“Why didn’t someone tell me this, like, 20 years ago?!” said Michelle, a Senior VP of HR. We were in a workshop, and she had just seen me walk through what I call “the belief in self diagram.” This one diagram goes a long way in explaining some of the most important things we need to understand (and don’t) to be happy, healthy, and highly effective. Things like:
- Where the recurring challenges of our lives come from
- What drives results
- The source of our behaviors
- How our early childhood experiences and meaning-making affect our view of the world (how we “assemble” reality)
- The lynchpin role belief in self plays in all this
- How to build belief in self, and
- Why it is hard (but not complicated) to do so.
The belief in self diagram is probably one of the most important frameworks I’ve developed. With the help of others, of course. I come back to it again and again. In this article, I’ll focus in on one aspect of the diagram. The bottom box labeled Belief in Self.
Increasing Belief in Self is Life-Changing
If you look at the diagram, you will see belief in self at the foundation of a system and process that gives rise to the challenges you face in life. I’d call that pretty high-leverage diagram. That’s the way Michelle saw it.
Here’s the basic flow of the diagram…
- As we build belief in self, the shortcoming that is our “cross to bear” in life is transmuted into our greatest gift.
- As we transmute our shortcoming, the way we think and feel is radically changed–clear mind, open heart, strong spine.
- This, in turn, changes our behaviors and actions for the better. Right action. More good. Less harm.
- This dramatically affects the results we produce, personally and professionally.
- And all this culminates into shaping the recurring challenges–positive and negative–over the arc of our lives.
This is why I say increasing belief in self can change your life. It is one, powerful part of a strategy for healing ourselves, for integrating our past in a healthy way, for therefore behaving and acting differently in the present, and therefore shaping the future to come.
What Is Belief in Self?
I define belief in self as follows:
Belief in self is the degree to which a person can count on themself to discern and then do the right thing, regardless of the perceived negative consequences or short-term pain.
When I possess a lesser amount of belief in self, I have feelings about what I know I should do, yet I don’t do them. Therefore, I cannot count on myself to do what is best for me, for others, and for life. At some level, I know that I am doing things that harm me, harm others, harm life. Yet I can’t seem to stop, and I grow numb to the consequences. The feelings of what is right to do become more difficult to feel, harder to sense. But they never abandon us.
When I possess a higher amount of belief in self, I can sense or feel what right action looks like, and I can summon the strength and courage to do it. I’m stoic in bearing the short-term blowback and negative consequences. And I can be a friend unto myself when I need solace when weathering both.
I can count on myself to be there for myself. There’s nothing quite like that in the world.
Is It the Same as Self-Esteem?
Belief in self is not the same as self-esteem.
Self-esteem–the way I see it–arises when we favorably compare ourselves to others and feel better about ourselves as a result.
If we judge ourselves as better than others in some way, we “have” self-esteem. We esteem ourselves. This, of course, does not mean we are seeing things accurately, straightforwardly. We are simply judging ourselves as “better than.” The problem is our high valuation of ourselves is based on external references, not a true internal knowing, a knowing that is sufficient unto itself.
If irrefutable evidence lands in our lap that others are better than us in some way, self-esteem evaporates. Then we suffer. We feel a loss of something that we never really had. Self-esteem is a poor but frequent surrogate for belief in self.
Belief in self isn’t based on comparison to others. It is our claim of and trust in our own abilities, capacities, capabilities, and resources. It isn’t, however, based on having it all together.
We don’t need to wait to start experiencing some of the vast benefits of belief in self until we have mastered ourselves. Instead, it emerges over time as an unshakable belief in our capacity to continually learn, change, grow, heal, and evolve for the rest of our lives. It is a journey that never ends. A longing met without attaining a fixed goal. And even starting to build a little more of it than we had to start with feels like a journey home.
Because it is.
Could Everyone Use More?
Do not confuse the appearance of self-confidence with belief in self. Some of the people around you who appear self-confident are wall-papering over a lack of belief in self. In other words, it is easy to imagine that someone who shrinks away, is shy, or is passive may lack belief in self. But its more difficult to imagine that someone who appears aggressive, confident, and “makes things happen” lacks belief in self. It’s a little bit like a scene in the movie Shrek, where Shrek is looking up at Lord Farquar’s very, very tall castle and says to Donkey,
“Do you think he’s making up for something?”
It is not a matter of whether we possess belief in self or not. It is a matter of the degree to which we possess it. So virtually everyone can develop more belief in self and reap the benefits.
