Every day we’re exposed to some form of hypnosis—whether we realize it or not. This is because our subconscious mind acts like a giant sponge, absorbing everything around it.

From marketing and advertising to television and movies—they are all constantly hypnotizing us. 

So why not turn your ability to be hypnotized into a chance to overcome your fears and achieve your greatest goals?  

Many people don’t practice self-hypnosis, but it’s so easy and so powerful—we should do it all time!

Today, I’m going to teach you how to hypnotize yourself in 10 minutes or less so you can help powerfully change your life—eradicate limiting beliefs and fears and increase your confidence, vitality, and abundance.

Let’s start! 

What Is Hypnosis? 

Hypnosis is actually a more common state of mind than you might think.

Generally speaking, hypnosis is a trance-like state characterized by intense suggestibility, heightened imagination and mental clarity.

The state of hypnosis is very similar to daydreaming, being lost in your thoughts, or totally absorbed in something you love.

Best of all, hypnosis can be used to help you achieve your goals—whether that’s to lose weight, stop smoking, or rebuild low self-esteem and confidence!

Is Hypnotherapy Safe?

Let’s cut to the chase—yes! 

Hypnotherapy is a very safe health and well-being intervention, and you are always in control. 

But there’s often lots of confusion around hypnosis. So let’s clear that up… 

A common misconception is that people believe once you go into a hypnotic state, you might not come out of it. Or another one is that you lose all control of yourself and your actions. 

This isn’t true at all. Hypnosis is not mind-control, and it doesn’t involve manipulating someone.

It’s a very gentle process that allows you to train your mind to focus on whatever you want to create.

Hypnosis provides improved clarity, focus, and concentration. It also empowers you to be in control of your mind rather than your mind controlling you. 

When you’re hypnotized by someone else, that person simply acts as a guide. This is helpful for those looking to become more comfortable with the process of hypnosis. 

Ultimately, the only one that can hypnotize you, is YOU.

How Does Hypnosis Work?

Hypnosis utilizes your powerful subconscious mind to reach an altered state of consciousness with increased focus and awareness. 

It helps you to tune out most, if not all, of the stimuli around you. Tapping into the “alpha brainwave state,” which occurs when your brain waves slow down.

By bridging the gap between the conscious and subconscious mind, hypnosis helps bring you into a place of deep relaxation. That’s why hypnosis is so popular among those who wish to manage and decrease stress. 

Hypnosis allows new pathways in the brain to be formed, helping to create positive changes in our thoughts and behavior. 

As you relax into a hypnotic state, your mind becomes suggestible. Then, you can uncover the root cause of issues and rewrite the stories you tell yourself about certain past events.

The adaptive brain is malleable like plastic, and it is designed for learning. By practicing self-hypnosis, you’re using that plasticity to retrain your mind to let go of negative, limiting beliefs.

The more you train your mind to focus on the present and positive, the happier and more peaceful you will be.

Can Self-Hypnosis Change Your Life?

Hypnosis can absolutely help to transform your life—whether you are a professional hypnotherapist, a client, or simply practicing self-hypnosis at home. 

Self-hypnosis is particularly effective in helping you steer your mind in a more positive direction, so you can:

• Make and embrace change faster
• Break free from a scarcity mindset
• Manage stress better
• Stop smoking
• Lose weight
• Overcome addictions
• Welcome vitality and well-being 
• Improve your life
• Think more positively
• Supercharge self-confidence
• Be more prosperous

As you can see, there are many benefits to hypnosis. It’s by far one of the easiest ways to help make extraordinary, lasting changes in your life.

Self-Hypnosis: How To Get Into a Hypnotic State

In order to successfully practice self-hypnosis, you need to be comfortable. This means sitting back with your arms relaxed by your side or hands separated on your lap. 

Then you can use a powerful Rapid Eye Movement (R.E.M.) technique. This allows you to enter a hypnotic state much quicker than traditional approaches. 

To do this, simply roll your eyes up for a few moments. Imagine you’re trying to look into your own hairline. 

Then, while keeping your eyeballs up, just close your lids. 

When your eyelids are closed, you may notice your eyes start to flicker under your eyelids. You can actually touch your eyelids if you’re not sure, and you’ll feel a slight fluttering. 

This helps you to relax and enter a trance state similar to the R.E.M stage of sleep. R.E.M is characterized by vivid dreams associated with increased brain activity. 

How Do I Know if Self-Hypnosis Is Working?

If you want to gain reassurance that you are successfully under hypnosis—then try this mind-hacking exercise… 

Once you’ve used the R.E.M. technique, take a moment to relax and push your shoulders down. Just imagine that you have a string attached to your right arm like a pulley. 

Now imagine that pulley is pulling your arm up and up and up.

As that string is pulled, your right arm is floating and moving and lifting and starting to travel higher. The minute you find it floating up, you can allow that to happen for as long as you like. 

This is confirmation that your mind is accepting suggestions.

Then imagine the pulley has been let go. You can drop your arm down, and then you know that you’re ready to start giving yourself suggestions.

How To Get Into Hypnotic Trance

In order to truly enter a hypnotic trance and start giving yourself suggestions, you’re going to first begin to take your mind deeper, down a set of stairs…

When you’re doing self-hypnosis, it’s a good idea to have the same steps, like wooden steps

that go down to a beach, beautiful carpeted steps that take you into a lovely room,

or beautiful tiled stone steps inside a villa in Greece.

I love the wooden steps going down to the sand. It helps me to relax, as I tell myself that I can feel the waves at my feet and the sun on my face.

But you can simply visualize the steps in your house if you like. It really doesn’t matter, but it’s quite nice to have a set of steps that you really love.

Take Your Mind Down 10 Steps

When you’re ready to descend your steps, simply drop your chin so you feel that “looking-down” sensation.

It doesn’t matter now at all where your eyeballs have gone. You no longer need to keep them strained upwards.

Mentally look down 10 steps, and as you count them, visualize your feet taking each step. 

It really helps to hear, feel, and to see your feet treading each step.

As you move onto step 10, feel each muscle and every nerve turn loose and get looser as you go deeper. Then begin to count down the steps, one by one, going deeper and deeper. 

As you go deeper, you’ll find every sound and noise around you is carrying you further into the most phenomenal, relaxing state of self-hypnosis.

By doing this, you allow yourself to develop a gentle, relaxing feeling that you are drifting and floating. 

Once you reach this deep stage of relaxation, you’re absolutely ready to give yourself powerful suggestions.

Give Yourself Powerful Suggestions 

This step, also called the “suggestion phase,” is all about stimulating the subconscious mind to uncover any unconscious blocks or limiting beliefs. 

You need to keep the suggestions very clear and simple—and always in the present tense, as your mind doesn’t work in the future. 

Now, what you say at this point obviously depends on what the issue is. Today, we’ll use confidence as an example. 

So tell yourself a story where you picture yourself feeling super confident. 

Begin to tell yourself positive statements, always focusing on the words…

“I am a beautifully confident person. My confidence flows from within.” 

“When I go for an interview, I’m confident.”

“When I go out socially, I’m confident.”

“When I pick up the phone and make calls in my job, I’m confident.”

Repetition is essential as this is how the mind learns and strengthens the neural pathways. 

So keep giving yourself exciting suggestions, using words that fire your imagination, and make an amazing picture for yourself.

How To Reinforce Your Desired State 

When you’re doing self-hypnosis, you should clearly visualize the image of what you want.

Imagine yourself a few months down the road, having already made the changes you want to make and achieving everything you had set out to do.

Whether that be standing looking at yourself in the mirror being your perfect weight and size or getting the job promotion you wanted.

Envisioning your future state can really help you picture yourself succeeding—which helps lead your subconscious mind to your desired outcome.

Remember, one of the rules of the mind is that the way we feel about anything is down to two things; the pictures we make in our head and the words we say to ourselves. 

So when you make the pictures positive, when you make the words positive, it actually changes your whole life in the most extraordinary way. 

Ending Your Self-Hypnosis Session 

When you’ve finished giving yourself powerful suggestions, you’re ready to bring yourself out of your relaxing self-hypnosis session. 

To do this, simply count from one to 10 before opening your eyes—some people like to come back up the stairs, and that’s good too.

So you can mentally go back up those 10 steps to the top. When you’re at the top of the steps, just open your eyes.

It’s very important to do this in your own time, in your own way.

You can do it as quickly or as slowly as you want to. 

The Takeaway

Self-hypnosis is so easy to learn. But the really great thing is, even if you do it incorrectly, it still works. And when you get it right, it works really powerfully! 

You can do it on a train while lying in bed at night or in a waiting room. Nobody knows you’re doing it, even if you’re standing up at a bus stop, it’s perfectly safe.

So start practicing self-hypnosis everywhere. Fill your mind with amazing, positive thoughts and witness your life begin to change for the better. 

If you want expert support in making your self-hypnosis journey as powerful and effective as possible, then I highly recommend my All Access Pass.

The All Access Pass unlocks my extensive library of self-hypnosis audios and meditations to skyrocket your personal development. Whether you’re looking for phenomenal success in your career or a lasting, loving relationship…

My powerful self-hypnosis audios and meditations offer an easier way to reach your goals that will feel entirely natural and totally effortless. 

To discover the life-changing power of self-hypnosis for yourself, simply click here to get your All Access Pass today.

It can impact everything; our relationships, health, wealth, success, and most importantly, our happiness. 

In an age fuelled by social media, with its filtered images and glamorous stories, it can be easy to fall into the trap of losing our own self-worth. Our accomplishments can seem small in comparison, making it easy to lose confidence in ourselves.

The tiniest of blemishes can send our minds quietly spiraling under the radar into fits of inadequacy and a lack of confidence.

It comes down to how you think and approach setbacks with full confidence. You are about to learn six simple—yet underrated—methods that you can use to take the feeling of failure and reframe it to your advantage and step into your full, confident self.

Where does Lack of Confidence Come From? (And Why Is It There?)

Instead of acknowledging how smart, strong, and resilient we are, most of us spend the majority of our time comparing our weaknesses to someone else’s strengths. We keep reliving moments of defeat or developing an unhealthy attachment to an idea of who or what we want to be like. 

You may find this hard to believe, but you’ve probably been gradually conditioned to behave this way.

You see it all over the media: millionaire CEOs turned into celebrities, the glamorization of influencers with millions of followers, and hustle-culture workaholism being praised in the spotlight. 

All of this sends us a subliminal message of toxic productivity and misleading beliefs of what success and confidence should look like.

With such pervasive messages, it’s so easy to assume it to be true for you too.

It’s easy to lose sight of your own confidence, strengths, and goals, and be tricked into following the crowd playing this toxic game: a rat race of achievement hoarding and unrealistic busy schedules.

How Low Self-Confidence Can Affect Your Life

It’s undeniable that a lack of confidence can be difficult to deal with.

Whatever life throws at us—such as a relationship breakdown, a business or job loss, or a loss at something that we were working hard to win—all these things can be difficult and can knock the wind out of us, which in turn, affects our confidence. 

Guilt and shame over your perceived failures can also give rise to the fear that internally whispers, “You will always be a failure.”

These “whispers” are what Marisa Peer calls our inner critic.

Marisa Peer, Britain’s #1 voted therapist, defines the inner critic as, “An annoying little voice of self-doubt inside your head that always seems to highlight your flaws and wipe out your confidence.”

All the things you say to yourself about not being smart enough, good enough, or brave enough make you lose confidence and trust in your own abilities. 

It is important to note that these thoughts aren’t painting a perfect picture of reality; however, in the moment, it can feel very true to you. You make them true the more you say them to yourself, blurring the lines of what is real and what is exaggerated negative self-projection.

Even the smallest adjustment to your perspective can have mind-altering shifts to your confidence and how you begin to think of yourself.

How Your Mind Works and Why It’s Your Master Key

Your mind hates change. That’s because it only knows what worked before to keep you alive. It doesn’t like to deviate away from that, even if it’s good for you. 

So if you’ve been living routinely convincing yourself that you’re not very good, your mind will do everything it can to make that your reality. It’ll make you lazier, demotivate you, and give rise and more power to your inner critic. It will keep you exactly where you tell it you want to be.

“Your every thought and word form a blueprint that your mind and body work to make your reality.”—Marisa Peer

Since your mind responds to the thoughts and words you tell it, then, by definition, it will project them and make it a reality. With this logic, you can deduce that your reality isn’t what’s out there, but what’s in your mind.

6 Simple Methods to Shift From Feeling Like a Failure To Having Ultimate Confidence

1. Make smart, positive choices

Making a small conscious choice to do something positive can cause a huge ripple effect of positivity in your life.

Simple (smart) choices + consistency + time = radical life changes

“Your thoughts control your feelings. Your feelings control your actions. And your actions control the outcome of your events. So if you change your thinking, you change everything.”—Marisa Peer

Just like how you can get sucked into a downward spiral of negative thoughts, you can also elevate your mind into an upward spiral momentum of positive thought.

2. Practice positive affirmations

We often tell ourselves that we’re “not smart enough, good enough, or deserving enough,” but we never consider those to be negative affirmations. We just thought it to be true. 

You simply need to replace that thinking pattern with a positive one that empowers, inspires, and drives you toward growth, leaving you feeling good about yourself. Even in the worst of times, this is the place where you will be operating from.

When you get negative thoughts about yourself, don’t judge them. Simply write them down on a piece of paper. Then identify the disempowering word, and replace it with the opposite one that you would like to embody.

Try this practice for at least 21 days, and you’ll be surprised at just how easy it is to reprogram your mind towards confidence. 
To have the maximum transformation, you need to uncover your most deep-rooted limiting beliefs at a subconscious level and remove them altogether. Then by replacing these blocks with empowering new beliefs, you can live the life you deserve. Marisa Peer teaches you the exact steps on how to reprogram your mind in her live 21-Day Confidence Challenge here.

3. Make what is familiar unfamiliar

Most of us make decisions out of habit or familiarity. In order to harness the power of positive choices you make, you need to be willing to become more mindful and make conscious choices.

You do that by making the familiar unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar familiar. 

Apply that formula to reprogram your mind. You will be able to stop whatever old (negative) habits your mind regularly gravitates towards and make a way to build new (positive) ones. 

4. Drop perfectionism and focus on incremental progress

Most of us are trying to create a radical change by sticking to it with willpower. In reality, it can be compared with trying to bench press 100lbs on your first day at the gym. It’s a formula for disaster.

What you want to focus on is the “progress” toward your change, and not the change itself. 

With a 1% compounding increase every day, it ends up doubling every 72 days. Meaning in under three months, you double your progress to success—whatever that means to you.

Remember: small changes over time = huge changes later. 

5. Awareness can be healing—practice it

Practicing awareness is like growing a muscle. The more you practice paying attention to what is happening around you and within you at a given moment, the more the muscle grows. 

When you bring awareness to that, it can help you let it go and stop it from holding you back. Be patient with yourself. If you miss a day or two, it’s fine.

6. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday

When we decide to become successful and confident, we often look up to others that “have it all.” We pick up our success goals from what they have already achieved. This way is prone to disappointment. 

Comparing ourselves with others, however, can become overwhelming, slowly nipping at your confidence and belief in yourself. 

The best person to compare yourself to is your former self. To make this approach easy and attainable, you need to define what a 1% better version of yourself looks like and you can do this in the 21-Day Confidence Challenge.

Becoming Unstoppable

The way you respond to life is all within your control. After all, you have the power to become the best version of yourself.

Working with clients from royalty and rockstars to CEOs over three decades, Marisa Peer has built a stellar reputation for impacting millions of lives, and has shaken up the therapy industry by creating powerful, rapid therapy techniques. 

Thousands of people have been transformed by her 21-Day Challenges—breaking free from seeking other people’s approval, rewiring their minds for unshakable confidence, and becoming unstoppable in every area of their lives.

Most of the time, we are unaware of what creates our self-confidence blocks. Our conscious minds can’t access that part of our thinking, which is why we repeatedly go over the same thought patterns, no matter what we try and shift externally. 

When you join the 21-Day Confidence Challenge not only do you get to the root cause of any blocks you have through Marisa’s powerful meditations, you will also find that you tap into your unstoppable self—firing up the belief that you are worthy and deserving. Marisa’s challenges enable your mind to open up brand new neural pathways so that nothing can hold you back and confidence becomes your new reality. 

The challenge is designed to be actionable from the very start to help you profoundly increase your own sense of self-worth and bring back the super confidence you were born with. 

It could also help you understand and rewire negative thoughts and behaviors so you can make a profound and positive change in your life.

In addition, you will join a thriving community, all ready to help keep you accountable in your confidence path. Marisa will guide you through the proven tools and techniques to be able to love yourself, feel good about your life, and believe in your potential.

It’s time for you to have the phenomenal confidence that you deserve.If you’d like to take a deep dive into gaining that unwavering confidence in your life, you can try it for yourself by joining the 21-Day Confidence Challenge here.

Although utterly uncomfortable, this emotion is often a positive push in the right direction. 

However, in my thirty years of working with clients worldwide, I have seen many being held back by a resembling feeling—toxic shame. I have also been awarded an opportunity to help those people release toxic shame and watch them thrive.

In this article, I will be sharing:

• The difference between normal shame, guilt, and toxic shame
• Toxic shame symptoms and consequences
• Where toxic shame comes from
• Ways to tackle toxic shame once and for all

Normal Shame vs. Toxic Shame

What is toxic shame? The best way to understand this complex experience is to contrast it with normal, healthy shame.

“Normal” shame is our emotional reaction to doing something we consider to be wrong. 

When our values and our actions are in a mismatch, we feel embarrassed. We tell ourselves: “What I did was wrong.”

Even though it is extremely unpleasant, this kind of shame is actually healthy. It teaches us not to repeat our mistakes. We realistically assess our responsibility in a situation and see that we should have done better. 

Thanks to healthy shame, we see the path towards becoming better people.

Guilt is similar to shame, although there is a difference between these two emotions. 

Guilt is a feeling of responsibility or remorse for a wrongdoing that hurt others. 

Shame does not necessarily mean hurting others. Rather, it is the painful feeling arising from violating norms and values. Shame is about doing something improper or ridiculous. 

Toxic shame, however, is an emotion that is not evoked by your actions. It is pervasive and built into your psychological core. Toxic shame is a consequence of a deeply-rooted belief that you are unworthy.

When you feel toxic shame, you are not thinking that your behavior was wrong. You are convinced that YOU are bad, contemptible, and undeserving of anything good. “I’m a horrible, awful person,” or a variation of this thought echoes through your mind.

Shame, guilt, and toxic shame could be triggered by similar situations. 

Let’s say that you were in a rush to catch a bus. While you were running, you accidentally pushed an elderly lady who stumbled. You kept on running because you had a meeting to get to. Immediately after you have boarded the bus, you feel flooded by emotions. Here is the difference:

• Shame would make you feel embarrassed because others saw it and probably thought bad of you. You also feel it was wrong. You think about your values and priorities, and decide to be more careful and considerate in the future.
• Guilt would come from imagining how the elderly lady must have felt. The empathy you feel would make you decide to stop the next time it happens, let the bus drive off, apologize, and make sure the lady was alright.
• Toxic shame ignores the possibilities of making amends. It is also not realistic. In other words, it is an emotional overreaction, void of constructive criticism. It makes you jump straight to: “I’m a despicable human being! I deserve to suffer and get pushed around by everyone forever.” 

I have seen this over and over again in my career as a therapist. So many of my clients did not realize that the reason they couldn’t move ahead in life and be happy was a deeply rooted feeling of toxic shame. 

Toxic shame symptoms

The symptoms of toxic shame vary from person to person. 

Toxic shame can be very difficult to recognize because it lives in your subconsciousness—the deeper part of your mind in which your core motives and beliefs reside. Therefore, it finds various ways to manifest itself based on your particular situation and traits. 

Here are its main characteristics:

• Compared to regular embarrassment, it lasts much longer and feels all-encompassing.
• You feel emotional pain and other adverse emotions that are disproportionate to the situation.
• There is often no external event that would trigger shame—it comes on its own or because of your thoughts.
• You feel inadequate and find yourself avoiding challenges and missing out on opportunities in life because you are trying to avoid the feeling of shame.

The Roots of Toxic Shame

Toxic shame usually emerges as a consequence of childhood or adult trauma.

If your parents were overly criticizing, distant, or downright abusive, you might have developed a conviction that you are unworthy of love. 

Self-shaming became your mode of being and a foundation of your identity. You did not learn to trust yourself and accept yourself. As a result, the toxic shame you developed makes you feel inadequate in various realms of life.

A traumatic experience in adulthood, especially if in romantic relationships, also has a way of making us start doubting our worthiness. If you were involved in a codependent relationship, toxic shame might have been a large part of the dynamic between you and your partner. 

As a codependent, you would have required your partner’s approval. You would have depended on them to tell you if and under what conditions you are worthy. Such a dynamic is a fertile ground for toxic shame to develop.

You could have started believing that something was wrong with you if you were a victim of abuse. Research revealed that toxic shame often comes from being abused by a partner with a narcissistic personality disorder.

Whatever the path was that led you to this point, now you are stuck thinking that you are not worthy and deserving of abundance, love, and happiness. Simply put, you are convinced that, no matter how hard you try, you will never be enough. Luckily, this can change. I will show you how.

What Toxic Shame Can Do To Your Life

During the past three decades of helping clients, time and time again I have witnessed the devastating consequences of a shame-based identity. 

Too many people live far below their potential because of the psychological effects of shame.

Directly and indirectly, toxic shame causes people to underperform and settle for less than they deserve. So many of us might not even try to realize our dreams if we think we are unintelligent, unlovable, and “a bad person.”

These are the three most striking effects of toxic shame I had seen in my clients before we started working on liberating them from it:

Social isolation and unhealthy relationships

People troubled by toxic shame often either isolate themselves from others or engage in utterly unhealthy relationships. 

If you believe that you are not good enough to have love and friendship in your life, you might avoid people altogether. Toxic shame is often the reason for developing a fear of rejection, fear of love, and fear of intimacy.

When toxic shame is coupled with a fearful-avoidant attachment style, the result is often a “push-pull” kind of a relationship. Any hint of criticism, no matter how well-intended, initiates the cycle of withdrawing and ensuing anxiety.

I have also seen many fall prey to abusive partners due to toxic shame. They were easily manipulated by their fear of revealing their “weaknesses.” The abuser would notice their need to be liked and a fear of being ashamed. The abuser would then skillfully suggest how they adore the victim—but would be completely disenchanted if they found out that the victim is, in fact, not perfect.

The door to abuse opens then and there. The victim is ready to do and withstand anything, only to maintain that initial idealized image of oneself. They sacrifice everything to prove that they are worthy and to avoid shame—or suffer because they deserve a punishment. The abuser stops being so delicate and moves on to open insults and violence, “justified” by the victim’s “unworthiness.” 

Emotional disturbances and vulnerability to toxic perfectionism

Toxic shame can trigger bouts of depressive mood. Internalized messages about your lack of value make you believe that you are vile or incapable.

Similarly, toxic shame can give rise to anxiety. When you feel that there is so much to feel ashamed of, it is only natural to become apprehensive.

Toxic perfectionism, as was revealed in scientific studies and witnessed in my years of practice as a therapist, is a frequent consequence of toxic shame. 

If you are inherently ashamed of yourself as you are, you probably bend over backwards to be perfect. You feel that you must do everything it takes to stop others from revealing your imperfection.

Harmful behaviors

When you believe that you are bad, self-loathing is a natural response. Some people then take it one step further—they start to punish themselves.

Many of those weighed down by toxic shame engage in self-harming behavior. Addictions, promiscuity, over-eating, self-injuring, self-sabotage—I have witnessed it all. More often than not, with my clients, the source of these harmful behaviors stems from toxic shame. 

Toxic shame initiates a vicious cycle. You feel unworthy and do things that are bad for you. You might even provoke external punishment. For example, you cheat on your spouse, underperform at work, or start a bar fight.

You drink, do drugs, gamble, or eat enormous amounts of unhealthy food. As a consequence, you feel ashamed. To put things right, you punish yourself—and the cycle starts over.

How To Overcome Toxic Shame

Have you had enough of all this? Don’t worry. Although it probably took years for you to reach the point where toxic shame runs your life, this can be mended in as little as a few weeks.

In my career of over three decades, I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the most successful people in the world. However, many of them were not successful when we first met. What made the colossal change in their lives was the work we did on overcoming toxic shame.

I have watched dozens of desperate people make a 180-degree turn and become thriving, happy individuals. I am so honored that I had the opportunity to assist them in finding their way out of the clutch of toxic shame. Here I give you four methods I found effective when healing toxic shame. They will work for you as well.

Self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and self-care

We all make mistakes. That does not mean we deserve no love. You are worthy of love, compassion, and care—and you need to learn to award them to yourself. 

Self-love does not happen overnight if you spent the majority of your life in the toxicity of unhealthy shame. However, it can be learned. 

The first step is to forgive yourself. You can try writing a letter of forgiveness to yourself. Let it all out. List your “transgressions” and traits you are ashamed of, and then forgive yourself.

Replace self-loathing with self-compassion. Whatever it may be that you are ashamed of, trust me, you are not alone. Give yourself the kind of understanding and compassion you would give to someone you love.

Finally, make a self-care plan. Take care of your body and physical health. Eat and sleep well. Surround yourself with supportive people. Make time for hobbies and fun activities. Pamper yourself. Why? Because you deserve it.

Meditation and mindfulness practice

Toxic shame is deeply rooted in your mind. To get rid of it, you need to unlearn the old ways of how you see yourself. 

At the moment, your automated reaction is: “I am unworthy.” You mostly see yourself as a pool of foulness and weaknesses. However, now you need to start practicing seeing yourself as an imperfect human being. Someone who does occasionally err—but also possesses plenty of great traits and potential. 

You get the power to choose who you will be every day. You can change the way you see yourself, and, consequently, the impact you have on this world. 

Changing your self-image may not come easy for many. One way to get there faster is through meditation.

Your thoughts control your feelings. Your feelings control your actions and your actions control your events.

Most of us identify with our feelings and thinking. We believe that they are true. We feel that we are our emotions and thoughts. With meditation, you learn that this is not the case. 

Various forms of mindfulness practices harness the power of your mind. It helps detach from feeling in a specific, habitual way. 

You become proficient at seeing feelings and automatic thoughts as separate from your core being. You learn to spot an emotional storm coming your way, and, most importantly, you develop an ability to step away from it.

Simply put, mindfulness helps us notice toxic shame at the moment when we are feeling it—and release it. Instead of being engulfed by toxic shame that came out of the blue, with mindfulness, you will be able to control it. 

The first step is to learn to notice your emotions and thoughts. Whenever you experience something, try to name the feeling. Try to hear the thought clearly in your head. Practice to keep them in your awareness.

Then, practice not judging them. Merely recognize their presence: “I feel incompetent right now,” and not “I feel incompetent and that’s horrible, that’s wrong, I shouldn’t feel that way!” 

The next step is to let go. Emotions and thoughts are transient. Therefore, acknowledge, non-judgmentally, your experience, and let it float away from you. When it comes back again, do the same. Let it drift away.

With time and practice, you will witness an inner balance develop. 

Working with a therapist

In the early days of my career as a therapist, I noticed that to help with an issue as complex as toxic shame, addressing both the conscious and subconscious mind is vital. I developed a ground-breaking method called Rapid Transformational Therapy® (RTT®), which does just that.

It combines the most effective principles from hypnotherapy, NLP, CBT, neuroplasticity psychotherapy and neuroscience. As such, it addresses both conscious and subconscious beliefs that led you to where you are now. A trained RTT® therapist works to help you reprogram your mind and open you up to a life filled with joy, love, and abundance.

I Am Enough program and masterclass

Based on three decades of experience working with clients riddled with toxic shame, I  developed an award-winning I Am Enough program. I yearn to share my insights and help you rediscover the confidence and self-love you were born with.

How does it work? Using various techniques, including hypnotic root causes, the program implants a new, powerful belief in your mind—that you are enough.

When you keep repeating to yourself that you are enough, your mind can no longer stick to the conviction that you are not. Your subconsciousness now works to confirm a healthy, empowering belief. The simple but powerful phrase helped many people worldwide kickstart their lives.

You do not need others’ reassurance and approval. You are not weak, unworthy, bad, or unlovable.

The truth is, you are enough. You will always be enough and you have always been.

If you want to rewire your brain to dismiss self-hate, self-doubt, and toxic shame, start your journey with the free I Am Enough masterclass. This masterclass will help you shift your focus from what you think are your insufficiencies onto your strengths and abilities.

Move on From Toxic Shame To Self-Love

Toxic shame is not a realistic feeling to serve as the basis of your self-image. It was imposed onto you in times of vulnerability. However, now you get to choose a new belief to found your identity on. Choose I Am Enough and turn your world around.

Summon abundance, love, and health. Contact an RTT® specialist therapist, try my I Am Enough program and a free masterclass, and break free. I am so excited for you to try my method—and I cannot wait to hear how it changed your life.

Do you ever feel insecure in your relationship—jealous, or snooping around your partner’s phone?

Or do you always second-guess your decision to go to the beach because your body is far from being as fit as you’d like it to be?

Maybe, you always find yourself shying away from the spotlight in social situations.

If you answered yes to any of these questions, know that struggling with insecurities is more common than you think. If you’re looking for methods on how to deal with insecurity, then you’ve come to the right place.

Along with how to stop being insecure, you will learn: 

• What insecurity is and the different ways it manifests in everyday life
• The root cause of your insecurity
• How being insecure can affect your life and relationships
• How to release your insecurities in five powerful steps

What Is Insecurity? And How To Know If You Have It

You may find that the internet provides somewhat confusing information on this topic. This is because feeling insecure is a tricky concept to wrap your head around. 

