Why You Shouldn't Believe In Yourself And What To Instead

Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad Costanzo and today's episode is not an interview. It is not even an original thought. Instead, I am going to share with you an article that I stumbled across on Facebook the other day, written by one of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, who wrote the book. Trust Me, I'm Confessions of a Media Manipulator as well as Ego is the Enemy. And I'll put links to those in the show notes as well as a link to the article on ThoughtCatalog.com that Ryan wrote just the other day on May 27th that really just kind of hit home with me, both for personal reasons, for reasons when I deal with clients, etc. And also because I had just given somebody some entrepreneurial advice. Talking about, look, sometimes you got to believe in yourself when nobody else does and you've got to push through and you just got to sometimes have delusional belief in yourself that you're going to be able to do it. Otherwise you're not going to be able to fight the battles necessary as an entrepreneur. And this article went completely counter to that advice. And by the way, the advice I was giving is very traditional advice. Believe in yourself. You hear that everywhere. So when I stumbled across an article titled I Don't have Faith in Myself, I have Evidence, it got my attention. So I'm going to read this article to you. I'm also going to link to it in the show notes. But I also want you to pay attention to not just the content of the article, but the angle on which the article is written. It's counter traditional wisdom. It is something that flies in the face of what everybody says. And when you write an article like this, it typically gets shared a lot. This has been shared almost 10,000 times and this is a very good tactic in marketing in general is if you can go against the grain of commonly held wisdom and show another side of it. Now you may not agree with all the points in here, but I love the way it's phrased and I think that he makes a tremendous and rare point about believing in yourself. So let me read this to you. It's not that long. You have to believe in yourself. They say if you don't, who, who will? Goes the seductive logic. When no one else believed in me, I believed in myself. And so a seemingly empowering but innocuous phrase has been inscribed on a million inspirational quote images. Been the subject of countless self help books and TED talks. Believe in yourself. The problem is it's bullshit. I don't believe in myself. Many successful people don't and didn't because it isn't necessary. They don't need to have faith in themselves. They have evidence. A few years ago, an interview asked Jay Z about his incredible self assuredness. It's a good question. He does seem like a person with unending faith in themselves. How else could the rap that he. Could he rap the things that he wraps? How else could he have gone from the Marcy projects to Madison Square Garden? The truth is it wasn't self belief that got him there. People don't realize I put a lot of my life into what I'm doing right now. I didn't just have a hit record and get lucky. I put a lot of my life into it. So the things that came out of it is not due to bravado and arrogance. I have confidence because of the work I've put in. And I put in so much work. That's Jay Z's words. That's the hard way. People prefer Rick Ross's line in the song that way people prefer his way. Our faucets used to drip, I used to ride the bench. But. But it was written in cursive for this king to exist. Man, what are you talking about? To me, these two approaches are a perfect illustration of the difference between ego and confidence. Belief in evidence, delusion and ambition. Both men are successful, but one lives in reality, the other in fantasy. One is a lot more successful than the other two. On a regular basis I get emails from people who are trying to do big things. They're convinced they have some multi billion dollar idea, a genius pitch, some brilliant artistic concept. They also have complete certainty that it will be a I just need for you to do the marketing. It's always fascinating to see what this certainty is based on because it almost always turns out to be. Well, nothing, just hubris, just delusion. Faith without evidence, wishful thinking. They think their success is written in cursive. When really success and confidence are carved from the work, produced in gradual relief as the evidence comes in, reassessed at every turn. And while it's perfectly possible that believers may turn out to be right, it's the latter type. The evidence based community, as the saying goes, who will enjoy their success more and find it considerably less precarious and fleeting. The great military strategist BH Little Hart compared two different types of generals. The first is the Napoleon who believes they are destined for greatness in some cases that from day one they have unswerving faith in their own specialness and importance. The second someone like William Tecumseh Sherman, he says, is defined by a slow growth dependent on actual achievement, which is happier, which is better. I won't make a joke about how the Napoleons and the patents of the world inevitably overreach and are the source of their own disasters. Hart's analysis makes a better argument. To the men of the last type, their own success