You have dreams.

You have ambitions in life.

The problem is you lack self-trust —crippled by fear of judgement and failure.

You hold yourself back even without meaning to. Letting opportunities slip by, becoming stagnant and regretful.

I know it well —I've been there.

I've been silent, hesitant and disconnected from the man I could've been.

• Controlled by illusions.

• Ignorant to the positive side of the world.

• Believing I was meant to stay the same forever.

It's a half lived life.

You become overshadowed by your peers and reminded everyday what you could have been if only you believed in yourself.

In this letter we'll talk about how to reclaim your self-confidence and trust.

We'll break down exactly the reason why you lose self-respect and how to deal with it.

Why you end up distrusting yourself.

When you've been walking in the wrong direction it can be hard to turn around and start again.

It's sickening to re-do and start from level 1.

But that's exactly what you need if you want to understand the different reasons why you've ended up having the current life you have.

Let's start with—

1). Self Betrayal: Becoming someone who you are not in order to fit in

You are naturally is ambitious.

You are always curious and open to learning.

But this is destroyed when you experience the real world when you become an adult or have gone through painful experiences when you were young.

It starts when you are ignored and feel worthless.

The feeling of rejection hurts and you want to run away from it.

You seek validation to gain acceptance because comfort feels nice.

You make choices that don't align with who you are, ignoring your emotions and making choices on behalf of other people's opinions while discarding yours completely.

Believing this is the only way to cope in order to stay safe from the discomfort of invalidation.

You make promises not for yourself but for other people.

And when you do make promises for yourself —you don't do it.

This feeling of betrayal creates internal hatred aka self-loathing.

I put this first not because I want you to feel miserable but because I want you to understand what people want you to be and who you want to be are not the same.

Forcing yourself to be someone else leads to frustration, hatred and anger for yourself and to the world. Being fake to please other people's ego and opinions (people pleasing). 

Most people suffer from this because don't have the courage to openly reject the standards people have put on them unwillingly.

So they self-destruct when they can't hold on anymore.

Moving on—

2). Self destruction: Having beliefs that don't serve you

• "I'm useless"

• "I'm a failure"

• "I can't get anything right"

• "I don't deserve to be loved.

• "I don't have the right to be happy"

If you were confident as a child but now socially anxious and lost in life as an adult.

You have negative beliefs holding you back.

They are subtle but incredibly damaging. They can linger for years, decades or until you die.

You have an obligation to identify and dissect these negative beliefs.

Where they came from and how they are infecting your life with negative thoughts like a mental illness.

Because they make you mess up the easiest tasks and cause you to act subconsciously in a way that you deem cringe so you end up feeling shameful afterwards.

Working hard but having contradictory thoughts is like walking in a uphill stream.

You're putting too much strain even though you could take the other way and make much faster progress.

You have to stop your infected mind from colonizing your thoughts.

The invaders need to be controlled and stopped from getting full control (Your negative beliefs).

You will need to create a barrier for your perception which we will tackle below.

A filtering mechanism that allows your positive thoughts to take over. To separate logical and rational thought from emotional thought to create distance.

Like an observer that see's and knows everything.

Creating a new identity

You are different parts but one person.

• The rational you,

• the emotional you,

• The ideal you

• The actual you.

• The primal you

The rational one is like a friend that's brutally honest. It doesn't care if it hurts your feelings. It will say what it thinks is true (people call this the higher self).

The emotional you is like a storm that's always ready to go down and cause problems when unproperly managed. It bursts out when you don't take care of your emotional needs.

The ideal you is the man you want to become.

He is perfect in your imagination and does everything effortlessly (He is the prince charming in movies). He is not real but merely a guide of what you can learn from.

The primal you is the animal inside you.

It's what makes you desire what shouldn't be and makes you act immorally stupid sometimes. It's the instinctive part of yourself that seeks comfort and pleasure.

Then there's the actual you. It's who you are inside. It's who you are to yourself when people aren't around. It's who you think you are as person.

Why am I telling all of you this?

Because I want you to understand the underlying parts of you being a person.

Most people stupidly believe they are only one as a person when there are actually different parts of them inside working together.

Forgetting their past accomplishments and focusing only in the recent mistakes they've made overlooking the good things they've done in the past.

This one dimensional thinking is your biggest enemy and rival (I talked about this in the previous newsletter).

In the future letters I will go deeper and tackle the spiritual self and inner self.

We'll focus on reclaiming trust and self-confidence in this letter.

A. The will: Patience and commitment

How bad do you want it?

Who you want to be as a person determines how much you are willing to self-sacrifice and deal with problems that come along the way.

You will suffer.

You will fail.

You will go through deep introspection that you'd want to run away from.

You will have to face inner demons you've never met before.

The truth is scary and most people distort reality (lie) to comfort themselves.

