Where does Self belief come from?

My opinion is that you have complete control over how others affect you. You can choose to let their words or thought have a large effect on you, or you can choose to only observe their comments and not let them have an effect on you. Should they have an effect? Certainly not, why should I be obliged to satisfy someone else’s opinion? This is silly and wasted, since everyone has a different opinion you would have to constantly change yourself to satisfy everyone, and I see no benefit in doing that whatsoever. Could they have an effect? Certainly, it’s valuable at times to consider what other people are saying. But at the end of the day what matters most to me is what I think and believe, not what other people tell me I should.

A lot I say comes from within, but also those around you play a role in self belief…like when my coaches and parents pushed me through a wrestling match when I was younger…you have the self belief, the others around you help boost that.

Of course people around us affect the way we feel, the way we think, our norms and values. This is the very definition of culture.

But I disagree with you, @dynamicduo. There is so much around us, every day, that there is no way to have “control” over how they affect you. Some of the more obvious influencers, statements, opinions, perhaps. But consider how many subtle influencers there are around us every minute of every day. Consider the very page in front of you, for example: how many influencers are here, literally in front of your nose, that you don’t even really see?

@PapaLeo But how many of those influences actually affect me? None of them. I make a choice to not let anyone’s words here affect me, and so they don’t. I am aware of how graphic design can influence and guide your mind, as well as the psychological effects of colors. What other influencers would you be talking about, and how would they affect me?

Countless. Other graphic influencers (like font and avatar), but also context, seniority (how much lurve does a person have), others’ comments about a posting. But also your personal state: how do you feel, what’s going on around you, what have you eaten today, what did you learn yesterday that you didn’t know the day before? And then there are the macro influences: where were you born and under what circumstances, how was your upbringing, what friends did you have growing up, what was (is) your formal education like? These all have influence on your perception and on how you process input.

The purely rational human being does not exist. There is no such thing as pure objectivity. Everything has context.

Are we talking about affecting ourselves emotionally? Also, if you choose to not let what people say affect you how will you learn anything. Granted there are many lies put out there by graphic designers. Every magazine cover that affects the self-image of women have been graphically altered. In my opinion people tend to let the world in because they want companionship. To not let world affect you means you shut everyone out.

I don’t believe as others above have said that one can CHOOSE how to be affected – logically, that makes sense, but I know, in practice, sometimes we are affected by others, negatively and it’s painful and you wish they didn’t have that effect on you but they do – either because they’re your parents and you want to trust them or your lover who you want to be vulnerable with or your children whom you won’t turn your back on but things they do can still hurt

If others truly didn’t affect me, I’d be dead

As one who was abused verbally from my earliest memories, and later was also abused physically and sexually as a child, I assure you that other people affect how we think and feel about ourselves. I remained stuck in a victim’s mentality for many years, and continued to allow others to influence my self-perception.

It is only after much hard work and deep contemplation that I can finally say that I accept, like, love, and am proud of myself. I recently went through a tumultuous relationship, and I was amazed at how level-headed I was, after having done very desperate and foolishly impulsive things in earlier relationships.

I have finally learned how to allow myself to feel and experience my emotions fully without letting my emotions overwhelm and control me, as they once did.

You don’t know yourself without a mirror. Read a few stories about kids who grew up in closets for the first ten years of life. No human contact. They can’t learn to see or talk or do anything the way most of us do it.

Other people are our mirrors. So, whether they reflect us accurately or not, what they reflect is how we see ourselves, and how we see is how we believe ourselves to be.

We do have the capability, after a certain level of maturity, of ignoring the mirror. We can walk past it without looking. No more checking or hair or teeth or how the makeup is working. We have enough sense of ourselves to create our own, internal mirrors.

This is a form of self-delusion, but it can be extremely useful. Then again, once we learn to take control of our image of ourselves, perhaps we can create our own reality. Especially if we are really good at believing our own realities, as constructed by ourselves.

I think that people like @dynamicduo are pretty rare. Most of us still peek in the mirror, and some of us stare in that mirror all the time. Sometimes mirrors lie, so if we believe what we see, we can be in trouble. Believing the lies of others is as bad as believing your own lies, I think. There’s a healthy balance somewhere, and I’m sure it’s different for everyone.

I tend to look at myself first, to see my reaction to various things. I analyze those reactions in as much detail as I can, and then I create a model of why I behave the way I do. Then I try to extend that model and see if it works for other people. I ask them what they see and how they think under various circumstances—a lot like what happens all the time on fluther.

Usually, I’m pretty convinced that, whether other people agree with me or not, my model is better than theirs. Oddly, this does not translate into self-belief, since my model incorporates the idea that I do not see things the way others do, and as long as there is a disparity in the different visions, I do not have enough information to base a belief on.

Other people say “fuck it.” Just do what you will. Stop analyzing. It doesn’t help you. I’ve realized over the years, that maybe analysis doesn’t help others, but it sure as hell helps me! So that’s one aspect where I find the mirror doesn’t tell the truth. However, identifying the areas where my self-mirror is lying is not such an easy task.

Wow. Great answer, @daloon, really great. A personal touch, very empathetic, and at the same time validating @dynamicduo‘s contribution. Kudos, man.

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