BELIEF IN SELF: 5 WAYS TO CREATE BELIEF
(Issue 46)

By Diane Gold

How to create belief in self is something we usually don’t talk about. We talk about believing. We talk about belief systems. We talk about how people who are successful have belief in self. We talk about people without belief falling into dark holes. We also talk about their digging themselves out when some belief shows up. But it’s uncommon to hear about what steps were taken to create belief.

In the martial arts, we are given a method to build ourselves into warriors of peace. The method is a systematic approach to understanding. The same is taught when learning music, dance, meditation, science, philosophy, religion, medicine, sports, language and any other discipline that exists. So, if we can learn other disciplines, why not be able to learn about belief?

(Anecdote: This reminds me of myself in college. I was part way between my finishing in music ed and starting in music therapy, and I thought about doing a PhD. I always wanted to have one so I could be called doctor. (We can be shallow at the same time that we have some depth.) I also really wanted to study whether there were a method to teach rhythm and pitch. That hasn’t happened yet, but I was reminded of my believing I could prove some such mechanism that is now being studied through central pattern generators in the neural network.)

ACT AS IF

We are the directors of our own movie as well as the main actor. We can will ourselves to prepare our face, our voice, our mind, our body to be a confident, capable, skilled competent person we are with with full ability to achieve, to resist what we want and to choose whatever we want.

When we do this, we may not see ourselves as confident. We may not feel that we are confident in this belief we are throwing on ourselves. But many other humans have achieved belief in themselves using these methods.

ACTION STEP

Tell the mind it is time for you.
Tell the mind you will succeed.
Be brave.

WarriorsofWeight Consulting
Click the image below for a helping hand.

REJUVENATION STANCE

Rejuvenate with 1 minute of silent standing, devices turned off, preferably in an alone space, but not essential.

Whatever our circumstance, however far we feel away from believing in ourselves; standing still will rejuvenate us. So that’s the beginning.

ACTION STEP

Standing, put the feet together with arms hanging down at sides.
Stand still, and close your eyes.
Lower the chin a tiny bit, so that the back of the neck is not pinched.
Slowly let a smile come to the lips.
If it wants to turn into a giant grin, let it.
It if makes you feel like laughing, go ahead.

POSTURE

We have all felt ourselves straighten up a little bit, walk a little straighter when we want to impress a prospective employer or romantic interest. Posture is crucial in creating belief. When we pull up from the top of the head, notice the straightness of our spine and deliberately become more aware of not slouching; we feel more confident, our respiration is fuller so we actually get more oxygen to our lungs and take the pressure off our muscles to get it there. Our speech is clearer, and we sometimes feel a bit of endorphins when we straighten up.

ACTION STEP

Straighten the posture on a regular basis. At least 3 conscious times a day. You’ll be glad you did.

MIRROR

Tell yourself you believe in you!

ACTION SEQUENCE

Go to a mirror with the attitude that you want to believe in yourself. On your way to get the mirror if it’s a hand mirror, or to the location of a wall mirror; strengthen the posture concept by remembering to straighten yourself, at least, throughout this mirror segment of the exercise.

Look in the mirror.
Say the words,

“I believe in me,”

10 different ways, with a smile on your face and love (for yourself) in your heart.

CHEERLEADER

Get an outside cheerleader!

ACTION STEP

Get a cheerleader.
If you have a friend, ask the friend to tell you she believes in you with the words,

“You can do it.”

This is very personal work. If you find you don’t have the kind of friend you can ask, be happy and go watch this video for a little support: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2HcRl4wSk . It might also help to go tell someone like the video store clerk, the bagel store clerk, the postwoman, a stranger.

CONCLUSION

The secret ingredients to belief are CONSISTENCY, REPETITION, FOLLOW THROUGH. Just as with any process, the more familiar we get with it, the more we become it. Creating belief is not an easy task. But it will empower us regularly to create, help others, be productive and feel good.

One last memory from both music and martial arts training is that it takes a good 20 years to learn a craft, a process, become stable, understand a personal destiny. Belief in self is something one becomes familiar with in time. Just like learning a language, learning hip-hop, becoming proficient at sobriety, becoming comfortable with any change in habit; creating belief is a life-changing process that filters in with work. It is a way of being that needs cultivation. Once it shows its face in our lives, we will be motivated to keep it alive. Don’t take it for granted, and remember to nurture it.

Whatever lies ahead, the time to start creating belief is now. It’s worth the pursuit and will accompany you wherever you go once it is created.

If you need a hand, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Help is right here at WarriorsOfWeight Consulting.

FEEDBACK

Please leave a comment and LIKE this issue below.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Moms For Healthy Daughters, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert and a dedicated mom.
She believes we can create our path and create along the path and that that lesson is one for every student in every school. Diane says,

“As powerful as our minds are, we should certainly have a required class in the concept of belief, not the philosophical discussion of different beliefs, but the mechanism of how to reach self-belief. We look for it. It grounds us. It drives us, and it heals us. If we all understood that we could develop it, our lives would be fuller, and we’d be more available to better our world.”

For help, check out Simple Secret Method Consulting.

THE HABIT CYCLE: CUE-ACTION-REWARD-CUE-REPLACEACTION–REWARD (Issue 45)

By Diane Gold

In the past several weeks, I’ve been talking about and looking at habits, reading about them, examining my own. There are so many different factors, but there seems to be one common cycle.

CUES

We get a CUE.

It can be visual such as the photo of an apple pie to a dessert hound.

