I’ve been struggling with this for a long time. Self-confidence was definitely not my forte as a young woman.
And as a matter of fact, I made it my mission for 10 years to BECOME A WOMAN WHO BELIEVES IN HERSELF.
In the process, I discovered HOW MUCH SUCCESS STARTS WITH BELIEVING IN YOURSELF. And not just professional success. I’m talking about all kinds of personal and life successes.
But more importantly, I found out that BELIEVING IN YOURSELF AS A WOMAN is not something that happens suddenly, like a revelation.
BELIEVING IN YOURSELF is all about BUILDING THE RIGHT, CONSISTENT HABITS.
Build The Right Habits To Believe In Yourself As A Woman
It’s important to incorporate GOOD HABITS in your daily routine that will help you keep BELIEVING in yourself and having faith in the process.
I use the Law Of Attraction every day. Although it’s sometimes presented as a spiritual practice, there is actually a good psychological basis as to why this actually works.
For instance, the Law Of Attraction is priming you for success. And it also helps you stay more focused and reduce doubts so that you can spend more time ACTING instead of overthinking.
1. Write your one-sentence DREAM down 15 times per day in the morning.
You’ll see that this is more difficult than it sounds. Finding out what your ONE dream is at the moment and formulating it in just one sentence is tough.
But something magical happens when you write it down 15 times, day after day. You STOP questioning that the dream is possible.
Instead, you START making plans and figuring out HOW you can get there.
That’s an incredible tool and a very powerful effect. Switching from DOUBTS to PLANS, from IF to HOW.
2. Create a vision board.
Making a vision board can sound childish. But images are an incredible tool to impact our subconscious.
Sometimes, the bare fact of getting used to the sight of something we desire, AS LONG AS we make it seem like it has happened, helps our brain familiarise with our dream.
A vision board can be great to motivate you. However, don’t forget to get your hands dirty and DO SOMETHING for your dreams to come true.
3. Visualise your dream life in 3 years during a short meditation, every day.
Here’s a sentence I’ve heard over and over again from Vishen Lakhiani, founder of Mindvalley: “We often overestimate what we can do in 1 year, but we UNDERESTIMATE what we can do in 3 years”.
That’s why he recommends visualising your dream life 3 YEARS FROM NOW in your daily meditation practice. It helps you DREAM BIG ENOUGH without feeling under pressure or frustrated. 3 years is enough for your dreams to come forward a lot…
4. Self-Authoring.
I first read about the concept of self-authoring when I was doing more research bout Jordan B. Pederson’s projects. I was reading his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos* and found some of the advice inspiring.
And by the way, the first rule is to STAND STRAIGHT WITH THE SHOULDERS BACK…
But back to the topic of SELF-AUTHORING. It’s all about using the power of journaling to increase your chances of success and self-belief.
You journal about your past, your present AND YOUR FUTURE.
Jordan B. Pederson has been conducting research and found that students with a difficult background had much higher success rates during their studies and career when they were SELF-AUTHORING.
It seems like this helped them process their past and present better WHILE IMPROVING THEIR CAPACITY to ENVISION SUCCESS. It’s often DIFFICULT to believe success is possible when you have never really experienced it, either directly or indirectly through friends and family.
That’s why self-authoring seems to be a good tool to give hope back to anyone who may have lost faith in themselves.
5. Love your body no matter what.
The older we get, the more we appreciate our own body for what it is. Except for those who fear to get wrinkles, of course!
As a woman, it’s important to ACTIVELY learn to love your body, progressively.
There is much pressure to look perfect. Especially for young women. But that’s not what life is all about.
And most of all, hating or not accepting your body will have many bad consequences:
- unhealthy behaviour. If you are trying to FORCE your body to look like someone else’s no matter what, you will STOP listening to your natural needs. You could develop the wrong eating habits, hurt yourself being overly active, or simply impose a lot of STRESS on your body and mind.
