How to have faith in the future.
This is a topic that resonates very close to my own heart.
I’ve spent the vast majority of my life not having any real faith in myself.
I came from a background where my faith in my religion and spiritual beliefs used to really define me as a person.
However, at the age of 26, I walked away from my religious faith, and this plunged me into a very deep existential crisis.
I spent a lot of time feeling hopeless about the idea of having any kind of faith in anything.
For a while, I explored hedonism as an antidote to this hopelessness.
I lived a very ‘drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll’ type of lifestyle during this period of my life.
However, I also discovered that the downside to hedonism is that in order to engage in it, you need to be living a life that’s basically characterized completely by chaos.
For a while, this can be a lot of fun. And God knows I had a lot of fun while living a hedonistic life.
However, in the end, this ended up spiraling out of control, which led to me hitting absolute rock bottom.
Everything that mattered to me really fell apart.
I ended up financially ruined, divorced, separated from my children, and living a whole different, more serious version of my own existential crisis.
However, the good news is that this wasn’t the end of the road for me.
It was at this lowest point in my life back in 2017 that I made a commitment to myself to fix the problems and get my life back on track.
This was the beginning of my own alpha journey.
And in this process, I had to learn (literally from scratch) how to have faith not just in myself, but also in the processes of dating, life, success, and many other areas as well.
And in this blog post, you’re going to learn the 8-step process that I discovered as I was learning how to have faith in the future.
How To Have Faith In The Future – In 8 Powerful Steps
1. Determine Your Purpose
You could describe this as making a plan, deciding what you want to do with your life, choosing a direction for your life’s work, etc.
But here’s the thing.
The more specific you get with determining your purpose, the more this is going to equate to increased faith in your future as you move down the line and make other decisions.
The reason for this is pretty simple.
When you don’t know what your purpose is, that’s basically the equivalent of not understanding your destination.
That’s sort of like leaving to go on a voyage on a ship and not bringing a map, a compass, or any other navigational tools with you.
On such a ship, you’re probably going to struggle to have faith that you’ll arrive intact.
You’re probably going to gradually become overwhelmed by the fear of drifting listlessly in the ocean, eventually starving to death, or sinking in a storm.
When we embark on the journey of life without a clear path and purpose, we succumb to the exact same type of fear.
This destroys our faith and keeps us from being able to find any sense of ‘inner emotional security’ on our journey.
2. Understand Your Path
There’s no such thing as being able to completely prepare yourself for an adventure.
Adventure, by definition, is filled with unknowns.
However, there’s a big difference between learning everything you can, and setting out blindly ignorant; without any knowledge or understanding of any kind.
Once you determine your purpose, it’s in your best interest to research the path before you, and to study the lives of other men and women who have traveled similar paths in their lives.
When you equip yourself with this information, you’ll learn the best techniques for how to begin the process and embark on your own hero’s arc.
And this, in turn, will help to give you increased faith that your future will be successful.
Imagine yourself as an explorer, and life as a great big maze.
It takes a lot of time and effort to find your way through a maze.
And if it’s big enough and complicated enough, you could possibly die on the journey without ever reaching the other side.
With that being said, if you can learn from other men and women who have already navigated the maze, and you can get a roadmap that shows you where to go, what traps to avoid, etc, this can save you a ton of time and give you a renewed sense of faith in your ability to reach the exit not only intact, but also successful.
3. Leave The Comfort Zone
We all have comfort zones in life.
These are places where we feel relatively secure and safe, at least in comparison to the wilderness that exists in the ‘mire’ of unknown territory.
At first glance, it would seem to make sense that staying in the comfort zone would actually increase your faith in a successful future.
Why?
Because staying in the comfort zone is safer, right?
Well, this idea is actually not only an intellectual and philosophical error, but also an instinctual and evolutionary disaster.
The truth is this:
Staying in the comfort zone only guarantees you a relatively comfortable and quiet passage to the afterlife.
