— How do you believe in yourself when everything is collapsing? How do you tell the difference between a single failure and a systemic loss of faith in yourself?
— When I hear the phrase “how to tell the difference between a single failure and the loss of faith in yourself”, I immediately see in it a huge ego-construction. Because a person who formulates it this way already wants to justify their own losses.
— Life brings very different moments. Sometimes everything is falling apart, but you still believe in yourself, keep moving forward, and hold on. And sometimes it’s the opposite: you’re on the rise, everything around is a success, everything works, but suddenly the faith in yourself disappears completely. And you think: “Something is about to happen.” And sometimes both collapse at once: externally everything is falling apart, and the faith in yourself is gone too. What is this state?
— A very good question. And here it’s important to immediately pay attention: what is faith in yourself based on in the first place? How do you gain it, how do you create a stable, solid state of life? After all, one person’s faith collapses because of money, another’s because of relationships with parents, another’s because of events in the country or in nature. Some begin to lose faith when loved ones get sick. Some — when a loved one dies. And sometimes everything around looks fine, but inside there’s chaos and no foundation.
The reasons are countless. Each person has their own. And here it’s crucial to understand: faith in yourself is one of the greatest structures of human freedom. I’m not talking now about the kind of belief that says “I’m the smartest, I’ll succeed in business.” No. We’re talking about the true inner feeling, about the resilience, about the strength that nothing can shake. And this is always individual, personal.
Now the question: are there universal practices, general rules for strengthening faith in yourself? For example, comparison practices. “If they succeeded — then you’ll succeed too. If this girl succeeded — then you will too.” Many stories are built on such cases. “I lost myself, 15 of my relatives died, but I believed in myself, took a training — and became a billionaire.” Yes, such stories exist. But this is a trap.
The first thing to understand is: the solution to the question of faith in yourself is always individual. And you can solve it only through the strength that allows you to know yourself deeply enough to understand your own causes. To know yourself — by yourself.
And in order to know yourself, you need to engage in true actions, practices, tasks that lead to development, to the knowledge of your “self.” The more a person knows themselves, the better they understand the cause-and-effect connections around them, the more faith they have in themselves. This is expanded perception of life: understanding why events happen and how they are connected to you.
To truly know how I am built as a person, to understand my own system — that strengthens the absolute state of faith in oneself. The more knowledge, the stronger the faith. And here we come to a paradox: we don’t work directly with the causes of fear. We go toward knowing ourselves — and then the very structure of losing faith doesn’t appear. Yes, along the way you can work through separate aspects: when it happens, what it’s connected with, how to process it. But without self-knowledge, it’s impossible.
There is no pill, no course, no place of power, no ashram, temple, or person who could guarantee to turn on faith in yourself in everyone for life. Because the very fact of having this inner core — that is freedom itself, which a person strives toward from century to century, from life to life. That is the main task.
And you cannot confuse true faith in yourself with the egotistical one. “I’m smarter, therefore I’ll succeed.” This is abstraction, illusion. True faith is in calm evaluation.
— Can faith in yourself be measured somehow?
— That’s madness. It’s the same as trying to measure intelligence. Compared to what? In one situation, a person may be the smartest, and in another — an absolute fool. Faith in yourself cannot be measured.
That’s why I’m always wary when someone says: “I’m confident in myself because…” Yes, you can be confident that you’ll pass an exam or that you’ll handle business. But that’s something else. You’re asking about the kind of faith that comes out of nowhere, that shatters your state, explodes your emotional system, your heartbeat, your hormonal background. Doctors can prescribe pills, tests, give explanations. And faith in yourself suddenly disappears, then reappears, then disappears again. It moves in its own way.
And to observe this — that is the true freedom of a person.