Therefore to confront your insecurities in order to become a better person spiritually, mentally and physically is to voluntarily bear the burden of the person you want to be.

You will have to remember your "why" when cracks open.

You will have to remember the reason why you started in the first place when everything seems to have no hope.

That's what you need.

You need commitment and will to attack and continue attacking whatever it is you have to do even if the odds are 1 in a million.

You need to arrogantly believe you can do it even if people around you are telling you cannot.

Even if your own mind tells you cannot —you have to believe.

Your will is a weapon.

Desire is the reason why the world is the way it is now. Robots used to be a child's joke but now we have AI today.

Travelling in space used to be fantasy back in medieval times.

Even now I'm able to write this newsletter and send it to you thanks to modern technology.

I don't have to make a speech so everyone can hear and read what I'm typing here.

And it all came from will. The desire to create and innovate.

And you have it inside you. The will to become more as a person.

You can't run away from it.

This will becomes stronger the more you reject.

It's planted inside you for a reason because you were meant for more.

Don't waste it. Use it to guide you instead.

Now let's talk about insecurities.

B. How to deal with what you hate about yourself.

These are divided into 2 parts so it's easier to read.

Part 1: What happens when you get exposed to social media too much

Most insecurities come from influence.

No one is born insecure.

No child wakes up and say "I hate the way I look" or "I hate how small I am".

It is precisely from peer and media influence.

When people bully, criticize and undermine someone else these feelings take root.

• Being called weird

• Being criticize all the time for your small mistakes

• Being mocked for clothing choices

Your mind starts to bully you because it's so used to being bullied.

Your mind starts to create contradictory thoughts that are negative because it believes your not worthy of becoming a better person.

Media is even worse.

You see unrealistic beauty standards and you compare yourself to those people (celebrities) not being aware what you see has been edited and manipulated precisely to make you feel insecure.

The same goes from your friends when they post online.

You only see the highlight of their lives never the bad, so you believe they must've have a good life not realizing they just don't show it (the amount of edited faces I see online and how they look offline is surreal).

Who you're comparing yourself to online isn't even real. You're competing to someone inexistent and edited.

Comparisons discourage you a lot.

It makes you unmotivated, lose energy and opportunities e.g. this person is better than what I do so, why bother since I am not getting the same results?

The way to deal with your insecurities is to stop comparing.

• Stop comparing to people who aren't real.

• Stop comparing to see who looks better.

• Stop comparing your results to someone else.

I remember back when I'd open Facebook. I'd see my friends looking great. I'd feel bad—"Why am I not as handsome as he is?" , ''Man he looks so good I wish to look like that".

Social media is the breeding ground for insecurities.

Most people get depressed seeing how much better their friends lives are compared to theirs.

They wish to have the same. They wish to experience the same experience their peers are having.

But not getting any of those makes you miserable.

Growing up poor —travelling for vacation was out of option.

Every summer I'd see my friends post about spending time in the beach and having fun.

I'd have so many thoughts of how bad I wanted to go the beach too, I'd see them smiling and laughing.

"Man I wish I can also go there"

This is bad.

Because energy spent thinking about a future that you cannot attain is useless (yes no matter how bad it is —you got to accept reality).

This is surface level.

I haven't even talked about how much insecurity social media causes to women.

So if you want to stop feeling bad and sh*t all the time.

Stop using social media that makes you compare yourself to other people instinctively.

No matter what you do you will compare (it's instinct).

No matter what someone else will always be better than you. No matter what there will always be someone else worse than you.

To summarize your lesson here:

• Learn to stop comparing yourself instinctively to edited and manipulated media

• Learn to stop seeing the world in your opinions. Branch out and see if there's more to learn.

• Learn to stop using social media so you don't have to deal with loss of energy, loss of motivation and loss of opportunities.

Now that we've dealt with the external influence —let's go deep about your inner insecurities.

Part 2: Why you are anxious about yourself (Internal rejection)

This stems from childhood.

• Comparisons to siblings

• Critical comments from parents

• Criticism from adults you don't even know about.

These are subtle yet powerful.

Negative self-talk can become your identity through constant self-criticism.

These damages your self-esteem and create a belief that your flaws are bad even though you can fix them.

Your mind becomes your biggest bully. Constantly reminding yourself of your flaws.

These thoughts translates into your actions.

Influencing the way you talk, the way you act, and the way you think. Which ultimately leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that reinforces your insecurities.

It's a negativity loop. The end starts from the beginning and the beginning starts from the end.

Negative thoughts → Insecurity → More negative thoughts → Stronger insecurity → Negative thoughts

Breaking this cycle starts from challenging your views and belief.

The way to do this is to look inside yourself.

You will look at yourself like you're a video game character. You will look at yourself from a 3rd point perspective.

