Do you act like you're good enough?

Hi guys!

Thank you for taking the time to read my first blog post. I know, I know! I'm probably a bit late to the party but I'm slowly getting there where technology and social media are concerned. I've only recently found out what vlogs, hashtags and tags are! It's a whole other language.

I thought I would write about some of the realisations I've had myself this week in the hope that it helps you too. In my book and in my sessions, I help my clients to challenge negative beliefs they have about themselves. We work on replacing any beliefs that are limiting them, with empowering ones that will help to propel them forwards.

You can do this by...

1. Identifying what your negatives beliefs are. ​Think about the things you regularly say to yourself or feel when things don't work out? Probably the most common limiting belief is, 'I'm not good enough'. Does this sounds familiar to you??

2. Once you have identified the limiting belief, reflect on how this belief has negatively impacted your life. What has it stopped you from doing? Has it affected your confidence? Relationships? Career. Also think about the benefits of having this belief? Has this helped you in the past? This normally feels like a trick question as most people find it difficult to think of anything good that has come out of believing they're not good enough. 

3. You were not born believing this.  This belief has been learnt through different experiences you've had, particularly between the ages of 0-7 years, the period in which most beliefs are formed. It can be helpful to identify where this belief may have come from. It could have been comparing yourself to siblings, friends, comments from a teacher, parent, grandparent. Please remember when you decided to take on this belief, you were seeing it the situation through the eyes of a child. It wasn't a necessarily true or full picture of what was happening.

4. To start challenging this belief, it is helpful to look at what evidence there is to back up that belief and what evidence there is that disproves it. There is normally much more evidence that disproves the belief! Once you have your long list of evidence disproves the belief, it can feel a bit strange that you would carry on believing something that obviously wasn't true!

5. Cast your minds forward to the future. If you decide to keep believing this, what impact could this have on their future? What could it stop you from doing in the future? How might this impact your self esteem? Your relationships? 

6. Once you've decided that you want to let this belief go then it's time to set the wheels in motion to start learning a new way of thinking and feeling about yourself. What would you like to believe instead? Most of the time it is the opposite of the limiting belief, 'I am good enough', 'I am beautiful', 'I am worthy'. To start believing this new belief is going to take time as I imagine it is deeply ingrained in your unconscious mind but a good way of challenging your thoughts and opening yourself to new ways of thinking is by repeating these positive statements or affirmations to yourself on a regular basis. Repetition helps you to create new neural pathways in your brain so that eventually you will adopt it and start believing it.

Now this is where I've been going wrong and where I have had my major revelation this week! 'I am not good enough' is at the centre of my core and I have to fight it off most days. 99% of the time, I now believe that I am good enough as I have a wealth of evidence that I can draw on to back that up. I have however realised this week that my thoughts and my behaviour are not always inline. I may be able to tell myself that I am good enough and believe it but then I say 'yes' to a relative when I needed to have said 'no' or I book in extra clients when I am already at capacity or I feel guilty for charging a client a cancellation fee even though I had arranged my day around their missed appointment. Would I behave in this way if I truly believed it? My behaviour unconsciously backs up my negative belief, negating the positive work I have been doing and keeping me stuck. 

I have to practise what I preach! I cannot tell my clients to make sure they are practising self-care and putting their needs first if I'm not! I have spent the last week looking at different areas of my life and where I might still be communicating to myself that I am not good enough or that my needs aren't important. I have made some tweaks around the processes and procedures in my business to make sure that I am communicating the right message to myself and modelling that to my clients. I have made a timetable to ensure that when things return back to 'normal' that I have a balance of work, life and play that works for me. I have spent the last few months looking outside of myself for the answers around why I still sometimes lack in confidence or assertiveness in certain areas of my life. My go to is...'I need to buy a book to find out more about x?' or 'I need to find a coach of my own to help me with x'. The thing I have realised this week is exactly what I tell my clients! I have already got the answers. I just needed to look inside and identify what I was doing that was keeping me stuck. You can do this too. 

So, what can you take away from this? Challenging your negative beliefs with your thinking is incredibly important but if you really want to make a change on a deep level then you need to make sure your actions are inline with someone who believes they are good enough. You can't just think it and expect to believe it. You've got to live it. Even if that means you have to pretend to start with. 

If you struggling with this ask yourself, 'If I was someone who truly believed I was good/important/worthy enough, would I be doing this now? Would I be allowing this person to treat me this way? 

I wonder what you could do this week to tell yourself that you're good enough and that your needs are important?

I hope you find this helpful. I'd love to hear your thoughts, if you can relate to any part of it or if you would like more information about any of it.

Big love,

Claire