Self-belief
Self-belief is knowing that we can do something with confidence and conviction. It’s that important quality that allows us to bat away self-doubt and rise to the occasion.
Think about how important self-belief is in your own life and the lives of those you know and love. Think about all the things that we do effortlessly, almost on autopilot.
Now think about it when self-belief isn’t working. When the things that we rationally know we should be able to do, remain outside our conviction levels.
I want to explain why.
The development of self-belief is a system, there’s a three-step process to it, and it’s run by our emotions.
When we first try to learn a new skill or competency, we’re often forced to go outside of our comfort zone. We can become confused, uncertain, and fearful.
As we practice the skill and become better at it, we experience an emotional shift. We begin to enjoy what we’re doing, and there is a sense of achievement. It feels good. Sometimes there can even a be a bit of a wow feeling.
This is when our emotions move to a more neutral state and self-belief is bedded in. Things become second nature. There is still plenty of satisfaction, but self-belief is like being self-managed.
We have a limitless capacity to develop self-belief. Unless, on the journey to attaining a new level, an emotion is triggered that represents a negative belief about ourselves. It can look like this:
| Emotion | Negative Belief | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Humiliation | I am a failure | ||
| Shame | incompetent | ||
| Despair | I don’t deserve |
At this point, our Emotional Defense System comes into play. Its role is to protect us from threats, and it does so by changing the negative emotion into one that we can cope with, and uses our thinking to devise a strategy and to rationalise the new emotion. Bear with me and check out this table.
| undefined | Negative belief | Emotional Defense System | New Emotion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Humiliation | I am a failure | Extreme Avoidance | In control |
| Shame | I am incompetent | Self-doubt to prompt retreat | Safe |
| Despair | I don’t deserve | Lack of care, a neutral approach | Indifference |
While we might have a desire to achieve, our system will always prioritise our defence system responses, which makes attaining self-belief a very hard ask.
But all is not lost. We can circumvent our defence systems by using external tools, like additional training, or we can learn how to revise and work with our systems, so we can understand and master them.