One of the biggest things that I have learnt over the past
year, all throughout my life but particularly sport is that you have to be able
to believe in yourself. You can achieve amazing things when you actually have
faith in yourself. I know it sounds so clichéd, but my biggest learning curve
was when I actually accepted that it is true!
The most important belief you can have is self belief! How
is anyone else supposed to believe in you if you cannot even believe in
yourself? It is a battle but once you get past it, you will be so amazed! One
of the hardest things about self belief is getting it. You may always say you
can do what you want to, but you actually have to feel it too. And once you
feel it, you will begin the struggle to keep belief in yourself. People will
come along and try knock it away from you, and try to quash your self belief
because they don’t have any, but you can’t let them have it!
You will also gain more confidence if you are able to gain
the belief of those around you, your teammates, coaches and support staff. When
they trust you to take on anything, you know that if you are not up to the
challenge, they will be there to have your back. However, this is not always
necessary. Sometimes when people don’t believe in you it can become easier to
achieve what you want to. I find that if I am told I won’t be able to do
something it makes me want it that much more!
Another key thing to self belief is goal setting. As I have
already mentioned in one of my other blogs, it is important that you are able
to set realistic measureable goals in order to gain your self confidence. If
you set goals that are too high you will continue to fail and become down on
yourself, and if you set goals that you can’t measure then you will never feel
like you get anywhere. The biggest thing that taught me self belief was hard
work! Although not the most talented, I always knew I could do what I wanted,
but when I started putting in the hard yards I began to gain what I had always
wanted.
I want to end by saying I have had a wonderful semester, and
creating these blogs has helped me to express who I am and what I believe in. I
will leave with a quote that Keith said to me that I will never forget:
“Give yourself permission to succeed! “