It’d be nice, right?
If you were better looking, smarter, or more well-connected.
It’d be nice if your life was easier, you were able to get what you want with less effort, and results just came to you.
It’d be nice to get rid of the parts of yourself and your circumstances that you don’t want to be there, but if you can’t, the next best option is to finally do the one thing that would give you peace, confidence, and the ability to live the best life possible for you.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
You’re always going to be you.
It’s better to accept yourself as you are than to try to be something you’re not.
It’s better to embrace your ‘flaws,’ or even turn them into positives, instead of wishing they weren’t there.
You’re better off ignoring what other people have and replacing envy with a total focus on living the best life possible given your talents, abilities, and circumstances.
Like most self-help advice, this sounds good in theory, but it’s a hell of a challenge in practice.
So what do you do?
Try some of the frameworks I’m about to share, apply them to your life, fail at the process, try again, fail some more, try again, and repeat the process until you’re more confident than you’ve ever been.
Not perfect, but much better than you were in the beginning.
Crush Your Limiting Beliefs For Good
Someone with half your talent is getting 10x the results because they didn’t tell themselves a BS story about their potential.
If you want to become like them, take one of the fake rules about life you have in your mind and find an example that contradicts it.
- Find “unattractive” (quotes because it’s subjective) people with great social skills that meet romantic partners easily
- Find “dumb” people who are successful in business
- Look for people with tough upbringings who found a way out
Repeat this process to teach yourself that whatever perceived flaw or negative circumstance you have in your life isn’t causing the outcomes you’re getting.
You’re causing them because of the beliefs you have about your situation.
There’s a version of you that’s a massive winner, with the only difference being the thoughts between their ears.
Speaking of that person…
A Scary Thought and An Inspiring Piece of Wisdom
Think about this quote. Write it down. Post it on your wall where you can see it:
“Someone once told me the definition of hell. At the end of your life, the person you became met the person you could’ve become.” – Anonymous
You can become much more than you are right now without changing who you are. Ask yourself what the ideal version of yourself would do and attempt to do it.
Work with what you have instead of fighting it.
You might not have the quickest mind in the world, so if you have to take more time to study, so be it.
You might have to work twice as hard as the next person to get the same result. If you want the result, so be it.
Maybe you’re not the most persuasive person in the world, so you have to ask more people and get rejected more than the average person to get the number of yeses you need. It is what it is.
Our capacity for success is like a cup. Maybe your cup is smaller than others, but if you fill it to the brim and they half-ass it, you can outcompete them.
This next framework will also help you blow past the competition.
Stop Setting Yourself Up For Failure (And Do This Instead)
I’m not good at most sports. I have bad hand-eye coordination. No matter how much I practice, I’ll never be as good as a natural.
It’s a game I can improve at, but it’s not worth playing because I can’t win.
I’ve been gifted other talents. I can articulate my thoughts through writing and speaking. I have intellect and the ability to consume and retain information fast.
Instead of running away from my blessings and trying to become an athlete, I became a writer and a content creator. The path was laid at birth.
You can’t be anything you want. You can’t win every game.
Your life will be easier if you play to your strengths and find your edge. You have an archetype. Lean into it. Lean into you. Don’t play life on hard mode. You have an unfair advantage. Find it and exploit it.
Master the Subtle Art of Discernment
Practicing radical acceptance means you live out this quote:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I bolded the middle phrase because it reveals an important truth about self-acceptance.
There’s a difference between accepting yourself and letting yourself off the hook. You should be yourself. You are okay as you are in the sense that you’re inherently as worthy or equal to any other human being.
But, that doesn’t mean you’re not selling yourself short. Self-acceptance doesn’t mean accepting everything about yourself and your life. If there are things you can change, change them and you will be happier.
Change the Cover of Your Book (If You Want to)
Cosmetic changes can have a profound impact on your self-esteem.
If you get in better shape, wear nice clothes that fit, and groom yourself well, you’ll feel better.
This can be taken to the extreme like people who get tons of plastic surgery out of a deep sense of insecurity, but for most of us, changing the three variables I mentioned goes a long way.
If you don’t work on these areas at all, you’ll lack confidence because you know you have control over these areas but you’re just not doing anything about them.
Maxxing out your appearance and improving your health in the process is one of the easiest dominos to knock over to build self-confidence.
This is Pointless: Do It Anyway
Money won’t make you happy. Status is a hollow goal rooted in the misguided desire for recognition. If you reach a major goal in your life you’ll feel euphoric for a little while but you’ll get used to your newfound success fast.
You should do all the above anyway to find out they weren’t the answer.
Until then, you’ll understand the concept in practice, but you won’t be able to feel it because you didn’t scratch the itch.
All roads lead back to self-acceptance.
If you can master self-acceptance upfront without doing anything, great.
But most of us have to attack the problem from all the wrong angles until we finally realize we should just be happy to be alive, enjoy the moment, stop caring what others think, and do what we enjoy just for the sake of doing it.
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You’re selfish and self-centered. I can prove it.
Lack of self-acceptance is rooted in self-centeredness. If you lack confidence, your sense of self is too strong. You think people are what you’re doing, but they don’t. You think the spotlight is on you, but it isn’t. You’re way too focused on yourself to just engage in the world around you.
Stop focusing on yourself. Start focusing on other people.
Instead of thinking of the most clever thing to say in conversation, become a good listener and be interested in the other person.
Instead of worrying about whether your business will succeed, focus on creating amazing products that change people’s lives.
Practice turning off that lens where you’re perceiving the world through the world’s perception of you. Instead, you become an observer of the world and make a positive impact on the people in it.
Give people good emotions.
Think about what their lives are like and try to make them happy.
A weird thing will happen. As you take the focus off yourself and put it on others, they’ll start to respond to you more positively, which will increase your confidence by default instead of you trying to become more confident.
Eventually, if you’re lucky, you might stop trying altogether.
Trying is the Road to Failure
The true state of self-acceptance happens when you stop trying.
This doesn’t mean you don’t work hard. It means you stop trying to force results to happen. It’s when you operate from the place of giving things your best effort and letting the chips fall where they may.
Sure, you want people to like you, but if they don’t, cool.
It would be nice to build an amazing business, but you’re not going to let your business success define you.
You can work to make your situation better, but there’s nothing to improve. There is no void you need to fill with success. You emanate power instead of exerting force.
Once you’re comfortable in your own skin and you come from a sense of being instead of doing, you end up getting everything you’re tempted to push hard for anyway.
It just comes to you.
The universe likes and rewards people who already like themselves.
Change the things you can, but don’t need to change them.
Improve your life, but don’t try to improve yourself.
Everything you want to happen will happen if you just let it. Get out of your own way and go win.