For starters, if you ask yourself: “What is insecurity?” you may find it hard to define this concept without exploring other internal feelings such as self-confidence, self-doubt, groundedness, and anxiousness. 

In simple words, insecurity is a lack of confidence or reassurance in some aspect of self.

Navigating the feeling of insecurity can be tricky because it evokes other feelings of inadequacy and being threatened.

It can also manifest itself in many different aspects of your life. Insecurity can show up as jealousy in your relationship, self-criticism, and becoming overly focused on other people’s lives instead of your own.

Signs of insecurity 

Most reactions coming from a place of insecurity are unhelpful and disempowering.

Insecurities can be subtly dripping negative thoughts into your mind without you even noticing. However, once you realize that most of the things you are insecure about are in your head, you can do something about it. 

Signs of insecurity include:

• Shutting down emotionally when you are confronted with a difficult situation you don’t want to deal with.
• Feeling overly jealous and distrustful of your partner.
• Making unfair comparisons with other people that leave you feeling like you’re not good enough no matter how hard you try.
• Having a tendency to want to please other people in order to get their validation.

As you can see, insecurity can show itself in many forms. Moreover, if you let it, it can take control over your daily life as well as your relationships. The recognition of that fact, however, is a good first step on your way out of insecurity.

Why Am I So Insecure?—The Root Cause of Your Insecurity

Most of us think that insecurity comes from external influences. In reality, more often than not, it’s created from the inside—coming from your mind.

According to Marisa Peer, best-selling author, and motivational speaker, this feeling can originate early in life with an insecure attachment to your parents, or it can develop after being hurt or rejected by someone you care about.

Think of it like this: 

When you accidentally cut your skin, your body forms a scab over the wound that takes some time to heal. After the healing process takes place, sometimes scar tissue is formed where the wound used to be.

The same thing occurs when you’ve experienced emotional hurt: your mind processes that feeling as an emotional wound and needs to take some time to heal from the experience. 

After the healing process is over, your mind can sometimes form its own “scar tissue” that can manifest itself as insecurity.

Just like real scars, these “emotional scars” can sometimes evoke sensitive reactions when triggered, and they can push you to act in ways that often make matters worse. 

How Being Insecure Can Affect Your Life And Relationships

Even though insecurity may seem like something personal, its far-reaching consequences can affect nearly every aspect of your life. 

Insecurity stands behind toxic relationships, it steals your peace of mind in your financial life, and it keeps you thinking small by dragging you back to your comfort zone.

In your relationship, insecurity manifests itself as jealousy. You feel constantly uncertain about whether or not your partner loves you or is attracted to you. 

This drives your constant need for attention, approval, and validation from your partner, which can become overbearing to them.

If you are insecure in your relationship, it may lead you to want to distrust your partner and start snooping around their personal life. 

This overly controlling behavior can be damaging to your relationship and make your partner feel suffocated. 

With such a dynamic between two people, it’s just a matter of time before the relationship begins to gradually deteriorate. 

In your life, insecurity can manifest as a difficulty to set clear boundaries. When you are not grounded in your own self-worth, you can be more likely to go out of your way to make other people happy while sacrificing your own needs.

There is nothing wrong with wanting others to be happy. However, if your actions are guided by a lack of self-love, more often than not, those noble intentions are motivated by a need for constant approval and validation from others. 

Trying to compensate for your own lack of self-worth or self-esteem by placing unreasonable demands on others will likely backfire sooner or later.

Insecurity can make you self-conscious—one of the ways it manifests is by making you overly conscious of your body.

You may find yourself avoiding mirrors, and when you do look at them, it’s often met with negative self-talk and harsh self-criticism.

If that’s you, it’s a sign that you have internalized the critical voice from some past negative experience. Or you have a tendency to compare yourself to other people in a way that makes you feel like you’re not enough.

Fortunately, when you start to notice that sinking feeling and wonder how to deal with insecurity—there are a few immediate things you can do. 

5 Powerful Steps to Release Your Insecurities

Part of why insecurity feels so heavy and painful is that it creates an illusion that you are the only one who suffers it. This alienating experience can make you feel broken, unworthy, and that something is wrong with you.

As you go through the steps below, try to remember that everyone in the world is insecure in some way. A certain level of insecurity is natural and simply a part of normal human experience.

Having said that, we should strive to minimize our insecurities as much as we can because the less of them we have, the more enjoyable our experience of life becomes.

How to deal with insecurity—here are the five powerful steps to letting your insecurities go:

1. Become conscious of your insecurities

Open up a Word document or take out a piece of paper, and bring to mind one of your insecurities and write it down. 

It doesn’t matter what it is; it can be anything. The only rule is that you’re going to pick one insecurity at a time.

You may want to figure out how to stop being insecure in a relationship, 

maybe you want to get over feeling insecure about the shape of your nose or body, 

or perhaps you’re feeling envious of your friend’s recent career promotion.

Now write down the answers to the following questions:

• What am I insecure about?

This is an important first step because you can’t overcome a fear or insecurity if you don’t label it and become aware of it first. 

For example, if your insecurity revolves around your relationship, bring to mind the image that evokes feelings of insecurity. An unpleasant memory of someone flirting with your partner could spring to mind (along with all the negative emotions associated with it).

If that’s the case for you, be honest with yourself and write down: “Jealousy in a relationship.”

After you become aware of your insecurity, ask yourself the following question: 

• Where does this insecurity come from?

This question can help you dig a little deeper into the root cause of your feelings.

Does your insecurity come from something that you may have experienced early in your childhood? 

Or maybe it’s a recent negative life experience that left a permanent mark on your psyche?

Facing these deeply buried emotions is not an easy thing to do. 

In fact, most people shy away from uncovering and examining painful memories and hope they go away on their own. 

Unfortunately, when such emotions are not processed and released, they can slowly begin to fester. Until you muster up the courage to face them, your day-to-day life will be negatively impacted.

For example, if you’re wondering, “How do I stop being jealous and insecure in my relationship?” realize that this feeling comes from you being uncertain about whether your partner actually loves you or is attracted to you. 

Now, it is possible that your partner gives you genuine reasons for concern and your feelings of insecurity are not unfounded.

However, if you find yourself feeling jealous and insecure for no good reason, then keep asking yourself, “Why?” until you arrive at an answer.

For example, if as a child your parents were going through a divorce, you may have experienced feelings of abandonment. This could have affected you well into your adulthood, making you fear and actively avoid any type of feeling that reminds you of abandonment. 

2. Shift your perspective from self-judgment to self-love

Now that you are clear about what your insecurity is and where it comes from, ask yourself this:

“Now that I have a clearer perspective, am I willing to see things differently?”

“If you change the way you look at things, things you look at change.”—Wayne Dyer

Realize that your insecurities are the result of your own self-judgment—they are not the objective reality. 

Replace self-judgment with self-acceptance —and poof! Your insecurities disappear.

From now on, try applying a more positive lens to see yourself through—a lens of self-love. 

How would your insecurity look through the lens of self-love and self-acceptance? 

Throughout Marisa’s 30 years of experience and from helping thousands of people release their deepest fears and insecurities, she realized that the root cause of most of our issues stem from lacking self-love and feeling that we are not enough on our own. 

Just like in the first exercise, make sure that you are writing your answers down either on a piece of paper or a Word document.

Now go back to the memory that the insecurity originated from and try seeing it from a perspective of self-love. 

How do you do that?

Become a loving parent to your past self.

For example, let’s say you are insecure about your nose and you think it’s too big. 

Instead of seeing yourself as a victim that is being bullied and feeling like you are “not good enough” or “not pretty enough”—see this child from a perspective of a loving parent.

Close your eyes and remember the situation when you felt insecure for the first time. See this upset little child in your memory. Tell them that they are beautiful and it doesn’t matter what other people think. Then give your child-self a big hug. 

Remember that kids tend to make fun of each other all the time for no reason. There is no point in letting events like this from the past dictate how you feel about yourself later in life.

If you’re doing it right, you should have a growing warm and fuzzy sensation in your heart area—stay with that sensation and let it grow. 

However, if you don’t feel anything, get free instant access to Marisa’s powerful ‘I Am Enough’ meditation—it will help you unlock that relaxed state of mind that is conducive to this powerful visualization. 

As you can see, a shift in perspective can be really powerful—it can allow you to understand, accept, and love yourself more.

3. Reprogram your subconscious mind

Now that you have identified the insecurities and changed the way you see them, it’s time for step three—reprogramming your subconscious mind. 

As you may (or may not) know—the subconscious mind stores all of your beliefs. Your beliefs determine the dominant thoughts your mind creates.

As Marisa Peer, who has spent over three decades treating a client list that includes international superstars, CEOs, royalty, and Olympic athletes, says:

“You make your beliefs then your beliefs make you then the universe makes those beliefs real.”

So, what are beliefs exactly?

Think of beliefs as clouds. Out of those clouds comes rain—your thoughts. If your clouds are made of toxic water, the rain they cause will be of the same quality—toxic.

If you want your thoughts to stop sabotaging your efforts by making you feel insecure, you have to go straight to the root cause—your beliefs.

Hopefully, you have now identified quite a few insecurities that you are working on by writing them out and shifting your perspective on them.

The next step is to cross off your insecurity and replace this limiting belief with a new, more empowering one.

For example, if your insecurity was:

“I don’t feel pretty enough because my nose is too big.”

Replace with:

“I don’t feel pretty enough because my nose is too big.”

“I am enough as I am, and I fully accept how my face looks.”

After going through this exercise with a bunch of your insecurities, you will end up with a highly personalized list of affirmations that you can now repeat to yourself on a daily basis.

If you want to take this process to the next level, you can sign up for Marisa Peer’s free ‘I Am Enough’ masterclass. 

150,000 people have used this free masterclass to help them release their own mental blocks and insecurities. 

If you feel like you have your own insecurities holding you back from fully accepting yourself unconditionally, Marisa will help you get into the trance-like state needed to access the subconscious part of your mind. 

During this process, a critical, conscious part of your mind shuts down, and you can work with your subconscious mind directly. 

You can then install positive beliefs and suggestions, and bring in new empowering ideas that you never thought were possible. 

Marisa rewires your thinking, leaving you with unshakable certainty and conviction that you are enough and will always be enough. 

In the beginning, it may feel unnatural to say those self-affirming words when you are used to criticizing yourself. 

With enough repetition though, your mind has no choice but to accept the new beliefs —so stick with it until repeating those self-loving statements feels natural.

4. Stop comparing yourself to other people

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”—Theodore Roosevelt

You are not in competition with people you see on Instagram, and the brand of your car doesn’t determine your inherent value as a person.

The bad news is that no matter how pretty, successful, or wealthy you become, there always will be someone who has more of those qualities than you. 

The good news is—life is not a competition.

Instead of comparing yourself to other people, try remembering that we are all here to share our unique gifts with the world. Comparison makes you lose sight of your own strengths and makes your inadequacies seem disproportionately large. 

Comparison is also unfair. Everyone has a different story and a different set of strengths and weaknesses. Comparing your weaknesses to someone else’s strengths is a game that is rigged against you. 

The only person you should compare yourself to is the past you—you from 5 years ago, last year, or yesterday. As long as you are improving and growing—that’s all that matters. 

It’s all about progress, not perfection and not competition. 

5. Stay aware and catch yourself

After successfully going through the previous four steps, you should be well on your way to releasing your insecurities once and for all. Well done.

Despite the fact that you successfully dealt with your insecurities, they may still occasionally crop up—old habits die hard.

As Marisa Peer says:

“Your mind is hardwired to resist what is unfamiliar and to return to what is familiar.”

Whenever you catch yourself having insecure or negative thoughts, or comparing yourself to other people, make sure to notice and interrupt them with the affirmations you compiled in step three.

It will take time and repetition before your affirmations become ingrained deeply enough that they become your mind’s default. 

During that transition period, make sure that you don’t let any negative thoughts pass by unnoticed. Quickly reframe them into new empowering thoughts.

So remember: stay in control of your mind. 

6. Take an active role in your self-improvement

Insecurity is a very challenging mindset to hold, as it can affect so many aspects of your life. From how you think about yourself, to how you think others perceive you, and to how you interact with the wider world.

That’s why it is very important that once you have decided a change needs to be made, you ensure you dedicate the time, energy, and commitment to the journey of rewiring your thoughts and behaviour patterns.

This isn’t an easy feat to achieve alone, of course. But with a little help and a network of like-minded individuals in your corner, it is possible to overcome your insecurity and welcome in a new, confident you.

Marisa Peer’s 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge aims to dispel all your previously held beliefs about yourself, and replace your negative thoughts with unshakeable, unstoppable confidence. When you feel confident, you feel good about yourself. When you feel good about yourself, you can take on the world.

Join a thriving community of people attempting to improve their confidence and receive daily training for three weeks by clicking the banner below and signing-up to the challenge.

Final Words

Now that you know that you don’t have to let your insecurities control your mind, you can start releasing them. The real transformation, however, starts when you put what you learned into action. The best place to start is by putting those five steps into practice.

Your insecurities aren’t likely to vanish overnight, but slowly they will start to weaken.

Do you want to supercharge this process and take your life to the next level in record time? You are ready for Marisa Peer’s award-winning at-home transformation program, ‘I Am Enough’. 

Sign up for Marisa’s free ‘I Am Enough’ masterclass to make your first step a life free of insecurity.

Guess what? 

It is also one of the foundations of your relationship with yourself.

Trusting yourself means that you are confident in what you want and in the choices you make. 

If you find yourself hesitant, unable to make your own decisions, or constantly doubting your choices, you might want to learn to trust yourself more.

If you feel that you have difficulty trusting yourself, don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. There is a way to turn this around. 

By reading this article, you will learn all the things you need to know to begin trusting yourself.

You will discover:

• What it means to trust yourself
• Signs to look for when you don’t trust yourself
• How lacking trust in yourself affects your life
• Reasons you lack trust in yourself
• How to learn to trust yourself more

What Trusting Yourself Means

When you trust yourself, you can count on yourself in any situation.

It means that you can commit to your growth; you know what you want, and you are confident in your capabilities to achieve.

That is not to say that you expect perfection. Even as a confident self-trusting person, you can sometimes expect to make a bad call as we all do.

Trusting yourself is not about making the right choice 100% of the time; rather, it’s about believing in yourself to bounce back even after making a poor choice.

Part of self-trust is to accept yourself—with all the good as well as the flaws.

What happens when you trust yourself?

Here is how you would feel if you trust yourself:

1. You are self-aware 

You know what is important to you and the things you cannot tolerate. It’s easy for you to make your own choices, and you live authentically.

2. You are confident 

When you are confident, it is much easier to decide what suits you and what doesn’t and move forward with that choice.

3. You take criticism well 

You don’t take people’s criticism personally as they are assessing matters from their perspective. Like Marisa Peer, a world-leading therapist, says, “Once you believe in yourself it doesn’t really matter what other people think.”

