There was a time in my life when I stopped believing in myself. It was a time of desperation and silent resignation. I had given up. I had thrown in that proverbial towel in my mind and had relented to the fact that there were no good things yet to come. All hope was lost. I was decimated right down to the core. To say that it was a turbulent time in my life would be an understatement.
But eventually things changed. It didn’t happen overnight; it took years. But what I came to realize over time was that I never actually stopped believing in myself. Buried somewhere, deep down inside, was a passion that I simply didn’t know how to tap into consciously. It was hidden away behind a door with a locked key that only my subconscious had access to.
Although I had failed miserably, and many times over, I eventually recovered. Today, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t want to go back and erase those failures, as hard as they were on me. I would do absolutely nothing differently. Through failure, life’s greatest lessons are learned. It’s through failure that we build a platform for great success.
The truth of the matter is that no one should stop believing in themselves. No one should completely give up and resign themselves to their fate. No one. Not you, nor I, nor anyone else. Why? Because, while life isn’t easy, it’s most certainly worth it. Often, we don’t realize how we’re being molded and shaped for a bigger and brighter future when we’re struggling to just get by.
However, if you’ve found yourself in the precarious situation of a loss of belief in yourself and your chances for the future, all hope isn’t actually lost. It’s a sign — a signal from the heavens. It’s made you seek out the answers and search for clues to help instill that sense of belief back into your life, and breathe an air of comfort with the expectation of good things to come over time.
And even if you think that you no longer believe in yourself, or have deemed yourself too old, too uneducated, too poor, too stressed, or anything else for that matter, somewhere, deep down inside, there’s a flame of belief that can be ignited. Even if you’ve failed dozens of times, hundreds of times or thousands of times, your belief in yourself should never waver.
Throughout history, even the most famous people in the world have failed the most times. And these weren’t minor failures; they were monumental. Henry Ford went bankrupt, so did Walt Disney and Donald Trump. Stephen King’s first novel was rejected 30 separate times and he threw it into the trash only to later be retrieved by his wife. J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected by all 12 major publishers in the UK.
The point? All of these people never stopped believing in themselves. Even through the endless array of failures and pain. Surely, they didn’t have it easy. Then again, no one ever does who’s wading through the turmoil. Simply put — don’t stop believing in yourself no matter what happens or what anyone says. Keep charging forward towards your goals. The magic eventually happens, it just takes what often seems like an eternity.
What Happens When You Believe In Yourself?
There’s this element of consciousness that still confounds us. What’s real and what isn’t? Our physical bodies are tied to the conscious energy that resides within our spirit. But what is that really? At the very core, it’s energy. You and I and everyone else in this world are pure energy at the very fundamental level of our beings. It’s that energy that’s holding the atoms of your body together, making you into who you are today.
However, we are limited by our physical bodies, which have access to 5 senses, limiting our ability to see or hear or feel beyond those 5 senses. We can only see a limited spectrum of ultraviolet light and hear a limited spectrum of sound based on frequency, and so on. But there is so much more we cannot see or hear or feel. We are limited by the physical bodies and the senses that we have access to.
I say this to draw your attention to your personal limitations. That’s usually where things like faith and the utter belief in something that we cannot prove exists takes shape. If you believe wholeheartedly in God but you cannot prove that God exists, why do you believe it to be so? There’s simply something that goes beyond reason, which draws down to that core conscious energy that makes us into who we are.
Belief can never be created or destroyed, it’s simply tapped into or ignored. It’s always there, like a flame waiting to be kindled and ignited, like a fire waiting to be turned into a conflagration. Your ability to believe in yourself simply resides in your ability to tap into the spiritual energy that makes you into who you are. That energy can be focused in one direction or another to produce any results that we’re after.
This all boils down to a matter of focus. If you focus on the negative aspects of whatever you’re going through and think in your mind that you’re going to fail or you want to give up, then you will. Conscious thoughts pervade the subconscious mind working conspicuously on our behalf, either for us or against us. Think positively, on the other hand, with the utter belief in your abilities and the future, and you’ll pull through. It will just take time.
However, for most people, time is the greatest obstacle. We want things to happen in a particular timeframe defined in our minds, not beyond. When things begin to take longer than we had anticipated, we get frustrated and fed up. It happens to everyone. But good things really do come to those who wait and see things through. Once you’ve developed that belief in yourself, all it takes is a matter of time.
5 Ways to Start Believing In Yourself
After wading through a period of non-belief, it’s hard to start believing in yourself. It’s hard to gather your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual faculties to turn the tides and breathe an air of positivity into your life to help you achieve your goals. It’s hard to embed that fire and emblazon the spirit to push through the tough times in life. But it is possible. You can start believing in yourself today. It all boils down to a matter of focus.
