It’s Never Too Late to Believe in Yourself

If you’re someone who doesn’t believe in yourself, you may have reached a point in your life where you simply accepted that’s simply the way it is. You might have the desire to change but it’s quickly stifled - because that would require a belief that change is possible, and you don’t see any way that you’re ever going to believe in yourself.

Most people in the world lack confidence in one or more areas of their lives. They engage in pity parties and are masters at demeaning themselves with self-deprecating jokes or criticisms.

But those habitual behaviors are often the only thing stopping you from true success. It’s not the lack of a step-by-step plan or the absence of the perfect guru to guide you – it’s the fact that you don’t believe in what you can achieve, and if you don’t actively work on changing that, you’ll struggle for years to come.

Why It’s So Hard to Believe in You

Low self-esteem is one reason that people just don’t believe in themselves. They have zero faith in their ability to do anything whatsoever. This isn’t something that just strikes without warning.

Having low self-esteem is something that happens over the course of time. You divide the world into those who can and those who can’t and you’ve placed yourself firmly in the can’t section.

You see people as losers and winners and have decided that you’re a loser. This kind of low self-esteem is extremely destructive. Not only does it make you doubt your self-worth and fail to see yourself as the valuable person that you are, but low self-esteem makes it hard to move forward in life.

You find it easier to not believe in yourself because that’s where your comfort level is. By not believing in yourself, you can stay where everything is familiar and never have any feelings of letting yourself down.

There’s nothing scary and nothing to risk if you hold on to what you know is true. But the problem is that it’s not true – not if you don’t want it to be. Low self-esteem isn’t something that’s founded in truth.

It’s a glimpse of something in life, but not a reflection of what has to be a fact. It stems from a number of causes that are related to childhood, traumatic experiences and situations that happen in adulthood.

Low self-esteem never just occurs. There’s always a reason. But regardless of why it occurs, it causes you not to believe in yourself. What that does is rob you of the ability to be able to do things or change certain areas of your life that could lead to more fulfillment.

The problem with low self-esteem is that it keeps perpetuating the cycle that you can’t afford to have faith in yourself. Even if you understand the truth about what low self-esteem is and how that it negatively impacts your life, it’s not something that you can simply decide that you’re not going to allow anymore.

Because it’s so ingrained in you, you’ll need to look for the right tools for your life that can help you alter your beliefs that bind you in a destructive opinion about yourself. When low self-esteem isn’t addressed, it leads to flawed logic and that can hinder you with anything that you want to attempt in life – from pursuing a career as an entrepreneur to forming valuable relationships.

Flawed Logic

When you have flawed logic, you don’t see the world (or yourself) from a truthful viewpoint. You see it using the low self-esteem lens that’s been part of your life. With flawed logic, you’ll struggle with believing that it’s too late to have faith in yourself.

Some signs that you’re struggling with flawed logic are the belief that you can’t change direction in life. You feel that the job or the career that you have now is the one that you simply have to put up with for the rest of your working life.

You’ve invested too much time, energy, money or education in your current job or career and you don’t believe that you deserve to make a U-turn and do something different.

This same kind of flawed logic can make you not believe in yourself when it comes to improving your health, too. You believe that it’s too late for you to get into shape - that too much time has passed, that you’ve gained too much weight, that you’ve let yourself go for too long.

You don’t believe in yourself enough to believe that change is possible for your body or for your health. It just has to be what it is, and you have to accept it. Right? Wrong. Low self-esteem can cause you to have this kind of flawed logic when it comes to your financial situation, too.

You’ve messed your credit up. It’s bad you’ll never be able to claw your way out of it because you just don’t think you have what it takes to turn it around and end up with good credit.

Flawed logic also makes you think it’s too late to believe in yourself when it comes to furthering your education or getting a college degree. You don’t believe in yourself because so much time has gone by and now you’re not a twenty something year old with enough free time to work on it.

You’re closer to retirement age than college age. You don’t believe that you have the intelligence, the stamina or that you’re even good enough to go to college. People who have flawed logic believe that it’s too late to fix a relationship, too.

There was a rift in the family and so much water is under the bridge. You think it’s too late to learn how to develop healthy relationships. Maybe you put up with things that you shouldn’t have - or maybe you should have apologized to someone, but you think it’s too late to repair the damage.

Flawed logic keeps you trapped in the mindset of not believing in yourself when it comes to becoming an entrepreneur. You’ve always had the desire to be your own boss, to run your own company - but you think it’s too late because only young Silicon Valley types create start-ups, right?

You think it’s too late to make a change, to make a stand or to believe in yourself - but it isn’t. It’s never too late as long as you’re still alive. There are many instances of people seeing their biggest success in their golden years, so using age or time as an excuse can no longer cut it.

Self-Protection

Sometimes what can occur is that people use a form of self-protection, which transfers into not believing in themselves. It’s usually brought on by an experience or experiences in life.

This is something that’s a part of them. It’s so automatic that they’re not even aware that they’re doing it. But self-protection and not believing in yourself can become a never-ending circle.

