Firstly I would like to apologise for the long time since I have last posted my blog: A levels have been quite time-consuming and I have struggled with writing about something I was actually passionate about and not just what seemed ‘right’, but, lo and behold, I am here.
This blog today is about how we as humans are guilty of being our own barriers, and to explore this further I will be talking about on of the foundations of this: lack of self-faith. Before any assumptions are made, we need to acknowledge that faith is not just to do with religion but also to do with our interactions in life.
Not only does society serve as a potential barrier in our life, our lack of self-faith simply accentuates this and these are the reasons, in my opinion, why:
1. Have you ever found yourself working harder, doing bigger and better things when you believe you have the capacity to do it? That is because not only does our work ethic have a relationship with what is available to us(resources), it is linked to what we believe we can do. Consequently, a positive work ethic cannot exist without faith. Yes, you can work hard out of fear of failure but as time goes on you will give up because fear is not an element that can sustain you: it will leave you feeling constantly condemned. Contrastingly, having self-confidence will motivate you to push on. Why? Because that potential you believe you can achieve will ultimately become a target.
2. Moreover, if you do not have faith in your abilities or a successful ‘potential self in’ you aspire towards, you will be prone to basing your image of yourself and your life on what people tell you: firstly, this is because you have no ‘belief-system’ in yourself to combat these opinions and if you do not have faith in yourself, that must mean that you think lowly of yourself and so what others say about you, if it’s negative, will pose as a sort of confirmation when it is not true
I feel like the reasons why people don’t have faith is because:
1. It is embarrassing: I don’t know about you, but I have been in situations where I know what people are thinking about me and I feel shy to say or act otherwise. For example, if a teacher believes I will achieve so and so grades and I say I will achieve higher, the natural reaction for the teacher is to laugh at me like: ‘AAAAAAAA?’ *Soulja Boy*. We need to understand that if we allow ourselves to be tethered by other people’s faith in us, we will simply become prisoners of a society or humanity who hold grudges and who are quintessentially different to you- a humanity that changes its opinion every five seconds.
2. Our scope is limited: As a society, we are guilty of depending greatly on our circumstances and environment to inform us of our abilities and what we can aspire to be, and in a society that suppresses individuality and the individual’s chances to succeed, it is a fatal decision to make. I used to argue wholeheartedly that someone’s aspiration and success in life was largely down to their environment and the example I would use to support this is: if someone who has grown up in a poor environment, for example, and has never heard about what an astronaut, they could never aspire to be an astronaut. Though this may be true, someone once told me that you can aspire to be great and not have the idea of an astronaut in mind. What I am saying here is that your faith in yourself and your abilities does not have to be dependant or in relation to both your circumstances and your present status.
3. It’s comforting: when you do not have faith in yourself, when you fail, it kind of feels okay because it was what you expected. Faith require believing but it also requires practical steps and to the slothful...that seems long. When you do not have self-faith, mediocrity is a treat. Similarly, some people try to avoid self-faith because of failure: failing when you have self-faith can seem like a kick in the tooth, a feeling that many are not willing to feel. This is where the issue of self-confidence comes in, and its notions should not be blurred with self-faith. Self-faith is the, what I think, humble appreciation and approval of one’s self, whereas self-confidence is the trust in one’s abilities, solely. Though self confidence is not bad, too much of it is deadly. In the face of failure, self-faith says “I can do this. I will try again”, but self-confidence says “I don’t need this. I can do something else/better”.
Self-faith is not a bad thing or something that’s moist. Self-faith is what allows us to control our environments rather than experience it controlling us. How can you get self-faith? Well...as a Christian, God’s descriptions of me and what can I achieve just make me go, “Is that me yeah?”. As in like a WHOLE me, “a chosen generation?”(1 Peter 2:9). What is also helpful is analysing and discovering yourself: how can you believe in yourself if you don’t even know it? Are you creative? How can you ‘manipulate’ this to get to your destiny? We assume our abilities and when we do that we produce eurgh results. Those times when you are under pressure and are fighting for something, opinions of you cannot carry you on, so build that faith so that in all things, you will be unwavered.
“Victorious you are and victorious you will be, as long as in your psyche you can see yourself as victorious.”― Abhijit Naskar
“Taking the journey towards ourselves is the hardest journey we have to make in this life and yet the most courageous”― Mimi Novic
“You wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don’t make moves and you don’t climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you’re not competition.” – Nicki Minaj
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