There’s seven billion people on the planet. And yet, there’s only one you. Original, quirky, one-of-a-kind human you. We spend so much of our lives trying to prove ourselves. Wanting to be the best. To stand out from the crowd. To prove that we matter. But with millions of people trying to do the same thing, it’s no wonder why our insecurities present themselves. In life, you’ll always find at least one person who will support you when it’s you against the world. But finding that voice among the crowd can be hard to notice. In this article, we’ll share with you how to believe in yourself when no one else will. After all, if you won’t be your biggest cheerleader, who else will?
How to Believe In Yourself When No One Else Will
1. Remember That You’re Changeable
You know that advice that guidance counselors, psychotherapists, and your parents gave you your whole life, “just be yourself,” can we just be honest for a moment to admit that that motto kind of sucks. I mean, who the heck are we really? Do we even know? The first eighteen years of our lives we’re raised by our parents so who we are is carefully molded by them in your upbringing. Then, we start to date people and our personalities get blended with the personalities of those we have crushes on or fall madly in love with. Our personalities are so tied to bonds with other people that it’s hard to know what aspects of our personalities are truly our own. Maybe if we locked ourselves up away from others we’d get clues about what we love and what we hate. But being social is a part of the identity of being human (even if you’re the most introverted person on the planet). The most important thing to remember when it comes to believing in yourself is that who you are is changeable. Maintain a growth mindset. Aspects of your personality you don’t like can be augmented. Flaws you see in yourself can be destroyed. Thoughts that put you down can also be silenced. So as you learn how to believe in yourself, remember that life is constantly about evolving and exploring who your self actually is (and if a self even exists at all).
2. Use Negative People to Motivate You
There’s two types of people in the world: those who collapse at the hand of their haters and those who thrive despite them. As we just mentioned, you can be part of either group: it’s your choice. You could choose or change your mind on this any time too. All it takes is one moment to decide how to channel negativity directed at you into something that builds you up. Having a chip on your shoulder can be a great motivator for your success. Who doesn’t want to prove somebody wrong? It’s in our nature to feel this way. It’s definitely challenging when it’s those closest to you telling you that you can’t or shouldn’t pursue your passion or follow a path that you want to take. But if you’re not the lead character in your story, who will be? And who would you become if they were to lead you astray or slip out of your life? Don’t let the negative voices around you dictate your story. Sometimes you need to remove yourself from situations and people to take a moment to reflect on what course of action you want to take. If you believe in yourself, the words of skepticism or disbelief shouldn’t have an impact at all. Instead, it should make things a lot clearer for you.
3. Remember That Failure Is Growth
We spend our lives climbing mountains, always aiming for the next peak. And every now and then we tumble downwards to an area we don’t recognize, lost and scared. Failure, mistakes, regrets, and bad experiences suck in the moment. But they’re often the most defining moments in our lives. Even the most catastrophic, I-hate-every-second-of-my-life moments build our character. They help us recognize when we’ve gone in the wrong direction. They push us to become the people we really are and constantly resist being because it may be so unlike who we are now. As you believe in yourself, it’s important to remember that any roadblock and challenge you face will never be understood in the moment because you’re too busy living it. However, as time passes and your story unfolds, you begin to see how that experience became a turning point in your life. Unfortunately, life is best understood in hindsight. Failure can shape you into becoming the person you’re meant to be. Don’t run away from it. Don’t avoid it. Don’t lock yourself up in your home afraid to venture out in the world. There’s beauty in the crumbling up of a life you once knew and had. But the person you become facing towards the future is much more breathtaking.
4. It’s Okay to Learn
To believe in yourself, you need to acknowledge that life is about learning. You can learn to believe in yourself. You might decide to read some books about building your confidence or how to think more optimistically. Often, when we think negatively, we catastrophize. “Oh no, if I take this first step something horrible will happen and I’ll be seriously hurt.” And with thoughts like this it’s natural that we rarely progress forward but instead stand still. But the brain is changeable. And you can change your brain to make yourself believe in yourself. You can change your brain to push you further in a direction that your whole body is resisting. After all, believing in yourself will force you to grow. And growth is a very uncomfortable feeling which is why most people avoid it. But you can learn how to be okay with that too.
5. Visualize Success
Visualizing success plays a huge role in your quest to know how to believe in yourself. If you constantly imagine yourself achieving success, your brain starts to slowly take action to push you into that direction to help you become the person you’ve visualized. Taking the time to visualize what your future life will look like, and have more happy thoughts, will help motivate you to take action as well. It’s easier to believe in yourself if your brain is helping you move in that direction. As you subconsciously make little changes in your life that bring you closer to your goal, you begin to realize that you can accomplish what you want out of life. The feeling of not believing in yourself will slowly go away because you’ve slowly taken these baby steps that helped move you towards your goal. At the end of the day, believing in yourself is simply a change in thought process. If you start visualizing yourself as a successful person naturally the thought process changes enough that believing in yourself becomes second nature.
