Radical Self-Belief!

Radical Self-Belief (if you don't know where to start, start with this)!

This writing will help you identify what aspects of self-doubt are holding you back. If you have a 9+/10 belief in yourself to make "anything you dream of" happen in your life, you can skip this writing. If not, read on... 

​

A human life can be so exquisite, but before it actually becomes exquisite, you first have to believe in yourself to be worth it and to be able to make it happen for you.

 

To live the experiences of your dreams.
 

Imagine that you had infinite money and infinite time right now, and you could just hit the "pause" button on your life as you live a few 'exquisite' experiences. 

​

Pick your favorite of the "imagined" examples below, or use them as inspiration to create your ideal current vision of a life experience. For fun, you can even combine multiple and "design" the life of your dreams week by week, month by month, season by season...

 

Imagine... 

 

Sitting under a coconut tree looking over on to the sunset from a warm, tropical beach with the white sand between your toes and a lovely cold drink or fresh fruit in your hand. 

 

Waking up to the sunrise on the highest mountain top in the middle of an evergreen, forest filled, national park, overseeing the entire mountain range in all directions. 

 

Finding a partner, creating a family, and being able to impart your wisdom in the caring for and raising of young children who will, no doubt, continuously surprise, love, and teach you what more there is to life. 

 

Being immersed by the fluffy clouds, gliding and sliding through the air like a bird on your hang glider, parachute, hot air balloon or tiny private plane.

 

Getting up close to the large wild animals of the African savannah plains - zebras, lions, giraffes, gazelles, hippopotamus, and elephants - guided by an expert in the safety of an SUV on a safari. 

 

Living a lifestyle of the rich and famous, admired by many, influencing the world with your authority by the power of social media, going on tours, speaking, performing, being interviewed by magazines and staying in high class hotels.

 

Sailing the Mediterranean sea on a luxury cruise ship complete with pools, restaurants, bars, casino, gym, entertainment, and nightly shows as you make pit stops on major coastal cities of Spain, France, Italy, and Greece.

 

Experiencing the total stillness and peaceful quiet after 10 days of no technology, no entertainment, totally silent vipassana meditation course in a rural spiritual centre.

 

Being able to experience the view from Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China, or seeing the Pyramids of Egypt, and any other historical sites of your interest.

 

Watching the spectacle of a 40 foot (12 meter) human effigy burning to the ground on a backdrop of Nevada's Black Rock Desert dotted with lasers piercing through the dust on the Saturday night of the Burning Man festival amongst a crowd of 70,000 people.

 

Whatever it is that excites you, you can have more of, and this writing will outline one of the very first steps to ensure that it happens. 

 

Self-belief. 

 

The most important thing about self-belief is that it is THE foundation to action-taking, which is the foundation for creating results in your life. 

​

The human bodymind is so damn smart and well designed that lacking self-belief can be a protective mechanism. 

 

If there is something that it "doesn't believe that it can achieve", it will not even allow you to spend the energy on trying to achieve it.

 

Think back to evolutionary times. 

 

You're a hunter-gatherer, you haven't eaten in 1 or 2 days, and you see an animal that you might be able to kill. 

​

Subconsciously, it is your self-belief which will drive the approach you take. 

 

If you believe you can kill it, your bodymind will take the actions to chase or throw the spear. 

 

If you do not believe you can kill it (maybe it is too healthy and too fast compared to your low energy levels), your bodymind will decide that it is best to conserve the energy that would have otherwise been wasted in attempting the kill.

 

Counterintuitively, this is better for your survival, because you have more energy left for the next (and hopefully "right") opportunity. By "not spending it" on the prey that would have been a "maybe" catch, there is more energy to ensure that an "easier" prey would be more of a "guarantee". 

 

And this is exactly the problem that so many people are facing: the subconscious self doubt stops them from taking the actions that will lead to progress. 

 

Succumbing to instant gratification of "cheap" dopamine through social media doomscrolling, procrastinating by watching videos or engaging in other escapist and toxic behaviours instead of doing the work of progressing.

 

Most people do not believe that they deserve an "exquisite" life, or, for those people that do, most of them will not believe in themselves enough to be able to achieve it. 

 

So how do we change this? 

 

Self-belief is a huge topic in and of itself, and we will break it down into more manageable chunks. 

 

The first is that self-belief is about multiple components, and also multiple points of view. 

 

Firstly the idea of "points of view".

 

We can look at self-belief through the lens of spirituality and human potential. Think "Maslow's hierarchy of needs". 

 

No matter where we are on our journey in life, and no matter what our external circumstances are, we can believe in being destined for greatness.

​

Believing that every human being has within themselves the potential - the seed - to reach their highest possible levels of freedom, fulfilment, and flow: self-actualisation, self-realisation, enlightenment. 

 

Existentially speaking, there is no reason why only few would be chosen over others who simply "wouldn't be pre-destined" to have the capability to reach such states of bliss.

 

If you believe that somehow "your seed" of human potential is not as good as anyone else's, there is some belief work to be done here in finding out why and addressing it.

 

One of the ways to do that would be to explore religions, spiritual practices, and altered states of consciousness in order to gain an experiential awareness that you are not what you thought you were and that the limits you thought that you had were only in your mind's programming.