Signs That You Don’t Trust Yourself

So, what does a lack of trust in yourself look like?

To help you know if it’s time to learn to trust yourself more, check and see if the following signs apply to you:

1. You hesitate in making decisions

Making any decision, big or small, takes a lot of time and effort. You keep swinging back and forth between your options, not sure which way to go. 

You are doubtful that you are making the right choice so you spend hours, days, or even months on research before making a decision.

To end the misery, you usually resort to friends or family, ask for their opinions, and constantly feel the need for reassurance.

2. You rethink your choices

After finally settling on a choice, you still don’t feel certain. You keep rethinking your decisions even after making them. More often than not you find yourself frequently examining and reexamining your other options.

You wonder if the option you gave up was the better way to go.

3. You have a critical inner voice

Your inner critic is the voice in your head that criticizes your choices and actions. This voice is usually very harsh and judgemental and it causes you emotional pain and distress.  

When you are your worst critic, you tend to beat yourself up for mistakes that you did and find it hard to forgive yourself no matter how small your mistake was. 

Your inner critic voice tells you things like, “You don’t know what you are doing” or “If you say this now, they will find out just how dumb you are.”

Such overly critical dialogue with yourself eventually prevents you from pursuing what you want.

When you are with friends or a group of people, you tend to hold off from sharing your opinions. You refrain from participating in a conversation and avoid attention.

You feel like you might not be able to support your point of view or fear that what you will say may make you look incompetent.

4. You are not comfortable speaking your mind

If you are experiencing these signs, it’s important to understand how they can affect the quality of your life.

What Happens When You Don’t Trust Yourself

A lack of self-trust can have a negative effect on your life, from living in stress and unease most of the time to missing on growth opportunities. Sadly, if you don’t address the matter, it can get worse with time.

Here are some of the adverse effects you might encounter if you don’t learn to trust yourself more.

1. You self-sabotage

Self-sabotage can take many forms and affect many aspects of your life, like your career and personal relationships.

You might be self-sabotaging and hurting your personal growth by taking actions that do not serve your best interest. Sometimes self-sabotage can present itself in failing to take necessary steps.

For example, you may be delaying emails, tasks, or reports at work because you are not confident of your work. You keep second-guessing everything you do.

Your delays might be affecting the work process and eventually, you get negative feedback on your job evaluations.

Another example that can happen in your personal life is not speaking up when you are not happy in your relationship with your partner.

You could be tolerating traits or behaviors that bother you because you are hesitant about discussing the matter with them. After some time, this could lead to you growing apart and ending the relationship.

2. You experience negative emotions

When you lack trust in yourself, you frequently face situations that get you stressed and anxious. That’s because you are constantly thinking and assessing matters under the pressure of your critical inner voice. 

You could also be feeling down if you are blaming yourself for an unfavorable outcome of a decision you have made. 

Consequently, this emotional turmoil can negatively affect your health and the quality of your life in the long-run.

3. You live somebody else’s life

When you base many if not all of your decisions on your friends’ advice, you are not living your own life.

No matter how well your friends or family may know you, they don’t know you better than you will ever know yourself.

Following people’s advice all the time will only push you further away from knowing and trusting yourself.

The Biggest Reasons Why You Don’t Trust Yourself

To work on trusting yourself more, it’s important to understand what causes your lack of self-trust.

Here are the two main reasons why people don’t trust themselves.

1. You are judging yourself because of your failures

Trust is built cumulatively based on the moments, events, or situations where you proved to yourself that you are worthy of your own trust. 

In the same way, when you repeatedly fail to keep your promises, you disappoint yourself and lose trust in yourself.

For example, imagine you decide to be healthier and become fit. However, every time you buy a gym membership, you gradually stop going to the gym after a week or two. 

The next time you consider getting a gym membership, you will doubt if you can trust yourself to commit to it, right?

Your mind is constantly recording your behaviors. When such disappointments become frequent, you form negative ideas or a belief about yourself. 

For example “I’m not reliable” or “I am not the type of person who can commit to exercising.” 

2. You have low self-esteem

You might have been harshly criticized for your choices growing up, which led you to have low self-esteem. 

It could be that your parents didn’t allow you to make your own decisions to protect you from making mistakes; or questioned your choices, doubting that you are making the right ones. 

As children, we are much more sensitive and prone to emotional hurt. 

For that reason, you could have internalized this feeling of incompetence. You adopted the criticism and accepted it as a part of who you are.

From her 30 years of experience with clients from all over the world, Marisa Peer concluded that the common denominator for most of our fears and the cause of our setbacks is the feeling that we are not enough.

You might have lost trust in yourself after many disappointments or you grew up thinking and believing that you were not good enough because you were taught so.

In both cases, at some point, you decided to believe that you are not smart enough, not reliable enough, or maybe not lovable enough. This led you to lose trust in yourself.

You might be thinking now, “How do I undo this and start trusting in myself again?”

The good news is that you can practice self-confidence and reprogram your mind to trust yourself again.

How To Learn To Trust Yourself

So, how do you build trust in yourself?

To build self-trust, train yourself to be more confident like you train your muscles to become stronger.

Start with small steps and take it one day at a time. Use the tips and exercises listed below to start practicing being confident and trusting yourself. 

Here are things you can do to learn to trust yourself:

1. Choose the people you surround yourself with  

Stay away from people who usually make destructive comments and those who are overpowering in conversations. 

Instead, surround yourself with people who believe in you and are supportive of you. This should help you speak your mind and participate in conversations with more ease. 

2. Give yourself small tasks

Completing tasks no matter how small will help you regain trust in yourself. Pick a new habit that you want to adopt, start doing it, and track yourself. Choosing a simple task will make it easier to integrate into your daily routine. 

Completing the task and committing to a new habit will give you a sense of accomplishment and boost your confidence. 

For example, you could choose to drink a glass of water first thing when you wake up every day. 

Remember, it is okay to fall off the wagon sometimes. That is normal. The most important thing is to pull yourself back on track. So if you missed a day, just go back to it the next morning. 

3. Focus on your strengths

Doing more of what you’re good at helps boost your confidence and trust in yourself. 

List the things that you are good at. You can ask a close friend to help you identify your strengths. Then, plan to use one of your strengths now, whether in your job or your personal life.

For example, if you are a great photographer and you enjoy taking pictures of your city. Take it on as your hobby and practice it in your free time.

If you already do, take it a step further and plan to participate in an exhibition or take an advanced photography course. 

4. Make your own decisions by dropping perfectionism 

Push through the hesitation and make a choice.

Remind yourself that often there are no good or bad options, there are just different options. Even if the outcomes were not preferable, you would learn from them and know to do better the next time. 

Focus on progress, not perfection.  

Start small. For example, the next time you are out for lunch and feel like trying a new dish on the menu, but you’re feeling hesitant and unsure, go for it. 

What is the worst that will happen? If you like it then add it to your list of favorites and if you don’t, now you know not to order it again. 

What is more important is that you explored something new today. 

This is a small example, but it is a starting point. Gradually, you will be more confident about making bigger and more important decisions.

5. Change your self-talk

According to Marisa Peer, even though people’s criticism can be destructive, it is far more destructive when you criticize yourself.

“Don’t be your own worst critic, be your own best friend.”—Marisa Peer 

Instead of beating yourself up, replace that with positive affirmations. Just like you would be your friend’s cheerleader, be your cheerleader.

When you repeat a positive affirmation, you are reprogramming your mind to accept your new beliefs—the beliefs you choose.

So, choose phrases such as “I am enough,” “I am confident,” or “I am competent” as your daily affirmation and say it to yourself repeatedly during the day. 

Integrate these words in your day by adding them to your daily routines. For example, you could write it on a post-it note on your mirror so you can see it and repeat it every morning while getting ready for the day.

6. Get to the root cause of the problem

As we explained in the previous section, the reasons for your lack of self-confidence come down to a negative belief that you adopted at some point in time. 

To learn to trust yourself again, it is imperative that you change this belief.

Now you might think, “But changing a belief doesn’t sound like an easy task to do.” 

You are right, it can take a long time and a lot of work to change your beliefs because more often than not they are deeply rooted in your subconscious—at the back of your mind where you are not aware of them.

What if we told you that there is a way to get to the root of your beliefs and change them into the positive, empowering beliefs you want?

That is exactly the purpose of the cutting-edge, award-winning program I Am Enough. 

Known for her love for practicality and speedy results, Marisa designed the I Am Enough program to help you access your subconscious mind and build an unshakable positive belief system.

The I Am Enough program uses the most powerful tools from different therapeutic modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and includes eight recorded self-hypnosis root cause sessions. These recordings will take you back in time to when the idea was first planted in your mind and help you replace it.  

During the program, you will work on building self-esteem and confidence as one of the program’s aims is to help you gain complete confidence in yourself and empower you to shape your life and your world in the way you love.

If you want to get a feel of how it works, you can check out Marisa’s free ‘I Am Enough’ masterclass and experience it for yourself.

So next time you’re facing a confusing decision, or you think you made a mistake, don’t beat yourself up about it. 

Remember, the sweet would never be as sweet without the sour. Experience everything that life has to offer.

Why is it that some people can navigate failure and even use it to fuel a path toward their life goals, motivations, and drive? When others, however, give up on their dreams and sometimes themselves? The reality is, failure is inevitable. We all experience it, and if you haven’t already, at some point, you will too. However, you don’t have to make it define who you are. It comes down to how you think of failure and approach setbacks. 

Failure can be part of the long road toward success, and when the feelings of failure creep in they can be easily shrugged off, or better yet, used to your benefit—but only if you know how to think of it constructively. You are about to learn six simple—yet underrated—methods that you can use to take the feeling of failure and reframe it to your advantage.

In this article, you’ll learn more about:

• Where feelings of failure come from
• How it can affect your life—if ignored
• How your mind works around feelings of failure and why it’s your master key
• Six simple methods to reframe failure and understand it better
• How to move past failure and build an unshakable resilience.

Let’s get started by discussing where the feeling of failure comes from.

Where Does The Feeling Of Failure Come From? (And Why Is It There?)

You can go and search for the words “feeling like” on Google, and you’ll notice that it autocompletes with the word “failure.” That’s because you are not alone, and even the most successful people in the world go through it.

Why is it we go through this feeling even when we’re successful?

The truth is: anyone who has ever succeeded at anything has failed along the way. 

Instead of acknowledging how smart, strong, and resilient we are, most of us spend the majority of our time comparing our weaknesses to someone else’s strengths. We keep reliving moments of defeat or developing an unhealthy attachment to an idea of who or what we want to be like. 

This “comparison game” eventually leaves you feeling like a failure.

Why do we do that? It doesn’t make any sense—or does it?

You may find this hard to believe, but you’ve probably been—gradually—conditioned to behave this way.

Subliminal Messaging

You see it all over the media: millionaire CEOs turned into celebrities, the glamorization of influencers with millions of followers, and hustle-culture workaholism being praised in the spotlight. 

All of this sends us a subliminal message of toxic productivity and misleading beliefs of what success should look like.

With such pervasive messages, it’s so easy to assume it to be true for you too.

It’s easy to lose sight of your own strengths and goals and be tricked into following the crowd playing this toxic game: a rat race of achievement hoarding and unrealistic busy schedules.

If you are like many of the millennials out there today, you’re probably spending the majority of your time trying to play this “game” and get it right, too; putting in so much energy and effort thinking it will make you great or bring you happiness.

Either you’re trying to win at something as opposed to learning.

Expanding your social circles as opposed to building friendships.

Chasing a promotion instead of doing what you love.

Trying to fit in just to be liked by your acquaintances or peers.

Getting more “followers” or “likes” on your posts.

And so on…

The Reality

In reality, if you’re truly honest with yourself, you’ll realize that most of the goals that you set for yourself are externally motivated and don’t hold much merit to you personally.

That’s why you make it your goal to try and collect one achievement after another but still feel dissatisfied and empty inside.

Furthermore, when you don’t succeed at these goals, you internalize the problem and blame yourself. 

You begin to assume that maybe you’re playing the “game” all wrong, and you have to do better because you’re just not cutting it. 

You think: “I’m such a screw-up. Maybe my best isn’t good enough,” and counterintuitively, instead of doing anything to remedy your situation, you end up demotivating yourself.

So if your spirits are down in the dumps and you’re sitting here thinking: “Why am I such a failure?” you might want to pause and reflect on the question: “What is the reason behind you wanting all of these things in the first place?”

Now the game-changing question becomes, not if you’re playing the game right, but, “Are you even playing the right game?”

Think about it: 

Wouldn’t it be terrible to spend your whole life trying to win at a game only to realize you’ve been playing the wrong one all along?

How Feeling Like A Failure Can Affect Your Life

It’s undeniable that failure can be difficult to deal with.

Whether you broke up with your partner, closed down your business, lost at a sports game that you were working hard to win, or lost your job. All these things can be difficult when viewed as failures.

When you feel like a failure for a prolonged period of time, you feel like it’s hard to escape the sadness, anxiety, stress, and even depression that this experience manifests as. 

Guilt and shame over your perceived failures can also give rise to the fear that internally whispers, “You will always be a failure.”

These “whispers” are what Marisa Peer calls our inner critic.

Marisa Peer, Britain’s #1 voted therapist, defines the inner critic as, “An annoying little voice of self-doubt inside your head that always seems to highlight your flaws and wipe out your confidence.”

The inner critic is the bearer of bad news. When failure ends up making you feel down about yourself, your inner critic begins to feed off of that negativity and attacks you with even more destructive thoughts, making you think: “I am NOT worthy of success.” “I DON’T have what it takes.” “I am NOT enough.”

All the things you say to yourself about not being smart enough, good enough, brave enough, make you lose trust in your own abilities. 

Its sole job is to tell you what you can’t do, what you aren’t good at, and where you aren’t headed in life. It can eventually start leaving you depressed.

The Link to Depression

When feelings of depression start creeping up, you end up isolating yourself from your family and friends, thinking that you will spare them the burden of supporting you. 

These painful emotions can lead to fear of failure and depression, which are associated with sleep disorders, inability to focus, lack of energy, and loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed.

It’s like taking out the vibrant colors and flavor of what life can potentially offer, making it grey and bland. 

It’s important to note that these thoughts aren’t painting a perfect picture of reality; however, in the moment it can feel very true to you. You make them true the more you say them to yourself, blurring the lines of what is real and what is exaggerated negative self-projection.

Whether it’s love, a business venture, or a personal goal you set out to achieve, where some view pitfalls as failures, others view them as learning opportunities that show a path forward to the goal. It’s just a matter of perspective.

Even the smallest adjustment to your perspective can have mind-altering shifts to how you begin to think of yourself.

How Your Mind Works Around Feelings Of Failure And Why It’s Your Master Key

“The most powerful potential on the planet comes from your mind.”—Marisa Peer

We often hear that the mind is really complicated and can take a lifetime to understand. While that might be true to some extent when it comes to understanding its biology, we often make the mistake of thinking that it also applies to our psychology.

