3 Ways to Stop Underrating Yourself--Permanently

A woman named Tina walked up to me and said, "I could never do what you do."

The funny thing is that she wanted to do what I did, but didn't think she could do it. The truth is what you think about, you bring about. She was bringing about fears, uncertainties, and doubts instead of hope, faith, and joy.

Early on in my career, I felt the same way. I often questioned myself. Was I too young? Was I the wrong skin color? Did I have enough experience? Did I have the right credentials? All of these were the wrong questions.

Little did I realize that I must not answer my questions, but question my answers. I had to deliberately think about why I could do it instead of why I couldn't do it. Nothing was impossible.

This is where most people get mixed up. If you think of why you can't do it, then you will think negatively of yourself and fail to produce adequate results. Conversely, if you think you can do it, you'll seek to find ways to bring it to fruition.

There are 3 ways to stop underrating yourself--PERMANENTLY. First, you must change your thoughts, which controls your feelings, which instigates your actions. In other words, what starts in the mind will become an emotion that will soon need to be acted upon.

Henceforth...

Thoughts>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Feelings>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Actions

1. Change Your Thoughts: You have to rewire your mind completely. Every day, you must consider that most of what you learned is a farce. This means that you have to dump all of the past knowledge that you had about your life and begin to rebuild your mindset.

In order to do this, you must change what you put your attention on. With all of the distractions in the world, you must not digress to that of lesser importance. Instead, you must gravitate to what your mind and heart tells you is true.

You have to saturate your mind with absolute truth for as long as you can. This means that you have to read consistently every day, play audio programs (driving, showering, getting ready, etc.), and meeting bigger thinkers.

Enlarge your mind by attending conferences and ask as many questions as you can, even if you think they are dumb. Feast on new knowledge and continually put truth into your mind every day. Think about what you think about.

2. Change Your Feelings: As emotional beings, we constantly seek approval from other people. We cater to our feelings. When we wake up, we feel that either elated or discouraged, which is a strange thing which we may never understand.

Nevertheless, let that not dictate your life! Instead, seek new ways to make yourself feel good. Because your feelings lead to actions, you must make sure that you're doing activities that make you feel good.

Now don't take this too far. Even though eating a half-gallon of ice cream makes you feel good, don't think for a second that you should do this. Instead, go for a small cup if you need to. Go for the things that you want. Don't deprive yourself of any luxuries and cheat yourself out of life's goodness.

However, the highest activity that you can do to change your feelings is to exercise. Your physical state always controls your emotional state. In fact, emotion has the word "Motion" in it. What would even be better is if you made positive affirmations in the process of exercising.

3. Change Your Actions: Assuming that you've developed positive thoughts and feelings, this will lead you to positive actions. However, your positive actions may come in two forms: spontaneous or planned.

Positive spontaneous actions are actions that you take without formal planning. For instance, if you're sitting around the house, you may get an impulse to go shopping for something you've desired to obtain a few months ago. This happens because of how you've trained your thoughts and feelings.

Positive planned actions is like preparing to eat a fancy feast. You know it's coming and you've salivated for the moment for far too long. Usually, what this means is you'll plan to achieve a goal and work steadily toward it. In the process, you're working on your attitude (thoughts and feelings).

Eventually, your actions will lead to your results, which will subsequently lead to your success. If I could have told that woman all of this as she explained her disposition to me, then I would have. But since I thought about it after a while, I had a feeling I should take action (spontaneously) and write about it. So I did!