The `Believe in yourself’ Lie

I am perplexed at an odd mantra that the millennials seem to have latched onto; that the prima facto ingredient to accomplishment and success is pride, or as they like to express it, to “believe in yourself”. Oprah Winfrey opines on this topic with a religious fervour, as do so many other motivational thinkers. The truth is, they are not really motivational thinkers, they are motivational feelers and exploiters. And they teach that narcissism is a means to the end. 

Success comes from effort and planning, not from self reflection and self esteem. It is a formulation that generations from the epoch of time have used to build civilization. Logic and Work ethic are the means to build your life. If you “feel” this isn’t correct, you are likely poor and depressed.

“You can be anything you want to be in life” is a lie. You can’t be. There are many things in life that are beyond your capabilities. People are not all identical clones. We have fed this gobbledygook to our children, whereas reality testifies against its absurdity. Even in kindergarten, children will readily perceive that there is a vast schism in athletic ability amongst their classmates.  Some will run faster and some will not.

Competition breeds failure. Failure builds character and tunes your focus, so you can find success.

Work … Fail … Refine … Retry. You will find success by planning and executing different strategies to reach realistic and logically derived goals. This is not for the faint of heart, for it takes due diligence, dedication, hard work and time. Yet once you have found some level of success, that fake pride based upon feelings and a sense of superiority will be replaced with an honorable self esteem built upon the tangible foundation of your accomplishment. 

To move forward, it's time to replace Oprah Winfrey and Joel Osteen's hollow sloganism of "Believing in yourself", with Larry the Cable Guy and Toe Mader's (1)  "Git-R-Done".

(1) - from Disney's "Cars".