The truth is, you don’t really need to know the complexities of your mind to get it to work for you; you just need to know the rules of how your mind functions.

For example, when you are in a state of feeling like a failure, you tend to get sucked into a downward spiral of negative self-talk. You put yourself down and stop trying new things, meeting new people, and seeing the possibilities all around you. 

This happens because the feeling of failure can be paralyzing. By not allowing you to act, your mind thinks it’s keeping you safe from potentially failing. However, it stops you from succeeding as well.

As Marisa Peer says: “The simple truth is that the human mind has one simple job: to keep you alive for as long as possible.”

Change and the Mind

Your mind hates change. That’s because it only knows what worked before to keep you alive. It doesn’t like to deviate away from that, even if it’s good for you. 

So if you’ve been living routinely convincing yourself that you’re a failure, your mind will do everything it can to make that your reality. It’ll make you lazier, demotivate you, give rise and more power to your inner critic. It will keep you exactly where you tell it you want to be.

“Your every thought and word form a blueprint that your mind and body work to make your reality.”—Marisa Peer

At the end of the day, your mind will do what you want it to do and what it believes is in your best interest. With that said, let’s take this thinking and dive one step deeper, and talk about why perspective is important. 

Since your mind responds to the thoughts and words you tell it, then, by definition, it will project them and make it reality. With this logic, you can deduce that your reality isn’t what’s out there, but what’s in your mind.

So it’s important for us not to misinterpret our understanding of our experiences. 

One common mistake that many of us make is misinterpreting the concept of “failing” vs. “being a failure.” There is a key difference between both and adjusting that perspective plays a positive role in your psyche.

What is the difference between failing and being a failure?

Most of us tend to make a wrong association between “failing” and “being a failure.” Just because you failed at something, doesn’t automatically make you are a failure.

To understand this, you need to distinguish between states and traits. 

A state is a temporary way of being, thinking, and feeling that is usually instigated by external circumstances. For example, feeling depressed when you experience a setback, or motivated when you start working on a new project.

A trait is a personality characteristic or a genetic predisposition which influences our personality, attitudes, and behaviors. It includes character qualities that are stable and enduring, such as an affinity towards patience or generosity. 

Given that explanation, you could assume that “failing” is a state of being, whereas “being a failure” is a trait.

However, it’s not that simple, and we are often confusing our states with our traits. 

The Similarity Between Depression and Fear of Failure

When we feel chronically depressed, we start identifying ourselves as a “depressed person”. We assume depression to be a part of who we are.

“Your mind has no choice but to respond to the pictures you construct and the words you tell yourself.”—Marisa Peer

The reality is that depression is something that one can let go of and get past. It is not a part of who we are; it is a temporary passing phase.

The same applies to the feeling of failure. 

When we fail a few times, we start identifying ourselves with these events and feelings. We start believing that we are a failure and failing is a part of our character: this simply can not be.

Researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health explain how it’s important to differentiate between states and traits if we are to understand ourselves better.

Understanding that “feeling like a failure” is a temporary event can help you to begin noticing how everything starts with your mind’s projections.

Let’s talk about how we can reframe our mind to navigate the feeling of being a failure and turn it to our advantage.

6 Simple Methods To Shift From Feeling Like A Failure To Success

1. Make smart—positive—choices

Even the smallest of choices can impact your life in big ways. A small choice today can act as a domino effect for big life changes later.

So don’t ever think that small changes don’t matter.

Making a small conscious choice to do something positive can cause a ripple effect of positivity in your life.

The simple formula to follow: 

Simple (smart) choices + consistency + time = radical life changes

With every small positive change, you influence yourself, your emotions, and your mind.

“Your thoughts control your feelings. Your feelings control your actions. And your actions control the outcome of your events. So if you change your thinking, you change everything.”—Marisa Peer

Just like how you can get sucked into a downward spiral of negative thoughts, you can also elevate your mind into an upward spiral momentum of positive thought.

2. Practice positive affirmations

One of Marisa Peer’s Rules of the Mind is: “Your mind is hardwired to love what is familiar.”

So if you’ve been in a negative thought pattern and criticisms for a while, then that is what is familiar to your mind. Even if you want to change, it will try to drag you back.

We can change that by consciously repeating positive thoughts and affirmations. 

Marisa has 30 years of experience helping thousands of people release their deepest fears and insecurities. Throughout the years she realized that the root cause of most of our issues stem from the feeling that we are not enough on our own. 

Leave this deep issue neglected, and you start to fulfill these feelings through disempowering behavior and language patterns: keeping you one step behind who you want to be. 

One core practice to tackle this feeling is to reprogram your subconscious—the deeper part of your mind. That’s because most, if not all, of your beliefs are stored there and your subconscious responds to consistent affirmation practice. 

You’ve been doing it your whole life anyway, telling yourself that you’re not smart enough, good enough, or deserving enough, but you never considered that to be negative affirmations you tell yourself. You just thought it to be true. 

Imagine replacing that thinking pattern with a positive one that empowers, inspires, and drives you toward growth, leaving you feeling good about yourself. Even in the worst of times, this is the place where you will be operating from.

How to practice ‘I Am Enough’ affirmations:

When you get negative thoughts about yourself, don’t judge them. Simply write them down on a piece of paper. Then identify the disempowering word, and replace it with the opposite one that you would like to embody. 

Example thought: “I am NOT smart enough,” “I am NOT strong enough,” “I CAN’T do it.”

Replace with: “I AM smart enough,” “I AM capable of doing anything I put my mind to,” “I AM ENOUGH on my own.”

To get some help in the beginning, consider practicing with the ‘I Am Enough’ Guided Meditation. Use it once a day for at least 21 days, and you’ll be surprised just how easy it is to reprogram your mind for success.

”Your words and thoughts are powerful and your mind is always listening.”—Marisa Peer

3. Make what is familiar unfamiliar

Most of us make decisions out of habit or familiarity. In order to harness the power of positive choices you make, you need to be willing to become more mindful and make conscious choices.

You do that by making the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar. 

Apply that formula to reprogram your mind. You will be able to stop whatever old (negative) habits your mind regularly gravitates towards and make way to build new (positive) ones. 

Marisa Peer is a best-selling author and motivational speaker on the topic of the power of the mind. She states: 

“Your mind is hardwired to resist what is unfamiliar and to return to what is familiar.” 

So be wary that when you try to drop any old familiar negative habits, you will potentially run into resistance from your mind. It may sound counter-intuitive, but that is a sign that you’re doing it right. So stick with it, because everything you want is right at the edge of your comfort zone.

4. Drop perfectionism and focus on incremental progress

Most of us are trying to create a radical change and sticking to it with willpower. In reality, it can be compared with trying to bench press 100lbs on your first day at the gym. It’s a formula for disaster.

What you want to focus on is the “progress” toward your change, and not the change itself. 

Here’s the logic: Focus on improving incrementally. Even as little as a 1% change—yes you read that right—can have a phenomenal compounding effect that will surprise you. 

With a 1% compounding increase every day, it ends up doubling every 72 days. Meaning in under 3 months you double your progress to success—whatever that means to you.

Don’t believe us? Here’s the math for proof.

Let’s go back to our gym analogy. 

Say you want to work from carrying 10lbs to 20lbs. 1% better tomorrow looks like this:

First Day: 10 x 1.01 = 10.1

Second Day: 10.1 x 1.01= 10.201

Third Day: 10.201 x 1.01 = 10.303

It may not look like a big deal early on, but fast forward 72 days later and that’s: 

10x(1.01^72) = 20.5

Remember: small changes over time = huge changes later. 

5. Awareness can be healing—practice it

Practicing awareness is like growing a muscle. The more you practice paying attention to what is happening around you and within you at a given moment, the more the muscle grows. 

You can practice your awareness muscle with mindful meditation.

Now, if you’re thinking, “This is going to take ages, don’t worry about that.”

Remember what we said earlier, start small. 

10 minutes a day is plenty.

It can help you take a deep look inside yourself. You will be able to recognize how the emotion of “feeling like a failure” is not a part of you, it is just deeply embedded. 

When you bring awareness to that, it can help you let it go and stop it from holding you back.

Be concomitant and patient with yourself. If you miss a day or two, it’s fine. You only fail when you stop trying.

6. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday

Comparing yourself to someone else’s capabilities can often lead you to think about your inadequacies, not your strengths.

For example, when the media glamorizes Elon Musk’s insane 100-hour workweeks, it’s understandable for you to think in comparison: “I’m a failure,” “I’m doing nothing with my life.” 

When we decide to become successful, we often look up to others that “have it all.” We pick up our success goals from what they have already achieved. This way is prone to disappoint. 

Comparing ourselves with them can become overwhelming, slowly nipping at your confidence and belief in yourself. With such disempowering thoughts, you pave a sure path to give rise to envy or feelings of failure.

Turn it around. Before going after another goal, you need to define what success in this area of life looks like for you personally.  

The best person to compare yourself to is your former self. To make this approach easy and attainable, you need to define what a 1% better version of yourself looks like. 

You are your best “control group.” If you want to compete fairly with somebody, you’ll want to be competing with yourself.

Moving Past Feeling Like A Failure

The way you respond to failure is within your control. After all, there is a difference between failing and being a failure.

Own your failures and position them as a stepping stone to growth. 

View mistakes as an opportunity to learn and adapt. This way you’ll be able to frame failure in a healthy and empowering way.

Working with clients from royalty to rockstars and CEOs, Marisa Peer was voted Britain’s #1 therapist. She has built a reputation for herself in the industry for getting rapid results. This is why she developed an award-winning, life-changing program ‘I Am Enough.’  

I Am Enough Program

It’s designed to help you massively increase your own sense of self-worth and bring back the confidence you were born with. 

It also helps you become permanently free from negative thoughts and behavior so you can make a deep and lasting change in your life. 

Transform yourself through learning and applying proven tools and techniques. You will be able to love yourself, feel good about your life, and believe in your potential.

It’s time for you to achieve the phenomenal success that you deserve!

If you’d like to take a deep dive into gaining an unwavering confidence in your life, you can try it for yourself by joining the ‘I Am Enough’ free masterclass, led by Marisa Peer herself.

You can also consider browsing through Marisa’s top ten podcasts for improving your mental health, and find something to curl up and listen to when you need some support.

You are enough and have always been enough. Unleash the confidence and power inside you.

The 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge

Feeling like a failure, or failing in general, can leave your confidence feeling knocked. If your confidence is knocked, you are unlikely to try at whatever hurdle you have fallen at, again, for fear of failing once more.

It is essential to have powerful confidence when trying to remove the feeling that you are a failure, as without it, you won’t be able to step out of your comfort zone.

Marisa Peer has developed the 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge with a view help people like you tackle the hurdles that come up in life – and give them the mindset to try again and again, despite any failure you might experience.

When you sign-up to the challenge, you will receive daily trainings over a three week period, as well as audios, meditations, and a community of people who have also signed-up to build their confidence skills. You will come out on the other side with a new outlook and perspective that will allow you to face difficulties without fear of failure.

To give it a try, make sure you click the banner below and secure a spot on the challenge today.

If that’s you, keep reading, because in this article you will discover practical tips that will allow you to get past your self-defeating behaviors, once and for all.

These insights will allow you to confidently step into the shoes of your best self on a consistent basis and reach your goals without a struggle.

Here is what we’ll cover:

• What exactly is self-sabotage and how does it stop you from achieving your goals?
• How to recognize the self-sabotaging pattern so you can stop it dead in its tracks.
• The exact reasons why self-sabotaging happens and how to find out what the root cause is, specifically for you.
• A simple three-step plan for transforming self-sabotage into effortless action in a few short days.

Let’s dive in.

What is Self-Sabotaging Behavior?

Self-sabotaging happens when you act in a way that prevents you from achieving your goals and ambitions.

The pattern of self-defeat usually goes something along these lines:

1. You set an ambitious goal that you’re hoping to achieve within the next few weeks or months.
2. At some point during the process, you experience a small set-back that makes you realize that the path to success is not going to be as smooth as you initially expected.
3. You feel your willpower and self-discipline slowly running out, as you’re giving in to your old, self-defeating habits.
4. Your inner dialogue goes from one of hope—”I’m actually excited about this new diet”— to one of hopelessness—”Why does this keep happening to me?” 
5. You promise yourself that you’re going to try harder next time.

Why Is It Important To Change These Behaviours?

As you can see, changing these self-sabotaging behaviors is not easy. It evokes feelings of resistance and anxiety, because it means going against old and familiar habits of thought and behavior.

However, changing those patterns is essential to making any meaningful progress towards your goals, because those self-defeating tendencies have the capacity to affect every aspect of your life.

They can bring your career to a halt, ruin your relationships, and make it impossible for you to get on top of your health.

Before we move any further in explaining why that happens, here are some practical examples of self-sabotaging so you can recognize the patterns as they occur:

Procrastination

Procrastination is, by far, one of the most common ways self-sabotage rears its ugly head, because our minds have the tendency to prioritize instant, rather than delayed, gratification.

For example: You know you should be working on that important presentation which is due a week from now, but the instant gratification of watching another episode of your favorite Netflix show is too tempting to resist.

One day before the deadline, you rush into creating slides and deliver a half-baked presentation, which is far from what it could have been had you given yourself enough time to prepare.

Substance abuse

Alcohol, drugs, and other substances alleviate stress, uncertainty, and other unpleasant emotions within a few minutes of taking them. However, consistent abuse of drugs and alcohol will always interfere with your long-term goals and values.

For example: Getting into a habit of drinking three beers to unwind after work, makes it harder to be present with your kids and spouse.

Stress eating

Emotional eating is a simple way to quickly shift your emotional state. However, if that’s the only way you know to manage your emotions, it can get in the way of reaching your health goals.

For example: Have you ever had a small set-back on your diet, fallen into a bad mood, and said to yourself, “To hell with it, I’m getting a large pepperoni pizza for breakfast!”?

Instead of seeing the set-back as a small bump on the road, you perceive it as a failure. You then seek comfort in bad food, even though it’s the very thing you are trying to conquer.

Negative self talk

The way you speak to yourself matters more than you think. If you constantly tell yourself, “I’m not good enough,” you rob yourself of the confidence needed to achieve your full potential.

For example: You are presented with a life-changing opportunity at work. Even though this is the moment you’ve been waiting for, your inner critic paralyzes you with thoughts of failure which makes you pass on the opportunity altogether. Later on, you rationalize that you didn’t want all this added responsibility anyway.

Perfectionism

There is nothing wrong with holding yourself to a higher standard, unless it interferes with your ability to take action. If you are a perfectionist, you may want to complete tasks flawlessly, and you may also dismiss the importance of incremental improvements.

For example: You may skip one or two classes and lose all motivation to attend the rest of them. It seems pointless to make an effort unless perfection can be achieved. Paradoxically, this attitude makes you fail the exams completely, since your need for perfection didn’t allow you to attend the lectures.

