Hello friends, welcome back to the podcast this week, we are heading into the fourth and final episode of the habit series. And we're going to talk all about believing in yourself. And this is gonna sound woowoo. But you know, it's not, I'm gonna actually give you very science based ways to cultivate a little bit of self belief. And I know this is hard. I know it is, from personal experience, it's taken me 45 frickin years to get, you know, assemblance of self belief. And I've done it by doing the tools that I'm going to share with you today. And I want to remind you that when we are installing habits or deleting habits, it all starts with the who, right, we talked about the who, the why, the how, and the what. And it all starts with the with the who, and you need to really be able to connect with that future version of you before you're going to be successful with all of this. And you also have to believe that is actually going to be possible for you to either create that keystone habit or to delete that kryptonite habit. And mindset plays such a huge role in whether or not you're successful with your habits. And this is because if you believe it's going to be hard than it will be. But if you believe that you've got this, then you will have it and you will be successful in either creating or eliminating the habits. And so we really have to cultivate some self belief, before we even get started with all of this habit work. And so in this short and sweet episode, I'm just going to share with you four ways that you can start to cultivate more belief in yourself. Okay, so Way number one is to just look at your prior successes. Right? What I would like you to do is take out a piece of paper and write down 100 successes that you've had in your life. Yes, I mean, 100. And if you can't do it all in one sitting totally fine, come back to it. But don't stop until you've written down 100 successes. And you're gonna be surprised at how many times you've been able to do the hard things in your life. Right, you're gonna look at your, you know, desire to quit Coke Zero. And look at these list of things that you've been successful at and know that you know what, quitting Coke Zero is no freaking problem, right. And if you are concerned that habits are not your thing, then I would love for you to make a list of habits that you've been able to consciously deliberately create for yourself over the course of your life. And this may not be as easy as creating a list of your wins or your successes. But I recommend that you do it anyway, from my own life recently, I mean, I have given up Coke Zero in the past, I have given up how it taking my phone to bed with me, I have gotten into the habit of prioritizing eight hours of sleep every night, I eat protein with every meal, I eat vegetables every day, I drink water, I get movement. In most days, I have a meditation practice, I have a morning routine that I do every morning. And all of these were habits that I intentionally chose to create for myself in my life, and you probably have a million of them as well. And so I think if you're able to actually connect to these successes, you will see that you have so much proof that you can do the things that you set out to do. And it's going to cultivate some belief in yourself. Okay, so that's number one, looking at your prior successes. Number two is looking at other people who are successfully doing what you want to do. And I'm not saying look at people with jealousy or envy, but look at them with curiosity and admiration, and observe them to see what are they doing to be so successful with that particular habit? And how can I recreate that for myself? So, you know, a great example of this is people who run so I wasn't runner 20 years ago, maybe even more than 20 years ago, really loved it then, and then for whatever reason I stopped running. And now here I am, again, wanting to pick it up again. And you know, having a little bit of a hard time. And so I've actually joined some Facebook groups of people who are runners, and I'm constantly going in there and looking for how they train, how they get around their obstacles, what sort of mindset they have, what sort of training schedules they're setting for themselves, you know, doing all sorts of things, and I'm specifically looking for people who look like me. So I'm looking for you know, women who are are in their mid 40s, who are carrying extra weight, who are just starting to run, and who are being really successful at creating a habit of running on a regular basis. And when you can see other people who look just like you doing the thing that you want to do, you can say to yourself, Well, why not me? Why not me? And as soon as you can ask yourself that question, you're going to start cultivating some self belief. So number one was looking at your own prior successes. And number two is looking at other people who are successfully doing what you want to do. All right. So number three is find your cheerleader. And this is so so important, right? No man is an island. And we can't do anything all by ourselves. And if you remember from the last couple of episodes, dopamine that dopamine hit is what gets us to do a habit or not do a habit over and over and over again. And another way that we can get that dopamine hit is having somebody else celebrate on our behalf. So every time you celebrate doing your habit or not doing your kryptonite habit, and we celebrate with that Boomtown, right, you're giving yourself that dopamine hit, and you're reinforcing the behavior. So if you have a cheerleader, a friend, a spouse, a partner, a kid, a colleague, you know, you know, some accountability partner in a Facebook group, whatever it is, if you can touch base with them, every time you do your new habit, or don't do your kryptonite habit, and they celebrate for you, receiving that from them gives you that dopamine hit as well. And it's also amazing to have a cheerleader around you where you can say, You know what I'm struggling, I don't think I can do this. And they're like, Oh, I got you. Of course you can do it. Of course you can. And when somebody is lifting you up and cheerleading you in that way, it is hard not to believe in yourself. It's hard not to believe in yourself, when somebody is believing so much in you. So go out, find yourself a cheerleader. So number one was looking at your prior successes, to looking at other people who are successfully doing what you want to do. And then three is finding your inner child cheerleader. And so the fourth and final tip I have for you is get your energy, right. And I think like this is probably the hardest one, but it's also the most important, it always goes that way, hey, but if you are feeling like crap, right? If you have low energy, and you're tired, and you're exhausted, and you're grumpy, and you're having indigestion, and you're stressed as all heck, it's really going to be hard to believe in yourself, right like and, and I'm painting a pretty negative picture. But a lot of us spend a lot of days just really being suboptimal from an energy point of view. And so part of I think cultivating self belief is taking care of yourself in a way that shows you that you care about yourself. And so I'm talking about prioritizing sleep, eating good food, getting rest, taking care of yourself in the way that you need to be taken care of. So that you actually have the energy to create these new habits and to delete the kryptonite ones. So I think I think this, this is maybe less of a concrete exercise, but I think it's probably the most important one is if you are running yourself to the ground, if you're sick all the time, because you're not sleeping and not eating well. If you are over committed and not enforcing boundaries in your life, then you're just not going to have the space that you need for yourself to do this kind of work. And so I would really encourage you to just take an audit of your life and how you feel. So one thing I like to do first thing every morning is just give my energy a number where where one is like, I might as well just be dead, I feel so crappy. And 10 is like I am on top of the world. I feel fantastic. Like the perfect ideal energy situation is a 10. And do this for a couple of weeks and just see where you typically set and then see if there's just an area where you can start to make little improvements. So this might actually be the space where you could look for your keystone habit and your kryptonite habit, right? The one most important, impactful habit that you could create in your life that is going to give you the energy that you need to do this work and then identifying that one kryptonite that that one bad habit that if you were to eliminate it from your life would make so many things better, including your energy. All right, so those are the four tips for building self belief that I have for you. Again, nice short, sweet one this week, but I think just if you can focus on doing these four things, you will be so much more successful in doing the habits work and so I'll leave it at that for this week and I look forward to joining
