“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” I love this quote, which is usually attributed to Henry Ford, as I see this play out all the time. What you believe about yourself changes what you’re prepared to do.
I once dated a very successful man who had a very difficult upbringing. He hadn’t had the kind of love or support that makes you grow up automatically assuming everything will be fine. But somewhere along the way, he had developed an incredibly strong belief that he could find a solution.
I remember him telling me one evening that something had gone badly wrong at work. It was a serious problem. At the time, I remember thinking that if it had been me, I probably would have panicked and been worried about how I was going to fix it. He didn’t. His attitude was that there will be an answer, he just needs to find it. So he stayed up all night researching the issue, worked through the problem, and by the next morning he’d found the solution.
What hit me was that it wasn't able to solve this just because he was intelligent, but it was what he assumed from the start - he believed there was something he could do. And when you believe you can handle something, you approach the situation differently. You’re more open to solutions that may present themselves, and more likely to look for another way when the first one doesn’t work. You ask questions and keep trying instead of treating the first setback as proof that you were never capable in the first place. I believe this was why he was so successful in his career at a relatively young age.
There’s actually a psychological term for this: self-efficacy. It’s our belief in our ability to deal with a particular challenge or achieve something we’re trying to do. Research has linked stronger self-efficacy with greater motivation, persistence and performance.
I learned another version of this from a boss I had in Singapore. He taught me not to decide somebody was going to say no before I’d even asked, and would regualarly remind me "Don't ask, don't get". That sounds so obvious, but how often do we do exactly that? We don’t ask for something because we think that they’ll never agree to that, or we're asking too much. We think we'll be rejected before anybody else gets the chance. But sometimes, when you actually ask, they say yes. I saw exactly this when I started to push back on something or ask for something I thought I wasn't going to get, because usually I got it.
I think that’s where believing in yourself becomes useful. It’s about being willing to find out what you can do instead of assuming you can’t.
If that doesn’t come naturally to you, start small. Ask for something you’d normally assume you couldn't get, like a discount at a shop or a small complimentary item. Try that new workout or pottery class that you thought you wouldn’t be good at. When a problem comes up, catch yourself before you go straight to “I can’t deal with this” and ask, “What could I try?” You might fail sometimes. But you’ll also start gathering evidence that you’re more capable than you’ve been giving yourself credit for. And after a while, instead of looking at every new problem and wondering whether you can handle it, you might start feel more confident that you can actually work it out.