Why Do You Keep Sabotaging Yourself?

On the surface, it may seem like there are many seemingly unrelated reasons as to why self-sabotaging happens. However, when you look a little closer, a recognizable pattern will emerge.

I like to call this pattern, “The elastic rubber band effect.”

Imagine having an elastic rubber band on your wrist right now.

If you pull it a little, it will remain stretched, but only if you continually exert energy to keep it in place. When you stop holding it, it will snap right back.

Whenever you are trying to change some aspect of your behavior, you will experience a very similar phenomenon.

Just like with the rubber band, you will continually need to exert a conscious effort when you are trying to implement new behaviors or shed the old ones.

Why does this happen?

Your willpower is a limited resource. As it weakens, you slowly stop fighting your old behaviors, and they snap back into their place.

For example:

• You’ve been trying to shed some extra pounds, but two or three weeks into your weight-loss journey, you experience unusually strong cravings for food that lead to a binge-eating episode.
• You’ve been trying to cut down on drinking alcohol. A couple of weeks into your abstinence, a friend asks you to have just one drink with him, which leads to an out-of-control drunken bender.
• You’ve just been promoted at your job, and for some odd reason, you don’t feel like working on the projects you’ve been assigned anymore. This shift in your attitude leads to you being demoted to your old position.

Are you seeing it? Can you see how self-sabotage can creep through the back door, unnoticed, and completely subvert your efforts?

The only way you can side-step the elastic rubber band effect is by applying the pressure for a long enough period of time to allow it to stretch permanently, without snapping.

To do this, you would need to introduce small, incremental changes over longer periods of time, instead of having the all-or-nothing mentality.

However, as effective as this technique might be, it still doesn’t address the root cause of your behavior—the limiting beliefs and unhealed emotional wounds hiding in your subconscious mind.

You see, there is a direct link between what you believe and what you are capable of.

If you still backslide to your “comfort zone” no matter what you do, it could be your subconscious mind’s way of compensating for the felt sense of “not being enough.”

Conscious vs. subconscious mind

Self-sabotaging occurs when your conscious and subconscious minds are at odds with each other.

To help you better understand how this works, let me give you an analogy.

Imagine your subconscious mind as a large database.

It stores information such as your memories, beliefs, likes, and dislikes, but it itself has no preference as to what data it stores.

From the time when you were a child, your mind was always listening. Your critical inner voices started to take shape in your formative years. Without knowing it, you start to internalize attitudes that were directed towards you by parents or influential caretakers.

For example:

If your parents saw you as lazy, you may grow up feeling useless or ineffective. This inner voice poisons every attempt you make at reaching your goals and keeps you stuck in life.

According to Marisa Peer,  this database—your mind—has one rule: it is hard-wired to resist what is unfamiliar, and to return to what is familiar.

It means that, if you perceive yourself to be “ineffective,” your mind will resist attempts at changing that limiting belief. Even though consciously you may want to be “effective”, your mind will fight against it, because it’s not something that it’s familiar with.

Fortunately, there is a way to break out of this vicious cycle by undoing your self-sabotaging patterns. Once you can spot exactly where it is that you undermine your efforts, you can start shifting the old beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve you.

The Three Step Plan for Stopping Self-Sabotage Once and for All

If you want to stop self-sabotaging, you need to understand why you’re self-sabotaging in the first place—what need is it filling? Once you’ve done that, you need to brainstorm long-term, less destructive ways to get those needs met.

For example:

If you’re trying to quit drinking, first you must understand why you are compelled to drink to begin with. You may find that drinking helps you to relax and unwind after work but paradoxically prevents you from showing up as your best self in your job.

Here is a three step plan for undoing the negative self-sabotaging patterns:

Step one: Recognize the patterns of your self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors

For the next seven days, start carefully examining everything you do, from the moment you wake up to the time you go to sleep. As you do this, ask yourself, “Does this action take me closer or further away from my goals?”

This process will require you to observe your moment-by-moment experience with mindful and non-judgmental awareness.

The insights you gain from that mindful practice will allow you to form a deeper understanding of why, when, and where you sabotage yourself. 

Once you’re finished with this exercise, you will have a crystal-clear understanding of what aspects of your life are being held back by self-sabotaging behaviors, and what need your self-sabotaging pattern fills.

Step two: Uncover your self-sabotage triggers

Once you know what the exact self-sabotaging behaviors are that you want to get rid of, it’s time to find your triggers.

What are the exact situations, thoughts, or feelings that set you off and make you want to act in a way that is against your best interest?

It could be:

• Feeling stressed and overwhelmed at your work
• Being bored and not having a clear direction
• Fear of success when you are about to achieve your goals
• Fear of being judged if you fail

Make sure you track your triggers in a journal and start creating a replacement strategy for each trigger in the following format:

“If X happens, I will do Y.”

For example:

If you identify that whenever you are feeling overwhelmed you instantly want to watch a Netflix episode of your favorite show, set a new rule for yourself.

Here are three examples of rules you can try today:

“If I feel like putting things off, I will try working on my project for just 5 minutes.”

“When I feel like watching Netflix instead of working, I will go for a refreshing 10 minute walk.”

“If I feel overwhelmed, I will allow myself to sit with those feelings for five minutes and then let them go.”

With small, incremental steps like that, you will be able to implement healthier, sustainable habits, without causing too much resistance from your subconscious mind.

Step three: Get to the root cause

Now  you know which aspects of your life self-sabotaging behaviors are impacting the most, as well as why you self-sabotage. You also created a simple “If X happens, then I will do Y” rule, which will allow you to start shifting those patterns.

Now it’s time to dive deep into your subconscious mind to make your shift permanent.

As you remember, your subconscious mind holds the key to a long-term, successful change in your behavior.

It happens because, in the depths of your subconscious mind you will find deep-ridden traumas from childhood or past events that have left feelings of negativity.

If you want a long-term, sustainable change in your thought and habit patterns so that you can achieve your goals, work on reprogramming your subconscious mind.

The I Am Enough Program

Marisa Peer’s award-winning I Am Enough program is designed to help you do just that. Once you complete the journey of inner self-transformation that this program takes you on, you will release all of your limiting beliefs and dissolve your self-sabotaging patterns.

Named “Britain’s Best Therapist” by Men’s Health magazine, Marisa has spent over three decades treating a client list that includes international superstars, CEOs, royalty, and Olympic athletes.

One thing all of those people had in common was the persistent feeling of not being enough, which sabotaged all of their efforts.

They were constantly chasing completion through more food, validation from the opposite sex, or by any other form of excess.

However, no matter what they tried, nothing could permanently fill in the void they felt inside. They kept repeating their self-defeating behaviors, hoping that the “next thing” would bring the happiness and fulfillment they looked for.

It is only when they fixed the root cause that resided in their subconscious mind, that they became permanently free from self-sabotage and self-destructive thoughts and behaviors.

The same proven techniques that Marisa has used on her high-profile clients are now available for you, too.

See for yourself how, the I Am Enough program changes you on a personal level to make a deep and lasting impact on how you feel about yourself, and how others feel about you.

When you know that you are enough, you are able to live a happy, motivated, and confident life. Not just sometimes, but all of the time.

Final Thoughts

Self-sabotage can be a painful experience as it interferes with every aspect of our lives, makes changes more difficult than they need to be, and undermines your goals and values.

If you want to stop self-sabotage for good, you need to remember that, as detrimental as this behavior might be to you now, it used to serve a useful function in your life.

Find out what areas of your life you sabotage yourself in, and why.

Start replacing those behaviors with actions that fill the same needs, but are healthier and less destructive.

And finally, to get to the cause, start working on your subconscious mind in order to change your deep-seated beliefs, unleash your best self, and make your actions effortless.Join a free “I Am Enough” masterclass to discover how Marisa Peer’s “I Am Enough” program can help you to shift on a deeper level and uproot the core beliefs that are holding you back from experiencing the richness of your life and unlocking your full potential.

We find it easy to appreciate our strengths, but when it comes to our flaws and failures, we develop an overwhelming sense of judgment and rejection. 

If you have ever been unreasonably hard on yourself, or find it challenging to get over your failures or weaknesses, then you may be lacking in self-acceptance. 

Self-acceptance, also sometimes referred to as self-approval, is a crucial component for your psychological well-being; without it, it is easy to be overly self-critical, obsessing over your failures and shortcomings. 

These negative emotions hold you back from self-actualization (which is becoming everything you are capable of becoming) and achieving the life you want.

There are various methods and tools to develop self-acceptance; in this article, we discuss what self-acceptance and self-approval is, and share several proven strategies on how to develop it.  

You will learn:

• What self-acceptance is
• What is the difference between self-acceptance and self-esteem
• How does self-acceptance affect your life and why is it important
• How can you tell if you have low self-acceptance
• Ways to develop better self-acceptance

What Is Self-Acceptance?

As its name suggests, the definition of self-acceptance is the complete acceptance of oneself, of both your positive and negative traits. 

It is much easier to appreciate our positive traits, but for true self-acceptance, you must also be able to embrace the negative, less-desirable parts of yourself. 

A popular misconception of self-acceptance is that it means giving up on yourself. That you simply give yourself a pass for your faults and weaknesses and stop trying to change them. 

Of course, this is simply untrue. 

Instead, true self-acceptance means being aware of both your positive and negative traits without attaching negative emotions or judgment on who you are.

It means being able to be objective about your strengths and weaknesses and not compromise on your self-worth. 

To put it simply, the self-acceptance definition is understanding that your value is separate from your actions and qualities. Despite having made mistakes and flaws, these things do not define you. 

Understandably, this can be difficult; but acknowledging your failures and weaknesses is the only way you can begin to work on them and create real progress. 

Self-acceptance vs self-esteem 

You might be wondering, what is the difference between self-acceptance and self-esteem?

It is easy to confuse self-acceptance and self-esteem since these two concepts are related. However, while they are both critical to your psychological well-being, they are not the same thing. 

Self-esteem is how valuable you perceive yourself relative to other people. These are the strengths you offer to the world, and how favorably you think you compare to others. 

Self-esteem generally relies on external ‘markers’ like your accolades or accomplishments. Being promoted at work can be a massive boost to your self-esteem, while being placed under a performance review can erode it. 

When clinical psychologists talk about healthy self-esteem, they mean that you have a reasonable, positive self-image. You are aware of your strengths relative to other people and believe in your value. 

Unhealthy self-esteem is when the needle falls on either end of the spectrum—in other words, if you think too much of yourself or believe that you are worthless and have nothing to offer, you have unhealthy self-esteem. 

In contrast, self-acceptance is much deeper than self-esteem. Unconditional acceptance does not depend on your external circumstances, nor your success and achievements. It is being able to accept both the good and bad about yourself. 

Unlike self-esteem, self-acceptance is not conditional. Even if you lost your job, had just broken up with your spouse, or lost all your money, you would still be able to love and show compassion to yourself. 

Naturally, it would be much easier for a person with healthy self-acceptance to develop healthy self-esteem. Since you rely less on external validation, you can appreciate your value regardless of what goes on in your life.  

What is the Importance of Self-Acceptance? How Does it Affect Your Life?

Unconditional self-acceptance is essential for your mental and emotional health, and it is one of the factors in the six-factor model of Psychological Well-being.

Having high self-acceptance leads to better mood regulation, fewer depressive symptoms, and increased positive emotions. 

Without self-acceptance, your psychological well-being suffers, which hampers efforts to create a happier, more successful life for yourself. 

For example, those with a poor body image may reject their bodies due to low self-acceptance. They compare themselves to others and feel unattractive, believing that their body is a failure. 

This perception causes them to feel ashamed, self-conscious, uncomfortable, and anxious about their body. As a result, they obsess about their body shape, weight, food, and calories, which eventually could even lead to an eating disorder.  

People with high self-acceptance understand that their figure does not define them. 

They can love both their internal and physical self, and recognize that crash diets and starvation are simply alternate forms of self-abuse. 

With high self-acceptance comes self-compassion. Being able to love and respect themselves allows them to make healthy, constructive changes to achieve their ideal body weight.  

Once you achieve self-acceptance, you also experience other psychological benefits such as:

• Increased freedom to be yourself
• The ability to take risks without worrying about the outcome
• Less fear of failure
• Living more authentically by living for yourself (and not for others)
• Increased self-worth
• More compassion and less self-criticism when you fail
• More independence and autonomy over your own life
• Less despite to win the approval of others
• Increased self-esteem

How Can I Tell If I Have Low Self-Acceptance?

Many suffer from low self-acceptance, and for good reason—research shows that before the age of eight, our self-acceptance is entirely dependent on our caretakers. 

If your parents verbally or nonverbally communicated that you were not attractive enough, not smart enough, not good enough, etc., while you were growing up, you may think of yourself as only conditionally acceptable. This would have likely had a negative impact on your self-acceptance. 

Today, you may have low self-acceptance if you have any of these symptoms:

• You often have a negative attitude
• It is difficult to acknowledge your weaknesses or failures
• You are constantly critical of yourself, and/or are confused about your identity
• You wished you were different than who you already are

We all suffer from these symptoms at one time or another, but if you find yourself constantly showing these behavioral patterns then it would be a good idea to develop better self-acceptance. 

How Do You Achieve Self-Acceptance?

Now you may find yourself asking “what is the key to self-acceptance? How do I achieve it myself?” Developing unconditional self-acceptance can be challenging, especially since it requires undoing years of subconscious conditioning. 

However, by following the strategies and steps below, you can develop better self-acceptance with time and practice. 

Step 1. Forgive yourself 

The first step in developing self-acceptance is showing compassion to yourself. 

Understand that you did the best you could at that time, acknowledge that you can no longer change your past failures and mistakes, and then move on. 

Self-Acceptance Exercise: Think of your past self as a different person, and that you can only change what you can control right now, which is your present self. 

When you reframe your mind this way, it generates self-compassion. You begin to understand that what you dislike about yourself today is because you judge your past self based on your current self, who needed to make that mistake in the first place. 

Marisa Peer, bestselling author and founder of Rapid Transformational Therapy®, (RTT®), believes that many of us are our own worst critic, and this negative attitude prevents us from developing self-compassion. 

However, by changing the way you speak to yourself, you can begin to forgive yourself and develop a healthier relationship with you.

Having this mindset is the crucial first step towards developing self-acceptance. Take ownership of your past mistakes and failures, but do not beat yourself up about it. Forgive yourself—after all, you did the best you could at the time. 

Step 2. Practice mindfulness

Much of our negative self-talk happens in our subconscious—which means that we are not even aware of when we reject ourselves. 

Take some time to listen to your thoughts and feelings—do you get anxious when you think about a particular area of your life? Which parts of yourself are you ashamed of? Which parts do you try to avoid thinking about?

These are difficult questions, but answering them will open your eyes to which parts of yourself that you find most difficult to accept. 

