The practical work of believing in yourself
Too often, I get stuck trying to negotiate my way into self-belief, waiting for a specific positive outcome to give me permission to believe in my own abilities.
For me—and likely for you, too—this stuff has everything to do with writing: With believing in myself as the kind of person capable of making the things I want to make, even when those things don’t yet exist in the world.
It’s a lot like writing a first draft: We choose to trust the process and let the words arrive, and we do this by not obsessing over immediate perfection or external validation. As writers, we know that belief in our work can’t depend on a flawless first draft. In this way, the act of creating is the act of believing.
Don’t get me wrong: I want to be successful, including the kind of success that, yes, sometimes involves external positive outcomes. But I also want my belief in myself and my writing to not depend on the world’s ability to recognize every part of me or immediately reward my successes. The immense subjectivity, frequent wonkiness, and persistent problems of the publishing industry, for one thing, make this a really vital choice, especially if I wish to protect my relationship to my creativity in the first place.
What I’m trying to get at is that, yes, you can be a good writer without having your good writing quickly & constantly validated by external, pre-defined sources.
In other words: Yes, you can choose to be radiant without waiting for permission to shine.
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When we learn that belief in ourselves must be earned, must be validated, we let all our choice-making, and our inherent capacity for self-permission, slip away.
The more my belief depends upon an external, inflexible circumstance, the more anxiously I remain attached to it. This keeps the belief existing outside of me, but because it defines the innermost parts of me, I feel nervous, hostile, and defensive.
Yet choosing self-belief is not always easy.
And if you’re like me, there are days where you feel so buried in self-doubt that you’re entirely disconnected from your sense of worth. Choosing to believe in yourself on those days isn’t about bypassing the hard feelings or preventing them from showing up. Rather, this practice is a muscle; objectively, it grows stronger with each use, even when your progress isn’t clear or immediate.
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The more I practice this work, the more I notice an interesting correlation: That when I choose to believe in myself—when I treat it less like a thing I must prove and more like a decision I get to make—my defensiveness tends to quiet down.
Why? Because there’s no longer anything external to defend. Because the belief lives inside me, where I have a say over its existence and protection.
Our beliefs are our choices, which is the one-sentence version of what I’ve been trying to say here.
I can wake up each morning and choose certain things with and about my life based on my values. That these choices are born of my agency, sprung from the eternal quiet of my body-mind-heart, doesn’t diminish their veracity.
What I want you to know today:
You can practice believing your beliefs.
Whether you start small with a daily affirmation or you lean on the support of a creative mentor who understands your journey, you can build the skill of believing in yourself and your work.
Because you can make the choice to believe something, and then let the choice itself (your invaluable agency) be its own internal proof.
