Squiggly Career Summer School: Self-Belief

Week 3 of Squiggly Career Summer school is all about how to build your belief. You can watch back our 30 minute Instagram Live session here.

The ups, downs, choices and challenges we face in squiggly careers can test us and impact our confidence. Building your belief helps you to be braver and navigate through the knotty moments.

Beliefs are how we make sense of the world – they are the mental architecture that we build in our brain. Challenging and changing our beliefs is possible, but it does take effort.

The four sources of self-belief according to psychologist Albert Bandura are:

1. Mastery – you feel like you are good at what you do
2. Modelling – you can learn from people around you
3. Encouragement – you have people who support you
4. Resilience reflections – you recognise your ability to overcome adversity

It’s useful to reflect on which of those 4 areas feel like an area of strength for you vs. an area for development.

3 ideas to build your belief

1. Reframe a limiting belief to a limitless belief

A limiting belief holds you back and makes you smaller. A limitless belief moves you forward and makes you braver.

Examples:

• Limiting belief = difficult questions make me a difficult person
• Limitless belief = difficult questions create different opportunities

• Limiting belief = If I fail, I’ll be a failure
• Limitless belief = When I fail, I never fail to learn

2. Get some distance from your doubts

Mental time travel can give you perspective and some your present day doubts from feeling all-consuming.

Start with some resilience reflections and ask yourself:

• What is a moment in my career I’m proud of?
• When did I overcome a big challenge at work?

Then move on to some positive projections:

• What am I excited about?
• What is something I know I will achieve by the end of the year?

3. Say Your Name, Say Your Name

When you doubt yourself in the moment, self talk can make a big difference. Using your name helps to make self-talk sticky. It sounds like:

• “Sarah, you can do this”
• “Helen, you’ve coped with this before and you can do it again now”

If you’d like some more support with self-belief, download our podsheet from episode 187 of the Squiggly Careers podcast:

Other things that might be helpful for you:

• Inner Voice Masterclass – podcast episode with Ethan Cross and Viv Groskop
• Download our Confidence Gremlims Ebook

We hope this summary is useful! Don’t forget, there is whole chapter on confidence in our book The Squiggly Career.

Helen & Sarah