Self Belief Is The Missing Link Right Now For You

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Self belief may be the final step that you need in order to progress further with your goals. Self belief is the idea that you actually earned and deserve everything good that’s going on in your life right now. It’s you trusting yourself in your decisions, skills, capabilities, and most importantly, results. Your life is just as valuable as anybody else’s.

There are a million reasons why you won’t have success, don’t let yourself be one of them. If you’re not going to believe in yourself, there’s very little chance others will believe in you. Otherwise, the entire group of your supporters will only be your mom and dad.

You have the power to garner tons of more support from others.

Sounds like a load of psychology tricks like telling yourself in the mirror that you are worthy? Don’t worry. I don’t believe in those psychological tricks either. Sure, some emotions happen outside in. If you start smiling you start to feel happy.

In relation to believing in yourself, it happens from the inside out. No matter how much you tell yourself in the mirror how you are confident, it is meaningless as long as you don’t believe it. No amount of psychological tricks will change that.

Your innermost feelings are what matters. What’s great is that you are not born with self doubt or self confidence. As kids, we rarely cared about anything else besides having fun and eating.

If you are having self doubt, it was learned behavior. Just as external forces put you in that position, you can put yourself out of it just as easily as well.

You are not alone. I felt a tremendous lack of assurance in the past too. However, I genuinely dug myself out of it and you can as well.

What is Self Belief?

Self belief is what you feel about yourself day in and day out. It sticks with you all day long and seeps through your unconscious mind as well. Notice that it’s about how you feel about yourself. It is not about what you think about yourself.

You can easily control your thoughts at the touch of a button. Even if you don’t believe it, you can easily think you are the best person in the world. It’s not as easy to feel that you are the best person in the world. Emotional control is the hardest enemy you will face.

Some face it for the rest of their lives and never beat it.

An abundance of self belief means that you make a decision without caring about other people’s thoughts. What’s important to remember is that others don’t live with your decisions, you do. Sometimes, they will have a problem with that because they feel ignored.

That’s ok. No matter how much they feel ignored, it’s still your life and you’ll have to live with the consequences.

A lack of self belief means that you don’t just let others question your decisions. You question your own decisions as well. Questions such as “what if it doesn’t work out”? “What if it gets worse than it already is”? These questions will frequently pop up.

Think about your own life right now. After all, the decisions you’ve made in the past led to your life today. Chances are, you’re not doing that bad. If you are, you are more than likely taking steps to better yourself.

Those doubts are more than likely unfounded.

How Self Belief Matters

Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan’s number two, of the Chicago Bulls was enormously underpaid. Objectively and arguably, he was the second best player in the entire NBA league. Not just with the Bulls, but with the entire NBA.

With that should come with the second highest pay, right? He was actually the 122nd best paid player in the entire league. His rationale when he signed a long 8-year contract was that he couldn’t afford to take any risks. He needed to ensure his family’s well-being.

While he did ensure financial well-being, $18 million is not chump change, he achieved it at a huge cost. He lost an estimated $80 – $100 million over his tenure on his salary alone. He sold himself short and didn’t believe a future in which he should be making more than what he was currently making.

That’s a HUGE loss.

If you lack self belief like Scottie Pippen, you do not believe you deserve the things you have. You don’t ask for that raise that you know you deserve for fear of retaliation. Or maybe it’s just not the right timing. Or a hundred other reasons why you shouldn’t ask for that raise.

Even if you do ask that raise and you get it, you might start to feel guilty! That’s what a company wants to hear. You start to over-deliver and be under paid. I’m all for providing as much value to others as you can. However, there comes a point where you’re providing too much value.

My Self Belief Destruction Story

I was 19 years old, about to get ready for an interview for an internship. It paid $18 an hour so I was ecstatic and happy to go into the interview. I had a good resume and I knew I had the capabilities to learn whatever I don’t know.

It was for a data analyst internship.

The interview started off easy with brief introductions of everyone. Then the guy started grilling and asking all sorts of ridiculous questions that had nothing to do with the internship. One question after another without any breaks or pauses to think.

The first question he asked was “do you know what VBA is”? What actually I heard was “do you know the function vLookup in excel”? I answered what I heard and didn’t answer the former. He replied “it’s ok if you don’t know what it is, let’s just move on”.

I started becoming confused at that moment and only after the interview did I figure out he asked about VBA, not vLookup. I knew both.

