“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford

The next time you get into your car to drive off, wherever you may roam, I want you to stop for a second to pay homage to Henry Ford.

Yes, he’s the guy in the picture over there and the man who created the Ford Motor Company, making it possible for YOU to have your very own personal automobile. He did it because he had an idea he believed in, and he never gave up, even when other people laughed at him.

Mr. Ford was most famously quoted for saying:

“Whether you think that you can or that you can’t,
you are usually right.” – Henry Ford

As you read this article on 8 Ways to Believe in Yourself When Nobody Else Does, keep in mind that you MUST believe in yourself first. Otherwise it will be practically impossible for anyone else to ever believe in you.

You have to choose between self-doubt or self-confidence and in the end… it’s a choice only YOU can make!

1. Let Go of the Past

The past is over and done with. Though the experiences we have gone through have deeply affected every aspect of our lives – whether for better or worse. Our pasts have shaped our personalities, self-worth, and influence the choices and decisions we make in our daily interactions.

“The most important thing for us to realize is this: the past has no control over our lives, except the control we allow it to have. It is not a life sentence that we must carry out!”

Once we become aware of this fact and take full responsibility for our own lives we become the true creators of our own tomorrow. The past may have made you who you are today, but it’s up to you whether you stay that way or not.

If you want to develop maximum confidence and belief in yourself, just know that you have the full capacity to do so. Your past can’t stop you! It’s just a trail you leave behind, it’s like the wake of a boat, or your foot prints in the sand. It’s not who you are, it’s only who you were and where you have been.

Nothing more and nothing less. Learn from your past and then let it go.

2. Embrace Your Present Moment Reality

The untamed human mind is a funny thing! It is always trying to escape reality. We spend so much time reliving the past or dreaming and worrying about the future, that we no longer have a grasp on what’s real and happening in our lives in this very moment.

We’re not living in reality, but rather our distorted perception of reality.

Reality can suck sometimes and the Truth can be a bitter pill to swallow. Many of us don’t want to examine our lives too closely, because if we do, we might have to face the fact that we aren’t as confident, happy, and awesome as we thought we were.

“To really make a change and transform any aspect of your life, it’s crucial that you face the reality of your life circumstances.”

By not embracing this moment as it truly is, we can continue to live in denial and protect our fragile egos from this often harsh reality. In this way, we also avoid feeling the pain of self-disappointment… yet, this comes at the cost of having to live our lives in quiet desperation.

You MUST stop deluding yourself and learn to face your present moment reality head on. Only when you’re honest with yourself can you objectively analyze your life and make the necessary changes that produce real results.

By discovering the hidden power within the NOW you gain access to the most important moment of your entire life… this one! It is only in this precise moment that life is lived.

3. Discover Your Life Purpose and Mission

In order to believe in yourself you have to be living your life on purpose. If you don’t know exactly what you want in life, how will you ever achieve it? Let me clue you in… YOU WON’T!

You MUST discover what your life purpose is and embark on a critical mission to accomplish it. It all starts with designing a life plan for yourself and setting some goals.

When you set a goal for yourself (even a small one) and then achieve it, you will increase the level of confidence within yourself. As you realize your goals, one by one, your belief in yourself will begin to take off. Soon your accomplishments will start to add up and your self-esteem will skyrocket!

“Decide exactly the type of person you’d like to become and what you want your life to be like… then create a plan of execution that will make it your reality.”

If you’re unsure about what you want to do with your life, I suggest looking at your hobbies and passions first. What talents and skills do you have (or are willing to learn) that you can use to provide value to other people?

Now start creating a vision of what you desire by writing out goals for the following six areas of your life; physical, mental, spiritual, personal, social and financial.Continue to refine this vision over time as you learn and grow.

As an Awakened Warrior, you MUST discover and complete your life mission. You have something awesome to offer this world… don’t rob us of your contribution.

4. Take Inspired and Massive Action

In my twenties, the internet was really starting to take off. I was like a sponge… absorbing information, reading tons of books, researching online, listening to audios. I couldn’t get enough. I was an information junkie and there was so much to learn and so little time to learn it.

Yet, after ten years of learning my life had changed very little. Sure there definitely were some improvements, personal growth and new insights. Life was good. However, many of my goals hadn’t been achieved and I was becoming discouraged. “What am I doing wrong?“, I wondered.

