52. The Case Against Believing In Yourself

Believing in yourself means having confidence in your abilities, judgment, and potential. It involves trusting that you can achieve your goals, overcome challenges, and make decisions that align with your values and aspirations. Self-belief is often linked to self-esteem and self-efficacy, which together form a foundation for resilience, motivation, and personal growth. This belief helps you take risks, persist through setbacks, and maintain a positive outlook on your capabilities and future or so we are told. I imagine many commencement speeches have similar advice.

This is what I think it is. Believing in oneself means to accept as true that one has the ability, fitness, or quality necessary to do or achieve a specified thing without a hard-to-vary explanation. It is a directive that encourages a personal conviction or feeling. If I were to give a commencement speech it would be different. I wouldn’t offer advice. Instead of telling you to believe in yourself and you'll succeed, think about this: which of your beliefs have you forgotten to question? Which parts of you hide from critique? And why do we accept any idea of success, failing to doubt it? Remember, validity lives in the freedom of scrutiny. The path to overcoming challenges lies in challenging ideas.