Belief

I read a great piece of writing by Joan Westenberg yesterday on Why Belief Beats Discipline and how our self-identity overrides anything that doesn’t align with our personal narrative.

We are not consistent with our goals. We are consistent with our identities. And if your identity says you’re inconsistent, undisciplined, doomed to flake or drift or binge or relapse, then the moment you raise your standards, your subconscious files an objection. You “forget” your commitments. You postpone things “just for today.” You start researching better productivity tools instead of doing the actual work. All of it in the service of returning to your known baseline - the set of standards you believe you can meet.

This led me to journal for a while about the limiting beliefs I have about myself because you can’t change your personal narrative if you don’t know what it is. I realized one of the more persistent lies I keep telling myself is that I’m “too old” to do this or that. “If only I’d done this sooner” or “if only I’d thought of this when I was younger” or blah blah blah. I don’t know where any of this came from, but it popped into the background of my thoughts one day and took root.

I know it’s not true – as long as I’m still breathing it’s not too late to do anything – but there’s this hum of uncertainty looping around my head these days that I’m working to rewire.

All of it goes along with the other persistent voice that berates me about all the things I haven’t done that I should’ve done by now: “Look at all this time you’ve wasted.”

The trick that most people don’t want to admit works: in order to meet a higher standard, you have to believe - with absolute certainty - that you will meet it before there’s any evidence. That’s what makes it hard. You have to flip the usual script. Not: I’ll believe I can do it once I’ve done it. But: I’ll believe I can do it so that I can do it.

I got started writing on the Internet by sending a piece of writing to someone who’d explicitly stated they were not soliciting pieces of writing. I did it on a dare, but I didn’t think twice. I wrote a story and sent it off to a stranger I very much admired.

I thought, at best, they’d ignore it, and at worst, they’d reply telling me not to send them unsolicited work. But I felt confident in the writing. I believed it was worth sharing.

When I woke up the next day, not only had they replied to say they loved it, they’d gone ahead and published it for all to see. There were 50+ emails in my inbox from strangers gushing about it, and more kept coming.

That little dare changed my life. (Thank you, Amber).

If I’d been too shy, or too scared, or too self-conscious I wouldn’t have done any of it. But back then I didn’t hesitate because the voice in my head told me that my writing was worth sharing. I had zero evidence to back this up beyond a few positive comments from friends, and it honestly didn’t matter what anyone said or thought.

I believed my writing was worth sharing and that was enough.

Dan Koe sent out a newsletter yesterday with a message that I think boils down to:

All real change is identity change.

If you believe you are “x” you will make choices that align with being “x” and you will remain “x” forever. If you want to be “y” then you have to believe you are “y.”

Knowing isn’t enough. You have to believe.

I might go into this more in my newsletter (Coming Soon™) because preemptive self-belief ties in nicely with the Law of Attraction and that might be worth exploring.

All of this to say: I’m working to change the story I tell myself about myself because I still do believe that my writing is worth sharing.