You are a puppet of other people’s words.

From your career path to which clothes do you want to buy.
From which university do you go to to which country do you want to visit next.
From who do you marry to which colleague do you choose to have lunch with.

You can’t help but be heavily influenced by other people’s opinions.

If they don’t think it’s a good thing, you can’t do that.
If they disagree with your opinions, you can’t think in that way.
If they don’t validate your feelings, you shouldn’t feel that way.

Your words, actions, and even feelings are restricted by people’s thoughts. You’re practically in prison- called “people’s minds”.

You can’t be yourself.

What’s the point of living a life that isn’t chosen by you, but assigned by others?

What’s the point of being you, when none of your characteristics stems from you?

Living as an insecure human being is an excruciation.

You’re just a slave to other people.

You feel suffocated, restricted, suffering, whenever you skew your decision due to “other people’s opinions”.

You have no autonomy.
You have no freedom.
You have no self.

And the reason for all these endless sufferings, is you aren’t confident in being yourself.

Confidence is autonomy.

If you aren’t confident, you don’t have a say in your life.

In this letter, I will show you

1. the 3 pillars of confidence and
2. how can you work up each to boost up your confidence and regain autonomy.

Let’s get started.

The 3 pillars of confidence

Confidence is comprised of self-understanding, self-trust, and self-love.

1) Self-understanding

You can’t be confident in something that you don’t know well enough.

Imagine you’ve just met a new person in your life. You will be very careful over your word choice or topics you talk about because you don’t know how that person will react to it.

Now think about the latest conversation between you and a friend or family member that you’re really close with. You know him/her so well that you just know how to handle the conversation and make it goes smooth. You aren’t walking on eggshells when you talk to him/her.

Apply this thinking to yourself.

Do you know yourself well enough?

Can you accurately predict how would you feel under certain circumstances?
Do you understand why do you feel that way?
Do you know how to stop feeling in that way, if the emotional response is undesirable to you?

Of course, there is always feelings that we can’t predict, and we will never really know ourselves well enough to give a 100% accurate prediction.

However, an 80% of accuracy is should be your lower threshold if you’re taking self-understanding seriously- which you should, because you are the only person that you would be in this entire life time.

So, how can you understand yourself more?

You’ll have to break it down according to your time-line: past, current, and future.

Past: your personal history.
– How did your parents raise you?
– What mindsets have you acquired from them? And your peers, friends, colleagues, or random people online?
– How did you live your life (habits, lifestyle)?
– How do you perceive yourself?
– What is your personality/character?

Studying your past helps you understand your present, since your current way of being is the result of the unique combination of your past experiences.

Current: your day-to-day decisions and feelings.
– How do you feel when you get up in the morning? Do you feel recharged and energised, and excited to start another day, or feel so damn that you have to start another day?
– How do you feel when you go to sleep? Do you feel fulfilled because you’ve put in the effort that moves you closer to your dreams, or so damn that your free time ends so fast and you will soon have to start another day?
– Who do you hang out with? Do you hangout with them because you want to or because they are your only options?
– How do you feel about your work/job/career/business? Are you enjoying the process and are satisfied with the progression or you feel so stuck and trapped but don’t know how to escape it?
– How do you feel about your decisions? Did you make that decision, or let others make it for you by obeying whoever’s opinions, in which you feel betrayed and disappointed by yourself, again?

Start examining your emotions. They aren’t there for no reason. They are a product of a trigger. You have to trace their origins, the “why?”, in order to understand yourself.

Future: your vision and goals.
– What is the meaning of your life?
– What experiences do you want out of this life?
– What achievements would you like to accomplish in this life?
– What do you want people remember you for?

If you don’t know where are you going, you aren’t heading towards your desired direction.

If you are not heading towards your desired direction, you will always feel unfulfilled and demotivated, because you lack purpose and meaning in living.

Humans don’t crave for happiness, we crave for meaning.

We want to make sense of everything, including life.

We want to know why are we here.
We want to know what are we doing here.
We want to know how can we do what we’re supposed to do here.

Clarity is the key to a directional life, which is the key to progression, which is the key to realising our dreams, which is the key to self-trust.

2) Self-trust

Self-trust is finding yourself reliable.

It’s integrity. It is taking your words seriously.
→ Whatever promise you make to anyone (including yourself), deliver.

It’s honesty. It is always telling yourself the truth, without judgement or sugarcoating.
→ Whatever emotions you feel, even if it’s “bad” emotions¹ like jealousy and bitterness, admit it (to yourself).
→ Whatever desires you have, even if it’s “greedy²” like money and power, admit it (to yourself).

It’s ability. It is believing that you can make whatever you genuinely³ desire in life come true, regardless of how “impossible” it is.
→ This demands you to learn and practice so you get good at the required skills for doing so. You absolutely have the potential to get good at any skills (read more in my last newsletter how to get good at anything), but you have to actually get good at the required skill to make yourself trust your ability.
You are not stupid.

