The most influential voice in your life is the one inside your head: your own. It carries more weight than your parents’, peers’, or mentors’.
If that voice is constantly telling you that you’re not good enough, that you’ll never succeed, or that people like you don’t achieve great things, it will become one of the biggest obstacles between you and your goals.
But where does that doubt come from?
Your experiences shape most, if not all, of your beliefs. If you grew up without money, for example, you might still see yourself as poor long after you’ve become financially successful, refusing to spend much of your hard-earned wealth out of fear that it might one day run out. I’ve known multimillionaires who still carry hundreds of dollars in cash because, psychologically, they feel broke. Their circumstances have changed, but their self-image hasn’t caught up.
You can change your circumstances without changing the beliefs you hold about yourself. That’s why overcoming self-doubt takes more than someone telling you that you’re capable. You need to see what’s possible with your own eyes. In other words, your brain needs hard evidence.
One of the best ways to build evidence is by surrounding yourself with people who are already doing what you want to do.
When you see someone with a similar background achieve something you once thought was out of reach, you start to associate success with more than an abstract possibility. It becomes something you can picture yourself achieving, too. After all, if they did it with a very similar upbringing and the same obstacles, why can’t you?
The people around you influence what you believe is possible. If everyone in your circle shares the same limitations, it’s easy to mistake those limitations for reality. But when you spend time around people who challenge those assumptions, you begin to expand your own sense of what you can accomplish.
Once you’re seeking out and spending time with people who motivate and inspire you, add accountability, because even when you decide you want to change, that old voice isn’t easy to eliminate.
Every time you take a risk, pursue an opportunity, or do something outside your comfort zone, doubt can creep back in. You’re suddenly back to wondering whether you’re making a mistake or whether you’re capable of following through.
This is where the people around you can help, too. They can hold you to your commitments and help you push through the moments when your confidence falters. And you need to keep showing up long enough to build a track record of your own success.
Every time you follow through on a commitment, take a calculated risk, or accomplish something you once doubted you could do, you give your brain another piece of evidence that you’re capable. Over time, those small wins begin to compound and change the story you tell yourself.
After a while, you stop relying on empty affirmations and start building confidence on the evidence of what you’ve done.
Self-confidence isn’t something you simply decide to have. It’s something you build. And you build it by surrounding yourself with people who raise your standards, creating accountability that keeps you moving forward, and collecting evidence that you’re capable of more than your doubts would have you believe.
Eventually, the voice that once held you back will become the voice that’s pushing you forward.
