It’s A New Year, Time To Start Believing In Yourself!

There is something magical about fresh starts and new beginnings.  A new year gives us a clean page, full of possibility. Each year, I try to start out with a word or intention to focus on. I do not consider them resolutions, because those so often wind up becoming failures. Such as the time when I was 15 and my resolution was to stop eating sweets to be faster on the swim team. My answer was to eat ALL of the sweets I could find on New Year’s Eve so I wouldn’t crave them anymore. Clever, right? NOPE! I got sick and ended up feeling like the year was a complete bust before it even began! Instead, I choose to think of goals and intentions. I have quite a few personal goals this year that I am crazy excited about. I’ve been finding inspiration everywhere I look lately. Inspiration truly is all around us. Being the big dreamer, bad detail person that I am (a.k.a. ‘Type B) I decided I would search for information on how to turn my goals into actions. I stumbled upon a Podcast hosted by Jonathan Fields called, “Good Life Project” with an episode entitled, “To Succeed at Anything, Do This.” Yep, that’s what I need, a blue print for acheiving success! After listening to it, I ended up with many helpful hints. The main powerful tip for me was: It’s a new year; time to start believing in yourself!

The podcast episode has really great advice in the form of 7 P’s, I’ll make you listen to it (you can do that here!) to understand the explanation behind each of the P’s.

The one that really stood out to me, that I believe many of us struggle with, is beleiving our ideas will really become something. I seem to believe in everyone around me; I can see who they can become and the beauty and potential in their dreams and ideas. When it comes to believing in myself, I typically fall flat, which ruins a potentially great idea before it can even begin. I have so many friends that have said they do the same thing. Strong, capable, brave women and men give up because they don’t believe success can happen for them, or they aren’t sure how to make it happen. Oh the wasted talent! The World loves and is in need of creative, bright, and energetic people. The difference between the success stories and so many of us is our ability to believe in ourselves enough to go get ‘it’ done. Whatever ‘it’ may be.  As a friend once told me, “If you were able to believe in Santa for like 8 years, you can believe in yourself for like 5 minutes!” TRUTH!

As Mr. Fields’ podcast shares, you don’t need to have 99% belief in your dream or idea to succeed, you just need to have 1-2% to kick it off. As the idea grows, and you take steps toward your goals, it will be easier to believe in its achievability.  Whatever your goal might be, it can be achieved. Don’t look at Everest and quit because it looks to tall. Look at the first task with a piece of faith in your heart and step in that direction. If you don’t know something, research it, ask someone who has the answer, check out a book or easiest, google it! You have to have faith. That doesn’t mean we will all be successful in our first attempt, or our fiftieth.  It just means to believe in ourselves enough to step towards our ideas. The only sure way to fail at your goals, is to never even start them. If you want to learn Spanish as a second language, you have to believe in yourself enough to make it past, “Hola”. Lacking confidence? Fake it! Read about faking it ’til you make it here.

With 2018 officially here, I challenge you to step outside the walls each of us create for ourselves, and start believing in those dusty old (or shiny new) dreams you have. I don’t care how you have to do it – write a motivating mantra on your mirror in lipstick if you have to – but dang it, believe in yourself! Ok, I will stop channeling my inner Stuart Smalley now.  If you’d like an additional ‘Daily Affirmation’ lift from the Saturday Night Live dude himself though, click here!)

Stay wild and keep on shining!

xoxo,

Ashley