This path will also guarantee that you’ll never have adventures, never achieve big goals, never find great opportunities, and never learn to accomplish things for yourself.
This is, in fact, NOT a safe bet… and it will NOT help to give you faith for the future.
Staying in the comfort zone is actually a very slow and agonizing death sentence for your soul—and eventually, your body.
By contrast, if you leave the comfort zone and embark upon the dangers of the hero’s arc, you’ll have no choice but to face those dangers and overcome them.
And when you do this, guess what happens?
- You learn to trust yourself.
- You become more competent.
- You become more formidable.
- You’re either devoured by the monsters in the maze, or you grow strong enough to become a monster to the monsters.
- You grow dangerous enough that things that used to frighten you now flee in terror at your presence.
We only achieve this kind of strength, however, if we choose to go out into the dangers of the wild unknown, fight our demons, and come out victorious on the other side.
Once you become formidable, you’ll learn to have much greater faith in yourself and in your future.
And this faith will be real and well-earned.
As such, it will be long-lasting true faith.
It won’t be based on anything fake.
It’ll be based on your actual experiences, and on your knowledge of the world and how to overcome conflict.
This is truly the difference between being a helpless peasant and being a formidable, powerful warrior.
You know what they say…
“It’s better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.”
4. Embrace Failure.
Once again, this may sound like bad advice.
You may think to yourself:
“Why would I ever want to embrace failure? Wouldn’t I want to avoid failure—or to at least try my very best to plan ahead so that it doesn’t happen?”
At first, these sound like very legitimate questions.
However, once you embark upon the hero’s arc, you’ll quickly learn that failure serves a valuable purpose.
It serves as the weight we lift to become the strong, capable, formidable heroes we need to be in order to accomplish our purpose and mission.
One important thing to understand about failure is that it only actually defeats you if you give up and retreat back to the safety of your comfort zone.
Otherwise, failure actually looks a lot scarier than it really is.
- Yes, it’ll knock you down.
- Yes, it’ll kick you while you’re down.
- Yes, it will embarrass you, make you feel stupid, cost you some money, eat up a bit of your time, and leave you thoroughly demoralized for at least a little while.
However, living through these experiences and recovering from them builds crucial muscle tissue—and makes you stronger than you were before the failure.
Plus, every time failure kicks the shit out of you, you learn new possible techniques that you could use to defeat it the next time around.
The capable warrior understands that they need to intimately understand their enemy if they want to increase their odds of victory.
And this is exactly what the alpha must do as they embark on their hero’s arc and pursue their goals for the future.
See, skirting around failure is a fear-based mentality.
This isn’t to say that you should fail on purpose, but it IS to say that you should barrel forward, head down, ready to smash into any unforeseen walls of failure that may threaten to surprise you along the way.
Either you’ll break through them, or they’ll knock you down.
But once you get back up, you’ll be stronger and more capable for it—and you’ll be much more likely to break down the wall on your next attempt.
So don’t shy away from failure.
Rather, look for failure and embrace it when it happens.
Understand that it was inevitable, and that it’s actually a great blessing, a learning tool, and an exercise in strength-building—useful for helping to turn you into the formidable monster you’ll need to be to achieve your goals, conquer your purpose, and become the true alpha in all of your respective social hierarchies and vital life domains.
And once again, when it comes to faith, nothing will teach you how to have faith in the future and in yourself like realizing that you have the power to face failure and overcome it.
The more you do this, the more you’ll realize that you’re actually a lot more capable than you used to give yourself credit for.
And you’ll realize that the things you used to fear weren’t really that terrifying once you faced them and felt the ‘sting’ of their bite.
5. Be Relentless.
As far as we know, you only get one chance at this life.
You get one shot to create a purpose and attack it with relentless tenacity.
A lot of people choose to cower in fear and live a risk-averse lifestyle because of it.
They believe that this will help them to feel more secure and safe in a world full of danger.
