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- the ravine before self-belief
the ravine before self-belief
and why it's so hard to solidify your character
Ben Lazaroff
January 31, 2025
In partnership with
introduction | edition #007
why is it so hard to believe in yourself? even if so many around you see “potential” in you, what blocks the transmission from other-based belief to self-belief?
in large part it’s knowing the details—the difference between who and what you project yourself to be, and all the miniature fraudulences about yourself that no one else can know unless you let them.
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, Infinite Jest, The Book of Disquiet, The Corrections — all novels that prod with surgical precision deeper and deeper into human nature—your specific, individual human nature—to get you to notice the limitless ways we conjure up mental inventions to navigate even the most uneventful of days.
what kind of person are you? why do you do what you do? so then why aren’t your motivations always what you say they are (at least not exactly)?
why do you not believe you can do something every friend you know wouldn’t hesitate to say you could do? why don’t you believe in yourself the way they do?
and aren’t the people who unflinchingly believe in themselves precisely the people we should be most worried about?
how can you be confident in yourself—to yourself—without forging alliance with delusion? how can you close the gap?
this week’s breakdown:
one tip | find someone who will go all the way there
this is not a fix-all. you have to work on yourself in invisible-to-the-public ways every single day. you will have to develop an honest relationship with yourself about the worst actions you’ve taken, the most poorly-made decisions you’ve made, and the simple stupid habits you can’t quite seem to shake.
if you want to believe in yourself, you can’t look to escape yourself — the more you run, the further you have to go — because you think you’re running to a finish line; but it’s the starting gate you’re running from.
this process of self-belief-creation is extremely complex, and i’d venture to say most people never solve it — they may never even realize the nature of the problem, let alone develop a coherent approach to unlocking it.
so you shouldn’t try to speed-run this process on your own. start by finding someone in your life who (i) cares about you, (ii) wants to see you improve your relationship with yourself, and (iii) has some combination of communication skills, life experience, and willingness to call you on your bullshit.
unless you live high up in the Himalayans after decades of Buddhist training, (iii) is especially important — there will be several courses of bullshit, each paired with a wine of elaborate defensiveness. you need someone who can see this, at least in part, and who won’t make you feel guilty for sharing the very bottom of your personal barrel.
it doesn’t matter if it’s a close friend, a licensed therapist, a parent, or anyone really — find someone you can talk to brutally honestly. they don’t have to know everything about you, and you don’t actually need to give them your entire life story for them to help you move forward. in some cases, knowing too much can be harmful; in others, it can be an accelerant, bypassing layers of contextual soil en route to the root.
often, you’re going to need to be unflichingly stupid and superficial with this individual, so long as those stupidities and superficialities are real. find someone you’d share the equivalent of a (very) embarrassing search history with. or your journal entry you’d rather most people not get their hands on. your very bad habits are on the table—they’re often more worth fixing than socially-acceptable categories like “career uncertainty” or “a relationship not quite working out”.
what i’ve found is a mutual interest in this can be doubly effective — as long as one or both parties don’t enable each other’s bad habits, or make it some kind of “look-at-my-latest-marathon-time” improvement contest. each person can hold the other accountable, and if one person temporarily falls off, the other keeps things on track.
this tip isn’t foolproof, and requires skill, but it’s one of the only approaches i’ve seen prove effective in building a foundation of self-belief for someone who may not have felt that for a long time.
one more thing — remember not to make everything too serious all the time, or you’ll render yourself clinically diagnosable.
The New Yorker
one work of art | solitude, in paint, in film
Fisherman on Rocky Seas: this topic reminded me of Sean Maguire’s (played by Robin WIlliams) painting in Good Will Hunting. though a therapist himself, Maguire remained haunted by his wife’s passing to cancer, lost after losing the one person who centered his life—so much so that he’d struggled ever since to tether himself to anything new.
beyond this one possible lens from the viewpoint of Williams' character, this painting might offer a larger interpretation as a dangerous, often lonely battle with our own mind — a need to square up to pain, and row against the very psychological constructs that allow us to go about everyday life. to know ourselves, we have to resist simple ways out — even if self-investigation feels painful and limitless.
said another way, if the man below doesn’t row — if we distract ourselves from questioning our integrity and all our possible fraudulences — the only thing left afloat will be his hat.
Originally painted by Good Will Hunting’s director, Gus Van Sant, based on Winslow Homer's “The Gulf Stream” (1899).
one song | landmine
Landmine by Post Malone:
this isn’t your traditional semi-country-semi-hip-hop crossover — soft chords crescendo and de-crescendo abruptly, layering the lyrics of a man trying to push through, not quite able to sidestep his own self-destructive ways.
in a recent interview with Howard Stern, he spoke of the feeling of “being on the verge of mental breakdown—like you just want to go into the woods…”
And outside…
I'm burnin' my way through a stoplight —
Baby, I'm fine…
I'm just thumbin' my way through a landmine —
…this is someone trying to navigate; trying to cope; trying to get to the core of their sadness — something we all have to do in order to be fully human.
how can you not listen to this song and flicker through a dozen memories? you leave feeling heavy—but not without hope.
he’s doing the rowing.
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one quote | herman melville
“…what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance.”
final thought
“it always seems impossible, at the start, to fundamentally change, or fully be honest with yourself — and then you change one small thing, get real with yourself about one longstanding problem you’ve had — and watch the whole world open up to you.”
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