Indestructible Self-Belief
Module 2: What's Your Opinion of You?

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Typecasting a child in a negative role can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Child psychologists have long warned of the dangers of pigeonholing youngsters, pointing out that if you don’t want your son or daughter to behave badly, it makes sense not to go around telling everyone what a nightmare they are.

But while low expectations lead to low self esteem and low achievements, the opposite is also true. More than 30 years ago, a study demonstrated that if you tell people what to expect of the children they are dealing with, the end results will be affected by that information.

The research project gave teachers enhanced expectations of their pupils performance and found that the youngsters performed better than would have been expected. No surprise really.

This labelling happens all the time in families. How many times have you heard a parent describe one of their children as ‘the bright one’ (making, by definition, other siblings ‘not so bright’) or ‘the lazy one’ (why would they even bother to try to change)?

Expectations

Parental expectations can be so high that even the brightest children feel like failures if they don’t achieve straight As in their exams. And the sense that they have disappointed their parents and teachers can linger into adulthood, found a survey by the University of London’s Institute of Education.

They interviewed hundreds of youngsters who were considered ‘academically promising’ when they started secondary school, and followed them up in their mid-20s to see if they had ‘fulfilled their potential’.

They’d all achieved various levels of success in their chosen fields, but what was really interesting was their response to their achievements, and how that early pressure stayed with them. A significant minority considered themselves failures because they had not met parental expectations.

Emotional support

Emotional support, not pressure, is the key. There is now clear evidence that children with higher self-esteem at ten get as much of a boost to their adult earning power as those with higher maths or reading ability.

This crucially comes from the home, but for some lucky children, an inspirational teacher can make all the difference.

Blackwell primary school in the old mining village of Alfreton, Derbyshire, had well below average scores, and expectations for the children were low when Delyth Girdler became head in 1998.

Four years later, there was such a turnaround, the school emerged as the most improved year on year, something the headmistress puts down to raising the children’s self- esteem. ‘The biggest thing we had to counter is low expectations of what a child can achieve,’ said Mrs Girdler.

‘Many of the children come from homes where education isn’t necessarily a priority, and where they don’t have access to books, so we need to show them how good they are.’

An inner-city school which became notorious for all the wrong reasons is St George’s, the west London comprehensive where the head teacher Stephen Lawrence was murdered.

When ‘superhead’ Marie Stubbs was brought in to try to restore order, her first act was to shake hands with every pupil. ‘Every child should be intrinsically valued,’ she said.

That approach, combined with a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on behaviour and appearance, and the visits of positive role models from the world of sport and entertainment made such a huge difference that, after months of hard work, St George’s was removed from Ofsted’s failing list and pronounced ‘a good school’.

Ambition

Marie Stubbs’ methods mirror those of schools in Ghana, which are getting such good results from their pupils that parents in England are even sending their sons and daughters to Africa to learn. Lacking role models and held back by low expectations, black children in Britain lag badly behind their white and Asian peers.

One boy whose despairing family sent him to Ghana recalls that in London, ‘no-one at school had any ambition. If you ask kids in Ghana what they want to be, they say pilots, neurosurgeons, lawyers. In London the kids just shrug and say, “I dunno”. That means they’re heading for the bottom.’

Another said, ‘Here in Ghana everyone wants to succeed. It’s not cool or clever to fail.’

Taking control of your life

The story of Pav Akhtar is a lesson in how taking control of your life can change your destiny. Akhtar, the first ethnic minority president of the Cambridge University Students Union, put himself into council care at 14 to escape family problems.

One of five children, he was born in Preston, the son of Pakistani parents. His father was a lorry driver, his mother a disabled housewife who spoke no English. He said after his election that he hoped his story would be an inspiration for other ethnic minority students and children from care homes who dream of making it to Oxbridge.

‘I had quite a tough childhood,’ he recalled. ‘I knew the right thing to do was to move out of that environment. My parents were against me going into care. It’s not what a good Asian kid does.’

