“Just believe in yourself” is advice often given, but what does it really mean to have belief in oneself? What happens if one has no belief in them self? Is it even necessary to consider the concept of believing in yourself?

A friend of mine used tell me to believe in myself, it was at a time when I needed that advice but unfortunately at the time the words meant nothing, the concept going straight over my head.

There is no quality control of the advice we give and the advice we get, for example there is a quite ridiculous saying “don’t cry you will only upset yourself” – completely useless advice to someone who is obviously very upset about something.

So when someone says believe in yourself often they feel you have qualities that you may have never considered yourself as having, even our closest friends see us differently to how we see ourselves, in fact no one can ever really know what it is like being you, and if they don’t know, how can they/we advise?

The problem is of course the times we need to be advised to believe in ourselves are usually the times we have no belief in ourselves, in which case the advice tends to fall on deaf ears.

So what is belief in yourself?

Have you ever thought to yourself “I knew there was something wrong” or “I had a bad feeling about that” or “I didn’t know how but I just knew it would work out”.

I am not describing psychic experiences I am talking about our day to day lives when we just have a gut feeling about something, maybe our subconscious picked up subtle signs, who knows where these feelings come from, but they exist.

Listening to those feelings is having some belief in yourself.

Acting on those feelings in the face of others rationality is having complete belief in yourself.

It can often seem our whole world is conspiring to prove our belief in ourself is irrational and wrong and we ourselves confuse the matter with wishful thinking on one hand and paranoia on the other.

If you want to develop your belief in yourself just follow your gut feelings, you will not always be right but are you always right now?

I believe the concept of believing in yourself is well worth spending some quiet time contemplating because it can often be the turning point in ones life when one goes with ones own gut feeling with a confident belief in oneself.

In following a strong belief in yourself you can still be wrong, but being wrong or failing or making bad decisions can be very positive for your future and is only negative if you do not learn from the experience.

And allowing yourself to be wrong sometimes, is how to not turn believing in yourself into arrogance.