It’s decisiveness. It is believing that you can make the best final decision for yourself after giving due consideration to other’s opinions.
→ This demands you to develop critical thinking and filter through the opinions and understand the perspectives behind each thought.
→ This demands you to learn and practice enough in decision-making so your decisions indeed are good. If you always make decisions that get yourself in trouble, you won’t trust yourself anymore.
Again, you are not stupid. Stop wanting to do nothing but fool yourself with words like “oh I trust you, just be confident already”. It won’t work.

When you find yourself reliable, you trust yourself more than anyone else.

You know whatever you promise yourself, you deliver.

You know whatever you feel/want, you admit, you aren’t ashamed for showing your true essence (to yourself), because there is nothing to be ashamed of.

You know whatever you want it, you get it for yourself.

You know whatever decision you make, would be better than if other’s make that decision for you, because you have more knowledge, and you understand yourself more.

It becomes hard NOT to care about your opinions more than other’s opinions.

How can a person like this be unconfident?

Yes, it demands a lot of work.

But the pain of putting in the effort, would be nothing in comparison to that of losing autonomy and freedom in life.

3) Self-love

Self-love, as to contrary belief, is not something that you can “actively” do.

Self-love gurus ask you to “treat yourself”, “kiss yourself”, “hug yourself”, but I can tell you none of these will work if you don’t love yourself at the first place.

Think about the people you love (or have loved) in life.

Did you “deliberately” do it? Or did the love just naturally happen?

Same way with yourself.

You can’t force yourself to love anyone, including yourself.

Self-love is not guaranteed. Isn’t that because the person is you yourself, that the nature of love suddenly shifts and can become “forceable”. No.

The only way to make you love you, is by becoming the person that you would enjoy being, you would be proud of being.

There is no other way. No amount of kissing or hugging works.⁴

Start thinking how does your ideal-self look like.
– What is his/her character?
– What are his/her habits?
– How does he/she show up (physical appearance)?
– How does he/she present him/herself (the way you talk and behave)?
– What knowledge/skills does he/she have?
– How does he/she feel about him/herself?

The more vivid the image, the stronger your emotions are in becoming that person, the better.

Next, you pick ONE (yes, one only) aspect that you could start the first step RIGHT NOW.

If you try to do everything, you will end up doing nothing. Because there is no clarity, and you will feel all over the place.

Be reassured; as you make improving that one aspect a habit that you do it automatically without the need of “willpower”, you can start incorporating the next, and the next, and the next.

Let’s say you want to start with your physique (which is a great starting point because it fixes your outer appearance and inner energy level. You kill two birds with one stone!).

Start incorporating a 5-minute workout routine before you take a shower.

No, don’t pay a ton of money to join a gym membership and work out an hour a day.

It’s almost impossible to make such drastic changes last because the human brain doesn’t like changes.

Any changes is uncomfortable to your brain, and the larger the discomfort, the more difficult for you to execute and stay consistent.

Start small.

Your turn

Now you understand how being unconfident is taking away your autonomy and freedom.

Now you understand what confidence is (the 3 pillars) and what can you do about each to boost up your confidence.

The only thing left is to take action.

No amount of advice works if you are not executing it.

Pick one aspect you want to improve, and start small. Aim for consistency, then you can slowly increase the intensity (if you want to). Incorporate the changes one by one.

I know you can do it.

That’s all for this one.

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Footnotes:

1. There is no bad emotions. Every emotion signal something about you, whether it’s a past that needs to be processed and healed, or a future desire that has to be fulfilled. There are your compass, they are neutral. The “good” “bad” part plays a role in you reactions to them. For example, using unlawful force against another person to express your anger is a “bad” behaviour. Anger itself is not a “bad” emotion, but your reaction to it may be a bad behaviour. ↩︎
2. “Greed” itself is a neutral term (to me). You can want a lot, but if your means is by creating even more value to other people in exchange with that wealth, that’s called “ambitious” and “contribution”. But if you want a lot without wanting to provide anything meaningful to the world, that’s called “selfish” and you probably won’t be able to achieve it anyways. ↩︎
3. The key here is genuinely, from the bottom of your heart. Not the goals that other people make you feel like you “have to” achieve in order to be deemed as a successful person ↩︎
4. Affirmations like looking into the mirror and saying “I love you” to yourself can have some positive effect if and only if you are actively doing something to improve yourself in your desired direction, e.g. hitting the gym because you want a better physique. But it won’t work if you aren’t doing anything to improve yourself into a version that you’d love more, but just demanding yourself to love this version of yourself. Although this is the third time I say this (because this is important), please be reminded that you are not stupid. If you aren’t putting in the effort, you know it and you just can’t love a person that doesn’t invest anything into you. ↩︎