Self-Acceptance Exercise: It may be helpful to write these down in a journal and keep track of how you feel throughout the day—you may realize your dysfunctional behaviors and thought patterns that stop you from accepting yourself. 

While doing this exercise, do not forget to practice self-compassion. Remember, the goal of this exercise is not to judge yourself, but rather it is simply to create an awareness of the parts of yourself which you have been subconsciously rejecting. 

Step 3. Welcome your feelings—both good and bad 

Exploring parts of yourself that you find difficult to accept will understandably bring up a lot of negative feelings. 

Whenever you experienced these feelings in the past, your subconscious’s first instinct was to push them away. Similar to how our nervous system actively avoids physical pain, your mind works the same way by avoiding mental and emotional pain. 

The problem is that your subconscious is merely avoiding the issue, which is a short term solution. To accept yourself, you must confront these feelings head-on. 

Your first instinct might be to try to escape these unpleasant emotions but do not push them away this time. 

Self-Acceptance Exercise: Explore that feeling with a sense of curiosity and cool detachment. Pretend that you are your own best friend—if they showed up hurt, how would you treat them?

Allow yourself to feel these negative emotions for a while and then ask yourself—what can you learn from this? How can you turn this emotion into something positive?

You may also possibly experience positive feelings during this exercise, and you may instinctively reject them—try not to. Accept these positive emotions, appreciate yourself, and understand that you earned the good things along with the bad things in your life. 

Step 4. Forget being perfect

Thinking that you must be perfect is one of the biggest impediments to unconditional self-acceptance. 

As human beings, we inevitably make mistakes and develop flaws. Those who have low self-acceptance may try to deny these flaws or avoid situations where they may fail. 

They then end up living an inauthentic life because the fear of failure keeps them from living out their potential.

Understanding that your imperfection makes you unique and that failure is a part of life will help you be more accepting of yourself. 

To help you with this exercise, do not define yourself by either your success or failure. Instead, understand that your value is intrinsic to your being—in other words, recognize that you are the most important person to yourself, regardless of the mistakes and failures you have made.

When you let go of the need to be perfect, it becomes much easier to be authentic and accepting of yourself, of both your good and bad. 

Step 5. Stop comparing yourself

One reason why developing self-acceptance is so challenging is because we constantly compare ourselves to others. Especially with the advent of social media, there is a sudden rush for people to appear perfect on their social feed. 

This creates the illusion that everyone you know or follow has a happy, perfect life, making it impossible for you to appreciate your own. 

Studies have shown that people on social media are more likely to compare themselves to other people and objectify themselves. On average, those who had a social media profile suffered from lower self-esteem, greater body shame, and worse mental health.

Remember that true self-acceptance is unconditional—it does not depend on your perceived success compared to your peers. Your life is uniquely your own, and because of that, it will always be valuable to you.  

When you stop comparing yourself to others, you begin to journey inward and focus on you. External validation matters less, so you start seeking validation from yourself, which is a part of self-acceptance. 

Step 6. Take an active role in self-improvement

When you are learning to accept yourself, it can be a difficult process. It is not one that can be rushed, nor is it something that will happen overnight. It is something that will need plenty of time, attention, and perseverance.

We know this could be a hard thing to achieve if you are investing in your self-acceptance without any external support. That is why Marisa Peer created her 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge.

Confidence is inherently tied to self-acceptance. You need the confidence to accept yourself as you are, the confidence to move through the world as your authentic self, and the confidence to remain as you are once you have achieved the behaviour and positive mental state. If you join the 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge, you will see drastic change in your confidence, and therefore self-acceptance, as you undergo daily trainings, listen to audios and experience meditations, all within a thriving community of those seeking to boost their confidence and self-acceptance themselves. Interested? Make sure you find out more by clicking the banner below.

Unlock Your Natural Self-Acceptance Through ‘I Am Enough’

Although these steps can help you develop self-acceptance, it will take time and practice. Trying to change subconscious behavior is not easy, but it is possible if you remain disciplined and consistent.

For a more effective solution, however, consider learning from a professional. By using a proven technique, you could achieve results much faster compared to trying to develop self-acceptance on your own. 

By using a therapeutic modality, you are able to utilize powerful tools and strategies to work directly with your subconscious mind. You can explore and directly address deep-rooted issues, which make it difficult to accept yourself.

After working with clients from around the world for over three decades, world-renowned therapist, speaker, author, and founder of Rapid Transformational Therapy Marisa Peer, concluded that most people’s issues stemmed from the feeling of not being enough. 

Feeling inadequate leads to low self-acceptance, and usually stems from a traumatic experience in your childhood. 

You can improve your psychological and emotional well-being by developing better self-acceptance. All you need to make some mental shifts that open up your mind to accept yourself more. 

What Can You Do Next?

Marisa Peer, the world-renowned therapist with over 30 years of experience has developed multiple resources for you to enjoy, to help you along the way of discovering your true, inner, more than enough, self. You can select between a Program – a full and in-depth course on the power of believing in yourself to help you change your mindset forever, or a FREE Masterclass to give you quick, actionable advice you can take away immediately.

The I Am Enough Program

Marisa developed a revolutionary program, ‘I Am Enough’, that can help you get to the root of that experience, let go of the negative emotions, and rewrite them with empowering ones. Click the banner below to be taken to the program hub, and to find out more about what you can expect when you sign up.

The I Am Enough Masterclass

To get a taste of what the full program offers, sign up for a free ‘I Am Enough’ masterclass and learn how you can discover the root of what is blocking you from achieving self-acceptance and directly addressing it. You will feel the changes much faster than doing it alone. To access the masterclass, led by our very own Marisa Peer, click the banner below

Regardless of what you do, remember that you are unique and valuable because of your strengths and flaws, so always be kind and learn to accept yourself.

You are enough, you always have been, and you always will be. 

Everyone, at some point, gets themselves into a mental battle with their inner critic. When something great happens to you, it whispers in your ear, “You are not worthy.” When life gets hard, it makes you feel like everyone else is doing well. Of course, you are the only one struggling. It makes you question your capacity to make good decisions when things don’t go exactly as expected.

Experiencing self-doubt from time to time is normal. However, if you let it get out of control every time it visits you, it can limit you as a person. With that being said, all is not lost. You can—if you want to—learn how to talk back to your inner critic.  Learning to do so is crucial. Otherwise, it can stop you from taking clear and confident action when new opportunities come your way. 

By the end of this article, you will learn:

• What is self-doubt and where it comes from
• An easy method to spot it before it spirals out of control
• The three rules of the mind and how you can use them to let go of self-doubt

Let’s get started.

What Is Self-Doubt?

Self-doubt is an anxious feeling of uncertainty about an aspect of oneself. 

It occurs when you lack confidence or feel incapable of doing something you need to do that is typically outside of your comfort zone.

Some people assume self-doubt to be a mental illness. However, it is actually a natural part of being human, and in some cases, it can be a good thing.

Healthy self-doubt: An example  

When you venture off to explore something unfamiliar for the first time, your mind uses a small and healthy dose of self-doubt as a way to keep you safe. It assumes that your unfamiliarity with the task can pose a risk, so it discourages you from pursuing it. 

In this scenario, self-doubt is a useful tool as it motivates you to gain more clarity before blindly jumping into something unfamiliar.

The problem happens when this inbuilt response gets out of control. 

If left unchecked, self-doubt can become a limiting factor in your life. Moreover, it can hold you back from taking action and seizing opportunities. 

It makes starting and finishing things harder than it needs to be.

Instead of keeping you safe, it chips away at your confidence and makes you overly question yourself.

Unhealthy self-doubt: An example 

Imagine this:

After working hard at your job for many months, your efforts finally started to pay off.

You were assigned a new leadership position for an important project that could break or make your company’s bright future.

In the ideal world, you simply take it as a recognition of your exceptional performance and smoothly step into your new role. 

Instead of doing that, your thoughts go into overdrive:

“What if I mess up?” 

“I will look like a fool when they find out I don’t have what it takes.”

“What will people say?  

“I just don’t think I’m smart enough to do this.” 

This type of self-doubt is not healthy and counterproductive to helping you.

Let’s take a deeper look at the different forms of unhealthy self-doubt. This way you can better recognize and overcome it, should it occur. 

How To Spot Unhealthy Self-Doubt

Think of unhealthy self-doubt as a parasite. In order to survive, it seeks nourishment by feeding off its host’s self-esteem and confidence.

It shows itself in the following forms:

The self-fulfilling prophecy

 “I can’t do it”—this attitude can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you do not believe something can be done, why would you put the effort to do it in the first place? 

If you don’t put in the effort required, you are less likely to get the result you want. As a result, you affirm your initial thought: “I can’t do it.”

Self-sabotage

“I do not deserve this”—self-sabotage comes from fear of failure. If you are afraid you won’t pass the test, you might be tempted not to study at all. Therefore, if you fail, you can blame it on not studying. 

In this case, you can shift the blame from yourself to some external circumstance. For example, it was not your capabilities that failed, it was the situation.

The imposter syndrome

“Who am I to do this”—the strong feeling of inadequacy comes together with this type of mental dialogue. 

You might be afraid of being discovered as a fraud. Because in your mind, your achievements are due to pure luck rather than personal accomplishments. This may happen even if you already demonstrated you are more than adequate to get the job done.

Feeling of unworthiness

“It is not good enough”—in this case, you habitually deny yourself the sense of achievement. You lack self-kindness. Therefore you believe that no matter how great your accomplishments are, they are never good enough. As a result, you experience harsh self-judgment that keeps you permanently stuck in a spiral of self-doubt.

The way you talk to yourself is critical as it creates neural pathways in your brain. 

If you allow the voice of self-doubt to repeatedly undermine your achievements by telling you “you cannot do it,” “you are no good,” “you do not deserve this,” those thoughts will become your default state of mind. 

Over time those thoughts will form a self-perpetuating feedback loop. Consequently, it will keep you stuck in the same situation finding it more difficult to break out of it as time goes by.

Where Does Self-Doubt Come From?

There are a number of reasons behind your self-doubt. for example, some find their roots in traumatic past experiences. Others, on the other hand, can be directly tied to the inner dialogue you have with yourself.

Lets elaborate on each type so you can better understand where self-doubt comes from.

Negative past experiences

Going through difficult situations is a normal part of life. However, the way we interpret them will determine how we deal with them.

This can also include possible negative experiences you might have been exposed to as a child.

For example, If you were raised by parents that were overly critical, chances are you grew up with a continual nagging of self-doubt.

Those experiences might have left you scarred. Therefore, today you need to learn how to cope with them without hanging on to the pain they caused.

Comparing yourself to others

In the age of social media, comparing yourself to other people is almost unavoidable. 

As you scroll through your social media accounts, you end up seeing other people’s unrealistic and “highly curated” highlight reel of their best moments. 

The comparison you make in your mind may end up making you feel somewhat inadequate and plant a seed of self-doubt.

All of those different reasons make it seem like the problem of self-doubt is complex and can take forever to fix.

In reality, it is not as hard as you think, and here is why:

There is only one common root for all those reasons we mentioned earlier. 

It is this heavy feeling you get inside of “not being enough.”

Marisa Peer, a world-renowned therapist with over three decades of experience, has helped thousands of people, including CEOs, rock stars, and Olympic athletes, to release their fears and phobias.

Having worked with many clients, she discovered that the root of most people’s issues—phobias, insecurity, anxiety, fear, and many forms of addiction—stems from the need to fill the inner emptiness of not feeling enough. 

The inner emptiness was a chief reason why her clients would second guess their capabilities. Moreover, they self-sabotage their efforts in critical moments.

If they could just get rid of that one persistent feeling—not being enough—the wall of self-doubt would start to collapse like a house of cards.

Before you can permanently remove self-doubt from your life, you need to understand how it works.

The Mechanics of Self-Doubt

When we experience an overwhelming sense of self-doubt, we tend to lose touch with the most basic thing we should be in touch with, ourselves and our minds. 

According to Marisa, “We end up doing everything backward trying to control our events when we must first address the root cause, our thoughts.”

Marisa is a big fan of simple and practical principles that anyone can easily apply to their life to get tangible positive outcomes. 

One powerful principle that Marisa helped many of her clients adopt is: 

Your thoughts control your feelings. Your feelings control your actions. And your actions control your outcomes.

Here is how it works:

You have a thought: “I can’t do it.”

This thought will cause you to feel sad, angry, bitter, helpless, or even hopeless.

Consequently, this type of thinking evokes negative feelings about yourself. As a result, your ability to make sound and proactive decisions is hindered.

To put it simply, it puts fear in the driver’s seat of your behaviors and actions. This makes you less likely to take risks and reinforces the original thought of “I can’t do it.” 

Now you might be wondering, 

“How do I get out of this vicious cycle of self-doubt?”

Marisa teaches her clients three simple yet effective rules of the mind that can help anyone take charge and completely let go of self-doubt.

3 Simple Principles for Overcoming Self-Doubt

Principle #1: Make the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar

Your mind loves what is familiar to you.

Even when the thing that is familiar is not serving you well, your mind thinks, “At least I know this well.” 

If your mind is accustomed to “negative dialogue,” you will have an unconscious preference for that type of thinking.

People whose inner critic is out of control are familiar with the constant nagging feeling of “not being enough.” 

What you want to do is make the feeling of not being enough unfamiliar. At the same time, make the feeling of being enough familiar.

Here is how to do it:

Start by using this simple yet extremely powerful affirmation “I Am Enough” in your daily practice.

This simple phrase can change your life.

When you say and repeat “I Am Enough” on a daily basis, your brain will start to believe it. Gradually, the phrase will sink in, and your mind will accept it as the truth. 

This simple affirmation will help you feel more empowered and confident.

Choose a powerful affirmation from the list below and repeat it to yourself every day:

• I am confident
• Today I am courageous 
• I am significant
• I am capable of dealing with anything

Saying these affirmations out loud may seem bizarre. Some of Marisa’s clients were skeptical too, and today they swear by it.

Try to incorporate this as a daily routine for as little as five minutes for at least 21 days or more. You will see your self-doubt gradually subside.

Practicing affirmations by yourself may sound hard in the beginning. You can try to incorporate audio that can guide you.  

Marisa’s guided hypnosis audio course can be a great way for you to start your practice. It can help you rewire and reprogram your mind and uncover your inner confidence and self-esteem. 

Principle #2: Tell your mind what you want it to do for you

Your mind does what it truly thinks you want.

If you do not communicate clearly what you want, your mind will get confused and work against you.

In the case of self-doubt, your mind is trying to protect you from potentially dangerous situations. In reality, this could end up hurting you.

Instead of letting your insecurities get the best of you, be mindful of how you communicate with your mind.

Here is how to do it:

Words you tell your mind are like blueprints. Give it direct, crystal clear commands about how you want to feel about yourself in any situation.

For example, as you are working on a tough project and you feel your doubts creeping in, tell your mind:

“I’m choosing to do this,” “I love this,” “I am thrilled to be working on this project.”

