 Welcome to day 73 of the Mindfulness Challenge. Today we're going to look specifically at how we can meditate to believe in yourself. You know, there's a lot of things that happens through spiritual development. I talked to you about spirituality and spiritualism, but all through all different levels of spirituality and spiritualism, it's a self-doubt. It's that lack of belief in themselves. I can't do this and we're taught a lot of that from an early age. You know, you can do this, you can't do that. You know, if you do this, you won't be able to do that. And all of these things. And what it's about is the ability to fully believe in yourself. So having a position where you feel confident in yourself. Don't get me wrong, okay? Not everybody can be brilliant at everything. And I can give you many examples. I was a very good sports player. I was a very good soccer player, a football player. But can I draw? No chance. If art was down to me, we would be behind cave drawings, okay? And you know, have I hopefully got an ability to help teach people? You can answer that. Can I paint the wall? No. So I can't be good at everything, and I'm not. And actually, you know, I believe competency, the best way to describe competency, is knowing your own competence. But knowing your own competence without detracting from it. Saying, oh, you know, I should be better this or I can be better that. You know, just understand where your levels are and work towards where your levels are being as good as you can be. But believing in yourself that you can get to those levels is really important. Believing in yourself to be able to achieve the goals that you want to set. Believing yourself to be able to come through situations. Believing yourself to sit exams. Believing yourself to, you know, start your business. Do whatever you want to do. That belief is very, very important. But it has to be, you know, realistic because, you know, if we set too high bars, we don't jump over them, then bang, what do we do? We punch ourselves in the face and we go back the other way. So today, this meditation is very much about helping you to believe in yourself, removing some of those areas of self-doubt, of self-worth. You know, I've said before and many times how we beat ourselves up when something doesn't happen or when something goes wrong or it doesn't flow for us. Oh, it always happens to me. Well, actually, it doesn't. Sod's law is that, isn't it? You know, our sod's law, that's me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're always looking for it. The reality is you amplify some of the things that go wrong and it's always, always me. So what we're going to do now is we're going to look at this and it's going to be, you know, all about believing in yourself. So as always, I'm going to pop up a picture and very much like most mindfulness meditations, it's about you just honouring your breath. It's about you becoming comfortable in your chair and it's about you just breathing into your body in a way that is very fulfilling and beautiful. With your eyes closed, just already now having the ability after cultivating so many of these meditations just to breathe in and breathe out and just being that beautiful mindfulness space. But I want you to take five significant and purposeful breaths. The first one, breathing in fully in hell, expanding your belly in your chest as much as you can, holding it for a moment and exhale, feeling a beautiful wave of relaxation sweeping over you. Two, you inhale, filling your entire breathing system with fresh oxygen. Hold it and exhale, the wave of relaxation gently sweeps over you again. Three, you inhale so that you're now brimming with air. You hold it, soaking in all the oxygen and you exhale, your body relaxes in different ways without any effort. Four, again you fully inhale, feeling these breaths purifying your entire body and exhale, just notice how you're feeling. And five, a beautiful breath coming in, holding it and feeling completely invigorated from the oxygen. Exhale, allowing relaxation to sweep over you again. And take a moment to see how you feel at this very moment. You now have an abundance of oxygen and this is how we are created to feel, breathing deeply and fully as an expansion of self-compassion. Let your breath flow naturally now and notice how you feel. Return your focus now on your spine as well. Is it straight, radiating confidence in yourself? Make your posture tall and proud, lifting your head held high. If you haven't done so already, just settle into this beautiful relaxation and allow your eyelids just to become very soft and very heavy and relaxing your eyelids is very comfortable. It'll let you grow and begin to fill your entire body with calmness. And I want you to become aware of your head, just notice your eyes, your ears. What sounds can you hear? Notice your nose and can you feel the air gently coming in? Now notice your mouth and your chin. Let your awareness go down your neck and shoulders down each arm and all the way to the tip of each finger. Become aware of your lungs now, expanding and contracting and notice your heart beating strongly. Notice your belly, notice your hips all the way down each leg so you notice your feet and each toe. Take another nice deep breath in and let a smile come across your face and bring your mind to a memory where you were laughing. It could be a memory from long ago or a funny moment that happened recently. Just feel the laughter. Feel that laughter and joy rising your body as it comes into your mind and vividly see yourself laughing. Now hear yourself saying when I laugh I am calm and relaxed. Whenever I'm in a stressful time it's helpful for me to smile even just a little and remember that the stress shall pass by. When I breathe deeply and focus on a time when I was laughing I can bring the feeling of happiness and joy back to the very moment of now. I'm an important addition to this world. I accomplish things in my own time. I am worthy and I deserve goodness. When I relax I can focus. I don't have to worry about what will be because I already am and I want you to vividly see now yourself accomplishing all that you want to do. See this in as much detail as you can. The more detail you can imagine of yourself achieving the goals the better. Take those moments now to feel that wonderful feeling of accomplishment and achievement and success. You have everything in your locker, everything in your body to be able to have these moments of success and achievement and I want you to visualise them now and bring them to life in your mind so we can start to manifest them in the karmic energy that we live. Understand that you are a very special person. You are a wonderful being and an amazing light and you have your own abilities and your own ways of doing things and success for you is being as good as you can be and from this day forth you can use this meditation anytime you like to be able to visualise and bring to awareness the achievements of the past, the laughter from the past to the present to manifest in your goals and your achievement for the future in a way that is truly beautiful, humbling, honest, loving and caring. Whenever you are coming back to the present moment please just remember that you feel energised, you are ready to accomplish the goals you visualised and take a deep breath in, hold it and let it go, open your eyes and come back into the room. So there we are, there's an opportunity for you to believe in yourself to accomplish your goals, set some targets, make sure you know they're achievable like I ever say and you've probably heard me say a million times you know Rome wasn't built in a day but some of it was make those little bits and structures, structures yourself. You know I'm doing a lot of structuring at the moment, I'm structuring my working week, I'm structuring because I need structure but I have to do it because I can consistently create what I need to create but I believe in myself to be able to achieve that so I'm going to give it a go. Do that for you, make some notes, put some structure down for yourself for you to be more productive and not procrastinate about too much and say right at 10 o'clock on a Monday morning I'm doing this at 11 o'clock I'm doing that and do it but building time for time for yourself for reflection you know my working week starts with a meditation, my working day sorry starts with a meditation. So put your hands on your chest be more structured believe in yourself and use that meditation for the power of good. I love you Julian, good morning, good morning Julian, I love you, have a lovely day 73, I shall see you tomorrow for day 74, be love and give love, take care, God bless, bye bye.