You will not judge but ask why and how.

Then you'll get answers.

C. Knowing yourself is the antidote to shame and self-hatred

Learning about yourself is the key to growth.

You must be unfiltered and not lie to comfort yourself. You need to see the naked truth.

Because that's the way to growth. To grow you must ask questions and seek answers.

You need to ask yourself:

• What are my weaknesses?

• What are my strengths?

• What are my qualities?

You have to rip yourself apart mentally and see inside. Only then you can fully understand yourself as a person.

Back then I didn't know why I didn't like the way my nose looked.

I was ashamed by it's shape. My friends would always mention it and every time they do I would feel bad about it.

But I was unaware why I didn't like it.

All I thought was "I wish I had a smaller nose". Because that way It'd look normal.

What I actually didn't like was it's shape being different than everyone else.

Because of that I felt alien to my classmates.

I felt different and distant and this caused me to feel insecure because I'm the only one who had this problem and everyone else didn't.

This was one of my weaknesses. I was one dimensional. I didn't look at different reasons and only hated it because I felt like hating it.

The same goes to you.

There are probably hundreds of things you don't like about yourself but you've never known "why" and "how".

You never asked yourself why you hated or didn't like it in the first place.

Your emotions dictated your thought and because of that you believed in blatantly not having analyzed "why".

To fix this you need a pen and paper (For maximum effect stick to traditional means).

A simple exercise would be to:

• Write down 5 strengths

• Write down 5 weaknesses

• Write down 5 qualities

About yourself.

This is a simple process you can immediately start. You don't need a full page to write down about one weakness or strength for now.

You just have to get started. or else you won't do it in the first place.

As time passes and you're putting in the right action —your weaknesses and strengths will change.

If you don't know anything about yourself take a personality test online.

But you have to understand not every information online is correct.

You will use it as a guide to see what is true to your experience.

If a weakness is revealed to be true then don't believe that it will hold you back for the rest of your life.

Understand, analyze and overcome.

Don't make it a disadvantage that will hold you back.

D. Take action to build proof

Here's the fun part.

Confidence is faked till it becomes real. And so is trust in yourself.

Confident people are not aliens. They aren't people that feel no fear and doubt.

It is exactly those reason why they are confident. Because in spite of feeling scared and anxious they do it anyways.

It is this very act that makes a person confident. The more you do it the more second nature it becomes.

Use the same principle to earning self-trust.

Build something you're proud of no matter how small.

The proofs and credibility you stack inside your mind that you are confident will lead to more confidence aka self-trust.

The hardest part is your first act.

It is extremely intimidating and hard to do.

But once you get the ball rolling —the snowball effect happens.

• More input = Higher levels of confidence.

• More input= Higher levels of self-trust.

If you want to grow faster then you need to believe in yourself.

You need to take action (I know you've probably heard of this a million times already but are doing anything about it?)

Because action makes it real. Action makes your thoughts real. Action makes who you are as a person real.

It creates proof and results.

And results are credibility.

When you act you get results. You get achievements in life.

And you can always go back and remember your accomplishments. This in turn makes your self-image better.

"I've done this once, I can do it twice".

That's how self-trust is made. It's when you know you can do it because past you has already proven he can do it.

E. The Goal: Putting it all together

To complete your new identity —you have to ask yourself:

What kind of person do I want to be:

• What kind of qualities do I want?

• What kind of strengths do I want?

• What kind of weaknesses do I want?

You need to vividly imagine the kind of person you want to be.

You need to know how he acts, talks and thinks.

You need to know how he responds to problems and life difficulties.

This is how you completely delete self-loathing. The way is to replace not add.

You will subtract what you don't like about yourself and change it through action.

Because most people are miserable since they don't know what they want from themselves.

And I don't want you to be "most people".

So here's a new reverse engineering action step you can easily do to avoid that

Write your anti-vision.

An anti-vision is a life you would absolutely hate living. It's the most miserable version of your life.

• List out all the things you don't like.

• List out all the things you wish to change.

• List out all of the of worse qualities you can have

Because I finally took action when I realize how cruel life is to lazy people. The concept of anti-vision shook my nerves. It felt so terrifyingly real that I could feel my bones rattling.

This is what I wrote:

After you've written your anti-vision.

Do the opposite.

Take notes on what you can change. See what angles you can attack and make progress.

The goal is to improve not to make you depressed.

This is how you do reverse engineering. You look at the negative side and make it turn into positive.

I hope this helps you out.

Use your anti-vision as an energy drink every time you feel unmotivated.

I'm sure you'll do the extra push even if you didn't want to.

That's all for this week.

Hope this helps and see you next time.

-Noat (Author of Improvement Letters).

PS: If you’ve got any questions hit reply and share this with your friends if you found it useful.