5 Ways to Build Your Internal Belief System so Others Will Believe in You Too

Do you know you’re meant for something more?

My mind is still buzzing from the incredible Hollywood telling of the story behind Queen and the rise of Freddy Mercury.

I went to see Bohemian Rhapsody last night.

I love true stories. Stories about how people became successful. Stories behind what makes one person more visibly successful than another. Stories behind their motivation, their dark moments and their great shining ones as well.

What inspires them? What motivates them? What makes them different? How do they set themselves apart?

Where do they get the confidence, the conviction, the purpose and that unwavering belief in themselves?

In Freddy Mercury’s case, he followed an approach that could seem formulaic in Hollywood’s eyes:

1. Start out as a nobody
2. Find love and success
3. Struggle with stardom, promiscuity and addiction
4. Lose yourself to fame and the life you used to know
5. Fall hard and rise strong with a renewed understanding of what’s most important

Let’s apply this story-telling formula to most of the rest of us:

1. Start out as nobody – check, most of us do unless we were born into fame
2. Find love and success – this is the holy grail for most of us. Finding someone special to share our lives with and have some form of success with which to provide for ourselves and enjoy our lives, is the ultimate for most of us.
3. Work hard to keep number 2 going for the rest of our lives.

And while stardom and all the trappings of it may not be something most of us yearn for, many of us do know we’re meant for something more.

Something more than routine.

Something more than the predictable job, the comfortable life and the annual vacation.

You know you are meant to leave your mark on this world – on your world – in some way.

And what is it? What is that mark you are meant to leave?

Some of you are already spending your days doing what you’re meant to. You are satisfied and enjoy most every day’s accomplishments. You are grateful for what you have and enjoy giving to others as best you can.

Many others, on the contrary, are not satisfied.

What’s more, the yearning for something more comes with guilt – guilt that you should be happy. Guilt that you are well fed and live comfortably, so what’s your problem? Why can’t you be happy with what you have?

Ask the likes of Freddy Mercury or anyone else who kept going to seek more. He knew he could make a bigger impact than the everyday rock and roll band playing college bars and local venues. He knew he could inspire more people with his music and his creativity.

What’s more, I bet that deep down, you already know you can too. You already know what that more is.
Perhaps you have a “Secret Life Project” that you’d like to explore, or perhaps a lifestyle choice you know is waiting for you if you could only figure out how to make it happen.

What do you need to make that jump from mediocre to fulfilled? The leap from a mundane routine to one you can’t wait to get up for every day?

The step into a purpose-filled, deeply satisfying life?

Here are five ways to build your internal belief system so others will believe in you too:

1. Uncover Your Brilliance

Many of us go about our lives knowing we’re meant for something more, but really not sure what it is. How do you even uncover it?

Rewind my life 10, 12, 15 years ago after I was out of the proverbial woods with babies and parent survival mode, and I started turning the attention dial back on myself a little bit. I had been serving others for so long I had no idea what I wanted to do next that would make me excited to get up in the morning again.

That’s when I hired a coach. A trained coach can help you dig into what’s underneath your motivations and help you unpack the many competing priorities of your life to help you gain clarity about what the best next step for you is.

2. Build Your Confidence

I will be the first one to tell you it’s not enough to simply identify that best next step. You have to also build a plan, muster up the courage and develop the confidence to step into it.

Many mid-life career professionals, when they decide they’d like to make a career shift or step back into the workforce after being home with their children for a while, will experience a crisis of confidence. There’s something about making a shift as an adult vs deciding as a teenager that makes this decision scarier. There’s more to risk. Often, not only financially, but also to your reputation too.

What will your friends, family, and colleagues think if you make a change in your life direction? Or perhaps the better question is, what will you think if you don’t?

3. Dream Your Vision

What is the ultimate vision you are hoping to achieve? You probably won’t know this right away. But I bet you are very likely seeking a state of mind. A feeling. An emotion of some kind. What is the experience you are seeking?

There are likely many avenues and choices that will get you there. There is no one right answer.

4. Make an Action Plan

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was your life to this point. Making a shift in career or life direction will take time and planning. Those overnight success stories didn’t happen overnight at all. Success is built from a series of steps that have you eventually move forward.

They might be in a zig-zag motion at times, but thoughtful, inspired, positive steps will eventually get you to where you want to be.

5. Climb The Staircase

It is said that you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just knowing where the next step is can be good enough, for now.

What’s that one thing that you can do to start you on your path to building that deeply satisfying life or career? Is it signing up for a course? Is it holding information interviews with people who are working where you’d like to work? Is it traveling to a location to explore if you really want to move there?

If this article has you interested and you’d like to hear more, follow along at www.susanelford1.wpengine.com/blog or apply for a complimentary strategy session at https://susanelford.com/free-consultation/

I invite you to share how this article impacted you. What are you meant to be doing to ensure you are giving your life your all?

To your success, in business, and in life,