AFFORMATIONS ON BUILDING SELF-CONFIDENCE
“The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.”
— URSULA K. LE GUIN
In our live workshops and mastermind programs, we often include a fill-in-the-blank questionnaire that gets people to look at their inner beliefs about themselves.
We often ask our students to complete this phrase: “If I’m good to myself, _______________.” Many of the women in our workshops finish that statement by saying, “I feel guilty!”
Do you sometimes feel guilty if you take time for yourself? How do you feel accepting a sincere compliment? When someone compliments you, do you accept it, say thank you, and move on? Do you secretly wonder, What do they want from me? Or do you wave it off, deny their compliment, and think you’re being “humble”?
Listen, there’s nothing wrong with a little humility. What I’m talking about is the inability to accept a sincere compliment. That happens when your Negative Reflection—that part of you that doesn’t believe anything good about you—has told you lies that you believe, such as, “You’re not that pretty,” or “You’re not good enough.”
How do you feel when someone pays you a sincere compliment?
And guess what? You believe these lies you’ve been telling yourself, even when someone else is trying to give you a genuine compliment. For example, I was teaching Afformations on a teleseminar, and two weeks later heard from one of the attendees. She wrote:
Noah,
Thank you for teaching us on the call. I find myself using Afformations everywhere! People are even asking me what I’m doing to lose weight!
But the funniest part is that I haven’t lost a thing! My schedule hasn’t allowed me to get to the gym, and my eating hasn’t changed. So the scale reads the same and I keep asking myself, “Why am I so fit and healthy at 125 pounds?”
People are seeing what I’m asking. Maybe my enthusiasm is burning off those extra cheesecake calories!
Being able to accept a sincere compliment is just one behavior that reveals your beliefs about yourself and your level of self-confidence. Another is how you show up in your relationships. As an example, I’ve included what a student named Adam posted on our online Afformations mastermind group:
Dear Noah,
Afformations have changed my life in so many ways! Growing up, I was always an introvert and not very confident when it came to most human interactions, especially with women.
After a friend told me about you and your Afformations Method, I started listening to your iAfform Audios, reading your books, and really working on my confidence.
Right around that time, I met a woman named Samantha who was beautiful, and I thought she was out of my league. Here I was, a geeky, skinny entrepreneur just starting in business who didn’t have a lot of success yet, and she had modeled a bit and was dating a very successful dentist who was also a body builder. It really intimidated me!
So I started using the Afformation: Why am I so confident? I also started acting more confident, completely faking it at first. But I noticed that with the Afformations, the more actions I took, the more confident I really felt.
Within a month, I decided to go ahead and ask her out, and it took two months for her to say yes. We are now happily married. Thank you, Noah, for helping me gain the confidence and find the relationship I always wanted!
(To learn how to join our private online Afformations mastermind group, see Part IV of this book or visit www.HavingAbundance.com.)
If you’ve been holding on to a negative self-concept or find it hard to accept a sincere compliment, use these Afformations to build a positive self-image—and let your light shine from within!
Healthy Self-Confidence Habits