on self-assurance
you will never betray your heart
confidence: i will get the good outcome.
safety: the bad outcome can’t hurt me while i’m here.
reassurance: [x] says the outcome will turn out fine. i trust them and feel better now.
self-assurance: i trust myself and my process, so regardless of this outcome— good or bad— i know the dots will eventually connect. i’ll be okay.
For most of my life I’ve been skeptical of people who are deeply self-assured. These people just… go for it? Undaunted by guilt, shame, or fear? Without overthinking downside risk or hating themselves when things don’t work out?
Totally bizarre. Probably illegal.
The thing is… over the past couple of years I’ve become one of those people. And despite not intending to join their ranks, now that I’m here I’ve never felt more alive. I’m still pretty new at this whole thing, but already I wish I’d gotten here sooner.
If I could give my younger self one piece of personal advice without creating a time travel paradox it would be this:
You are going to figure out how to become the central source of reassurance in your own life. It’s going to turn out incredible. Way, way better than you imagine. Developing self-assurance is part of the main questline, but in the process you’ll unlock powerful branches in a ton of OP skill trees like rizz, courage, emotional regulation, and luck.
Turns out the belief you have to viciously criticize yourself to achieve greatness and avoid turning into a self-centered narcissist isn’t true. It also turns out raw intellect that overrules feelings and physical cues isn’t as honest as you think it is.
I’m not saying you need to abandon worldly desire and turn into a monk: it’s fine for your reassurance system to include social status, Salt & Straw, romantic partners, etc. You’ll figure out a healthy balance that works for you.
What I am saying is this:
If self-trust and affection isn’t the central source of reassurance in your life, when the chips are down you’ll be willing to betray yourself to keep the system from falling apart.
That’s the fatal flaw.
If you rely on your social circle, significant other, high-status job/school, or spiritual community for reassurance more than yourself, then betraying yourself when you’re afraid of losing them is always on the table. And even when you aren’t actively betraying yourself, the knowledge that you’d be willing to is a leaky toxic waste drum of anxiety. It’s a blueprint for living a life full of regrets.
If you had asked me a few years ago I would have said this worldview was self-centered. Now I believe the alternatives are dishonest and fragile.
To genuinely show up for others as your best self, you’ve got to be fundamentally unwilling to betray yourself. That’s the heart of it.
On its face this may sound stupidly simple. Have you considered trusting yourself more?
The thing is, becoming self-assured isn’t actually a test of intelligence. It took me an excruciatingly long time to figure that out. The hard part is letting go of your personal resistance to accepting trust and affection from yourself.
The why of your resistance is unique to you. Maybe you think liking yourself is cringe. Maybe you believe self-hatred is the only way to avoid becoming complacent and instead live up to your ambition. Maybe you’ve been hurt in the past and think exhaustive threat analysis and mistrust will keep you from being blind-sided by that pain ever again.
Whatever the lore, it boils down to this: if you secretly believe you don’t deserve self-assurance or fear that being kind to yourself will get you hurt, then self-assurance will stay out of reach until you change your mind.
No exceptions.
My journey to self-assurance basically followed these steps:
(1) Get sick and tired of the results of trusting your voice of inner doubt. Become skeptical of how honest and accurate it actually is. Decide you have no idea what’s next but refuse to tolerate this pattern repeating.
(2) Cast a wide net for guidance on how to change: friends, books, therapy, internet strangers, reality tv, anime, content creators. Begin to notice a pattern of people you vibe with regretting the unexpected costs of being unkind to themselves.
(3) Pour energy into visualizing a more self-assured version of yourself and pay close attention to why it feels so hard. Where is the resistance coming from? Why do you roll your eyes at the idea of giving yourself trust and affection?
(4) Commit to pay the cost of uncomfortable, vulnerable, possibly cringe inner work to retool your identity and dissolve resistance at its source. None of your beliefs are off limits.
(5) Accept you can’t logic your way into self-assurance: it’s an emotional state of being, and getting there requires feeling your feels without intellectualizing them.
(6) Get out of your head and take action to build self-trust: its bedrock is competence and keeping promises to yourself.
(7) ADVENTURE
(8) Write down your learnings
For the longest time I had no idea how to visualize what “self-assured me” would even look like. I felt too skeptical, too anxious, and too humble to be self-assured. I wanted to picture it but the process felt like drawing a boardwalk caricature. Ridiculous.
Still, I kept at it: refusal to continue with the old pattern, right?
I couldn’t make out a full picture, but I figured maybe I could try to get more comfortable with affection on one day, and tackle trust another? Maybe I should try to do an ambitious project without using terror of failure as my motivation? I tried all that and more. Progress was gradual, but one day it felt a little less impossible. I stacked a few more days after that, and then weeks, and then months.
Self-assurance is really a feeling more than anything: when you face a stressful situation, it’s cool clarity that you’ll make things work no matter how the chips fall.
No eye-rolling, no panic, no arrogance: just calm, steady trust that you can handle whatever comes, and that you’ll never betray your heart.
That’s the vision.
Vibe Pairings
Uncle Iroh counsels a conflicted Avatar about making an impossible choice. Sometimes it’s okay to make a move without really knowing where it leads.
The “It gets easier” scene from Bojack Horseman. Honestly one of the darkest, most hilarious, and deeply affecting shows I’ve ever seen. I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, but that first time was unforgettable.
The Steve Jobs commencement speech is a video I often end up rewatching when I’m in an uncertain season of life. His perspective about connecting the seemingly random dots of your life resonates so deeply with me.
The Mountain is You went viral on BookTok awhile back and is one of the most poignant and persuasive explorations of analysis paralysis and self-sabotage that I’ve ever read. 10/10.