is a constant surprise and its fruits are more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty. Not the sham of insincere self deprecation, but the modesty of moderation in the Greek sense. It is poise, not pose. When I left what was a very good job to write my first book, I didn't believe I could do it. That would have been absurd. What would have been the belief based on? I had never done it before. What did I have that was evidence of my own capacities? I had worked as a research assistant on other books I had written on a regular basis for many years. I had sketched out a full outline of a book I wanted to write. I knew I wasn't a quitter. I knew I was a fast learner. What I had was not belief. I had a case. I had evidence that I would be able to write a book. And I was willing to test that assumption. No more, no less. I remember that halfway through the manuscript, I sent it to someone I trusted and then met with them. The first question out of my mouth was, so, is this a book? I wanted feedback. I wanted objective feedback. I was willing to accept the verdict or work to get the verdict I wanted. Eventually I would taste that fruit that Hart was talking about. The sweetness of gradual accomplishment. The immense gratification of looking at something you created and thinking, where did that come from? And being able to answer that. It came from you. Not because you were born with it, because you are inherently or intrinsically entitled to it, but because you created it from nothing. This, one of the greatest feelings in the world, I must say, is a feeling that can only be earned. To take it on credit in advance, to steal it, to pretend it, is to miss the point. It deprives you of all the pleasure of the actual accomplishment. The Bible describes faith as the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see. Whatever you want to do with your spiritual life is up to you. But that way of thinking is about as dangerous as it gets when it comes to one's profession. Hope is not a Strategy for writing a book or starting a company. It's not something to bet your career on. It is a recipe for potentially catastrophic failure. Napoleon Hill believed he could take. I'm sorry. It is a recipe for catastrophic failure. Napoleon believed he could take Russia, and so did Hitler. Cheney believed we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. Trump believed that president would be easy. Kanye believes he's a Steve Jobs, a fashion. What evidence did they have for these assumptions? Nothing. Worse than nothing, actually. They had plenty of people telling them how hard it would be, how it would be, how it would actually go, but they didn't listen. They had too much faith in themselves, too much certainty in what could not be seen. You can lose your faith. You can't lose facts. In the end, the evidence almost always wins, as it did for Napoleon, as it will for Trump. And instead of tasting the sweet fruit of gradual accomplishment, they drank the bitter brew of abject failure. Many of them, in this moment, would find that ego had whispered affirmations in their ears for so long, was now saying something quite different. It's not a way to live. It's not a way to do big things. It is a way to fail big. The Shermans of the world, their rise was more gradual, but it was based on what was real. His famous march to the sea was military genius, but hardly some flash of inspiration. It was the slow accumulation of his deep study of the country, of the failures and difficulties he faced in battle, of his insights into the Southern mind, his collaborations with Grant, and then his willingness to test the theory city by city, town by town, across rebel territory, in even as the newspapers called him a madman, an idiot, and predicted his failure. It wasn't faith in himself. It wasn't belief that he was chosen by God. It was a rational, operational, iterative, and it worked. And it saved America. It also saved himself. He knew when to stop the war. He knew how to end it peacefully. And he knew when it was time for him to walk away. I have all the rank I want, he would say. That's the other part of it. Somebody believes they can jump off a cliff and live. And if they do survive, that doesn't mean it was a good idea. It just means they'll keep doing it until eventually they don't. Is that what you want? Who do you want to listen to? The gamblers or the workers? The hustlers who sell hope as a product? Or the doers who don't traffic in any of that? As crazy as it sounds, you don't need to believe in yourself. That's not what's holding you back. Whether you think you can do something is so much less important than whether you actually can or can't do that thing. You need to assemble a case that proves you can. You need to do the work that stands as evidence for what you're capable of. You can walk by sight, not by faith. That's how you actually end up achieving the things that other people are too busy believing they can do. So that's the article and that's pretty much word for word with a couple of flubs in there, but I loved it. I'd love to hear what you think about it and email me at askbradaconrappedbusiness.com youm can check this actual article out over at thoughtcatalog.com I'll put a link in the show notes, but until next time, keep listening, keep sharing and hey, shoot me a review on itunes. I love those things. Talk to you guys soon.