But he persisted, and spent two years in a children’s home, while continuing at school. After studying A levels in night school while working in the day to finance his studies, he gained a place at Cambridge University.

‘My parents are extremely proud of me and what I have achieved. My father had thought I was doomed because I put myself into care and it would be extremely bad for me. I challenge the stereotype since you can’t write people off.’

Overcome setbacks

The effects of low academic success or poverty can both be overcome with self-belief. Cherie Blair grew up in a relatively poor single parent household with little academic background, but significant emotional support from her mother Gale.

Her father, the actor Tony Booth, walked out on the family when Cherie was only five. She saw little of him, but worked hard at school, got herself into the London School of Economics, where she out-classed all her more privileged contemporaries. She is now one of Britain’s most distinguished barristers, as well as being the wife of the Prime Minister.

The Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson left school at 16 with mediocre qualifications and was also dyslexic. However he came from an affluent and encouraging upper middle-class family, his mother and grandmother both famously supportive.

He went on to become one of the 20 richest men in Britain. High levels of self-esteem and self-belief are what have given him the edge.

Smashing the class barriers

Poverty is truly no barrier to being a high achiever – in a poll of the 70,000 millionaires in Britain, over half came from poor backgrounds. Today, the class barriers which held back previous generations have been well and truly smashed and anyone can rise to the top.

Some predict there has been such a reversal that a privileged upbringing can even be seen as a hindrance. Fifty years ago, an education at Eton was a guaranteed golden future for the lucky few.

But now the top public school is no longer a passport to success. And for many true self-believers, lack of education never stood in their way.

Poverty to success

The self-made multi millionaire Sir Alan Sugar started life as the son of a poverty-stricken East End tailor. Growing up in a two bedroom council flat in Hackney, he vowed to escape the poverty of his childhood. He started young, coming up with money making schemes from an early age.

After a brief spell in an office, he struck out on his own, forming Amstrad. A tough, shrewd businessman with an unnerving eye for gaps in the market, he made a fortune from his electronic empire, bringing affordable computers to the British public. Now worth a reputed £700 million, he declares bluntly ‘I will not allow anything in my life to fail.’

Growing up dyslexic in the 50s was a start in life which would challenge even the strongest characters, and David Bailey recalls how teachers at his East London school predicted he would be a failure. ‘They treated me like an idiot and said I would never make anything of myself,’ he remembers.

Undeterred, he pursued his passion for photography and by 22 was working for Vogue. His name is now synonymous with some of the most iconic images of the past 40 years, but he’s never forgotten those who wrote him off as a child. When he was awarded the CBE in 2001, he described the honour as ‘one in the eye’ for those teachers who had such little faith in him.

Grow your self-belief

Like Bailey, you may not have received the best possible psychological input as you were growing up. No matter. All the more incentive to make up for it now. The truth is you can grow your own self-belief any time you decide.

I am going to act as your coach in this regard. Whether you’re after a massive kick-start to upgrade your self-belief or a gentle boost, my tried-and-tested techniques really work.

Awareness is 50% of the battle. Waking up to the need for greater self-belief, alerting yourself to its power takes you to the halfway line.

What do you want to believe?

What do you want to believe about you? The truth is you can believe anything you want. Whatever you choose to believe will be true for you in your life, because that’s the view that you’ll feed and cleave to.

You’ll accumulate evidence to prove your position, because that’s simply what we humans do. We have a need to be right, so whatever we believe, whatever that perspective is, like a heat-seeking missile, we’ll locate the evidence to prove our position.

So, it’s best to be clear what you want to be right about, because that will shape your experience of life and your opinion on – you.

I was reminded of this only last week at a dinner party when the host was talking about Sarah, his 53-year-old recently divorced neighbour. He lamented the fact that although she was wonderfully vivacious and glamorous and ran a successful estate agency, she’d find it virtually impossible to find a boyfriend at that age.

Everyone around the table nodded knowingly in agreement. I asked him why he believed this to be the case when she was such a sensational person in every way.

He explained that no man of 53 would be interested in her, preferring a much younger woman and Sarah would not be interested in a toy boy younger man, so she was stuck. Is this true? Absolutely.

