The degree of faith in oneself comes out in what you say and do. The truth is that it is difficult to conceal loss of faith in oneself. You take it with you wherever you go. It touches everything you touch, and it affects your progress, your joy and satisfaction with life. It discourages you and cancels out any optimistic and ambitious dreams from the outset. An empty heart is devoid of energy and inspiration, making it almost impossible to succeed while being blown in the wind with it. If you could detect the early warning signs of losing faith in yourself, you could do something about it to improve your chances to lead a satisfied life both personally and professionally.
What it is Like to Lose Faith in Oneself
Loss of faith in yourself makes living in your body, mind and soul an anguish. Imagine that a skill you are good at, failed you and did not seem effective anymore. Imagine it did not get you out of trouble like it did in the past. You discover in the middle of a project that you bit more than you can chew and luck is not on your side. Repeadedly, you realize that your weaknesses have ruined things for you and that it won’t be the last time. It will happen again because you can’t seem to rid yourself of your weaknesses. That can make you lose faith in yourself.
When you realise that your shortcomings are deep rooted tendencies that are a part of you, it can be descouraging. You can live in a state of being deeply disappointed with yourself. It is like living with someone who let you down, and you cannot put some distance between the two of you. Every time you look in the mirror, those disappointed eyes are looking back at you.
When you let yourself down too many times, you begin to associate being yourself with pain. You anticipate suffering, believing that it is just a matter of time before you disappoint yourself again. Your self-confidence can be shaken by an event or a series of events. It can be eroded over time until you are a shadow of your former self in your own eyes.
Negating One of the 12 Categories of Pleasure
Loss of faith in oneself makes freedom a terrifying experience rather than a desirable thing. Freedom is one of the key 12 categories of pleasure that set you up for success. Losing faith in oneself, destroys the pleasure of freedom. At the core freedom means being left to your own devices. For one who has lost faith in themselves, to be free is to be condemned to face your weaknesses and to live with consequences of your own mistakes and the possibility of self-harm. When you become a source of pain and suffering to yourself, it is difficult to like yourself. You are more likely to lose faith in yourself. Being alone with yourself is such a terrifying experience because of the deep self-doubt and distrust.
Losing faith in oneself extinguishes the pleasure of freedom. While others enjoy freedom, and run towards it, you secretly flee from it. You don’t want anyone to know, because you do not want to have to explain why anyone would run away from freedom. In fact, you are running from yourself. But you can’t, because wherever you run, you will meet yourself there. So, it is a terrifying state of being.
The Prevalence of Loss of Faith in Oneself
How common is the problem? First, it is important to note that the loss of faith in yourself is a matter of degree rather than clear black and white state. Many young people, who have been criticized too harshly growing up may have a pronounced degree of loss of faith in themselves. All adults lose a degree of faith in themselves at some stage of their lives due to trauma, be it caused by being fired from their jobs, business failure, personal failure, struggling to find a job and a source of income, relationship break up and divorce. These experiences peel away their self-confidence and self-trust, leaving their faith in themselves bruised, battered and raw.
The Warning Signs of Losing Faith in Yourself
Signs of losing faith in oneself include feeling demotivated, lacking confidence in one’s abilities, experiencing self-doubt, feeling overwhelmed by challenges, withdrawing from social situations, and having a negative outlook on the future.
It is good to be aware when you have lost faith in yourself. People who have lost faith in themselves cannot tackle the simplest of tasks. They do not believe that they can prevail over challenges, solve problems, and win against the odds. When you have lost faith in yourself you do not believe you can, you just go through the motions of trying, but deep down you are not really trying, because you don’t believe you can achieve anything.
Procrastination can be sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
When you deliberately delay something, be it an activity, an event, a conversation, a meeting, an announcement, a decision, it is most often because you anticipate pain from it. When you procrastinate, what you are really delaying is the pain. The fear is that you won’t cope well with it. You feel vulnerable and hence the reluctance to put yourself in harm’s way. You have lost faith in your ability to cope and even succeed under the circumstances.
Risk Aversion can be sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
With self confidence at a low, you can be reluctant to take risks. You do not trust yourself to come through and make things work, thus you may tend to avoid risks. You anticipate suffering where things depend on you. When you take matters into your hands, you expect suffering. To counter it, you become risk averse. Such an approach to life leaves you poorer because most good things in life involve risk. Yet in your case you are afraid that you will let yourself down. You have lost faith in your ability to manage risk.
Missing Deadlines can be sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
A sign of low faith in oneself is when you struggle to finish work or to release your completed work and thus miss deadlines. You will miss deadline if you lose faith in yourself. You will engage with negative self-talk saying things like “What made me think I can do this” or “I’m not good enough.” You are never sure that your work will be acceptable to others. Therefore, you keep tinkering with it.
It could come across as perfectionism. Not finishing your work on time is as good as not doing it. All your effort and worry go to waste. In the same breath, you squander opportunities. Loss of faith in oneself means you don’t trust your work at all because, you do not believe in yourself.
Stealing and Cheating can be Sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
When you resort to stealing, you have given up on the hope for productivity through your talent, effort and hard work. It means aht you have lost faith in yourself and your abilities. You do not believe that you are capable of significant achievements. In which case, you believe that you are not on par with those who produce. The only way for you to get ahead is through stealing. On the outside, it may seem like you believe you are too clever to work. That you will get away with just stealing from the suckers dumb enough to do all the hard work for you.
