You believe in your career and in yourself or you wouldn't be where you are now. But do you have that internal negative voice sometimes? You know the one that undermines your positive beliefs, tries to tell that you won't make it to the next level up, that you will never achieve a healthy work/life balance, or that you're no good at a particular area of your work? If you tell yourself negative things about yourself and your career, you will subconsciously look for ways to prove that you are right. In this way those beliefs will be regularly reinforced and may ultimately actually become fact. Let's see what we can do about that.

What I'd like you to do for a moment is concentrate on your main goal for your career. Close your eyes and take yourself forward to the time when you have achieved it, when your career (and accordingly your lifestyle) is everything you want it to be. Stay there for a minute or two and really drink it in. Take note of what you can see, hear and feel.

Ask yourself:

· What strengths did I have back when I was planning to get here, which enabled me to get to this point?

Now come back to the present and keep hold of those positive thoughts.

We all hold Empowering Beliefs. These are the beliefs which empower us to move forwards towards our goals. Some of them we know and can list straight away. Others may surprise us when we encourage our subconscious to come forward with them. All of them are extremely powerful and make a huge difference to the outcome of all our endeavours.

When you express an Empowering Belief the sentence would typically start 'I am...' or 'I can...'

Basing your list on your answer to the bullet pointed question above, write down now 5 Empowering Beliefs you have about your career. What are its strengths? What does it do for you? What do you love about it? 'It is... what?' 'It can... what?' 'It does...what?'

Once again basing your list on your answer to the question, write down now 5 Empowering Beliefs you have about yourself which will enable you to get your career to where you want it to be. 'I am...?' 'I can...? 'I'm great at...?' 'My XYZ skills are superb'. Don't worry if you think it might sound big-headed to anyone else. What's important is that you believe that you have this strength, ability or knowledge.

That's a great start!

Now commit to doing something over the next couple of weeks. Every day add at least one new Empowering Belief to your two lists. Your goal is to end up in 2 weeks time with at least 10 Empowering Beliefs about your career and at least 10 Empowering Beliefs about yourself.

So each day ask yourself: 'What Else?'

Ask other people what they think. Ask colleagues, clients, friends and family. When someone else gives you some positive feedback, accept that they wouldn't say it unless it were true. So you can easily take that on as a belief of your own - right?

Keep your lists where you can access them easily and often, particularly if you are having a 'wobble moment'. This is really powerful stuff and can cause a mental shift that will take you shooting forwards. Please note I am not saying that empowering beliefs alone will make things happen. But if you accept and believe all the positive things about your current and future career and about yourself, you will actually go out there and take the action necessary to make it happen! What's the alternative?