When was the last time that you were truly amazed by yourself, by all your accomplishments, and by the amazing individual that you are? We all have things that we’re proud of in life, and areas where we’d like to improve. Life is a series of ups and downs. At any given moment we will be up in some areas and down in others.
That’s normal, that’s life. The problem is that it’s all too easy to focus on all the things we want to accomplish and forget about all the things that we already have. It has been said that most people compare other people’s highlights package to their own outtakes.
Most people compare other people’s highlights package to their own outtakes!
I’ve managed to pack quite a lot of things into my short life, but I am very ambitious, I have BIG Dreams, and still so many things I want to do. When I meet people, they are often AMAZED by how much I’ve been able to accomplish in my life and yet for me, I look and see how many things I still want to achieve, and I keep adding to the list!
So, it’s easy for me sometimes, if I’m not careful, to become down on myself because I see so much that I haven’t done and don’t take the time to be AMAZED by how much that I have. Don't get caught in limiting thinking because you're not where you want to be. See the good in you that others see.
See the good in you that others see.
I once worked with a guy who related a story to me of when he first got started in sales. It was his first ever sales job, he had no experience in selling, and he was selling a product that was around $3,000. Actually, it cost $2,900. Over time, he became very good, he was getting lots of sales and making good money. But he’d hit a glass ceiling which, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t break through. He was a consistent performer, but not a top performer. Then one day, there was a price rise of $200. Not a huge increase for a product that already cost around $3,000, you would think that wouldn’t have much of an impact on sales, right?
Well, it did. It had a dramatic impact. What do you think happened to this guy’s sales? I guessed they probably went down. He said I was wrong. In fact, his sales burst through the glass ceiling that had been holding him back and he became one of the top sellers for his company.
So, what happened?
Well, as he explained, being his first sales job and never having sold before, he was intimidated by having a product that cost $3,000. He doubted that people would pay that much. But his boss told him it was worth $3,000 and he believed him. He saw other people getting sales, so he thought there must be people willing to pay that much. But he never actually took the time to analyse himself whether HE thought it was really worth $3,000. So, he just believed what he was told. Then when the price rise came, even though it was only slight, it was enough to put it OVER the $3,000 limit that he thought the product was worth. Suddenly, the belief that he inherited was no longer enough, he couldn’t justify asking MORE than $3,000 for something he himself only believed was worth $3,000. He couldn’t sell!
So what happened?
Well, he did what he should have done in the first place. He had to sell HIMSELF on the product. He had to convince himself that it was worth that much. When he actually started to think about how good the product REALLY was, how it would benefit his customers and all the reasons why they SHOULD buy this, he suddenly found himself believing that it was worth WAY MORE than a mere $3,000. Armed with his OWN belief, it was now so much easier to sell something for $3,100 than it ever had been for $2,900 when he was borrowing someone else’s belief!
Why Do I Tell This Story?
The reason I tell this story is that the product that we’re talking about here is YOU! It’s nice to have people to tell you how good you are, tell you how amazing you are. But if YOU don’t really believe that, it’s not going to mean anything. I can’t tell you that you’re amazing, though I suspect you probably are, but I don’t know you. So, if it came from me, it wouldn’t mean anything. It has to come from you.
So many people say that they have no self-belief. They look at other people and say oh they’re so confident, I could never be like that. But what I have discovered is, it’s actually really simple to believe in yourself.
You see believing in “yourself” as some abstract concept is really hard. What is self? How do we define what self is? If the term “self” has no meaning, no definition, then believing in ones “self” will be really hard.
But if you give “self” a meaning, then it becomes really easy. Everyone is amazing at something. You may think that you have no self-confidence but you may be really good at fishing or knitting or gardening or whatever the case may be. So, you may think that you have no self confidence but if you start talking about fishing you could talk with absolute confidence because that is something you’re really good at. If someone were to ask you if you were any good at fishing, you could confidently answer yes because it is something that you know to be true.
Apply this principle to every area of your life. Start noticing the things that you’re really good at. Imagine for a moment that you heard through the grapevine that someone had said that you were “AMAZING” at something but you didn’t hear what it was they said you were amazing at. What would be the first thing that comes into your mind that they might have been talking about?
Finish this sentence, “When they said I was AMAZING, they probably meant I was amazing at….”
Once you start to deliberately notice all the areas of your life where you are amazing, you will be giving yourself permission to start, maybe for the first time in your life, to acknowledge yourself as being an AMAZING person.
And you know what, the more you allow yourself to acknowledge those things, the more of those things you will start noticing.
When you walk around thinking about all the things that haven’t gone to script in your life, all the things you still have left to do, you’ll walk around in a slump. Your shoulders will be down, you will be down, and you will project that onto others that you meet. But when you walk around thinking about something that you KNOW FOR SURE that you are AMAZING at doing, you’ll walk with confidence, you’ll talk with confidence, and THAT will project onto the people that you meet. They will think, WOW that person is so confident.
So let me ask you…
Isn’t it about bloody time that you AMAZED yourself?