But the truth is that there is no such thing as safety.
Because no matter how you cut it, the Angel of Death has already been dispatched to fetch your soul.
It’s just a matter of time.
The Valkyries have already saddled their mounts and departed from the higher realms to collect your life essence and carry you across the valley of the thin veil that separates life from death.
You were born with a death sentence stamped squarely onto your forehead, heart, and soul.
These facts don’t really lend to any real potential for ‘security’ or ‘safety,’ do they?
We can either choose to cower and find false security in the comfort zone, or we can choose to become the best versions of ourselves while we have the chance—and understand that our life is going to consist of a limited number of days before our light blinks out.
And we can either live those days to the fullest—or we can choose to spend them hiding under a rock, hoping for safety.
In fact, the 18th Vow of the Oath of Kings and Queens speaks directly to this point:
“I understand that every day is a battle… and that there is no guarantee of victory tomorrow. So I vow to live gloriously and wisely on this day of days, setting my sights on the battle before me, without losing sleep or hope to the unknown horizon.”
Here’s the thing about hiding under a rock.
It tends to make you feel weak and inferior to everything else—and for good reason.
Because that’s what you are when you hide under a rock, like one of the bugs and grubs that scurry around beneath.
By contrast, when you choose to strike out on an adventure—to build your muscles, to face failure, to overcome your demons, and to live life to the hilt like the kind of creature that knows it’s not getting another chance…
Well, that’s a different kind of life.
That kind of creature tends to have a lot more realistic faith in its future.
Because at least it knows that even though its days are numbered—while it’s here, and while it’s still alive, it has the potential to become one hell of a beast to be reckoned with before the end comes.
And it’s earned the right to have this faith in itself, by virtue of the trials it has overcome, the dangers it has conquered, and the failures that it has traversed.
We humans evolved as powerful apex predators.
And yet, all too often, in the false security of our modern world, we choose to live like prey animals.
And this plays havoc with our evolutionary instinct to have faith in the success of our endeavors.
Which one would you rather be—the bug under the rock, or the capable apex beast?
Because guess what?
- Both are already slated for destruction.
- The angels come for both of them, anyway.
We may as well choose to be relentless.
We may as well choose to use our fangs while we can.
We may as well choose to take a gash out of this world and create something with it.
We may as well live one hell of an existence—and make it big enough and prolific enough that people will talk about us even long after we’re gone.
In fact, that’s the closest thing to immortality we have—leaving a lasting legacy of greatness for others who might choose to follow in our footsteps.
But who would want to follow in the footsteps of an insect?
Real adventurers dream of becoming powerful warriors, conquerors, kings, and queens.
We know this intuitively.
Just take a look at any of our fantasy stories, and you’ll see this to be true.
But it’s true in real life as well.
6. Trust In The Process
As alphas, whenever we decide to do something in life, we should make a plan for it.
It’s in our best interest to make a plan, do some research, and write down our goals.
Then, we should take action, give it a try, and review, revise, and pivot as needed—to overcome challenges and failures, and succeed at the things that matter.
In fact, the 4th vow of the Oath of Kings and Queens speaks directly to this point:
“I vow to always pursue wisdom in my actions, and to refrain from acting rashly… that I may find balance, and calculate the risks and probabilities of my endeavors with as much accuracy and forethought as possible.”
However, with that being said, even if you follow these steps, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be trusting yourself or having faith in yourself to create the desired result.
Some people just go through the motions while continuing to disbelieve that they’ll create the success that they desire.
There’s an element of this where some people feel like they need to prove it to themselves before they can believe it.
Honestly, I understand what this is like.
I’ve been there.
And that’s not a terrible way to think about it at first.
In fact, that mentality is a hell of a lot better than the mentality of ‘never taking action at all.’
With that being said, there’s also a subtle behavioral difference that takes place when you trust in your path, versus when you don’t trust in it.