If Sarah believes it, this will be her reality, all that she will see, expect and look for. Is it true for everyone? Absolutely not. Just the day before I’d met 64–year-old Jibby Beane who relaunched her life after divorce at 50, moving from the family home to a  loft apartment in London’s East End.

Jibby’s self-esteem and self-belief is such that it genuinely wouldn’t occur to her that men wouldn’t find her attractive, whatever their age. Her current paramour is 37.

I am not for one moment saying that all 50-something women should aim to have a younger boyfriend or that this is the best indication of their self-esteem. I’m saying that one should have enough self-regard not to rule out any chap finding you attractive.

Do you want the beliefs and outlook of a Sarah or a Jibby? Consider how attractive one is with sky high chutzpah, safe in the knowledge of her own value and the other who is ‘realistic’ and expects next to nothing. Who do you think is the most magnetic and charismatic, even though she is 14 years older?

How upbringing boosts self-belief

Singer and songwriter Dido has topped the album and singles charts, selling millions and becoming of the few British pop acts to make an impression on the American market.

But she says success hasn’t changed her as a person, because her belief in herself has always been rock solid. ‘I used to work in Cafe Flo in Islington,’ she says, ‘but even as a waitress I didn’t feel any less special than I do now.’ She attributes this unshakeable self confidence to her upbringing.

‘I had complete freedom,’ she recalls. ‘The only rule I remember was not to lie. Dad always made me feel really beautiful. I don’t have some weird self-esteem issue; that would be exhausting.’

Compare Dido’s remarkable self-assurance to the revelation that most women feel depressed when looking at pictures of supermodels.

Worse, the images of flawless models have an almost instantaneous effect on the way ordinary women feel, with tests showing it takes just one to three minutes for most women to feel dissatisfied with their looks.

You are far smarter and resourceful than you think

Now that you’re a grown-up, the most important influence in your life is you. This gives you an awesome power to influence yourself. You have the power to be your greatest ally or your most deadly enemy. Which is it to be?

Enhancing your self-belief begins with a decision, the decision to reappraise your view of yourself, so that you enjoy the advantage of exceptional self-belief.

Actions of the Week

1. What is your opinion of you?

Is it good enough? Could you think better of yourself? Where could you enhance it?

The key to a real, enduring upgrade is to back up your enhanced appreciation with hard evidence. Remember: you have to convince you. Whatever new perspective you want to absorb about yourself, find compelling evidence to convince yourself of the genuine truth underneath your new belief.

For your new belief to ring true, you must be able to validate it for yourself. If you want to see yourself as a sharp thinker, look into your life, past and present, to show you justify such a belief.

What are the three key beliefs that, if you truly believed them to be true, would make the most significant improvement to your life? Note these down right now.

Take one at a time and identify the evidence that already exists in your life to justify such a belief. You’re looking for evidence to make it easier for you to believe and strengthen that belief.

2. Choose to be a ‘Believer in You’ from this day forth.

Don’t wait for anyone else to show faith. Declare backing for yourself right now. Announce it to yourself and no one else.

3. What difference will this backing mean to you, in your life?

Make a list. What difference would you like it to make? What’s going to change in you and your life? Get absolutely clear. Isn’t that exciting? It should be! Otherwise, think again.

4. Surround yourself with the right people.

There is absolutely no value in spending time with detractors. We all need good people in our lives, people who are on side.

Think very carefully about your team, the people closest to you, that you listen to and spend time with. If you have positioned people close to you who will make it difficult for you to think highly of yourself and move forward in life, decide what you want to do about this.

5. Take yourself out to lunch!

Or buy yourself a massage – come on, don’t make any of this into hard work. I want you to enjoy the process.

Take it seriously by all means, but lighten up too. You’re on the right track, asking quality questions, challenging yourself, checking your actions. Pat yourself on the back. ISBers would do this. Honestly – they’d do it instinctively, automatically.

Finally, know in your heart that you are far bigger than anything that can happen to you.

Have a terrific week