- charisma and social self: most of the time, it’s your mindset and HOW YOU FEEL about yourself that determines the way you are perceived by others. Have you noticed how on a bad day, people tell you that you look tired or stressed? While on the other hand, when you FEEL great about yourself, whatever the reason, you seem to SHINE and people notice? Even if you did no extra effort to LOOK better?
- losing time: I’ve done this mistake in the past. It took me years to accept and love my body as it is. In the meantime, I’ve lost an INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF HOURS looking to miracle solutions and exercising too much to compensate for bad food habits. Deep down, I knew there was NO MIRACLE solution. But I was in total denial.
Accepting your body for what it is and LOVING IT will change your life. Start working on this NOW.
6. Make yourself pretty for YOURSELF, every day.
Here’s A GOOD HABIT to build up as a woman, in order to LOVE YOUR BODY.
Make it a point to put in the effort to FEEL PRETTY for YOURSELF every day. The world will also appreciate it, for sure. But FOCUS ON HONOURING YOURSELF, for yourself. You should please your own sense of beauty and aesthetics.
Take a good shower, work on your posture with a yoga session, dress well and maybe even put on some make-up. Sometimes, even the simplest accessory can make you feel pretty.
Take time to feel BEAUTIFUL. You deserve it.
7. Follow your intuition.
When we grow older, we are told to act rationally and justify every action we take.
And I totally fell for this philosophy of life. My student path was heavy in mathematics and I had to BLOCK OUT any intuitive bit of me for quite some time. Of course, working in finance for a few years didn’t make it better.
Only recently have I discovered the virtues of intuition again. Because it’s impossible to rationalise every move and decision we make without going crazy. Especially given the many opportunities we are faced with nowadays.
Also, there is more and more research being done on the power of intuition. It turns out that our brain has often subconsciously analysed a situation and figured out a problem WAY BEFORE we become conscious of it.
Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking*, which I already mentioned above, will motivate you to pay more attention to your guts feelings.
8. Practice patience.
Patience has become quite rare nowadays. We almost NEVER have to wait. Whenever we are confronted with a challenge, we can AT LEAST distract ourselves immediately. So that we don’t have to think about it.
But patience is key, and it’s a TRAIT to develop early on as a woman.
We’re sometimes told that we should never wait for something and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT to get it NOW. It’s to emulate us and, to some extent, to keep us busy.
But I think you’re better off if you recognise EARLY ON that GREAT THINGS TAKE TIME.
That’s the case both for your professional and personal life.
It takes time to…:
- build up valuable knowledge.
- become super fit.
- build good relationships.
My boyfriend could tell you a long tale about this. When we first met, he knew I was the girl he wanted for sure. But I needed more time. And he genuinely accepted to become friends, first. With NO GUARANTEE that this was going to work out. JUST PATIENCE. And it worked out pretty well for him (and for me) 🙂
But I can tell you for sure: had he been impatient and tried to push me, I would never have become his girlfriend…
9. Get to the point.
Try to get to the point in a CLEAR and QUICK way.
In a world where, unfortunately, many women still aren’t treated as equals to men, it will give you GREAT POWER to learn how to make a short, precise and impactful oral statement. Especially in a professional environment.
On top of this, “getting to the point” is a great skill to have in a conversation. And it helps create more space for everyone to express their opinion.
Expressing yourself CLEARLY and CONCISELY also sends a great signal to YOURSELF: you know exactly what you want to say and do.
You will feel more confident as a result.
10. Allow yourself to dream and aim high.
As long as you remember to be happy in the now, ALLOW YOURSELF TO DREAM AND AIM HIGH.
Your 3-year vision meditation practice is the perfect place to integrate this GOOD HABIT.
And it’s important to have dreams and high goals when you are younger. Just like for your finances, YOU HAVE ENOUGH TIME for all of your efforts to combine and compound into a great success.
That’s why it’s important for you to start dreaming NOW. Because it will be more difficult to change your path the more you wait.
11. Start psychotherapy or any other regular practice that will help you dive deeper and understand yourself better.
A lot of us still are under the impression that Psychotherapy is only for sick or crazy people.