By doing this over time, your mind will have no choice but to start agreeing with the new attitude you are trying to adapt to.

Principle #3: Be proactive not reactive

The way you feel about yourself and your situation is the result of two things: The pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself. 

If you are like many of us, as a child you may have often heard phrases such as:.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“You’ll never be any different.”

“I’m disappointed in you.”

Parents use those words with good intentions. However, they are usually not aware of how those words could have a negative effect on their child’s mental dialogue.

With enough repetition, those messages embed themselves into a person’s self-dialogue. With time, they become a part of how they talk to themselves. 

The good news is that it is completely up to you to change it whenever you want.

Here is how to do it:

Whatever situation you find yourself in, you always have the freedom to choose your response. 

There will still be times when you feel like self-doubt is creeping in. Now you know you can cheat your brain into feeling good by choosing words and pictures in your head deliberately.

For example, imagine you are driving on a busy highway, and a driver cuts you off. You may feel tempted to lash out and think of all sorts of negative thoughts. On the other hand, you could proactively choose to remain calm. You can do that by taking a deep breath and calming your preconditioned inner dialogue.

Start by telling yourself, “I am calm,” “I am peaceful.” 

This will help you realize that maybe the driver had a good reason to cut you off. So there is no point in losing your cool.

The premise is to keep the words you say and pictures you make in your head in check and in a positive frame. 

Let Go of Self-Doubt—A Word From Marisa Peer

Self-doubt and feeling insecure is not something you have to live with.

When you understand how to work with your mind, you will gain the ability to reclaim the inner confidence you were born with.

Here is your next step: 

You may think to yourself, 

“This is really useful information. But what is the easiest way to put this information to good use and remove self-doubt right when it pops up?”

Well, we have something special for you.

Marisa noticed that the successful people she worked with all had a common mindset: Their mind was their friend. 

Their inner dialogue always cheered them on, gave them constructive criticism to do things better, and was always proactively positive. Which is the reason behind Marisa’s extraordinary self-hypnosis RTT audio course named “Installing The Cheerleader.” 

By listening to this hypnotic audio course, you too can begin the process of reactivating your inner cheerleader today.

Remember, it is entirely possible to rid yourself of self-doubt and step into the life and type of person you want. Book a session with a certified RTT therapist and uncover your hidden full potential.

You can also consider participating in Marisa’s 21-Day Challenge.

The 21-Day unstoppable Confidence Challenge

Self-doubt can be rooted in a lack of confidence, in either yourself in general or your ability to get through day-to-day tasks. These beliefs are self-sabotaging, as there is no way to move beyond them while you still believe them. However, undoing years of negative self-talk in order to boost your confidence and reclaim your self-belief, can be extremely difficult if you are going it alone.

That’s why Marisa Peer created her 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge. Through a combination of daily trainings, audios and meditations, as well as a supportive network of like-minded individuals also participating in the challenge, you will learn how to leave your self-doubt in the past and welcome in a new, confident you.

If you are interested, make sure to click the banner below to find out more and sign-up today.

Perhaps things that once served as a bedrock for building a positive future and gave you a sense of stability have been swept away from under your feet. Your self-esteem that was based on your career growth, and your self-worth you so heavily tied to your bank account, all got smacked in the face by a surprise pandemic. In times like this, it is completely normal to fall into the grips of self-doubt and begin to question your own self-value. 

However, this might be a sign that your self-worth is built on shaky foundations. If you are trying to understand why your self-esteem, sense of self-value, and even your self-love have taken a hit and left you feeling bad about yourself, don’t worry, we’re here to help.  We are going to uncover the critical reasons why you might feel out of it in the face of recent events. We’ll also get you believing in yourself again by helping you build the most important quality of them all: Your self-worth.

In this article, you will learn:

• What is self-worth (and what it’s not)?
• Where does self-worth come from?
• How you can tell if you have low self-worth
• Techniques for building strong self-worth
• How you can fast forward self-worth growth

Let’s get started with discussing exactly what self-worth is.

What Is Self-Worth (And What It’s Not)?

How do you define self-worth?

According to Dictionary.com, 

“Self-worth is the sense of one’s own value or worth as a person.”

In other words, self-worth is a state of being that is defined by unconditional self-acceptance, self-respect, self-understanding, and self-love.

The most important thing to understand is that self-worth is not based on anything external.

If you have a high level of self-worth, then you have the ability to hold a favorable opinion of yourself independently of what is going on in your life.

No matter how tough life gets, your self-worth is based on a solid foundation of self-acceptance.

The unflinching nature of self-worth allows you to set your goals and achieve them.

This happens because self-worth makes you more or less immune to the inevitable ups and downs that happen along the way. With that by your side, you are able to skillfully scope and then navigate the terrain that leads to the fulfillment of your ambitions.

However, if self-worth is so unshakable, how come it’s not always by our side when we need it? 

That is because a lot of us have a skewed understanding of where it comes from, leading us to look for it in all the wrong places.

What is the difference between self-worth, self-esteem, and self-confidence?

Self-esteem and self-confidence are often interchangeably used to describe self-worth, but there is a slight nuance to each one of these terms in contrast to self-worth.

Why is this distinction important, you might ask?

It’s because to have a good understanding of ourselves and our emotions, it is important for us to build a richer vocabulary of our experience.

Let’s explore what the difference between these similar qualities is.

Self-worth vs. self-esteem

Where self-worth is rooted in your own estimation of yourself, self-esteem is conditional.

The relationship between self-worth and self-esteem is akin to the relationship between the root of a tree and its branches.

Self-worth is your foundation; it has to be built first as it grounds your self-esteem. When self-esteem is not rooted in a solid grounding of self-worth, it can become fickle and wobbly.

Imagine what would happen to a tree with long branches and leaves, but a weak and fragile trunk with no roots to support it. It would not be able to sustain harsh weather conditions without collapsing. That’s what happens when your self-esteem is not rooted in a strong foundation of self-worth. 

Clinical psychologist Dr. Christina Hibbert explains:

“Self-esteem is what we think and feel and believe about ourselves. Self-worth is recognizing ‘I am greater than all of those things.’ It is a deep knowing that I am of value, that I am loveable, necessary to this life, and of incomprehensible worth.”

Self-worth vs. self-confidence

Similarly, there are subtle yet significant differences between self-worth and self-confidence.

Self-worth is the sense of your own value or worth as a person.

Self-confidence is a feeling of certainty and competence in more specific areas. 

You can have a low level of self-confidence but still keep your self-worth unscathed. 

For example, you can have low self-confidence when it comes to learning a new subject outside of your comfort zone, like taking a new language course at school. Whatever the outcome, it does not reflect negatively on your self-worth whatsoever.

Since your confidence should be tied to your level of competence, there are naturally some things you will not be very good at and other areas in which you excel. To strike a perfect balance, you want to have high self-confidence in activities that are important to you and high levels of self-worth in general.

Where Does Self-Worth Come From?

Today, most people’s understanding of self-worth is projected on the wrong things. As we explained earlier, self-worth is something that comes from within, but that, unfortunately, doesn’t necessarily hold true for a lot of us.

Many people experience the feeling of self-worth only after achieving a feat or winning a competition against others. This means that their self-value and worth is tied to the output of their accomplishments.

Let’s not forget about social media and how it can impact how you feel about yourself. 

In this ever-rising tide of “likes,” “comments,” number of “followers” you have on your profile, and the list goes on, you gradually become conditioned to attach your self-worth to things that are outside of you. 

If you relate to this then ask yourself:

“Should you really be placing so much importance on your accomplishments to determine your self-worth?” 

“Why do you feel the need to outdo somebody just to give yourself permission to hold yourself in high regard?”

“Why should your sense of importance depend on the number of followers you have?”

In reality, self-worth has nothing to do with external manifestations of abundance. Rather, self-worth is like a blueprint that gives you an unquestionable right to pursue the best things in life; no matter what your external circumstances are. 

To have a high level of self-worth means accepting yourself fully and knowing that you are enough just as you are. This includes accepting your imperfections, weaknesses, and limitations. It’s about recognizing the real value of who you are—irrespective of anything outside of you.

However, we often have trouble accepting and loving ourselves fully and unconditionally, and this can lead to low self-worth. If left unchecked, this will negatively affect many areas in your life.

Signs of Low Self-Worth

There are some signs that you can look for when evaluating yourself in regards to low self-worth. Below is a short list that can help you evaluate yourself and give you some insight as to where you stand.

You don’t feel that you are enough as you are

When you experience the feeling of low self-worth, take note and see what you are basing it on. A lot of us wrongly tie our self-worth to our achievements, success, or the number in our bank account. This means we feel enough only if we achieve and succeed.

How to spot it:

• You tend to feel like you are overlooked or ignored when engaging in social interactions.
• In conversations, you exaggerate certain aspects about yourself because you think it will make you look better.

You don’t believe in yourself or your abilities

If you don’t truly value yourself, you won’t be able to trust yourself in many situations to do anything right. This will reinforce the belief that you are not good enough.

How to spot it:

• You often feel like your achievements are small compared to others. 
• Feeling that you are a victim of circumstances.
• Needing external validation to feel good about yourself

A sure telltale sign that you have low self-worth is when you try to attain it from all the wrong places, starting with people’s approval.

You feel good about yourself when other people praise you and see you as successful, smart, or attractive. 

This happens because you yourself don’t believe that you embody these qualities. Getting this external praise fills an innate need you have inside, and that’s why it feels so good.

Pursuing external approval, however, is like putting a tiny band-aid on a big cut. It’s a small and temporary relief, but there’s much more that is needed to heal the wound.

How to spot it:

• You never ask for help even when you need it because you think people will think less of you.
• Replaying conversations in your head over and over again until you reach a point convincing yourself that you made a fool of yourself.
• Feeling that you need to justify your feelings or thoughts to other people.
• Constantly comparing yourself to others

When you lack self-worth, you will look for someone that you can feel equal or superior to. In this way, you do obtain a sense of worthiness, however, a fleeting one.

How to spot it:

• You usually feel self-conscious or anxious when meeting new people. 
• Considering rich or famous people superior to you.
• Actively engaging in gossip.

How to Build Strong Self-Worth

“In order to have real inner confidence and lasting self-esteem you must know, feel, and believe that you are enough because this realization is very much at the heart of confidence of all types” ―Marisa Peer

By now, you hopefully understood the importance of having high self-worth. How do you build a strong, long-lasting feeling of personal value though? 

How do we look past the external environment and cultivate our sense of self-worth from within? There are a handful of things that you can do to begin building your self-worth right away. We’ve broken them down into a couple of steps.

Step 1: Expand your self-understanding

Your first step is to get to know yourself on a much deeper level. You need to learn about who you are first before you can determine your own self-worth.

You can try the following thought experiment to deepen your self-understanding.

Imagine that everything you own was now taken away from you. All your possessions, career, money, accomplishments, and friends are now a thing of the past.

What if all you had left was just yourself?

What would be left that is actually of value?

Those are important questions to consider because how you feel about yourself when everything has been taken away is the actual true measure of your self-worth.

Those types of questions force you to dig deeper into your internal resources such as your skills and come face to face with your strengths and your weaknesses and detach yourself from things that are not permanent and can be taken away at any moment.

Step 2: Develop your self-acceptance

As you unearth different aspects of yourself, you will find good things, neutral things, and things you may find hard to accept.

To build a real lasting self-worth, you need to maintain a high level of honesty at all times. You need to acknowledge the whole picture, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Marisa Peer, a world-renowned therapist with over three decades of experience, has helped thousands of people, including CEOs, rock stars, and Olympic athletes, to release fears and achieve a great sense of self-worth.

Having worked with many people, she discovered that to address most major issues successfully, you have to start with what she considers to be the most powerful potential on the planet: Your mind.

You are only human. Therefore you are not perfect, you have flaws, and you make mistakes. After all, that is what being human is all about. No one is perfect, and the good news is that you don’t have to be to feel that you are great.

Remember that your feeling of self-worth starts with accepting yourself fully and knowing that you—alone—are enough.

Noteworthy tips:

• No one judges you more than yourself. In your journey of self-acceptance, remember to be kind to yourself.
• Forgiving others for things that they didn’t mean to do is important for growth, but forgiving yourself for mistakes you make is omnipotent.
• Correct your perspective of “perfection.” Without the sour, the sweet would not be so sweet. In order to accept yourself, you have to accept all your imperfections, and that is what makes a perfect “you.”

Step 3: Enhance your self-love

People often think of self-love as being conceited or egotistic; however, this is far from the truth. 

If you want to be a loving and happy person in life, self-love is key. 

You can’t begin a happy life or even function with optimism if you don’t have an inner feeling of loving yourself.

Self-love is not about preening yourself all day telling everyone how great you are; on the contrary, that would be a sign of insecurity. 

Self-love is about treating yourself with the same compassion and patience as you would treat your best of friends.

Practicing affirmations of self-love can fast forward your progress towards building your self-worth.

Choose a few powerful affirmations from the list below and repeat them to yourself every day:

• I am choosing to be kind to myself today
• I am lovable
• My self-value is innate and unconditional
• I love myself 
• I am enough

Try to incorporate this in your daily routine for as little as five minutes for at least 21 days and you could start to see positive results in how you feel about yourself.

Fast Forward Your Self-Worth Growth by Addressing the Root Cause

The 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge

Though as described earlier in the article, self-worth and self-confidence are not completely the same, one does regularly inform the other. If you have low self-worth, this can affect your self-confidence, and vice-versa.

If you do not have the self-confidence you need to take on the daily challenges of life, this may lower your opinion of yourself, and lead to a decrease in self-worth. Improving your self-confidence will also improve how you feel about yourself as a person.

Marisa Peer has designed a 21-Day Unstoppable Confidence Challenge to help you develop the mindset you need to take on anything, and also improve the way you view yourself and your place within your world. Rewire your mind with daily trainings, a community of like-minded people, audios and meditations to improve your self-confidence, and therefore your self-worth. Click the banner below to read more about the challenge and begin your first positive step towards the version of you that you deserve to be.

I Am Enough

Marisa Peer has collected her learnings from all her success stories from helping thousands of people throughtout the years and condensed them into her award-winning program ‘I Am Enough’.

“The most powerful potential on the planet comes from your mind”—Marisa Peer

‘I Am Enough’ will equip you with the tools you need for building an unshakable belief in yourself in eight-steps. It combines cognitive behavioral therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and a whopping eight hypnosis audios. Working on multiple levels, this program works specifically to rewire your conscious and subconscious mind at the same time.

If you’d like to dip your toes in first to get a feel for Marisa’s ‘I Am Enough’ Program then we have something awesome packaged for you.

Marisa put together a free online ‘I Am Enough’ masterclass to help you in your first steps in rediscovering the self-worth that you have always had all along.

Take advantage now and sign up while it’s still free. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain when you find that all you’ve ever wanted to be was deep inside you already.

Remember that you are enough, you have always been enough, and you will always be enough.