When you act upon the world to achieve your goals without having real, actual faith in a positive outcome—you’re going to act with a certain measure of fear. And that fear is going to pollute your action steps and contaminate your behavior patterns.
If you don’t really have faith in the process, you’re going to be acting with a certain amount of fear—and this fear is going to work against you getting the results you want.
Why?
Because when we allow fear to dictate even subtle changes in our behavior patterns, we set ourselves up to miss opportunities, retreat from success, and shy away from obstacles.
None of these things are good for accomplishing the objective.
It’s in our best interest to face our fear, rather than reacting to it and withdrawing from it.
With that being said, it can be difficult to figure out how to do this.
So this is one simple hack that I’ve used in my own life—and it makes a huge difference, and deals with the problem at the fundamental behavioral baseline.
Make the decision to trust in your process.
At the end of the day, you either believe fully that your process is going to create the results you want, or you don’t.
But here’s the thing:
When you make a plan, and you research that plan, and you commit to that plan—you should actually have every reason to trust it.
And this is really where the ‘faith’ part comes into the equation.
Having faith in your plan—and taking doubt about the outcome off the table on an intentional basis—is one of the most powerful ways to shift your behavior patterns to be power-based instead of fear-based.
To deploy this hack, simply make the conscious choice to trust in your plan and process.
Whenever doubt threatens to creep in and say this isn’t actually going to work…
Dismiss it from your mind and remove your willingness to doubt yourself from the table.
This is truly a sheer act of will.
However, it becomes a habit once you get used to it.
This was one of the most important steps that I took when I mastered my dating life back in my early 30s.
Even though I was constantly learning about human mating behavior and how to interact with women, I was constantly doubting myself.
There was this lingering doubt in the back of my mind that even if I did all the right things, it still wouldn’t work.
But see, this fear self-sabotaged me—because it caused subtle, subconscious changes to my behavior that I didn’t even detect until I really started looking at myself and examining my actions.
When I committed to the truth of human mating behavior, and I decided to have complete faith in my plan and techniques, guess what happened?
This extra confidence gave me the power to break through those barriers that I was subconsciously shying away from before.
And this is sometimes the biggest difference between victory and defeat.
So if you want to have more faith in yourself and in your future, make an intentional decision to create within yourself a total and complete faith in your plan and process.
This is an alpha mentality principle that you must learn to embrace if you truly want to succeed in the most efficient manner possible while learning how to have faith in the future.
7. Commit To The Journey
Here’s the thing about commitment.
When we ‘commit’ to something, what we’re basically doing is saying to ourselves:
- Retreating and giving up are no longer options that are on the table.
- I am committing fully to this purpose.
- I’m burning the ships that brought me across the chasm, and I’m going to move forward in this new unexplored land having full faith in myself and in my ability to create success.
See, when we don’t actually fully commit to something, we subconsciously feed our self-doubt and our fear.
This is the danger of being ‘lukewarm,’ or ‘having one foot in and one foot out.’
We constantly have this lingering thought in the back of our minds:
- I could always quit and retreat to my comfort zone.
- If this challenge gets too extreme, I’ll just back out.
See, the problem with these types of doubts and thoughts is that they just feed that fear and that lack of belief.
And once again, when we feed these fears, this causes us to subconsciously retreat from the very challenges we actually need to commit our full power to solving if we want to achieve success.
If you’re not willing to fully commit to your path and purpose, then you’re going to continue to struggle with a lack of faith—not only in your future, but also in your plan and in yourself.
This is a vital principle that you must come to understand if you want to learn how to have faith in the future.
And once again, this creates a negative spiral and snowball effect where the fear compounds on itself.
It works against your ability to solve problems effectively, and you actually end up reducing your odds of success overall.
See, mindset is a huge factor.
If you don’t operate with the proper mindset in your life, everything else is going to be affected by it.
If your mindset is only 50% correct, all of your actions, decisions, efforts, and output are going to be operating at a 50% deficit.
