One thing I’ve noticed about all confident and happy people is that they have a firm grasp of who they are, what they have accomplished so far and what they are capable of. This allows them to live life with a healthy self-esteem, a strong self-confidence and high level of expectancy for the future.

One thing I’ve noticed about many negative, sad and insecure people is that many of them have forgotten who they really are, dismissed most of what they have accomplished and have no idea of how much they are really capable of. They choose to ignore past accomplishments or write them off as meaningless. All this leads to a lack of fulfilment, a low self-confidence, poor self-esteem, restricted ambitions and distinct lack of positive expectancy for the future.

This exercise will help you build your own healthy self-image. It will build confidence and it will open up your mind to even greater possibilities and opportunities. It is called “The Book of You” and consists of 3 chapters.

You can write these on a notepad, in a word document, in your phone’s notes app or any other form of electronic software, or even on scraps of paper if that is all you have. Whatever it takes, as long as you write them!

My personal preference is in a word document so that I can turn it into PDF (I’ll be happy to give some tips if you need help doing this) and keep a copy on all my devices.

Chapter 1 – Who I Am!

Write a sentence, list or story describing each of the strengths you have. If you find this hard start by thinking about all the things you are grateful for about yourself. Are you kind? Good at a certain sport / career? Witty? Good at cooking? Organised? Great at golf? Honest?

Think of this as a challenge to sell yourself in the best possible light. Every amazing thing about you, no matter how big or how small. Everything you appreciate about yourself, every instance you displayed a certain skill or characteristic, every single thing you like about yourself! Write it all down.

If you are really struggling, get others to help you. Get them to list what they like about you … but only use what they tell you if it is a positive comment and you agree with it.

This will be work in progress, the first time you sit down to do this you may only manage a few things … but you will find more as you progress. Set aside time each week to add some more things to your list.

Go into detail. Instead of writing “I’m good at golf”, write – “I’m great at short chips onto the green, excellent at putting, good at judging distance of shots, calm under pressure” and so on. Break it down to every skill you have.

Keep writing this chapter until you have a strong vision of who you truly are.

Once you have a strong vision of who you are you may want to add skills to the list that you don’t yet have so you can commit to making them part of who you are. Write down every strength you would like to add to your skill set. You’re writing it in the Book of You so you are committing to working towards that strength.

Chapter 2 – What I Have Achieved So Far!

Now write your success story. The story of your life if you were to focus on all the best parts. Your very own highlights reel. Write this in the form of a sentence on each highlight or just a list if your struggling. If you’re feeling creative, you could even write it in the form of a story / essay!

Include all your accomplishments (no matter how big or how small, take nothing for granted), all your success stories, good experiences, happy times and achievements.

These are something that insecure people often forget about or don’t take strength from. That is going to change when you write this book. Everybody has done something to be proud of, even if you start off with a small list and build it up by adding to it every week.

Some of the things you take for granted others are wishing they could accomplish … so stop underselling yourself!

Write down every single achievement, success, job well done, nice act, results … that you can think of. Again this will be work in progress, this will never be complete as you should be adding to it with every new accomplishment you make.

Chapter 3 – Where I’m Heading!

Now’s your chance to get really creative – forget all excuses, reasons and limitations that you’ve been placing on yourself so far, and write down all the things you would like to achieve and all the things you would like to do … no limitations! Dream big and shoot for the moon.

If you one day want to stay in a five bedroom mansion write it down. Describe every detail of every room, even describe the garden. Close your eyes and picture exactly how you would like this house to be and how you will feel when you have it. Now open your eyes and write that all down, every detail.

If one day you want a particular job, write the story of how you got the job. What you did to get it and how it feels to have it … use your imagination, and remember, no excuses and no limitations. Again close your eyes, picture exactly how you want this job to be. What it involves, who you work with, what your role is, who you deal with and how it feels to have the amazing job. Again open your eyes, and write down everything you pictured and everything you felt.

Do this for every area of your life that you can imagine. This is an ongoing task, you will be able to build on this and add more and more as you move through life. If you have family challenges or some insecurities you’d like to get over, write down the perfect solution to these challenges. If you had a magic wand and could change anything what would it be? How would things be in a perfect world? Write this all down, the perfect scenario. Close your eyes and imagine how things could be, how they would feel to finally resolve that issue or make things better. Open your eyes and write it all down, every single detail. Picture in your mind how amazing it will feel to have these things fixed and how things will be. Start on the most important area and then move on to the next.

As you start to achieve some of these things you will be able to move these from Chapter 3 into Chapter 2. This will be an ongoing process as you will always find some area of your life that you would like to improve. This is your chance to be creative and really write down how you would really like your life to be.

This is a very useful technique for anyone to try. I urge you to give it a try and see how you feel at the end of it.