What Does It Take For You To Believe In Yourself?
10 States of Being Which Give A Good Foundation
I love to ask myself hard questions.
What does it look like when you believe in yourself?
Is there a picture in your mind? Is it a feeling? Is it an idea?
Is it a mindset that you try to have? Is it a shadow idea without a view?
I picture how I feel. I am 10 feet tall and invincible. I can't do anything wrong because I ultimately believe in myself.
There is no fear or insecurity in my actions. If I stay in the picture long enough, it changes into me wearing amour and having a sword. I am going into battle. The irony of me doing battle because I believe in myself makes me cringe.
What is there to battle when you believe in yourself? The struggle comes when I am right, and people are wrong, and I have to change their minds. This idea isn't going to work because I accept that people have the right to think whatever they want.
Now, I was confused. Self-confidence or self-esteem are fleeting mindsets. This is ego territory and is based upon validation outside of myself. I won't believe in myself because somebody tells me to.
The opposite is true as well. I won’t disbelieve in myself because someone else does.
I realized I was trying to answer this from my mind (ego) or mindset and wouldn't get any clear answers. I needed to dig deeper. I realized that believing in myself wasn't a state of mind but a state of being.
My first clue was that I battled so much fear. Fear is a mindset and your ego talking. It changes as quickly as you change your thoughts. I felt my belief in myself should be something more profound.
Believing in yourself is who I am in my purest form. It isn't ego games. It is belief in my being. As a being, I exist in whatever state I am in. I flow in and out of different states, like the ocean’s waves. There is no beginning and no ending.
I came up with 10 different characteristics of being, which I thought would be a good starting point for evaluating myself on how much I believe in myself.
1. Success of a proven project.
The first time I start something, I find it the hardest to believe in myself. However, as I do more, I feel better about it. This builds success, and my belief in myself grows. As it grows, I will take more chances at this project.
2. No importance of what I am doing. Nothing to lose.
This one is like playing poker with money. The bigger the betting pot, the more I have to lose. The more I lose, the easier it is for the negative mind chatter to start.
Mind chatter erodes my belief in myself, and I shut myself down in a box. The negative mindset grows, and I am unwilling to gamble because I have too much to lose.
Now, I play poker with peanuts. This makes the game fun, and it doesn’t matter if I lose. I will be more willing to bet on myself and believe in myself, with nothing hindering it.
3. Wisdom gained from my mistakes or failures.
There have been many times when I failed or made mistakes, which led me to not believe in myself. I was a failure. What good did I do?
I have read the advice that our mistakes and failures are just learning experiences. But it is harder for me to accept this. This is where some self-love comes in.
I love myself for trying, for stepping out and exploring the world. Look at the mistake calmly. What happened, and why did it go as it did? Where did it go differently? Was it the expectations? Was it my thinking?
The answer to these questions gives me wisdom. I can examine what happened and learn from it, which reduces my chances of making this mistake again.
4. Frenzied enthusiasm and joy from what I am doing.
Everything that you do revolves around what you believe. It gives you joy. This is common sense.
Here is what is not common sense. When you have strong emotions about what you are doing, you don’t have time to think of anything else. You certainly don’t have time to question yourself. You naturally believe in yourself because you have your mind on other things.
5. There is plenty of doubt and fear in what I am doing.
I know that this contradicts what I said in 4. But this is more when I am starting on a new project. I am happily kicking it off, but there is some time when I think of it, and the doubt and fear settle here. I had too much time to overthink it, and my ego will try and stop me.
I let my fear and doubt be a compass. The higher the fear or doubt, the more I move in that direction. I won’t let my ego put me in a safety box. Safety in a box is an illusion.
6. My heart supports it.
I have recently connected my heart to my mind. (See my article here for details.) My heart leads my decision-making. My heart connects to my intuition, and I evaluate things outside my mind, which overthinks everything.
This has led me to better decisions and a belief in myself. Belief in myself is easy here because I am not letting my mind be in charge of questioning everything.
7. Criticism or praise doesn’t matter.
I know that this can seem like an ideal. Criticism or praise is based on how others see me through their filters. They judge you based on something that is in themselves. You do what you do for yourself, not them.
This isn’t the same thing as feedback. Unsolicited criticism is wholly ignored. I didn’t ask for it and don’t need it.
Feedback is different. I asked for input from people. This can be direct or indirect. Putting an accomplishment out or an article I am working on that I feel isn’t going right and maybe some help will get me on track.
8. Mental discipline to keep you on your path.
It is so easy to go shiny squirrel (get distracted) here. We get distracted and chase something else. Bring your focus back to what you want to accomplish. Things are not always exciting or fun, but stay focused. This encourages me to believe in myself because I care for business. I follow what is important.
This also encourages small success, which, as I mentioned in number one, builds the cycle of my belief in myself.
9. Dreams are not thrown in a box separate from the rest of life.
This is like storing away a good box of chocolate or treasure. I hide it away because I believe I can’t make it a part of everyday life. Everything else is toil, and this gem is yours alone.
When I believe in myself, whatever I threw in the box becomes a part of my life. I think that life can be good and that I can have this all the time. I make it a part of my life because I believe in it and myself.
10. Faith in life path and how I will get there.
This is the most significant component. Without faith I will not get where I want to be, nothing will happen.
Faith and belief give me comfort no matter where the path takes me. I am going to get there. I can have the life that I want. It doesn’t have to be a toil from dawn till dusk.
Faith gives me belief in myself because I am still on my path regardless of how the day is going. It doesn't mean anything when things I don’t want to happen. I take them in stride because I know I am still on my path, and it is all part of it. I can see the lessons that are there and take the wisdom from them to move on.
Belief Isn’t Static
I used the 10 guideposts to examine myself. I realized that believing in myself was a state of being, not a mindset. Mindsets can shift over time, but a state of being is something that we just are. It is an underlying thing that the mindset fits over.
Just because I believed in myself one day didn't mean it would be a constant state. There are days that I was going to believe more than others. That is the hard part. I want to feel this belief all the time.
Non-belief doesn’t feel good but is part of who I am. I have a range of emotions. Accepting these emotions is hard, but that is the human experience.
The more I believe in myself, the more I believe in the world. That is what matters. The more I believed in myself inside, the more I believed in my outer reality.
ABsolutely love this! Especially #9....
Very thought-provoking!