What I failed to realize is that your life will NOT change through learning alone…. ONLY through action and application. If we fail to act on what we know and learn, than that knowledge is utterly useless to affect change in our lives.

“Knowledge is ONLY potential power. When we take Inspired and Massive Action we transform conceptual knowledge into practical wisdom.”

The most potent form of action is INSPIRED ACTION! When you feel a deep sense of inspiration then life itself is encouraging you to act. This type of action may arise as a gut feeling, intuition or a sense of purpose and passion.

When you feel inspired to act, let this feeling guide you to do so immediately! To paraphrase Dale Carnegie, inaction breeds doubt and fear, while action breeds confidence and courage.

Life has a tendency to reward quick, decisive action and this is a surefire way to build a stronger sense of belief and confidence in one’s ability to make things happen.

5. Never Accept Defeat or Failure

As you take inspired action and work towards realizing your mission and purpose in life, you will most likely experience some temporary defeat and failure. No matter how well you prepare yourself in life you will still make mistakes and possibly fail at what you set out to accomplish.

When this happens, you must remember that this does not make YOU a failure personally. You are only experiencing a temporary set back.  If you give up at the first sign of adversity, all that you’ve worked for will be in vain.

You never truly fail until you quit trying.

Failure is only an indication that your current actions were not optimal to produce your desired result. Your approach should be reevaluated, tweaked and a second attempt made.

“Every set back and mistake contains a lesson and opportunity by which we may rise to higher levels of understanding and enlightenment.” 

Many times, these “failures” serve as a means to bring humility to a person who has let their ego get too inflated. I know this was partially the case back in my “wanna-be rockstar days” … it took the breakup of the band to teach me a valuable lesson in leadership and in the power of remaining humble.

Napoleon Hill taught in his Law of Success Course, that “Every adversity you meet carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.” It is up to you to humble yourself and look for this hidden blessing so that you may rebound stronger, growing and profiting from the experience.

Be very careful not to personify the failure. Just let it go and move on confidently. As Bruce Lee reminds us, “In great attempts… it is glorious even to fail.”

6. Control the Frame

As you go through life you will experience many things. Some will be good, some bad and some may shake you to your very core. Whenever we have an experience we tend to assign some type of meaning to this event in our minds, thus giving it a context.

For example, you may see a cute girl you would like to talk to and get to know better. So you approach her and say hello. She reacts indifferently to you and blows you off. One might then internalize this rejection through negative self-talk and hence “frame” the interaction in a way that diminishes their own self-worth.

Feeling rejected one might say to themselves, “Women don’t find me attractive.”; or “I’m no good with women.”; or “Women always reject me.”

In our own insecurity, we tend to blame ourselves when things don’t work out as planned… but realistically there are many factors involved that affect the outcome of every situation.

“Controlling the frame is about having a strong sense of belief in yourself and carefully selecting the context and meaning you assign to events in your life.”

There are two methods by which you can do this: either by upholding a favorable frame while the event is taking place or by “re-framing” the event in your mind after it all goes down.

Obviously the first method is more desirable since you can maintain your self-confidence by never undermining it in the first place. You simply KNOW that you’re an awesome person and things will work out in your favor. If they don’t, then you are fully capable of handling whatever arises.

After-the-fact, you can then re-frame this rejection by considering that she could have been having a terrible day or she could have been late for a meeting… or maybe your eye contact with her was poor. You never know!

In it’s simplest form, controlling the frame is about ALWAYS looking at the world and your life experiences (whatever they may be) in a positive light… and in a way that allows you to maintain your awesome-ocity!

7. Keep Learning, Growing and Evolving

In our modern scientific world, many have come to conclude that this Universe is nothing but a meaningless, chance event and that there’s no real purpose for our lives. In my opinion, this is a very shortsighted and erroneous belief.

It is fairly obvious that the bigger picture and purpose of the universe is to evolve.

As we study evolutionary theory, we see this from the creation of the stars and galaxies to the development of the solar systems. From there planetary ecosystems continued growing and evolving to eventually support life in millions of different forms!

As life continued to evolve, adapt and grow… ever more intelligent and conscious creatures, such as ourselves, rose to the forefront of physical creation…. with each successor being given more access to the conscious intelligence that is the ultimate source governing it all.

“By aligning our own life purpose with the very purpose of the universe itself (which is to grow and evolve) we tap into billions of years of intuitive wisdom, genius and intelligence that is stored in the very cells of our DNA.”

