Self-belief is something that nearly everyone seems to struggle with. Some of the nicest, wittiest, and most outgoing people will tell you that they sometimes doubt themselves. Self-doubt is a terrible feeling. It makes you feel useless, and it paralyzes you. I used to suffer from crushing self-doubt. When I was a kid, I used to wonder how on Earth I was going to achieve my dreams. My dreams aren’t unrealistic, but they require a lot of hard, complicated work in the wealth-building department. Now, the path is beginning to become quite clear. I’ve figured out a way to write my way to freedom, and I’ve been making it happen. Most of the people in my life have no clue what I’m up to and might think I don’t have high goals. Lol. It doesn’t matter, because I know what I’m up to and, I believe in myself. As a reader, the sheer number of articles on my blog should be a testament to this fact. Doing this online stuff takes dedication, and you need to be a little crazy to put your mind to it. So, without further ado, let me tell you how to increase the amount you believe in yourself.
Learn to evaluate yourself accurately
A lot of people with low self-esteem become narcissists. You notice this a lot with people who are in middle age and feel like they haven’t gotten a fair deal in life or had little dating success. If you live in a major city, I’m sure you’ve noticed the men in their “midlife crisis” wearing shirts too tight and driving cars too fast for their age. While it may seem counterintuitive, the reason for this (besides being faced with their own mortality) because they are struggling with self esteem, and becoming more narcississtic as they recalibrate. Narcissism is bad, and it will destroy your relationships and possibly your life. Narcissism makes you meaner than you otherwise would have been, and it makes you break rules you otherwise wouldn’t have in order to support your grandiose delusions. To avoid getting into narcissism, start looking at statistics and start reading information from reputable sources. Oftentimes, you’ll find that you’re catastrophizing. If you’re five foot eight inches tall, for example, you might think you’re short. You’re not that short. On the other hand, knowing how to evaluate statistics is also important. Some statistics are incorrect, and either designed to scare you or lull you into a false sense of security. The latter is the case with financial statistics. There’s a lot of hidden wealth in this world. People are making much more money than people give them credit for at the high end. When it comes to evaluating myself financially, I use net worth rather than income. This means that I analyze how much my little internet businesses bring in and figure out how much I’m “worth”. I’m not afraid to be cash-poor or look stupid, because all I care about is multiplying capital. If I keep on doing it at this pace, I’ll be able to retire at a basic level in 5 years and 10 months, at the age of 31.
Keep your goals to yourself
I’m now at the point where I’ll have solid results to show for my work within the next 3 years. Before that, I spent 3 years in a 3rd world country, holed up in my room learning everything I could about making money online. I still don’t really talk about my final, overarching goals because I don’t want people to ruin everything, I’ve worked so hard for. You see, when you’re young or trying something new, people’s natural instinct is to tear you down. Some of this is fear-based, as many people might be legitimately afraid of you failing, but sometimes it’s also malicious. This is doubly true if you are “low status” or outwardly perceived as somebody with low self-esteem. The best thing you can do is keep your goals to yourself. Unless someone is directly supporting you or mentoring you, there’s 0 benefit to them knowing about your life. Cut people off if they try to take the wind out of your sail.
Find faith
At first, I used to just have faith in myself. I used to tell myself my final net worth goal (which I have set for the age of 32, I’m 25 now) every single day, and inch towards it. I made good progress doing this, but the days got long, and the work felt hard. I could have progressed a lot farther had I chosen to believe in God. I talked in another article about having faith in God, but that article was a little more spiritual. This advice is more practical. Having faith in God makes it easier to believe in yourself because you put yourself in a positive thought loop. The spiritual nature of your connection with God also gives you a sense of inner peace. Every step you take towards your goals feels effortless when you have God on your side. It’s possible to have faith in yourself without God on your side, but I personally find it hard. If you aren’t going to use God, you can use positive affirmations. Make many positive but true affirmations. Repeat them to yourself at least 100 times per day. After about 100 days, you should see some differences in how confident you feel. As implied earlier, achieving more will help you believe in yourself more. So just working hard and keeping faith is more than enough to boost your mood.
Have a vision
The three things I told you to do above are simple but not easy. If you don’t have a pleasant vision for the future, you’re likely going to harm yourself and/or other people in the long run. You’ll be moody and angry, and you won’t be able to succeed. Your grind also won’t be worthwhile if you have no plan. I always see myself in Southeast Asia, living an extremely quiet life in a nice neighborhood. This is what makes me get up every morning, and how I force myself to keep improving and making progress. I will make this happen, and I’m getting closer and closer by the day, both my internal traffic numbers and outside sources indicate I’m on the right track, and as a result, I believe in myself.
Cultivating self-belief is long and hard, and the road isn’t steady. But it can be done. You just have to focus and keep taking steps every day. If you have a great vision of a clean life, things should work out in your favor.
By Rising Current on .
Exported from Medium on November 8, 2024.
