Self belief

“At this crisis, wherefrom has this dejection come upon you, O Arjuna, depriving you of your manliness, debarring you from heaven and debasing your earthly career?  Son of Pritha, yield not to cowardice. It ill becomes you, Scorcher of foes, cast off this base faint-heartedness and wake up.”

- Shri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita

“The great thing is to have faith in oneself, even before faith in God; but the difficulty seems to be that we are losing faith in ourselves day by day. “Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God – this is the secret of greatness.”

- Swami Vivekananda

 “The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.” 

― C. JoyBell C

“Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.” 

― David J. Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big

 “When you do what you fear most, then you can do anything. To dream by night is to escape your life. To dream by day is to make it happen. Doing the tough things sets winners apart from losers” 

― Stephen Richards

“It doesn't matter if thousands of people believe in you, unless You believe in You.” 

― Maddy Malhotra, How to Build Self-Esteem and Be Confident: Overcome Fears, Break Habits, Be Successful and Happy

Around ten days back, when I was in Madras, I chanced to meet an old friend of mine, who is the company secretary of a company. I held the same post in the same company more than 15 years ago. When I was the company secretary, he was working in the secretarial department of the company. He was a real wizard when it came to filing forms with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (Department of Company Affairs, then). He used to know a lot about conducting Board meetings, handling investors, maintenance of statutory registers and what not. I used to be surprised at his level of knowledge and had often goaded him to study Company Secretaryship and become a professional himself. My argument was when he could know so much about the secretarial department and be a real pillar around which the secretarial department functioned, why not go the extra mile and become a company secretary in his own right! He used to say something to ward my motivational thoughts off. He used to particularly cite his lack of English proficiency, the voluminous studies involved and the general 'I am not cut out for it' as the reasons for not pursuing Company Secretaryship. However, I used to goad him now and then. Many a time I had even said I will purchase the forms for him so that he gets encouraged / motivated to carry on, but without success. In 2002, when I left the company, he was still in the secretarial department. I thought for a fact that while he had it in him to become a company secretary, he chose not to because of lack of self belief.

Cut to 2015. When I met him, I was really amazed to know that this person had, over a period of time, studied Company Secretaryship, completed the course and finally, wonder of wonders, become the company secretary of the same company! The same post I held 15 years back! I remember speaking to him sometime back when he said that he was left with no option but to get into a bigger league and go ahead with pursuing the professional qualification. Frankly, I never would have bet at that point of time that he would do it, mainly due to his lack of inclination and belief that he could actually do it. But now, there he is, a professional himself!

How did this happen? It happened only because of self belief. Self belief is the confidence in oneself and one's ability to achieve things. How can you develop self belief? Is this essential? What benefits does it accrue to oneself?

All of us want to achieve something in life. Once we scale that peak, there is something else that our hearts want us to achieve. It could be an advancement in professional life or personal life or acquisition of a material possession. Anything. How can you achive self belief and put it into action?

Firstly, believe that you can do it. There is no possible task in this world that has not been surmounted by a human being. Let us take something like conquering a disease like asthma, for example. Asthma mainly occurs due to the contraction of the wind pipe. Yes, psychological situations cannot help you, it does contract the wind pipe. But what about other reasons, like weather etc? How can you try to breathe more life into that wind pipe? Or as in the example, securing a promotion, acquiring a qualification?

I am a company secretary but I joined the chartered accountancy course along with it. My asthma had a big effect in the late 90s on my education and I was able to complete my Company Secretaryship but as far as my chartered accountancy was concerned, I could only complete my Intermediate. I never bothered giving the final exam any serious shot as I had by that time settled into a cosy job. But everyone whom I knew wanted me to become a chartered accountant too. I never had the motivation to do it later on. Though I was a really good student, since it has been years of having actually been to an exam hall, I don't know whether I would be able to get into the student mode today. So I still stand at CA (Inter)! Lack of self belief? Perhaps.

Self belief requires you to have faith in yourself. "Yes, I can". Remove all fear from your mind. It is not easy. Do not listen to nay-sayers. These are the people who end up taking the wind of your sails.

Respect yourself. Lack of self belief arises from the fact that you don't know what you are capable of and end up undervaluing yourself. This is called as self esteem. You need to believe that you are actually worthy of something.

Have a goal.. The goal should be bold but realistic. It may even appear insurmountable at first. Break that goal into smaller goals. Let there be small steps, smaller peaks. Let the degree of these peaks become slowly higher and higher so that you do not have similar easier results to achieve.

When you fail in a small step, take heart from the fact that you achieved the earlier step and go about it again. But keep challenging yourself.

Never see others' achievements and compare them with what you have achieved. That would be like fighting a losing battle. Others can be inspirational, but never compared with. Everyone has their unique set of traits and skill sets that they are not comparable.

Have an icon. Keep him or her as a motivating factor in your life.

All these things will eventually help you kick start your engine and rev it slowly towards your goals. Just believe that you can. You will.

Go ahead, conquer the world!