The story you believe about yourself matters.

The human brain loves seeing patterns and categorizing things, both designed to help respond faster while doing less mental work. But the narrative you believe about yourself isn’t always based on the truth, just based on what you’ve bought into.

For example, if I told you that you were a bad driver, your mind would immediately remember all the times you hit a curb or got a ticket while discarding the 99% of the times you didn’t do either of those. This example might be silly, but this extends to other things:
I’m a bad partner.
I’m a total loser.
I’m not good in social situations.

This matters because you work in spirals. Your thoughts impacts your behaviors impacts your emotions, all interchangeably and constant. What you believe about yourself shapes your behaviors, which shapes what you believe about yourself.

There was a study where college students were told they would be interviewed for a job, and they got to pick who would interview them: someone who was encouraging and offered praise, someone who was harsh and critical, or someone in between. The students who had low opinions of themselves beforehand? They picked the harsh, critical interviewer.

If you’re having a hard time believing good things about yourself, I’d offer two tips:
(1) ask yourself what narratives you’re buying into without knowingly making the choice.
Did you choose them?
Were they given to you by someone else?
What narrative about yourself would you want to believe?
What narrative would you believe about someone else in your place?

(2) Shift your definition of ‘believe.’ When we think of beliefs, we think of a vague sense of mental certainty. How about this: you believe the things you’re willing to act on. Experts in anxiety will tell you that much of overcoming fears is acting on the realistic view of things instead of the fearful one. Acting differently literally changes your brain, and it gives you experiences that help to reinforce the belief you’re acting on.

What old narratives about yourself need to go?
What new ones need to replace them?
What would it look like to act on your new beliefs, even when you don’t feel sure?