The failure to believe in themselves is a result of how they self-protect by putting up walls to keep out change. They do this because there’s risk in change and sometimes risk can manifest into failure.

Failure stings. It means that a hope or a dream crashed and burned. The problem with people who believe that it’s too late is that they viewed that failure as something that’s a given – and insurmountable, too.

As surely as the sun rises, they believe that for them, failure is something that’s inevitable. They’re basing their lack of belief in themselves on things that have happened in the past.

Past failures have taught them that faith in their abilities equals pain. So they don’t even try. Then time goes by and they replace what happened - the failure - with a pseudo form of truth - that failure is something that will always happen to them with anything they put their mind to.

So, when something good is on the horizon, they’ll shy away from it because taking that step to pursue it, especially if it requires a major change in their confidence levels, is a reminder of the failure that they experienced before.

This self-protection that makes you think it’s too late to believe in yourself is something that you use to create a safe environment. There’s no risk here. You won’t have to hope or dream and have to watch that hope wither.

Self-protection is something that makes you a prisoner. It causes you to live a life that’s less than what you deserve. Failure is something that can and does happen. But if it does happen to you when you’re trying to make a change, it’s not evidence that you’re not one of the winners in life.

It’s only evidence that you attempted something and that particular route wasn’t the right one, so you need to regroup and go a different way. Failure in your past doesn’t mean you’re wrong to hope or dream or to want to change your life.

It’s proof that you were strong enough to try. It’s proof that you have what it takes to make that first step to go after what you want. Look at it as a picture of your strength, not as a shortcoming.

Pursuing Your Dreams

Some people get so set in their ways and think it’s too late to make a change, so they never pursue their dreams and live a life that’s mundane at best. They believe that their time has come and gone and feelings of regret fill their soul.

Usually this happens when it’s about a big change like a career move or going back to college. They think that who they are is set in stone, and even if it were possible to change, they feel as if it’s too overwhelming to comprehend.

People also get stuck in their lifestyles. You can get caught up in a cycle of adhering to a typical routine and change threatens that. It creates a lot of discomfort, and that doesn’t make you want to chase your dreams.

This will happen more often than not when it comes to thinking about changing your financial status. Goals such as taking a chance on starting a business or moving to a different job or taking on a new position in the company they’re in are things that feel too major to make a move on.

The problem with thinking that it’s too late and not believing in yourself is that when that happens, you don’t live a happy life. You think that all that life has to offer you is exactly what you already have, and deep down, you know it’s not enough.

Sure, sometimes you’ll catch yourself thinking there could be more - and you might even feel a longing to do something, but you always obediently stick it in the back of your mind, where it will remain until the next time you have a glimpse of what could be.

One thing you should know is that pursuing your dreams never has an expiration date. Just because you didn’t go after them when you were young doesn’t mean that opportunity ended.

There are never any permanently sealed doors when it comes to going after what you want in life. There are no age limitations, no location limitations and no knowledge limitations.

There are never any deadlines when it comes to making a change. So what if you’re at retirement age or beyond? You can still change course. You can start that business, move across the country (or the world) or start a new relationship.

You can learn a new skill. You can leave a cushy, well-paying job where you simply go through the motions for one that feeds your passion. It’s okay. You can pursue your dreams regardless of the circumstances or reasons you didn’t in the past. You can start right now - today.

A Willingness to Change

It might surprise you to learn that the number one reason people believe that it’s too late to change is because their willingness to make that change isn’t strong enough. There will be things in life that you’ll want, but if you don’t get it, you don’t necessarily lose sleep over it.

You don’t feel like something’s not right. There’s no longing deep within, no wonders, and no questions. You never think that there should be more to life. You don’t think about the path not taken.

But then there will be things that you can’t stop thinking about. When these ideas or desires cross your mind, you feel that pull in your soul. Something inside you stirs and makes you think about how much you’d like to do that … if only.

It’s the “if only” part that stops people in their tracks. Because immediately followed by that thought, is the one where they believe it’s not possible because life didn’t take that path a long time ago.

Or they think that the change is so big and so powerful and so life altering that it would just be too hard to attempt. The problem is when that happens, there’s not even a willingness to try.

There’s an automatic mental slamming of the door (because it’s too late) and it plays over and over like a broken record in their mind. You have to realize that “too late” is a soft place to fall as far as excuses go.

It keeps you exactly where you are. It keeps you from making mistakes, from making changes, from moving, from leaving, from trying – and from succeeding in your goals of carving out the kind of life you were truly meant to live. 

Your willingness to change is drowned out by all the reasons - which are really just common excuses - why you can’t possibly take a different path now. If you did that, you’d be saying that your life up until now has been wrong. Wasted.

And that’s simply not true. When you know that the life that you’re living isn’t fulfilling you and it’s not the one that you want, the only way that you’re going to be happy, that you’re going to find your passion, is to let go of the life you’re living now as it is.

Let go of all the reasons, excuses and situations that have kept you on the wrong path because you were meant for more. You’ve taken the first step – realizing that there may be hope for you in terms of changing your mindset.