In my last posting I shared with you the importance of your confidence in your competence. As one of the factors in the model for self motivation, your confidence in your abilities has a powerful impact on your motivation. If your confidence in your ability to achieve a dream is low you will not be motivated to pursue that dream.

Fortunately for those of us who struggle with self confidence, there are several strategies in my book, iMotivateMe, we can use to boost our self confidence.

One such strategy is called stories of achievement.

Research shows that you can increase your expectancy for success and therefore your motivation, by increasing experience with success. This is so powerful because the result of those positive expectancies is improved performance and success rates, which result in even higher expectancy of success and higher levels of motivation.

What we do, therefore, in this strategy is experience our successes.  We do this by taking some time to get in touch with our experience with success.  We do this by writing success stories, what I call “stories of achievement.”  A story of achievement is a recitation of a situation that occurred in your life of which you are proud, a situation that reflects positively on you, on your character, your skill, whatever.  Try to find one that relates to your vision, that change you want to make in your life. This will create a clear image of successfully manifesting your vision.  If you can’t find one that relates, don’t worry about it; think of one that doesn’t.

The situation that occurs to me when I think about stories of achievement in my life is a presentation I made on juvenile law relating to human sexuality.  It was my first public speaking experience, and it went amazingly well, standing room only, and being asked to present it a second time, as word had gotten around and more people wanted to experience it. It is probably the experience that made me aware of my vision, to be a professional speaker, given people information that will help them improve their lives.

When I find myself feeling insecure, I have this story all ready to go to improve my confidence in myself and my speaking abilities.

This is a strategy I strongly urge you to spend some time on, spend a hour or more, quietly, with a piece of paper or a turned on computer.  Try to come up with at least three Stories of Achievement. We all have these stories; the more modest of us might have to work a little harder to dig them out.

Bask in these positive experiences.  They will positively impact your successability and, as the model for self motivation teaches us, will super charge your motivation.

There are three factors that determine how motivated you are:

1. A worthwhile pursuit – How valuable to you is the change you are trying to make in your life?
2. Confidence in your competence – How confident are you in your abilities?
3. Your environment – Does your environment enhance or detract from your motivation?

In this blog posting I discuss the second factor, your confidence in your competence, what is referred to in the Model for Self Motivation as successability.

Your successability refers to your confidence in two different realms. The first relates to how confident you are in general, how effective you see yourself in handling all that life deals you. The second realm is how confident you are that you can achieve the specific change you are trying to implement.

If you lack confidence in yourself in either realm, you may have difficulties in staying motivated as you move forward in making a desired change.

Luckily, there are ways to increase your confidence in yourself, and thereby increase your motivation. Here’s a great strategy to do just that, called stories of achievement.

This strategy increases your motivation because you can increase your expectancy for success and therefore your motivation, by increasing your experience with success.

What we do in this strategy is experience our successes. We get in touch with our experience with success by writing success stories or stories of achievement. A story of achievement is a recitation of a situation that occurred in your life of which you are proud, a situation that reflects positively on you. It could reflect positively on your character, or on your skill, or on some other characteristic. Try to find a story of achievement that relates to the change you are trying to make. If you can’t find one that relates, don’t worry about it; any story of achievement will work.

This is a strategy I strongly urge you to spend some time on, at least an hour or more, quietly, with a piece of paper or a turned on computer. Try to come up with at least three stories of achievement. We all have these stories; the more modest of us might have to work a little harder to dig them out.

Bask in these positive experiences. They will result in a positive impact on your confidence in your competence. Each positive experience will point to at least one of your positive attributes. Reliving these successes will boost your confidence in your competence and give a major boost to your motivativation.

Why not spend a little time right now and come up with at least one story of achievement.