#1 — Understand that it’s okay to fail
The first way you can start believing in yourself is to understand that it’s okay to fail. When people fail, they tend to think that they aren’t worthy of achieving some goal or dream. They allow simple failure to deter the from pushing forward and in believing that they can accomplish something. It isn’t a matter of failing; it’s a matter of not giving up. It’s a matter of continuously pushing forward and living with a resilient heart and a tenacious spirit.
While failure can be disheartening and it can strike a deadly blow into our hearts, it isn’t the end of the road. Often, it takes multiple failures to achieve our dreams. It takes an enormous amount of toiling and upset before we can find the path that ultimately leads to success. It’s okay to feel disheartened, but it’s not okay to stop believing in yourself and your ability to see things through. The only real thing that separates a successful person from a failure is persistence.
#2 — Find a deep-enough reason to achieve something
Sometimes, in order to instill a sense of belief in ourselves, we need to find a deep-enough reason to achieve something. Why do we want the things that we want? What’s driving us and pushing us to move forward? Are they simply superficial reasons such as wanting a flashy car or bigger house? Or are they fundamentally deeper than that? Things like family, love, country, freedom and security account for the reasons that will help to drive us forward with unending belief.
For example, if you have children, maybe you want to achieve something because of them. Maybe it’s such a powerful force to provide a better life for your kids that it helps to instill the belief that no matter what happens, you’ll see things through. You have to find your motivator. It’s different for everyone. Just ensure that you’re doing things for the right reasons and they aren’t merely superficial.
#3 — Focus on developing good habits
Habits comprise 45% of our behavior according to one study, but it’s likely even more than that. Much of what we do is on autopilot. From the time we wake up, to our routines in the morning, the direction we travel to work in, the websites we visit, the things we say, how we think and so on. Since so much of our behavior is autonomous, it’s also easy to allow negative and poor behavior to become habitual over time.
When bad habits do a slow creep into our lives, we often don’t realize it until it’s too late. It’s easier to lose the belief in ourselves when we succumb to the fact that we simply can’t do something because of a personal limitation when it’s really just a matter of retraining our minds. Focus on developing good habits if you want to breathe air back into your beliefs about yourself and your potential for positive future outcomes.
#4 — Practice thinking positively
Considering that much of our thinking can also become habitual, when we think negatively, we foster negative things in our lives. It’s easy to lose belief in ourselves when we think negatively. We question whether we’re capable of achieving something, whether we lack the skills or talent, know the right people, or simply have what it takes to see things through. Instead, we have to think positively and make this part of our overall routines.
Negative thinking fosters those negative emotions such as fear, stress and anxiety. It also releases stress hormones into the body that help to deteriorate us physically. Practice thinking positively to counteract that. Watch a funny movie if you have to get out of your funk and do something that makes you happy. List out all the reasons why you should believe in yourself and how you’ve turned things around in the past.
#5 — Seek ways to contribute to others
Much of the time, when we look at our lives in comparison with others, we feel depressed or unhappy. We wonder how we’re ever going to enjoy the finer things in life when all we’re trying to do is scrape by. It’s not a good feeling whatsoever. I’ve been there, so I know precisely how that feels. But life isn’t about the things that we don’t have, it’s about appreciating what we do have. There are thousands of people in this world living in absolute squalor, without hope or opportunity for the future.
It’s easy to see the things that we don’t have and far harder to appreciate what we do have. That’s a natural thing in life, especially when we’re living in such a consumer-driven society. But, when you contribute to others, and realize the plight of some who don’t have enough to eat or a place to sleep at night, it gives you a new perspective. Contributing helps to instill a deeper belief in yourself because you realize that you do have enough at the end of the day.
Why You Should Never Stop Believing In Yourself
No matter what happens in your life, what failures you have to endure or pain you have to suffer through, you should never stop believing that there are far greater things in store for you. No matter what trials we’re put through in life, they’re all designed to help instill a sense of purpose and for us to appreciate what we have rather than what we don’t. That’s when the real magic starts to happen. That’s when we develop a sense of empathy for others and evolve into better human beings.
Believe in yourself no matter what anyone else says to you or no matter what you have to endure. Don’t allow anyone to help convince you that you’re not worthy of accomplishing or achieving something. We all have different journeys in life, and not everyone is fashioned in the same way. We each have to learn unique lessons in life at different times. The important thing is to never give up the hope and the belief in yourself and in your future no matter what happens.