Well, it’s NOT. Or better said, WE ARE ALL A LITTLE BIT SICK AND CRAZY at a certain level.
And that’s okay. But we should make it an endless quest to KNOW ourselves better. Start and see whether this deeper understanding of your past and present can help you improve your future.
And, by the way, it doesn’t need to be psychotherapy. You can also try out deeper meditation or yoga practice and other alternative healing methods. Or you can find the courage to TALK openly with your friends and family by yourself.
Find your way of knowing yourself better, it will help you leap forward.
12. Learn to be ALONE.
Most people are AFRAID of BEING ALONE.
In my opinion, this FEAR leads to the biggest mistakes in life.
Are you going to spend the night binging on TV series because you fear lonely?
Will you meet people you don’t really like because you don’t want to spend the evening alone?
Will you stay late at the office because no one is waiting for you at home?
Or would you even marry someone for fear of ending up alone?
The fear of being lonely and also the STIGMA around spending time alone definitely haunted me for a long time.
Only years later, after attending a full meditation week, did I realise THAT I CAN BE THE MASTER OF MY OWN EMOTIONS.
We are NOT DEPENDENT on others to feel joy. It’s all within us.
Once you realise this, you become SO FREE. You can decide to hang out with who you want when you want to. And you don’t need a distraction to feel better just because you are alone that night.
13. Love yourself.
LOVE YOURSELF. Every day. No matter what.
If you don’t know where to start to build this HABIT, here Kamal Ravikant’s personal story: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It*. I highly recommend this read, it will give you good advice to start loving yourself.
Be kind and self-compassionate and learn to FORGIVE YOURSELF as well.
If you still struggle to love yourself because this little VOICE IN YOUR HEAD tells you that you are THE WORST, please read Kristin Neff’s extensive book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself*.
Be YOUR BEST FRIEND.
14. Be more trusting and have faith in the process.
We are PRIMED to see the world with FEAR, UNCERTAINTY and DOUBT, or FUD, as some of you may know.
And there are very clear reasons WHY it is that way.
First, we have a VERY NATURAL TENDENCY to develop FEARS OF THE UNKOWN. This tendency seems to have originated from our NEED to escape dangerous or uncertain situations in order to SURVIVE in a more hostile environment with predators, deadly animals and plants or complex and difficult climate situations.
Yet, ALTHOUGH we luckily seldom have to fear for our lives, many of us KEEP HAVING STRONG FEARS AND DOUBTS. We only have shifted the focus and object of our fear.
And the MEDIA, which is a huge industry, has figured out that WE ARE MORE PRONE TO WATCH, share, react to NEWS and STORIES that REVIVE OUR SENSE OF FEAR AND DOUBT than anything else.
FEAR, UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT are also GREAT TOOLS TO SELL YOU ANYTHING.
That’s because FEELING SAFE is one of our MOST BASIC HUMAN NEEDS.
Be AWARE of that.
One GOOD HABIT that you can develop for yourself is to CULTIVATE TRUST and FAITH in the process of life.
Life is NOT ABOUT being the perfect woman. In fact, YOU DECIDE what life is about for yourself.
Whenever something makes you DOUBT or causes you to FEAR the future, I want you to tell yourself: “I trust that this experience will make me stronger and open new doors that I could not have accessed otherwise.”
15. Know yourself sexually.
Uuuuuh. The “S” word! Finally!
We still live in a society where sex is mostly taboo. Few people talk about it openly with their parents, friends or even PARTNERS.
I’ve recently watched a Netflix episode from the Goop Lab which featured Betty Dodson. She’s an American sex educator that has been teaching women for DECADES how to pleasure themselves.
I believe that, especially as a woman, you should get into the habit of experimenting sexually. And you don’t necessarily need a partner to do so.
It’s good to inform yourself and practice. But you shouldn’t stop at that.
I’d recommend reading and getting familiar with different practices and preferences, and LEARNING TO TALK OPENLY with any potential partner you may have.
It can be a long learning process, but it’s definitely a topic that most women will be confronted with at some point. The experience will be so much more wonderful if you have educated yourself a little.
