How to Be Confident & Believe in Yourself

CONSTITUTIONAL & METABOLIC INSIGHTS

Confidence is the secure belief that the story of your life is good, and that you are worthy of something wonderful. It is rooted in the virtues of humility and hope. When worldly circumstances feel hopeless or overpowering, we come face to face with our natural lack of control. We realize our own inadequacy—that our personal power is limited and finite.

Acceptance of this limitation is, in modern language, called self-compassion amid the struggle of life. In classical terms, it is known as the virtue of humility. Humility is not self-disparagement; it is the confidence-building belief that failure is not a crushing blow to the ego but a natural part of life. This virtue helps us rise up and try again—without excess embarrassment, or shame.

Yet compassion and humility alone offer little consolation unless they rest on a greater and more hopeful truth: that you will ultimately be okay, that the story of your life is good, and that you are worthy of something wonderful. Self-compassion soothes only when failure is not the end of the story, and when you trust that your destiny can yet be joyful if you try again.

This deep confidence in your worth and happy destiny is, in modern terms, mislabeled believing in yourself—but in classical virtue ethics, it is known as hope.

No one who truly believes in themselves imagines they have infinite power or control to fulfill every wish, even while acknowledging they have some nice gifts or talents. Rather, they believe they have a favored destiny—that somehow fortune will smile on them again. To "believe in yourself" is, at its core, to believe that life itself is inclined toward your good—that fate favors and loves you.

But who is this lady of fortune, this author of fate? Boethius (c. 480-524 AD) writes that Lady Luck is fickle: she gives worldly goods one day and takes them away the next as she turns her wheel of fortune. Boethius warns us not to place our trust in her. To rely on her, your own strength, or any finite being, he claims, is risky..

The longing to be loved and favored, to be worthy of something wonderful, to be rescued from despair—this is precisely what God promises, yet without the fickleness and presumption of fortune. The Author of life does not promise worldly success, which is fleeting, but happiness of soul. He promises that if you follow Him, He will make your soul light and your love great.

True hope, therefore, is not based on changeable circumstances but on confidence in God's providence and love. The root of the virtue of hope is trust in His promise to save you from the jaws of death itself and to give you eternal fulfilling life. Hope is possible only if:

• Death is not the end, because God is Lord even over death.
• You are destined for eternal fulfillment, because He loves you.

How, then, do we draw strength from hope in daily life? We find it by knowing that God is present—loving us even now, within our painful circumstances. He is not only loving us, but saving us, working for the joy of our souls even as He teaches and tempers us through suffering. Such hope gives us the courage to face even death with greatness of soul.

With this in mind, contemplate God's presence and Him loving you in one poignant, painful memory. How does His promise and love change that memory? How might He use this pain for your ultimate happiness—and for the good of the world? What virtue or strength were you meant to cultivate through it?Leave a Comment / Question