Why You Should Always Believe In Yourself

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt

 "If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started." - Cicero

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy." - Dale Carnegie

It's important to believe in yourself, even when it seems like nobody else does.

You need to overcome self-doubt and reach for success.

It is a common trend in the success stories of many billionaires, sports stars, entertainment idols, and business moguls.

One such inspiring story of self-belief you may not have heard of is that of Francis Ngannou:

Ngannou's Story:

• Born into poverty in Cameroun

• Worked in a sand quarry, starting at age 10

• Said no to joining gangs to pursue a boxing dream no one else believed in asides him

• In 2012 at age 26, set off on a journey across countries, deserts, and seas to get to Europe

• Rejected access to Europe 12 times

• Arrested in Spain and imprisoned for 2 months

• Homeless in Paris, sleeping on the streets

• Signs for UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) to fight MMA (mixed martial arts).

• Wins Heavyweight title - 2021 - earning $600k per fight

• In 2022, leaves the UFC (and multi-million dollar new contract offer) to try and fulfill his boxing dream

• Everyone laughs at him for “fumbling the bag” by leaving the UFC

• In 2023, lands $20 million contract with PFL MMA Promotion

• In 2023, lands $8M+ Boxing Fight with Heavyweight Champion Tyson Fury

Throughout his journey he was always doubted, ridiculed and laughed at.

How could a poor kid from Africa aspire to such lofty dreams?

One thing he never lacked, was self-confidence. He believed and backed himself to win every single time.

Bringing It Closer Home

 This also reminds me of a personal story, although not in the same stratosphere as Ngannou’s.

When my friends and I started SEAMFIX @seamfixltd many years ago, we were young “men” in our early twenties, fresh out of school with wide eyes and big dreams.

Our friend who worked at a Bank invited us to pitch a school management portal project for a university, which the bank was funding.

Our optimism was limitless, even though we had no product, car, or experience speaking to such an audience.

Luckily, we had created a base platform at the onset that we could use to develop products.

It had basic features like authentication, website, and community page creation, roles and permissions, and more.

This gave us a 30% head start in building any new product.

Immediately, we started customizing a university portal on the platform.

Within 48 hours, we completed what we internally called "vapor".

A product you could tap through all linked pages seamlessly but with no actual code or functionality.

We used vaporware as a hack back then to quickly respond to customer requests.

It helped us win many jobs and saved many demos. But I digress.

We took public bike transport (okada) to the demo venue.

We stopped a few buildings from the bank, cleaned up, waited until we stopped sweating, then walked in.

I'm sure we looked quite funny - 3 young men in oversized suits, pretending to be important.

We had one of us always stay back so we could claim he was our “Chairman”.

For commercial questions that we couldn’t respond to immediately, we promised to get back to them after talking to our Chairman.

We did this so they wouldn’t feel like they were dealing with kids.

You see, the Nigerian tech space pre-2010 didn’t have many startups with young founders.

We answered all their questions during the meeting, giving a good impression of ourselves.

The turning point was when they brought up a use case we hadn’t considered.

I immediately logged into our back-end and configured it within minutes and they were amazed.

Of course, we didn’t disclose that it was vapor. It was no-code before it was even a thing.

After the meeting, the bank’s IT manager escorted us down and offered to walk us to our car.

Perhaps he wanted to size us up after we’d just discussed a project worth millions of naira.

We had a brain-wave, telling him our driver went to buy fuel and so we would wait for him at the reception.

He wished to wait with us, but we convinced him to go back to work.

After he left, we walked out and took bikes back home to update our “Chairman”, laugh and pray.

We ended up winning the project and multiple others from the bank.

Although they paid us much less than other companies that did similar work for them, we felt validated because we knew we were on the right track.

Our appearance and lack of a finished product were unimportant.

Perhaps some of them even saw through our vapor product.

Our self-belief and confidence won over the decision-makers at the bank who appreciated our audacity.

They never stopped connecting us to opportunities, even as they advanced in their careers and changed jobs to other banks and organizations.

Closing Thoughts

Self-belief is powerful. Sometimes, that’s all you need to go places.

When you believe in yourself, you will:

1. Choose to do something, even if it seems impossible.

2. Motivate yourself to take action.

3. Commit to the journey with 100% conviction.

4. Attract the right people and opportunities

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

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