6. It’s All On You
Your whole life is up to you. Of course, there are other people in the world who can provoke you, harass you, discourage you, or hate on you to compel you to move in another direction. But at the same time, you can out-alpha them and walk your own path regardless of what actions they take or words they speak. At any moment, you can decide to believe in yourself. You can say to yourself, “I don’t need anyone to believe in me because I am in control of my life and I believe in myself enough to make the changes that I want and need to make to create the life I want for myself.” You’re the boss of your life. If you want to become a famous singer and everyone tells you you have a lousy voice, you can hire or work with a vocal coach to train your voice. Just as you might need practice to help you achieve your goals, all it takes is a little practice to believe in yourself.
7. Make Progress
The easiest way to convince yourself to believe in yourself is to make progress. Often we don’t believe in ourselves because we don’t have enough experience in something. How can you believe you’ll be a billionaire one day when you haven’t even made $100,000? Most people would call you delusional. But if you start finding ways to learn how to make money online you can slowly start building out your experience to earn more money. It begins with your first dollar online. Eventually, you’ll start to make more and learn more advanced ways to make higher amounts. But ultimately, you need to take a first step towards a goal and work at it until you grow. As you start to make progress, your confidence in yourself will grow too. And so naturally, you’ll begin to believe in yourself. The self-talk in your head will be more positive and encouraging when it comes to your special skill. And one day you’ll achieve your goal because you took those first few steps and chipped away at them until you believed in yourself enough to succeed.
8. Replace Negative Thoughts
Many times in meditation you’ll be encouraged to observe your thoughts instead of interrupting them. It’s important to be mindful of the thoughts that float around in your mind when you’re still and aware. However, if your brain is constantly cycling the same negative thoughts you aren’t really being mindful of your thoughts. Instead, you’re allowing your brain to take the easy path and dig deeper pathways to allow these negative thoughts to keep cycling through your brain until you have a mental breakdown. Instead, at some point, the observation of thoughts needs to become the rewiring of them. While you won’t be able to have control over all your thoughts, you can totally chime in any time and say “this thought is unproductive, share something more positive” and then throw in a new positive thought to replace the negative thought. This process takes months and months of practice. But with time, you’ll recognize yourself getting mentally stronger. And so when you realize you have more power over your thoughts than your free mind, then it’ll be easy to believe in yourself because you know that you can train your brain to do that too.
9. Write Down Your Goals
Writing down your goals is similar to visualization. However, the process is less about using your imagination but putting things down in writing. I’ve done this tactic a few times over the years and have found that I tend to accomplish things that I write down so it might work for you too. If you pull out a piece of paper, write down the things you’d like to accomplish. Set a date for them in the future (ideally a realistic date a bit further out like six months or a two years). You’ll find that with time, your brain will start taking action on getting you to do those things without realizing it. You might find the paper a few years from now while unpacking a box and realize that you actually accomplished most if not all that you originally set out to do and completely forgot that was the plan. Your brain is powerful. When you tell yourself you want something, it’ll make it happen. Your brain can create your whole world. So if you want to believe in yourself, take some time to write down the aspects of yourself you want to improve to make that a reality.
10. Find New Sources of Inspiration
To believe in yourself, you’ll need to change the type of information you consume. If you don’t believe in yourself, you might surround yourself with negative people, consume negative shows, or read negative information online. Naturally, that won’t bring the best of you forward. So you’ll need to do a major change-up to lead you to a newer, stronger, and confident you.-You can begin by watching positive and optimistic shows. You can start by reading books about self-compassion, kindness, optimism, and neuroscience so you can better understand your brain. These new sources of inspiration can help rewire your brain to be more positive and confident in your abilities.
11. Shut Down Your Fears
One essential step in the process of knowing how to believe in yourself involves shutting down your fears. When you don’t believe in yourself, sometimes you do but fear is paralyzing you from moving forward or taking action. You need to acknowledge that there’s a whole lot of variables in life that you can’t control. But your emotions, actions, and responses are in your control. To believe in yourself, you need to realize that battling your fears head-on can result in you believing in yourself and your dreams. You could lead the life you’ve always wanted simply by letting go of your fears.
12. Practice Optimism
The most optimistic people believe in themselves (and others too). Optimistic people see the best in a bad situation. They see how the rainy days allow beautiful flowers to grow. They know that a bad day or moment eventually leads you down a path of understanding a much bigger picture. There are many books like Learned Optimism that teach you how to believe in yourself by educating you on optimism. By looking at the world with a more hopeful view you can transform your life. Optimistic people are more likely to win elections, be well-liked by others, and achieve greater success in life. Being born a pessimistic person doesn’t doom you because optimism can be learned.
Conclusion
Believing in yourself sets you up for living a life that’s on your terms. If you’ve always dreamed of accomplishing big things in life, you’ll need to believe in yourself with all your might. The world is filled with doubters and haters but their words can be used to motivate you into action. Don’t allow the world to sway you in directions you aren’t happy with. Ultimately, to achieve success in life the only person who needs to believe in you is yourself. As long as you can control that, you’re capable of absolutely anything.