But in truth, you believe that you are beneath them. That is why you cannot compete with them on a fair playing field. Theft is fake success, productivity, talent and work. Imagine that everyone lost faith in themselves and no one worked, instead they resorted to stealing, soon there would be nothing out there to steal. Losing faith in oneself is impoverishing.
Petrified to be Heard and Heen can be Sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
When you have lost faith in yourself you are uncomfortable to take on public roles. You fear that others will see through the hole in your soul. That they will see that you have thrown in the towel. It is tempting to withdraw from social situations and avoid spending time with friends and family. Yet that is exactly what you need. You need social interaction to restore faith in yourself.
Unwillingness to Lead can be Sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
More specifically, it is near impossible to lead others when you are haunted by debilitating self-doubt. Leading requires clarity of direction, a voice and decisive action. When you no longer trust yourself, you do not trust your own voice, you feel lost and directionless, and you would rather step away from the limelight. For one who has lost faith in themselves, a leadership role makes them face their demon. Their demon is the difficulty in making decisions, due to self-doubt and uncertainty.
Giving Up Faith in Oneself in the Face of Criticism
The inability to take criticism is another indicator of loss of faith in oneself. That is because criticism is so crushing on someone who has already lost hope in themselves. If you are prone to overthinking things, dwelling on mistakes and regrets, and having a hard time letting go of negative thoughts, then outside criticism becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Outwardly you may put on a brave face when receiving criticism, but inside you crumble into a heap of shame. It breaks you, rather than mold you. You lose the benefit of constructive criticism, which you so dearly need to improve your performance.
Expecting Failure
When you lose faith in yourself you develop a negative outlook on the future, a feeling that things will never get better. You tend to lack the heart to push through obstacles and challenges, the probability for giving up after a failure rise. The mere expectation of failure extinguishes the motivation to do anything. Expecting failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you do not trust yourself and expect suffering to follow your actions, that combination leads to resistance to act.
Treating Your Talent as Irrelevant can be Sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
Everyone’s talent is only relevant in a few aspects of life. For the rest of life, which is the most part, it is irrelevant. That is as it should be. The trick is to find that narrow space where your talent is most desirable and answers a human need. In the busy daily activity, it is difficult to maintain focus and therefore feel relevant. It is far easier to lose focus and judge your talent by all the areas of life where it is not relevant, and conclude, wrongly that your talent is irrelevant. And that you are therefore by extension also irrelevant. When you have lost faith in yourself, such a conclusion come easily. And it is wrong.
Belittling Your Contribution can be Sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
In the greater scheme of things, any one person’s contribution to progress is comparatively small. When you have lost faith in yourself, you tend to notice how small that contribution is, and dwell on it. Not realizing of course that most contributions that make people successful are small. A good comedian makes people laugh, a good soccer players makes people cheer, a musical performer makes people hum and nod, a leader inspires people to work harder, and so on. The overall effect of the work is impressive. However, the contribution of each member is sometimes minuscule. If you examined this properly, you would not belittle your contribution ever.
Devaluing What You Do Well can be Sign of Loss of Faith in Oneself
What you do well comes easier to you than to most other people. That does not mean that it is easy to do. Seen through the eyes of others it could be rare and valuable. Adopt a different perspective on your contribution. See it through the eyes of your cheerleader. You do not know of any cheerleaders of your work, oh, they are there alright. You just need to find them. A sustainable working life or business does two things well. It finds the work you do well and do it, and secondly it finds the people who love your work and are willing to pay for it. Finding those two will sustain the value of your work.
Effect of losing Faith in Oneself
The effect of losing faith in yourself is that you stop looking to yourself to get ahead in life. You look to others to rescue you. Hoping someone will be impressed with you and hire you or discover you as a talent and promote you, is a gamble. To look to others to make you a success, or to take care of you and to fight for you, push ahead for you, open doors for you, recommend you, nominate you, is like a declaration of loss of faith in oneself. When you have lost faith in yourself you do not take the initiative. You leave that to someone else.
The problem is that it rarely happens that someone takes the initiative and promotes you. It seldom happens that someone discovers you as a talent and grooms and promotes you to success. It does not happen often that someone insists on you doing what you love and invest in your talent on their own volition.
Almost without exception, the initiative must come from you. People follow your lead when it comes to promoting your future and choosing your path and walking is relentlessly. They do not take the lead.
There lies the problem for one who has lost faith in themselves, they do not want to take the initiative in their own lives. They lack the motivation, the courage and confidence to take the decision. With no one taking the steps on their behalf, nothing happens.
Restoring Faith in Oneself
The knowledge that people take you at face value at first, but eventually see through you, has to give you a sense of urgency to restore faith in yourself. You do not want to be known as someone who has lost faith in themselves. You restore faith in yourself when you experience the best part of you. The loss faith in yourself, was caused by experiencing that part of you that is weak and small. It has made living in your body, mind and soul a torturous experience. It has made you wish for another body, mind and soul to inhabit and abandon your current one. But that is not the full story about you.
There is another side of you and it is the best part. By now you know that you cannot get rid of the negative side of you that cause you do much anguish. But you can lift it up through the better side of you. When you are no longer naïve about your strengths and weaknesses, you recover from the loss of faith in yourself and emerge stronger that ever.