The worst thing you can ever do is to not believe in yourself.
Just take a moment to close your eyes and picture yourself trudging down a winding path, pulling along a wagon with both arms. You are one among many others making the same journey, with each individual’s wagon loaded up with their self-belief and self-worth. Sometimes the path is smooth and well-maintained, but at other junctures there are pot holes of varying sizes as well as bandits trying to ambush you and steal from the contents of your wagon. The further down this road you manage to travel, the more you will achieve and the higher your value relative to others.
From time to time, however, your wagon gets knocked over or robbed and your journey is delayed. You might be making great progress for some time, moving along with a wagon filled to the brim with volumes of self-esteem and self-worth, and suddenly it only takes:
- One stranger with a random nasty comment to jab at your self-esteem
- A close friend you have trusted all your life to unexpectedly break your trust
- A comparative thought to pop up when you meet someone far more accomplished than yourself
- A negative thought that causes you to doubt yourself
… and your wagon tips over.
You stand there feeling stumped and crestfallen as you look at your containers of self-esteem splattered all over the ground, and you wonder, how do I pack all of this back up? The wagon seems too heavy to pull upright again and you already feel both mentally and physically drained of energy. On top of that, two of the wooden wheels are now broken, so even if you could bring it upright again, you would now have to exert more energy to pull it along like a rickshaw.
Doubt and self-resentment start to creep in, and rather than try and bring your wagon and its contents back up again, you just sit there and glance at the pile of mess lying in the middle of the road, reliving your failures in your mind time and time again until you feel even more self-loathing within you. With all the positive momentum you have accumulated recently shattered together with the contents of your wagon, the idea of staying in the same spot and quietly sulking seems more appealing than getting back up on your feet and risking more bandits and potholes ahead.
Now open your eyes. The above scenario was completely fictional, but is a perfect metaphor to describe the life of an average guy. He is capable of progressing in life but will never ever make any meaningful changes because he will give up at the very first sign of a major disappointment or setback. Once he falls and breaks his legs, he is far more likely to stay down and think about how unfair life has been rather than go through the short-term pain of the recovery process and getting back up. He no longer believes in himself.
Sound familiar to you? If so, then now is the time for you to change your attitude, or else you can expect to be stuck in limbo for the rest of your life. The longer you remain at a certain level, the more inclined you will be to believe in these limitations that you have set for yourself, and the harder it will be for you to break out of this trap. It is a repetitive reinforcement of a negative belief system.
For those who have been improving themselves for an extended number of years now, a recurring theme is that it always starts off at the foundational building block stage. You break through the first major ceiling and immediately start to question all of the other ceilings you have limited yourself with. At this stage, the people who are more prone to negativity and doubt will quickly try to break through the next ceiling, then completely quit because this next ceiling turned out to be harder to reach than the first one. However, those who break through the second and third ceilings will soon realize that the rewards at each stage increase disproportionately and are worth the extra work and sacrifices in the short-term. Eventually, the fourth ceiling will come down… then the fifth… and then the sixth… And then one weekend morning you step outside and an avalanche, a torrent, an outpouring of improvements all materialize synchronously. Congratulations, you have just experienced the feeling of ten-fold growth. You won’t forget this day when you are sitting on a park bench enjoying an ice cream and realize you’ve made it. A light bulb goes off in your head and you understand now that you will never turn back again. Why? You now recognize that the key to overcoming all of your problems and disappointments lies in focus and repetition.
You have won.