These percentages may not necessarily be precise—but this is pretty accurate, especially when I take my own life experiences into account.
In my own life, this quickly became abundantly clear—the more that I learned to commit to the things I wanted, and to burn the boats behind me as I moved forward to conquer my destiny, the more successful I ended up being—and the more efficient my processes became.
8. Take Decisive Action
Failing this last item on the list is actually one of the fastest ways to defeat yourself.
See, a lot of people get paralyzed by fear before they even take action.
- Maybe they do a bit of research and make a plan.
- Maybe they dream about the future they want, and they fantasize about how great it would be to have that future.
But then, when the time comes to actually commit and put some skin in the game, they balk.
The fear gets to them.
And right before they step foot outside of their comfort zone, they leap backward.
Then—they wonder why their plans never get off the ground.
They wonder why nothing ever seems to work out for them.
And this absolutely pulverizes their faith.
To remedy this problem, you must take decisive action.
I’m not trying to advocate that you do something stupid or foolish.
We always want to measure our strategies and plans with wisdom and rationality, and strive to act with common sense and forethought to give ourselves the best odds possible.
However, when those calculations are complete—then, we must move to the action phase of the process.
If you never take action, you will never create success.
But even more fundamentally, if you never take action, you’ll never develop even a little bit of faith in yourself or in your future.
If you want to learn how to have faith in the future, you must learn how to begin acting out your plans with full faith in yourself and in your abilities.
Knowing that—it’s also true that if you stick to the plan, and if you continue to face and overcome challenges, you will eventually succeed.
This doesn’t mean it’ll be perfect.
This doesn’t mean your plan is going to be absolutely bulletproof or that you’ll never make a mistake.
In fact, you’re guaranteed to make mistakes.
And I can promise you that your plan isn’t going to be perfect.
But guess what? It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter one bit—because the person with an imperfect plan, who takes decisive alpha action, will always beat the person with the incredibly polished, almost perfect plan who never begins the process.
While you sit in the comfort zone, overanalyzing and being afraid to take your first step—people who didn’t even make a plan, but who were brave enough to take action, are running laps around you.
They’re accomplishing their dreams, making money, dating beautiful attractive people, and basically living the life of their dreams.
Do you think that they deserve it more than you?
Don’t you think that your plan deserves a chance to get out there in the world and compete for some of these treasures?
Personally, I want to be the best in the game. And I’m willing to put my entire future on the line to prove it.
I want to have the best plans and the best executions.
Personally, I want to leave my competition in the dust—and lead those who walk beside me to incredible victory with me.
I want to be known as the ultimate at the things that I care about.
The 12th vow of the Oath of Kings and Queens speaks directly to this point:
“I vow to strive for excellence in everything I choose to set my hands to.”
And guess what? I have complete and total faith in myself to do this.
And the day that I decided to have that faith in myself and to actually take action on that faith was the day I realized that I was going to win.
And when I realized that, that’s when I started actually scoring big wins and making progress at a much more efficient pace, and with much greater gravity.
It matters.
Take action.
Remember, death in the comfort zone is still death.
It’s just an unknown, unglorious, pitiful one.
That’s not what you want for yourself.
Conclusion
I hope that this blog post has helped you to understand how to have faith in the future, in your plans, and in your journey.
And most of all, in yourself.
Hey, nobody said it was easy, but that’s not the point.
The point is that it’s 100% possible.
And if it’s possible, then you can make it happen—if you follow these steps, and if you keep acting out of belief and faith in yourself.
Now get out there, make that plan, and execute.
Keep these steps in mind while you do it.
Read this blog post a few more times, just to make sure you get the message.
You’ve got this.
I know that you can do it.
I’m doing it as well.
So let’s conquer our journeys together, and crush it.
Go with grace my friends, and never give up your power.
Until next time…
This is Joshua K. Sigafus signing off.