 

The path of moving away from identifying with the physical bodymind and any of your typical "labels" such as your name, your personality traits, your job title, history, environment, possessions, etc... and instead identifying more with your spiritual nature and oneness with the universe is another option to achieve the same. By this means, you can reprogram your mind to see that you, like the rest of the universe, are made of the same stuff: atoms and space, vibrating in each other, and both are at the same time within the environment and the environment itself. 

 

This will give you a reassuring belief in yourself as a divine cosmic event happening in the unfolding of spacetime in the eternal now. 

​

That might sound like a bit much, but it is essentially what most spirituality teaches when it talks about "you" being "awareness" itself - able to detach from your physical body whilst also being present in it. When you meditate, it is the "you" who "watches" your thoughts and emotions and internal body states go by yet that do not define who "you" are - because that version of "you" is all knowing, ever present, boundless, and timeless.

​

By the way: when you train yourself to get into more frequent, longer, and deeper states of "flow", you experience more and more of this boundlessness (dissolution of boundaries) and timelessness. 

So this is the "spiritual, existential" point of view around self-belief: the more deeply rooted you are in the belief that "you" are in nature a Divine being that is greater than what you "think" you are in this human bodymind (with all the things that tie to it), the more you will be able to take the aligned actions that will lead you further & faster towards your goals.

​

Next, we will look at the point of view of the human bodymind itself and its current programming. I call this the "components" aspect of self-belief. 

 

Much less esoteric or woo woo than the above, the idea of the "components" of self-belief has to do with your abilities - you as a person, a being, a bodymind - to do what needs to be done in order to achieve what you want to achieve. 

 

You can have an inherent self-belief about your physical abilities, your mental/intellectual abilities, your relationship abilities, your emotional abilities, your healing abilities, your artistic/creative abilities, your financial abilities, your spiritual abilities, and so on... 

 

You can have very high self-belief in your physical attractiveness, but low self-belief in your humour. Or vice-versa. 

 

These two examples are "parts" of your self belief that can be included in some of the "bigger" categories above.

 

In fact... 

 

You can pretty much choose how you define the categories that you want to create for yourself: there can be a handful, or there can be dozens, it just depends on what kind of lens you wish to look at yourself through.

 

So the first step is to start with creating a simple ranking that works for you. 

 

Consider a scale of 1-10, where 1 represents that you have "no self-belief at all" and 10 represents that "you have unshakeable, undeniable, unstoppable" belief in yourself in that part of the puzzle you are representing. 

 

Pick the minimum number of categories of "self belief" that you want to compare yourself on and then rank them on that scale.

 

If you are not at a 9 or 10 on all them, this is where one of your first major lines of work is. 

 

The more you increase your self-belief, the more you will be able to take the actions required in order to solve your problems, improve your situation, and live your dream life.

 

There are two approaches to increasing self-belief - the conscious mind (rational, analytic, theoretical) one and the subconscious mind (automatic patterns, learned world views and belief systems) reprogramming one.

 

For conscious mind, you can learn about self-belief in theory from books, podcasts, videos, and courses - and it will help get you higher. It's "easier" work to do than subconscious mind work, as all it involves is learning just like in school. 

 

Exploring what makes you curious, making new neural connections, sleeping on them (integrating them into your system), and then rinsing and repeating. 

 

The subconscious mind reprogramming requires a bit more work - not necessarily in terms of difficulty, but in terms of the challenge it is to discover your "blind spots" (the things you don't know that you don't know are holding you back), particularly if they have been conditioned and programmed into your psyche since early childhood, determining your fundamental world views and belief systems.

 

It may also be a bit more costly (either in time or financially) to discover those blind spots: in time, because it takes a lot of exploration and self-reflection/awareness to change them, and in money, because if you want to discover and reprogram them instantly, you might want to pay to work with a coach, therapist, healer or shaman.

 

Regardless of where you are right now, the most important takeaway from this writing is the following: the most important foundation to any growth and self-development path that you go through to behave in a way that is more conducive to your goals is to start with self-belief. 

 

Maximise your self-belief is the areas in which you have self-doubt and you will be able to take more frequent, more consistent, and more effortless actions to making your dreams a reality. 

 

You must believe that your dream life is possible to achieve, not just in general, but for YOU specifically to be able to achieve it. 

 

Yes, it may not be the version of you "today" that can achieve it - but it is that self-belief that will fuel the fire of your growth to evolve into the "next version" of you that will achieve those dreams. 

 

Maximise self-belief, and your actions will start to change, and when your actions start to change to be in alignment with your goals, your results will also start manifesting themselves. 

 

There is no such thing as actions that are too small. 

 

Reading this is progress. Evaluating where you're at is progress. Deciding on the next step is progress. 

 

Belief. Actions. Results. 

 

Rinse and repeat. 

 

To your success! 

 

With love, 

 

Anthony

​

PS: hey, if you read this and you aren't a 9+/10 on overall self-belief, I'm genuinely curious to know why. I'd love to find out more over a virtual coffee and maybe I can share something that will help you quickly make more progress.