He didn’t even for a second think that I heard a different question. All he started doing was judging me afterwards and thought that I was someone who would pull answers out of nowhere.

He kept grilling questions one after another that had nothing to do with the internship. Belittling and yelling became common. That lasted an hour and a half. He just wanted to ask as many tough sounding questions as possible.

That steered my course away from self belief. It took some years, but I’m completely over it now.

Ways to Boost Your Self Belief

There are steps you can take to achieve self belief.
There’s lots of things to be proud of

Looking back, what I would have done is either ended the interview right then and there or thrown the questions right back at him. I learned that I shouldn’t care about ruffling feathers. If I had self belief, I might have pushed back.

I learned now.

After going through the lack of self belief to having unshakeable self belief, I can honestly say that there are steps that you can take to come out of the other side. It’s not going to happen to you, you will have to actively take measurable steps.

The problem with articles that talks about self belief is that very few share their own personal struggles of it. They don’t know what others are going through.

All of them just tells you how to be better at it without firsthand knowledge. I will not do such things at my blog.

One of the primary things that can help your self belief is to HIT that share button for the Google algorithm, BERT 😊 . BERT hasn’t had much love lately in social shares so if you could gently hit that share button, he will start to feel the love.

Let others have self confidence as well!

1) Be Good At What You’re Lacking

During the first couple of years out of college, I had the “yes sir may I have another sir” mentality. I felt beholden to the company. If they let me go, I had nothing. I specifically lacked financial freedom and money.

These days, I don’t have that mentality.

Once I started to acquire a multiple six figure net worth, I started to care less. These days when my boss does something that bothers me, I let him know. If I have an interview and the interviewer is late and cancels three interviews in a row, I let them know.

I don’t care whether they reject me or not because I’m already at a good spot. I don’t need another job because I’m content with the one that I have. Once I started to have an abundance of what I lacked, I started feeling like I made it.

Perfect and master the things that you want to master and lack at the same time. Then it will slowly start to build you up. It’s not going to happen suddenly in one day. I still have moments where I feel I lost with an interaction. But I know at this rate, it’s only a matter of time until I feel mastery.

2) Practice Self Love

Your life starts with you and ends with you. The biggest advocate and supporter of your life should not be your family. It should be you. Practice healthy habits such as taking care of your mental health. Sleep is a big priority you should not overlook.

Once in a while, splurge on something to reward yourself for the hard work you’ve put in already. Look in the mirror and be happy with who you are as a person. And for who you are becoming.

Meditate and take a breather to start your day off right. Declutter your house and your life to have clarity on the choices you need to make.

We spend our lives in thirds. One third to sleep, one third to work, and the other third to do anything we want. Make the most use out of the last one third.

3) Care Less

Self belief is not about trying to be better than who you are already but avoiding self doubt. This one takes a long time to develop because emotional control is one of your hardest tasks to achieve. To care less than you already do, you need to practice conscious effort and recognition.

You can’t just care less when you’re in a neutral state. By definition, sitting in your couch and relaxing means you already don’t care. You’re already in a content state and it’s impossible to care less than you already do.

What you need to do is wait until you get emotionally affected sometime in the future. Maybe it’s an article that you passionately disagree with or maybe someone insulted you in the street. Yes, you do need to say something to them and stand your ground.

However, you also need to not let it make you feel worse. You need to not let your feelings be bothered. This is difficult because it requires 3 things. One, wait for something to happen to you, which is beyond your control. Two, consciously remember you’re trying to care less on top of the response you’re thinking of. Three, multitask talking and controlling your emotions.

It may take years, but the end result is worth it.

4) Recognize Your Default Position

Many people’s default position is that they are wrong until someone proves them right. That’s not a good practice of self belief. There’s a minority chance that others will rush to prove you right. They are busy with their own lives it’s hard for them to watch out for yours.

There’s a majority chance that others will do nothing to your defense. Therefore, a better mindset is to assume you are right until someone proves you wrong. You want others to prove and tell you that you’re wrong. You never want yourself to tell yourself that you’re wrong.

The game will be over before it even starts. That’s not the right kind of thinking. If someone pushes back with data and statistics, question the source of the data and statistics. What methodology did they use to come up with the conclusion?

If they do have ironclad logic and support for their position on why you are wrong, then and only then should you change your mind. Believe that you are right before you are proven wrong.

