I want you to begin by asking yourself two questions:

1.     What are your earliest memories of self-belief?

2.     Have you ever truly believed in yourself?

Now just sit with your answers for a minute.

Last year, I hosted a womxn’s circle at my home in East London, a space for womxn to connect, speak their truth, and be heard. The theme for the circle was self-belief, and I started by asking everyone to talk about their relationship with self-belief throughout their life. When it was my turn to speak, I traced my mind back to being a child and I could feel the inner confidence that ran through me at that early age. I didn’t question or doubt myself, I didn’t overthink, I just was.

When I answered this question, I realised that I’ve had to work harder at maintaining, or at times cultivating, the inner confidence that I innately felt when I was younger. And it got me thinking, maybe it’s just normal to lose self-belief as we become more burdened by societal expectations and social conditioning, we can lose sight of what really matters and then start to doubt ourselves. But I also know that as womxn, we’re always critiqued resulting in there being a lot of societal barriers we need to navigate (womxn of colour experiencing this even more intensely). Therefore, each step we take in life has the potential to diminish the belief we have in ourselves, if we were even lucky enough to have some in the first place.

I see so many womxn doing incredible things, but behind the scenes they’re quietly beating themselves down because they don’t believe they’re good enough. This lack of self-belief then opens the door to the inner critic, fuelling that fire of doubt, fear and shame.

Every womxn that I’ve spoken to (without exception) as a friend, client, or as a guest on my podcast has experienced a lack of self-belief and a critical inner voice. So, what’s going wrong here and is it possible for us to teach ourselves self-belief even against the backdrop of a male dominated, white supremacist, capitalist society?

In terms of what’s going wrong, I believe that the core issues are judgement and shame – topics that are both so wide and deep within themselves. As womxn, we’re judged, and we judge ourselves very harshly. We have to work harder, achieve it all (career, motherhood, desirability) and never let that smile leave our faces for fear of making someone else feel uncomfortable. And as the expectations are so high, none of us are ever able to live up to society’s ideal of what it means to be “a woman”, and then we feel ashamed. Ashamed that we failed. And what’s worse is that we’re all keeping each other trapped in this cycle as we’re always the first to step on someone else’s neck and put others down too. How many times have you caught yourself describing another womxn as “too much”, “too quiet”, “too difficult”? We need to stop fuelling the fire and instead bring each other up and encourage self-belief by supporting and praising those who are doing the work and putting themselves out there.

Self-belief grows when we see people like us doing things that we admire and that inspire us. It’s the basic principle of role modelling. Watching people like us achieve and fulfil dreams makes it feel like a possibility for us. As womxn, we’re massively lacking mainstream role models, leaving us questioning our own abilities or having to fight our way through. Because of this, it’s so important to find people that we can connect with and aspire to – thank you internet.

Self-belief also comes from being able to listen to what we want and tune into our intuition. But from a young age, we’re taught to detach ourselves from our bodies. We’re shown images of female bodies that are white, skinny and fuckable as the only acceptable way to be. We’re also taught that sex is about male arousal and pleasure which we’re simply there to facilitate. We’re exposed to so much that tells us we must be submissive in the way we engage and interact with the world. We slowly learn that to make it through life we need to shut up, starve or purge ourselves, and fake our orgasms.

Well I’m DONE with the bullshit. I’m committed to doing one of the most radical things that I can do as a woman, love myself and believe in the amazing human that I am. Yep, I said. I’m committed to building a life on the foundations of loving and believing in myself. This is a daily practice and one in which there are lots of slip ups. It’s not easy to love and believe in yourself in a society that sees you as a commodity to the male experience, but I’m damn well making this my life’s work, and I encourage you with all of my heart to make the same commitment right now.

I believe that we can teach ourselves self-belief, and here’s how…

Get clear on what you want. We are powerful and deserving beings, but we haven’t been taught to ask for what we want or even recognise what’s important to us. To do this, we first need time and space to slow down and be quiet. This in itself can be incredibly scary for a lot of people, and I understand why. It might be the first time that you’ve ever really allowed yourself to be with your thoughts. But give it a try. Make time for yourself in your week and see what happens. My experience has been that the more time I carve out for myself, the clearer I get in terms of what I want and how I want to spend my energy.

Be honest. Start to become aware of your own bullshit – the excuses, lies, and limiting beliefs you’ve told yourself for so long in order to keep yourself small. We tell ourselves these things because we think we’re protecting ourselves, but it’s all an illusion and actually preventing us from growing into the amazing beings that we are. Start tuning in to all of the things you like about yourself and that you’re proud of. Write this list down and refer to it every time the niggling inner critic starts talking. 

Stop comparing. This is a big one, particularly in a world obsessed with social media followers, number of likes, and infatuated with shiny new things. Your worth and value isn’t based on anyone else (even though we’re made to believe otherwise), so give yourself some social media boundaries. If you’re feeling depleted and shit about yourself every time you’ve scrolled, then ask yourself why. Think about what stories you’re telling yourself in your head and maybe consider unfollowing some accounts, limiting your use of social media when you’re feeling vulnerable, or having a total detox. I’m still working on this area within my own life and have only started making small changes in the way that I use social. For example, I don’t have any notifications turned on for Instagram, and I turn my phone onto flight mode in the evening until the next morning. Comparison is such a waste of energy that you could instead be using to fuel your own success and happiness.

Be patient - things take time. This is one of the biggest lessons I’ve had to learn over the last couple of years, and have to keep reminding myself of. In a world where everyone is trying to sell us something, we’re led to believe that there are short cuts and quick fixes to happiness, healing, and fulfilment. The hard truth is that there are no short-cuts. These things take time and the path is certainly not straight. But the good news is that when you decide to put in the work, you will feel the difference within your soul and your whole outlook on life, precisely because it did take time, it was hard. Don’t be hard on yourself if you’re not exactly where you want to be as what you’re experiencing right now is all part of getting you to where you need to be – it’s a cliché but it’s true, believe!

Release your negative thoughts. You are not your thoughts, and you are not bound to live a life controlled by negative thinking. Prove to yourself that the negative things you tell yourself are actually not true. Write a list of all the negative statements that you tell yourself, then next to them write the counter statement to them to frame it in a positive way. For example, if you tell yourself that you’re not confident, write next to it, “I am confident”. Next, write underneath, “I am confident” all of the times (even if there’s just one example) that you’ve been confident.

I believe in you and I challenge you to make a first step in truly believing in yourself.

If you’ve got this far, you might also be interested in a my Clarity + Focus Workshop on Saturday 15th February, 10.30am-3.30pm at Benk + Bo in Shoreditch.