In this post, I’m going to tell you why I believe in myself, my goals, and my future.
This has a lot to do with goal setting and business—but it also plays a pivotal role in our dating lives as well.
I’m a dating coach. And all of my content always goes back to dating success.
And in this post, I’m going to tell you why it is important to believe in yourself—not just in a dating context, but also in a business, life, and professional context.
Believe it or not, all of this matters. Believing in yourself and staying motivated matters for your dating life—and if you want to attract a high value partner (or many of them), then this is an important topic to understand.
Because you need to have positive self-belief if you truly want to succeed on the dating marketplace.
Life isn’t always easy. And it isn’t always easy to believe that we are going somewhere meaningful.
But I have a lot to say about this. And if you’ve been thinking about giving up lately, I have some news for you.
If you are doubting that your life is capable of turning out the way you want it, stop and listen.
If you are willing to do the work and show up for yourself, you are capable of making it work.
Let’s dive in and talk about it.
I Believe In Myself And In My Future. I Have Goals, And I Work On Them Every Day
Last night, I sat in front of my computer screen. I was putting the final touches on my newest homepage update.
I hit the refresh button, and watched as the page reloaded.
I was moderately happy with the results.
I am not a website designer.
I have never been very good at graphics, colors, or anything else visual.
Choosing fonts is tedious and frustrating for me, as is trying to figure out what should go where.
And, while I am a copywriter, I always struggle to write copy for my own business.
Nevertheless, the process of building my own business falls entirely to me.
That’s what happens when you’re bootstrapping your own business.
I shut down my computer, finished off my glass of wine, and prepared to head to bed.
It was early—almost daylight.
Once again, I had stayed up all night long… working on a website design that would probably just get redone in a month or two anyway.
But That’s Okay. It’s Part Of The Process
If there’s one thing that I’m good at in life, it’s staying motivated.
I believe in myself, and I always have.
I’ve always been highly motivated. But part of the reason for this is because I’ve always been pretty good at setting goals for myself.
But this project (my dating coach business) is also a little bit different.
This business that I’ve been building for the past year (this dating coach business) is the biggest, most exciting thing I’ve worked on yet. And for the most part, I’m building it completely on my own.
This is the business of my future.
Within it, I’ve found my true purpose and passion.
These things are very important. And in my past, I always struggled with them.
I also used to have this weird notion of what it meant to start your own business. I used to think it consisted of fun meetings, lavish business trips, three-piece suits, and sexy secretaries hanging on your every word.
Now, I chuckle at these notions. Now that I actually understand the true nature of what bootstrapping a business really is, these ideas make me laugh (if a bit sadly).
Bootstrapping Your Own Business Means Having Half A Dozen Things Go Wrong Every Week, And Trying To Come Up With Solutions For Them That Don’t Cost Anything
Because you don’t have any money to work with.
It’s doubling down on your freelance gig, to try to pull in enough money to pay your bills and fund your business at the same time. (By the way, if you haven’t started a freelancing gig based on a high-income still, get started NOW! That 9-to-5 hourly grind will never net you enough money to get ahead in life.)
It’s struggling to stay creative when you are sleep deprived, overworked, underpaid, and undervalued.
It is a lot of having nobody believing in you but you.
It is a lot of planning for the future, and executing on things today.
And the things that you execute on today? The things that you create today?
They may never be seen or read by anyone.
But all of it is still important. You just don’t get immediate credit for them.
That’s why they say that it takes 10 years to create an overnight success!
I Understand That The Things I Do Now Count As The Foundational Building Blocks Of The Business I Will Have Succeeded In Creating One, Two, Or Five Years In The Future
This is the thing that most people don’t understand.
It’s something that I also struggled to understand for years and years.
When you are building a business, you need to keep the end goal firmly implanted in your mind.
It’s far too easy to stray from it.
It’s far too easy to just give it up because it doesn’t look like it’s ever going to go anywhere.
The truth is actually pretty brutal. The natural recourse for your business is for it not to go anywhere.
In other words—if left to its own devices, your business will 100% of the time succumb to entropy and crumble.
So why bother?
Because you have a powerful success factor on your side.
And that defining success factor is YOU.
That’s the only part that makes a difference when you are bootstrapping your own business.
And that is the only solution to the problem of the existential threat of sure and certain destruction.