The real question is whether you think you want more of it. If you want to flip some behaviors from less positive to more positive and do so sustainably, you will need a higher belief in self in order to make and then sustain that change. If you want to change your results, shape the nature and type of your challenges, change the way you see and experience the world, you can use at least a little more belief in self.
Why Do We Lack Belief in Self?
“Why do we lack belief in self?” is a question that is bigger than one article. Therefore, anything I can say here in a short article will be incomplete. That said, let’s talk.
The nature and type of relationship we had with our primary caregiver had a profound impact on how secure we feel in life. Sara teaches this skillfully and wonderfully in her emotions course, as she is an expert in Attachment Theory. In short, the type of attachment relationship that formed between us and our primary caregiver impacted where we initially started our life on the continuum between fully insecure and fully secure. That’s where we all start. But there’s more…
During our early years, we all end up having some type of experience that imparts what Enneagram experts Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson call our “early childhood message”. We emerge from childhood with a lot of messages, some very positive and some not-so-much. Here Riso and Hudson are talking about the primary negative message that impacts our view of the world and therefore negatively impacts our behaviors. And the problem is we tend to carry the latter into our adult lives.
For reasons I won’t attempt to explain here, that negative early childhood message tightly connects to I refer to as our shortcoming. In the classic Enneagram, that is called the “passion” of the type. Our shortcoming shapes how we see the world, how our thoughts and emotions work and therefore affects our behaviors and actions. (Spoiler alert: every one of us can transmute our shortcoming into our greatest gift.)
An un-transmuted shortcoming influences our behavior in negative ways. At some level we know the behavior is harmful to us and to others, and yet we persist in it. This keeps our belief in self relatively stuck. Stuck where we were based on that original attachment relationship.
For many of us, we start with a degree of insecurity from our early years and then, through our behaviors and actions and subsequent relationships, we reify it. To reify something means to make something more concrete, more real. It is like we keep underscoring the same sentence again and again.
Read that last paragraph again. It captures the core reason we lack belief in self. It also points towards the solution, and…
THE GOOD NEWS IS WE CAN INCREASE BELIEF IN SELF. We can move ourselves along the continuum from very insecure towards very secure. Therapy can help us do this. Healthy relationships and healthy people can help us do this. And we can do this for ourselves.
How to Increase Belief In Self
There isn’t only one way to do it. Using multiple means is really effective. I don’t have time here to cover multiple means, but I can give you one, straightforward way in six steps. And it is already reflected in the diagram.
1. Set Your Intention. Decide you want to begin noticing the relative presence or absence of your belief in self in various situations. Set an intention to increase it over time. Never underestimate the power of a clear intention and an earnest request to the invisible forces of life to help you do just that.
2. Start Noticing. Start noticing the little things you do that squelch… you. The real You. Not the small you. Self with a capital “S”, This can be as simple as saying you don’t have a preference as to where to go eat dinner when you really do have a preference or looking at Facebook (just for another five minutes) instead of playing with your child when you feel your child really needs and wants your attention.
One of the ways we squelch our Self, by the way, is by squelching others. When we tread on others, we tread on our Higher Self. The higher part of ourselves does not see separatively. Our higher selves are concerned with the collective, are inclusive, are group conscious. Therefore when we harm or diminish others or any other aspect of life, this is a violation of our Self and therefore diminishes belief in self.
A great way to “start noticing” is to simply spend 5–10 minutes reflecting on the little ways you violate your own inner knowing by not acting on that knowing. This can be what you do to yourself, what you do to others, or what you do to plants, animals, or to Earth. We have little niggling feelings all the time of “I shouldn’t do this” and we know it isn’t social conditioning talking… that it is our Higher Self guiding us. Write these niggling feelings–and these little behaviors you do that defy those feelings–down.
The initial challenge can be that the Higher Self usually whispers. And if we stop listening during our lives, we can’t hear it very well even though it is still there. But we can always rebuild the capacity to hear these whispers.
You can even start with one or two small things on your list and grow it from there. Or even write down the number 1. and let it there be blank next to that number if you are coming up with nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum. The moment you set the intention to notice, and you start trying to notice, you set something in motion. And, if you hold the intention, it will come. Bloop! Something will pop to the surface, and sometimes in the most unexpected ways or circumstances. And then you will see more and more if you intend to.
3. Start Pivoting. Start to systematically eliminate the ways you squelch yourself and the small ways you squelch others. Another way of saying this is to systemically eliminate the ways you violate your deepest values or dismiss the inner knowing that is prompting you to do what is right but seems hard or fraught with risk.
