Sebas Bravo

In 1920, when heading to California, Amelia Earhart experienced her first flight¹. It was a moment of revelation, as the plane had only ascended 60 or 90 meters when she already knew it… she knew that she had to fly.

Her interest began during World War I, while Amelia and her sister, Muriel, were working as volunteer nurses and they were taken to the headquarters of the British Air Force. More specifically, there she saw the Royal Air Corps and was instantly smitten by the greatness and the mere fact that those were machines that allowed humans to fly!

However, at that time the world was completely different and the idea of a woman becoming a pilot was a complete madness. For that reason, she not only got discouraged by the people, but also by her own family, which caused her to have doubts about her capabilities; nevertheless, where there is a will there’s a way and in 1922 she managed to buy her first airplane, “The Canary.”

The rest is history, she became one of the best pilots in the world with adventures like: making the first female flight across the atlantic, made the single-handed crossing between Honolulu and Oakland (being the first pilot in achieving this venture), establishing speed records, and defended the incorporation of women into aeronautics field.

Amelia wanted to fly, so she learned to fly. By achieving this, she also paved the way for more women in aeronautics and became one of the best pilots in history. Despite what people said, despite her family and the world; she believed in herself and that was the best she could do.

Very often we don’t believe the great things that we can achieve, we tend to think that those visions are just “dreams” or that they are out of our capabilities. Sometimes the mere fact of thinking about big possibilities makes us feel overwhelmed, and then we feel the endeavors are not worth making; we give up before starting. Let me tell you, if we don’t believe in it and if we don’t try it, then yes, those visions will remain as dreams.

We are not more prone to fail than to succeed, the mere fact of taking action and going through a journey of improvement makes us feel successful, but it takes courage to take the leap and believe in ourselves.So, let’s create our manifesto, one that we repeat every morning or every time we need that extra motivation to start working, one that makes us feel powerful:

It is time that we start to believe in all the beautiful things that we can bring to life. It is part of our nature as humans, to create and to strive. It is in our code, within us, we just have to let it manifest in the outside world, and we have to let it shine.

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. – Leonardo Da Vinci²

What does it take to believe in yourself?

Believing in yourself is a powerful tool to achieving your goals and improving your overall well-being–it is, easily, one of the best decisions of your life. But if we flip the sides, not believing in yourself means that we are less likely to act, to change, or to push to make things better.

Believing in yourself will bring you joy and stillness. Not only that, I am sure that it will also help you to spread that confidence to the others in your surroundings. Yes, they will see you as a confident person and one worth admiring, but–most importantly–this “aura” of positivity will be transmitted to the world, and you will inspire change.

According to the article from “Psychology Today³,” there are three things that we have to take care the most in order to believe in ourselves, I call them “The Triple Aces”:

• Self-worth
  • The sense that you have value as a human being.
  • To really know that your life is worth living and that you have great value just by being you, for being alive. To be okay with your struggles as you know that constant progress will take them away and will bring you beyond. 
  • Knowing that not every time you are going to feel great, and understanding that it is part of life; the same way, your sadness or pain will not last forever⁴.
• Self-confidence
  • Trusting in one’s abilities and capabilities. Moreover, having faith in one’s decisions and actions.
  • Ask yourself: “When do I feel the most confident? What activities do I do? How can I create more confidence? What are your skills?”
• Autonomy mastery
  • Feeling in control of one’s life and choices. To know that you are in charge of your life, and you know the power of taking decisions that align with your values, it will instantly make you feel powerful.
  • Being able to navigate and adapt to one’s environment. As you know that environments are created and you can always adapt to the best way of living.

These aspects are connected between them, most of the time lacking in one leads to lacking in the other; but the same it’s true if we have developed one, we can develop the other. 

When talking about “not believing that you can achieve your goal,” normally the aspect to take more care is the number 2, self-confidence. So please, take your time to evaluate all of them and discover the problem from the root.

Believing in yourself

To develop the “Triple Aces,” I recommend you to do the following⁵:

• Journaling
  • First of all, take some time to really know how you feel. Take some paper (or even your notes app) and use the prompts of “point 2.”
  • When writing, remember to change the way you talk to yourself, please be compassionate. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to a dear friend.
    • If necessary, you can read our manifesto before starting.
• Small wins + tracker
  • At the beginning of each day, set small wins–literally very small ones, like making just one reflection, cleaning the house, going for a quick walk–and track them.
  • By making these small wins you will feel like an “achiever,” as someone who says that is going to say something and truly does it.
  • The tracker helps to keep you motivated. The more visual it is, the better.