You Are The Only Variable In The Equation That You Can Control. This Is Why I Make An Intentional Effort To Make Sure That I Believe In Myself Every Day
This is especially true in the beginning.
And in my experience, I have found that it is what happens before the beginning that makes the greatest impact.
Before you start making big money or gaining huge numbers of followers, subscribers, or customers, you need to do the work.
You have to show up for yourself.
You have to believe in yourself.
You have to foster hope for the future, and cultivate a vision for where you want your life to go.
Then you have to work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone, and fail over and over again until you start achieving some small victories.
Small Victories Are The Meat And Potatoes Of Bootstrapping A New Business
Here’s the thing.
As you work on cultivating small victories for yourself, you get into the habit of creating your own wins.
And that is monumentally important.
Because the better you get at creating your own wins, the better those wins get in the macro.
One day, getting five views on your blog post might seem like a win.
And that’s a good thing.
But six months later, getting 100 views on your blog post may feel like a win.
Six months after that, making a product sale may feel like a victory.
A year after that, making $2,000 a month from your business on the side may feel like a victory.
As we continue to grow and work hard, and as we continue to celebrate the victories, our victories continue to grow with us.
But at any point, it could all crash down. And the defining factor, once again is you.
This Is Why You Need To Keep Saying It To Yourself, Over And Over Again
Today, I want you to stand in front of the mirror and say this to yourself.
I believe in myself. This is real. I have a plan, and I’m going to stick with it. This is what I want. I intentionally choose this path for myself.
Are you going to continue to work on your business, build your vision, and craft the future you want for yourself?
Are you willing to do it even on days when there are no victories?
Or are you willing to go one or two weeks without a single victory, and still commit to motivating yourself every day?
Are you willing to be the hardest working man or woman in the room?
Are you willing to commit yourself to greater excellence, even though there is no immediate payout?
These are the questions I ask myself.
And every day, the answer remains the same.
I say yes.
Because I’m not content with a life of mediocrity.
I believe in the alpha mentality. I believe that we level up our lives by following these simple mandates:
- Mind your business
- Get your money
- Pursue your purpose
And I don’t believe that there’s any future for me in anything other than my own vision.
I believe in myself.
I believe I’m capable of making something better than my current life.
I believe that I’m capable of creating the kind of future I actually want for myself, my tribe, and my family.
I also know from experience that bad things will happen, and that I’ll face massive setbacks.
We all will. There is no way to escape the fact that losses are inevitable. Casualties are inevitable.
This is especially true in the beginning, when you’re just learning your craft.
You Just Need To Keep Believing In Yourself, Sticking With The Course, And Continuing Onward
There are a certain number of lessons you have to learn before you figure out how to avoid the biggest, most common pitfalls.
But at the end of the day, what matters is that you keep going.
Before you can truly begin cultivating success, you must become intimately acquainted with failure.
This is true in business. This is true in dating. This is true in athletics. This is true when learning a skill.
This is really true in anything you set your mind to.
You must persevere and continue to grow, despite the difficulties, failures, and setbacks.
There Will Come A Day When Your Victories Will Be Massive
But months, or years, or even decades before that happens, you’ve got to be willing to work and grind and hustle for the smallest victories.
And what is even more difficult than that is that sometimes you will have to be willing to do all the work, just to learn a really hard lesson.
This life, the life of an entrepreneur, is not a life that everyone is cut out for. But if you want something better for yourself, and if you refuse to settle for the mundane or the mediocre, then this is probably a path that you can walk successfully.
Personally, I think that anyone can do it if they are willing to just keep working hard and learning.
And if there is one piece of advice I could give, to help you conceptualize what it takes to win, it would be this.
Build powerful, productive daily habits.
Because when you really get down to it, when it comes down to the grind and the nitty gritty of what it takes to win or lose, the habits are the things that show up.
Working hard for three hours might seem like a small thing, until you apply it to every single day over a 365 day period.
Then, what was just 3 hours a day turns into a very big thing with massive results.
Whereas working half heartedly for one hour might seem like a short downside, but when you apply it across the year and you compare it to the 365 days of three hours of hard work per day, you quickly see how fast we can level up or how fast we can waste our time.
Cultivate good habits, and good things are certain to happen to you.
And most importantly, don’t ever stop repeating this phrase to yourself.
I believe in myself.
Go with grace, my friends, and never give up your power.
Until next time:
Joshua K. Sigafus