As you pivot from these less conscious behaviors that often violate your deepest values towards more intentional behaviors that better express your deepest values, notice how you feel. And notice how it impacts others. As you pivot, as you start not-doing unconscious and often harmful behaviors and start doing intentional, more life-supportive behaviors, notice how you start to feel about yourself. Notice whether you are starting to feel as if you can better count on yourself… that you can count on yourself to be there for yourself.
If you are feeling better about yourself, part of the reason is that you are closing the gap between your deepest values and how you actually act. Your values are not something you have, they are what you do. You can have very high aspirational values, but your real values are what you actually live through your behaviors and actions. When we close the gap between our deepest values and our values-in-action, we gain something so remarkable and intangible that words fail me. But part of it is we become embodied. We become magnetized and magnetic. There is an abiding, deep, silent equanimity. I’ll leave this, there.
4. Anticipate Blowback. Blowback will happen. It will come from two places–from within, and from without.
Probably everyone around you that cares about you will tell you “they fully support you in growing yourself.” But here’s the catch. If your growth results in changes they don’t like, all bets are off, typically. And it is highly likely that your arc of development is going to run counter to someone else’s needs, desires, and expectations at some point. So, don’t wonder whether you will be challenged as you work to increase your belief in self. Instead, be curious about the when, and the how. When it comes, greet it like a good training partner who challenges you to push beyond your normal limits.
The primary blowback you will face, however, will come from within you. Look back at the diagram. See the internal dialogue box? There’s a system running in there. And your ego uses that system. You start to change behaviors, you disrupt that system. And your ego–with the best of intentions (to keep you safe)–isn’t going to cotton to the idea of you taking conscious control of your behaviors. It will use internal feelings of worry, anxiety, fear, guilt, and/or shame to “put you back in your place.”
Increasing belief in self diminishes the control of the ego. Hence, the inner blowback. But this can be overcome. It must be, or you can’t move forward from here. So, know this…
Your first challenge will be to expand your ability to tolerate your own discomfort. Fear and anxiety have been influencing you, determining your behaviors, to a degree and in ways you cannot currently fathom. So, be stoic. Learn to suffer a little in order to gain your freedom. There is no other way I know of. No magic pill to make it go away. No “hack” to work around it. Learn to tolerate your own discomfort. That’s one price you pay to access the life-changing benefits of belief in self.
These “tests” from within and from without are the things that knock you backward again and again until you build the strength and resolve to overcome them. Think of them as resistance training, like pushing against the weights and machines in the gym. They help you build muscle, strength. These aren’t problems as much as they are initiations or rites of passage that enable us to claim our knowledge and power and move on to the next level of challenge, growth, healing, and integration.
5. Clean Up Your Messes. You’re going to mess things up along the way. Such as, with the best of intentions, you’ll try a new behavior. Someone else may react strongly and negatively, triggering you. You may then react and do or say something that is a violation of yourself and/or the other. So, now you’ve hurt the relationship and managed to do exactly the opposite of what you intended. Instead of making a deposit into your belief in self, you made a withdrawal. This is normal and this will happen. So…
Make repairs. When this happens, make it right. Apologize. Earnestly. And double down at doing it better next time. Good, heartfelt, earnest repairs build our belief in ourselves in miraculous ways. If I can learn to count on myself to make the things right that I’ve made wrong, I can start to count on myself to do anything. Such vulnerability–to say I’m wrong and to make it right–is so powerful. So powerful.
Practice self-compassion. When you make of mess of it, your ego will use that opportunity to try to “hook” you. Guilt, shame, embarrassment will arise. Negative thoughts will come, like, “What am I thinking this is too hard. I can’t do it. It will never work. See, I knew from the start this was a very bad idea…” Rise above all that. Spend 2 minutes (or 5 or 10) doing self-compassion. Talk about being able to be there for yourself… this simple practice is the cat’s pajamas. I wrote an article for you on that here.
6. Go Bigger. As I said above, start small. Work outward from there, taking on bigger and bigger behaviors and more challenging situations. Believe me, there are there. They show up in the conversations we avoid, the tasks we put off incessantly, spending money we don’t have, the dreams we don’t pursue when we know we should, the horrible thoughts we sometimes think, the people we’ve hurt and not attended to, and on and on.
There you have it. How to build belief in self. And believe me, it is a marathon and not a sprint.
There’s a lot more to say, but this will give you one fine start. Funny how often we want all the steps when the most important thing we need to do is to simply get started.
Get started. And I’d love to hear how it goes for you.