Common Misconceptions Holding You Back

There are many reasons why you don’t have self belief and self confidence to go after what you want. Some of them have good reasoning behind it. Most of them are bad reasoning. I’m pretty sure you are the only person on Earth who thinks these things.

Most people on Earth do not think those things of you. I admit that I exhibited some of these things in my earlier years. However, I don’t experience these things anymore.

There’s a good chance that it is just misconceptions that you are thinking about yourself.

1) Others Are Doing Better Than You

Social media affects your self belief
Everything is not as it seems on social media

I detest giving “feel good” advice. Feel good advice is advice that just makes you feel better about yourself. I like factually correct advice, based on evidence. You will not get advice that just makes you feel good here.

The thinking that others are doing better than you is more often than not a misconception. Social media has made it so much worse in that comparing others is as simple as logging onto a computer or app.

However, I promise that the pictures and status updates your friends post are the best versions of a specific moment in time.

There is no single person who is the best at everything. Roger Federer is arguably the best at tennis but probably terrible in writing poetry. The person who has a great social life and goes out every day rarely has a great net worth.

The ones with the least substance shout the loudest.

2) Worst Case Scenarios Will Happen

A person who practices self belief does not let the worst case scenario stop them from asking for something. In negotiating, there is ALWAYS a risk in asking for more rather than taking the deal in the table.

Once you ask for something instead of saying yes or no, then it opens up the negotiating table again. Either side can do one thing or another. Most of the time, if they are giving you an offer in the first place, it’s unlikely they will pull out quickly.

If they gave you an offer, it means they want the deal. Sometimes, deals do fall through as a result but it happen less than 50% of the time.

The saying “the worst they’ll say is no” doesn’t ring true. Sometimes there is something worse than can happen. But most of the time it doesn’t. If you really have a problem with the worst case scenario, figure out how to accept it before negotiating.

The worst case scenario with negotiating a job offer is that they will rescind the offer. Are you ok with that? Most of the time you should be. There’s plenty of jobs out there in the world.

3) You Are Born With Self Belief

Self belief is learned, not innate.
You were not born with self belief or doubt

Self belief is a learned trait, not an innate trait. It’s nurture versus nature. It works for the flip side as well. You are not born with self doubt, it is a learned trait. Your environment in terms of where you are living in and the people you surround yourself with influenced you one way or another.

Remember that we were born with a clean slate. We knew absolutely nothing and didn’t know anything about the world. From that clean slate and along the way, you became you who you are as a person.

It was the accumulation of little and big life events that shaped your thinking and feelings. You have the power to change the entire course of your life. You are the captain of the ship and you are one hundred percent in control of your own destiny.

The final choice is yours.

4) Perfection is Necessary

This one was the hardest misconception about self belief that I had to fight through. In school, we are taught to never be wrong. The goal was to achieve a 100 in all of our tests. Therefore, we start to equate perfection with good.

As a result of the misconception, you might refuse to do anything unless you are comfortable it is perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect for somebody else to like it. The interview you have is not going to be to your perfection.

In the financial independence journey, you are allowed to make huge mistakes. Lots of them in fact. Did you know that Jack Welch blew off the roof of the factory of GE? He became CEO of GE anyway. There’s no need for perfection in the world.

You are allowed to make monumental gigantic mistakes and still come out ahead.

Lack of Self Belief Holds You Back

The fact of the matter is, money is an emotional subject to many people. Money makes people feel something when we just talk about it. Add in a lack of self belief and it’s hard to deny that it’s keeping you from making more money.

As a result of it being an emotional subject, you have to be willing to take criticism. When you talk about money in the real world, people lash out at you. It makes them feel uncomfortable and to deal with it they start to target you. You have to be OK with that.

You have to be OK with asking to be paid more because you deserve more. No one is going to magically offer to pay you more money. You have to ask for it. The only time when a company pays you more money is when they find out you’re leaving.

One time, my boss and I both knew that I was getting underpaid. My boss did not do anything about it. Accepting that she wasn’t going to do anything even though we both knew I was getting underpaid, I found another job that paid 25% more.

Lo and behold, that’s the only time that my boss decided to raise my salary.

Without the self belief that I knew I deserved to be paid more, I would not have sought out another job. Self belief may be the final missing link in the puzzle to you achieving financial independence. You deserve more as long as you know you provide good value in return.

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