a leading broadcast media company!

If it’s meaningful to you, write it down. Remember that you did all that. Put it up somewhere. See it all the time. And remember that you have done great things.

Replace negative thoughts

Nowadays, it’s important to be mindful of the thoughts that float around in your mind when you’re still aware. If your brain constantly going around the same negative thoughts, you’re aren’t really being mindful. If you allow these negative thoughts through your brain, you will have a mental breakdown.

While you won’t be able to have control over all your thoughts, you can totally share something more positive and throw in a new positive thought to replace the negative one. If you don’t think positively about yourself, it can be pretty impossible to believe in yourself. It takes me months and years to practice this. But with time, you’ll get mentally stronger. And when you have more power over your thoughts, it’ll be easy to believe in yourself because you can train your brand to do that too.

Remember that failure is growth

We spend our lives aiming for the next level. Failure, regrets, mistakes, and bad experiences suck at the moment. But they’re often the most important moments in our lives. When I failed my first university entrance exam, I felt very disappointed in myself and was afraid that I would disappoint my parents. I studied harder (by focusing more on learning where my weakness lies) and took the second exam. And I passed the second exam by getting first place! (the announcement was the day after my birthday!)

Even the most I-hate-every-second-of-my-life moments build our character. They help us recognize when we’ve gone in the wrong direction. As you believe in yourself, you begin to see how that experience becomes a turning point in your life. I always try to be on the positive side by thinking that there’s beauty in the failure of a life. Your failure and your mistakes can shape you into becoming the person you’re meant to be. The person you become facing forwards the future is much more spectacular.

Focus on what you can control

You have to know that you can’t control everything in life. I can’t control the mistakes I’ve already made. You can’t control how your life began. Recognizing this will help your mind focus on the things you can control. Like what I mentioned above, you can choose to have more positive thoughts and make a peace with your current situation. By doing this, you will be able to do things that allow you to have more belief in yourself.

Be mindful of what you feed your mind

I must admit that I rarely watch TV at home. There are so many things on TV that are not educational and only fill my mind with useless things. I prefer Youtube or Netflix where I can feed my mind properly. That means we need to be intentional about what we read and watch daily. Especially when it comes to social media, you need to be consuming it wisely and mindfully.

Focus most of your energy on inspiring yourself by watching movies or documentaries. Learn new things that will help you get closer to the personal, professional, and financial goals you have for yourself. All of this helps your mindset to one that believes in your abilities because you’ll know you have the skill set to achieve success.

If you’ve always yearned of accomplishing big things in life, you’ll need to believe in yourself with all your might. The world is filled with haters but their words can be used to encourage you into action. Don’t allow the world to sway you in directions you aren’t happy with. It can mean the difference between succeeding or not succeeding as a freelancer. So believe in yourself!

Do you have any tips to believe in yourself that you can share with me? I’d love to read your opinions below!