It can be olfactory where we walk into a bar, smell a whole array of alcohol tonics and can’t resist them.

There are so many cues that result in habitual action. Anything can set off someone who gambles to excess to create gambling by saying,

“I’ll bet you $10 that it won’t rain today.”

NAIL BITING

I was reading about a nail biter and how examining the cue and looking at the reward might help with the habit of biting. Then I realized that I bite my nails, not as much as I used to. But I do, from time to time. I have still not identified the cue, that is, what signals me to execute my nail behavior; but it has something to do with working. As I begin to concentrate on work, I am driven to start to bring my hands to my mouth. I have been able not to bite my nails because I am enjoying the control of not biting, because I examined the behavior and because I was rather surprised that I hadn’t counted this behavior in my list of negative habits.

The REWARD for this nail biting was that I like the feel of biting. Or maybe it is a soothing behavior. I am not sure yet. My NEW REWARD, though, is laughing at myself because I am controlling this behavior. The reason I can do this is because I have lots of experience with changing habits. And I have learned to replace the bad ones with good ones. They are all still there, just waiting for the right cue.

ACTION STEP

Take a look at what you do that is in excess and that you want to change. Look for the cue that starts your craving feeling. Look at the reward that makes you feel euphoric. Tell someone about your self-examination, and say that you BELIEVE IN YOURSELF and commit to successfully being a different way – out loud. Go do the different behavior every time you get the cue. Even if you can’t figure out the exact cue, which I can’t with the nails, whenever you find yourself craving, keep looking at it as you do your new activity.

The explanation will show up. While you’re looking, though, doing what’s new will replace the trigger activity and become the new habit.

WarriorsofWeight Consulting
Click the image below for a helping hand.

OLD HABITS ARE HERE TO STAY

I am still reading Charles Duhigg’s The Power Of Habit. He mentions all the research about the fact that a habit doesn’t go away when we replace it. It’s easy to see this when people go back to old habits under pressure or lost focus. Have you experienced this?

If you can’t imagine addiction or being out of control with some habit, I am going to describe an allergic, physiological behavior to make a point about being out of control.

Imagine getting poison ivy with its toxic oil. The urushiol oil binds to the under layer of skin and stays there for 2 to 4 weeks. It affects 80% of people who come into contact with it.

After getting poison ivy many times in New York, I thought I was free of it when I moved to Florida. Ha! Little did I know that the precious mango tree that hung over the fence was loaded with the very same toxin. Cashew and pistachio, too, but I haven’t come into contact with those.

So we get a cue. The itch. We take action: we scratch and scratch. This behavior is not addiction, but it demonstrates how we can be out of control and the driver is similar. It is also not an antisocial behavior, so we are not stigmatized if we scratch. Everybody does it, across the social, ethnic and self-control lines. It illustrates being driven in ways very hard to control.

When I come into contact with the air that is near the powerful poison ivy plant, or if I touch the plant by accident, I break out into a rash and am doomed for a few weeks. I came up with a strategy for not scratching which is parallel to my strategy for controlling self-destructive habits. First, there will be a small little itch. When I get an itch on the wide part of my arms or my hands or feet; this is a cue for me to examine the area to see whether I have exposed myself to urushiol. It used to be the cue to scratch, but I know the feeling so well that I control it and determine whether it is the dreaded poison.

For years, I have been covering the dermatitis rash with bandages. This was for 2 reasons: 1) to keep the rash from spreading when the blisters broke and 2) to keep me from scratching it.

I just found out tonight that covering the area protected it from infection and scratching only, but that we can’t spread the rash on our own bodies, are not contagious once we are rashing and the blisters contain our own immune response to the oil and not the oil, itself.

So the bandages themselves created a new cue for me, even though I had them on for the wrong reason. Every time I touched the bandage, I remembered not to itch. I replaced my bad habit with another cue (the bandage) which led me to a good habit , not scratching. The reward? Not hurting myself with scratching.

CONCLUSION

Admitting there is a cue is really important, even if you are still in the dark about it, as I am about the nails. But taking the time to examine behavior with no defense is a good thing. Defense only prolongs the bad habit. Examining it starts a new cycle with a new behavior.

The belief part of the equation comes from inside. We need to believe in ourselves to get the job done because we must be strong enough to remember our self-examination. Statistics say this is done in a group, even if it is a group of 2.

ACTION STEP

So, whether you call someone a sponsor, an accountability partner, a friend, a mentor, a coach or a consultant; go tell someone about what you are self-examining and what direction you want to take with your habit.

Almost anyone will listen and be interested. So don’t use having no one to talk with as an excuse. Find an ear and talk about your behavior out loud. Whether it’s Weight Watchers’ or Overeater’s Anonymous, or just that one other person, get your story written by telling someone today.

See your cue. Talk about your cue. Talk about what it makes you want to do. Talk about the reward when you follow your old pattern. And pick a new activity for the old cue that brings the same or similar reward.

Good luck to all of us!

WarriorsofWeight Consulting

FEEDBACK

Please leave a comment and LIKE us.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Moms For Healthy Daughters, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert and a dedicated mom.
She is fascinated by the habit process. These are such strong pathways that are branded into us, difficult to change, and requiring our focus. Diane says,

“We are very powerful, we humans. We have the ability to set and reach tremendous goals. These are achieved, for the most part, by will power. When we climb a mountain, it is more with our mind than our body. Just the same, when we change a part of ourselves, we are, in essence, climbing the mountain of our own strength. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Keep going for one more minute. That minute will make the change. ”

For help, check out Simple Secret Method Consulting.