What the world needs most is what you have to offer. – Alejandro Jodorowsky

Self-knowledge and authenticity

We must be aware of our own feelings, they are always telling us something. So we have to enjoy the good ones, and pay deep attention to the not-positives, as they are yelling at us to make a change. In this way, we will know what we really want to accomplish and what are the problems that we want (or need) to solve.

Working with authenticity is key, knowing that we are all different and each of us is in an unique race, as much as it resembles ours. Create your own projects and do not compare to the others. We are all on a different path, making achievements worth for ourselves.

Avoid perfectionism

A very important part of believing in ourselves, is understanding that progress is slow, so we must be okay with that. This also comes with setting achievable goals, and with this I mostly refer to setting goals achievable in a specific time or with the skills and tools we currently have. If we have a significant goal, but we lack time or skills, then break it into small ones, and even smaller goals if necessary.

Perfectionism is not always trying to do everything as how you envision it with every tiny detail, it also is setting unachievable goals. We must be careful as this leads to not believing in ourselves and it is a form of “auto-sabotaging.”

What if you fly?

So, I want you to think about it. In what thing are you not believing or what thing you believe you can achieve?

If you don’t believe in yourself, then nothing will work. Lionel Messi believed that he could win the World Cup, Lewis Hamilton believed he could become the greatest Formula One driver, Martin Luther King Jr. believed he could make a change in the world. What do you believe?

Believing in yourself will make you put your body out there and start moving. It will make you strive for your desires.

Take the leap, and with time, you will fly.

🎫 Your ticket to improvement

One of my main beliefs is that we read to acquire knowledge, but it is worthless if we never apply it into our life, as Ryan Holiday states: “The goal is to put these words into works.” And that “work” could literally be anything: self-reflection, improvement, the start of an action, start crafting an idea, or words in your journal.

Therefore, I will ask you to see yourself as a “scientist of self-improvement,” one that seeks to find the formula to turn that spark into blazing fire. Or a “data scientist” who is gathering information from any place to build a “highest version mathematical model.” So, create your hypothesis and do your experiments to validate if these actions work for you. Go to your Lab and start crafting (by the way, I have a free Excel called “The Lab⁶,” which is designed for these experiments).

Without further ado, take your ticket 🎟️:

Your personal flight plan

As a good airline, we must establish a great plan to make a wonderful flight. For this reason, we have to set a clear destination of where we want to go.

• Dare to dream
  • Write down one goal or dream that feels both exciting and intimidating.
  • Ponder about: “What would you achieve if you believed you could fly? What is holding you back from starting? What’s the first small step you can take today to move closer to that goal?”

Continuing with our flight plan, we have to proceed with our manifesto of good practices:

• Every morning (or when you feel necessary) read your manifesto, it can be the one from above or you can create your own. Remember to add words that make you feel powerful.

I can imagine that your goal is very big and meaningful, so, as a long flight, it must have stopovers–or small wins:

• Break your goal in little steps that you can achieve every day. Things that are so easy and small that make success inevitable.
• Do not forget to track it and make it visual.

Finally, imagine that you have already “flown,” ask your experienced self for advice about achieving this goal, and ask how it made them feel.

Every endeavor is possible when you believe in yourself. Captain, you are more than ready to take flight!

Footnotes

1. Amelia Earhart, with Neta Snook, was a pioneer in women’s aviation. If you would like to know more, you can click here. ↩︎
2. Make a note of this quote, what is that thing that you have tasted and you long to return? Something that gives you life. ↩︎
3. More about “How to believe in yourself” here. ↩︎
4. If you’re not feeling good and think you need professional help, please go to this link to find a local therapist in your area. ↩︎
5. These are just my recommendations, but please, feel free to write yours in the comments 🙂 ↩︎
6. If you would like to get your Lab Excel completely for free, all you have to do is to subscribe to my Substack or to my newsletter “Ingenium.” ↩︎

Viventem gradatim; gradatim ferociter