The entire history of the Universe, is in a very real sense, an evolution and rise of consciousness. When we make it our purpose to keep learning, growing and evolving…We begin to believe in ourselves in ways we could never fathom from the limited perspective of our smaller selves.

We develop skills, assurance and insights that no one may ever take away from us… EVER… not even in death. We awaken to a world of infinite possibility and rise to the challenge of achieving our ultimate potential in life.

We begin to recognize others within our own selves. Finally developing the wisdom and compassion to love and accept one another… in all of our many, special and unique forms.

8. Love Life and Don’t Waste Time

In this day and age, millions of good human beings get sucked into a whirlpool of negativity, pessimism and despair. It’s easy to do when we witness so much suffering, misery, greed, corruption, deception, brutality, hatred and evil in the world today.

That’s why the overriding mentality of the world is a pessimistic one. It’s just easier to default to that mindset then it is to consistently monitor your thoughts from day to day and actively reprogram your worldview to be more optimistic.

Personally, I inherited my negative attitude when I was growing up and it’s been a difficult thing to shake. In fact, I’m still working on it! The secret, I’ve learned, is to control your dominating thought patterns.

“You will only begin to love life and believe in yourself when you stop wasting time by thinking negatively. Focus your mind only on what you want to experience and make it so!”

A huge part of believing in yourself when nobody else does, rests in developing the capacity to rise above the haters and naysayers of the world. It’s about learning to love life and yourself in such a way that no one could ever diminish you.

This type of unwavering confidence all stems from your mindset… and your mindset is formed by the thoughts running through your head on a daily basis.

What you need to realize is that, over your lifetime, your mind has been conditioned to think and behave in a certain way. You are repeatedly running these same, tired thought patterns over and over through your brain.

It’s up to YOU (and you alone) to catch your mind reverting back to its old way of thinking. Correct it and put it back on your desired path. You will have to do this, time and again, until the new pathway is ingrained into your subconscious mind as the new default pattern.

How to Believe in Yourself Recapitulation

Since this post is almost 3,000 words long I’d like to briefly recap the 8 Ways to Believe in Yourself When Nobody Else Does.  

Any skill, belief or talent that we want to master needs high volume of repetition and practice. Believing in yourself is no different than learning an instrument, you must pick it up and play it everyday!

1. Let Go of the Past

“The past has no control over our lives except the control we allow it to have. The past may have made you who you are today, but it’s up to you whether you stay that way or not.”

2. Embrace Your Present Moment Reality

“To really make a change and transform any aspect of your life, it’s crucial that you face the reality of your life circumstances. It is only in this precise moment that life is lived.”

3. Discover Your Life Purpose and Mission

“Decide exactly the type of person you’d like to become and what you want your life to be like… then create a plan of execution that will make it your reality.”

4. Take Inspired and Massive Action

“Knowledge is ONLY potential power. When we take Inspired and Massive Action we transform conceptual knowledge into practical wisdom.”

5. Never Accept Defeat or Failure

“Every set back and mistake contains a lesson and opportunity by which we may rise to higher levels of understanding and enlightenment.”

6. Control the Frame

“Controlling the frame is about having a strong sense of belief in yourself and carefully selecting the context and meaning you assign to events in your life.”

7. Keep Learning, Growing, and Evolving

“By aligning our own life purpose with the very purpose of the universe itself (which is to grow and evolve) we tap into billions of years of intuitive wisdom, genius and intelligence.”

8. Love Life and Don’t Waste Time

“You will only begin to love life and believe in yourself when you stop wasting time by thinking negatively. Focus your mind only on what you want to experience and make it so!”

What I wrote at the beginning of this article is worth repeating; you MUST believe in yourself first. Otherwise it will be practically impossible for anyone else to ever believe in you. You have to choose between self-doubt or self-confidence and in the end… it’s a choice only YOU can make!

 

Unleash Your Ultimate Potential,

Brandon

P.S. I want you to take 30 seconds to visualize and imagine how different your life would be if you fully believed in yourself 100%! What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you become? What could you accomplish if self-doubt was no longer a hindrance holding you back from your own greatness?

Got it? Good… Now go check out this ground-breaking video by Dr. Robert Anthony on how to create Unstoppable Self-Confidence. Keep learning, start investing in yourself, and watch your life take off! It’s a strategy that has worked for me. 😉