The Best Way To Remove Doubt Is To Find Proof (Confidence Has To Be Earned)

I think this is a huge issue that holds a lot of people back from working consistently towards their goals over a long period of time. Heck I think it stops a lot of people from even taking the first STEP and starting. What am I talking about?

• Confidence
• Doubt
• Self belief
• Some sort of guarantee of the outcome of all the work you’ll put in and all the sacrifices you make before you make them

A lot of people on social media and in forums etc, all seem to want to go after their goals or start a business but one common question that comes up time and time again is:

“What if I do all this work and invest so much of my time and it doesn’t pay off?”

It’s like people want a guarantee of success before they start. They are full of self doubt and constantly looking for ways to overcome it and get the confidence and motivation they think they need to start, continue and eventually succeed.

Unfortunately, as you already know deep down, life doesn’t work like that.

There are no guarantees. There is every chance you could invest all this time and effort and get nothing in return. Now I don’t actually believe that but nobody can offer any guarantees that this won’t be the case.

It takes a tremendous amount of self belief and confidence to commit to building the life you want and you might not see any results for years. In fact the common thread is that it does take years (like anywhere from 3-10) before anything that looks likes results starts to materialise.

When was the last time you devoted most of your time to something for 5 years with nothing but self belief that you will achieve the end result?

For me personally it was about 5 years of nothing but hardship before things started to turn around. After about 7 years it was much better and now (about 9 years), I’m starting to enjoy the early fruits of all the hard work in my lifestyle here in Australia and it’s getting good and exciting and I can’t wait for the next 5-10 years.

I’ve developed sooo much as a person compared to what or more importantly who I’d be had I not chosen this path and just ‘enjoyed my free time’.  At first I hated it and was almost forced to do it really, but now I love it and developing and building and progressing.

A couple key things I’ve learned that I wish someone would have said to me all those years ago

First one:

Yes there is no guarantee you will reach your goal… but there IS a one-hundred percent guarantee that you won’t reach it sat on the sofa drinking a 6-pack, smoking a fu****g reefer every night!

Think about this… even if you put in all that effort and all that time and you don’t reach your goal, how much better do you think your life will be if you reach 70% of it? Heck even 50% of it? How much more valuable, skillful and fulfilled do you think you will be after years of working on developing yourself and your life in your own time?

Do you think after 10 years you will look back and say I wish I played more Call of Duty or do you think you will look back and think “I’m sooo glad I went for it 10 years ago and never gave up”. Also there’s nothing worse than regret. You don’t want to get old and wonder ‘what if”.

Second one (and the trigger that caused me to write this post):

“Confidence and self belief is earned“

This is something that you don’t see touted much in the land of social media perfection. The land where everyone’s a winner and special and you have one fluffy feel good meme after another pushed at you day in day out.

The truth though in my experience, is that you don’t have ‘it’ in you no matter what the memes say. Most of you will be filled with doubt, not just at the start (although that’s usually the worst) but time and time again as you are forced to constantly learn and adapt and live outside of your comfort zone.

I’m reading a book at the moment and one quote stood out: “The best way to remove doubt is to find proof”

You only get confidence and self belief when you have proof. So how do you get proof?

You start working to build the life you want and when you start seeing wins, no matter how small, you start to see the proof and then your belief starts to grow along with your confidence.

You want self belief and confidence? Go and start working and you’ll start to earn it.