self belief

The great Nelson Mandela once said: “I am the master of my faith, I am the captain of my soul.

“Don’t judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

Only someone who has mastered the ability to believe in themselves can fall then stand up again to face life. Today we going to explore the concept of SELF-BELIEF and how you can achieve this through the martial arts. Believing in yourself often requires you to push yourself out of your comfort zone in order to achieve your full potential, and to master something that you don’t have faith that you can achieve. By believing in yourself, you are saying that you trust yourself to overcome your fears and walk the path toward your authentic Self. Believing in yourself is having the ability to know that your value does not decrease based on someone else’s inability to see your true worth.

As the legendary Kobe Bryant said:

“Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise”.

So how do the Martial Arts help us on this journey to self-belief? People often see martial arts as a weight loss or a physical well being program. However, if you allow it, your training will get you into the best physical and mental shape you can be in PLUS it will push your limits and help you discover so many hidden aspects about yourself whilst you are training. It will reveal your strengths, weakness, what frustrates you, how you deal with conflict, whether you are a hot head or a cool cucumber when faced with challenges, and so much more that you might not have known about yourself. All this will help you to discover who you truly are.

Committing to Martial Arts means you pick up techniques and learn how to defend yourself. The more techniques you learn the more you start to believe in you own abilities and the stronger your belief becomes, the more you realise that your strength is augmented by humility.

Humility and strength that come with self-belief are needed when you realise that someone else, for example your opponent, has the upper hand and overcomes you in competition or in class. At these times your strong belief in Self allows you to understand that you’re not invincible but at the same time you are not a quitter. This leads you to train and learn more, knowing what your vulnerabilities and weaknesses are, and that only YOU can turn these into strengths.
Martial Arts teaches us that even if we don’t succeed today, we have enough trust in ourselves to do what it takes to be better than who we were yesterday.
In fact, the basic principles of Martial Arts teach us to Believe in ourselves and to never give up. All the grand masters taught that.

You can’t be prepared to face every opponent, and sometimes your opponent is life itself. Even if you secretly believe you cannot do it – believe in yourself and you will be able to face any challenges life brings you.

“If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.”

(anonymous)

So – what are you waiting for? Start believing in yourself NOW!