Change How You See Yourself - Learn To Reduce ADHD Shame, Low Self-Worth & Perfectionism
According to Dr. Fred Luskin at Stanford University, the average person has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts daily. This number is likely to be even higher if you have ADHD. What’s worse is that around 80% of those thoughts are negative.
Chronic rumination, anxious over-thinking, zoning out into your inner world, and the overwhelming internal hyperactivity of having ADHD can all significantly increase how much time you are stuck thinking.
This never-ending cycle of rumination and overthinking doesn’t have to be your default way of being forever.
Your attitude, mindset, and beliefs allow you to see the world through a magnifying glass. You focus on one interpretation of events and a single reading on reality, while other alternative explanations and thoughts on the topic are filtered away.
You weren't in control when negative thought patterns and anxious attitudes developed. But now you have the power to redefine your personal narratives toward more healthy and positive interpretations.
This article will explain the origins of many common negative beliefs that cause shame, guilt, and feelings of worthlessness in people with ADHD before offering step-by-step protocols you can use to shift your way of thinking in a more healthy direction.
The Connection Between Beliefs and Emotions
In many cases, the emotions you feel (anxiety, worry, shame, self-loathing), the physiological responses of your body (chest tightness, sweat, restlessness, etc.), and your behavior after an event or an experience will depend on your underlying beliefs.
For example, imagine you text something to your partner in the afternoon, but they don't respond for more than 3 hours.
If you are an anxious person with low self-worth, you may start to think that you've said something wrong to upset them or that they don't care or love you enough to prioritize responding on time. You will start to get worried (emotion), which leads you to restlessly move around the room (body response) and browse social media to distract yourself (behavior).
Alternatively, if you are more securely attached and have confidence in your worth and the strength of your relationship, you will not make negative interpretations out of a neutral situation, which currently lacks context. You may get worried for a moment or two but end up reassuring yourself that they are probably busy with work or their phone's battery has died, and they can't respond.
These two completely different interpretations give rise to vastly different emotions, thoughts, body responses, and behavior. If your emotional state and mental health are largely influenced by perception, then you have the freedom and control to change how you react.
It's not a magic fix or an instantaneous solution, but a reassurance you can always get better. Your reactions are not set in stone, but with enough effort and commitment, you can change them for the better.
Covering every single troublesome attitude and belief that plagues people with ADHD will require a whole book. So, we will focus on two of the most common ones - thinking you are not enough due to low self-worth and perfectionism.
How ADHD Causes Shame, Guilt, and Low Self-Worth
If you have ADHD, chances are you've likely had your fair share of interaction with the unholy trinity of painful emotions - shame, guilt, and a feeling of inadequacy due to low self-worth.
Don't worry, you are not alone. Many people with ADHD feel guilt over certain actions, shame over their general behavior, and existential dread over not being enough for others and good enough in general.
To feel as though you are not enough comes from the social, academic, and professional struggle, which is common to all neurodivergent people who constantly try to mask and fit in a neurotypical society. If you often fall short, underperform, and don't fulfill the expectations of others, having low self-esteem is the natural result.
It's a vicious cycle that gets worse over time.
If you have moments of brilliance and genius because of hyper-focus and days where your symptoms are better, this becomes the new high standard people reference when judging you. It's very common to hear people say, "How can you pay attention to X so easily but don't bother for Y? You need to stop being lazy and irresponsible!"
You fail to meet the expectations of others. They get upset, disappointed, and distanced from you, making you more desperate for their approval and validation. In a quest to redeem yourself, you ramp up the expectations you set for yourself. You think that if your inner critic is louder and harsher, maybe it can help you catch up and stop slacking.
The cycle repeats itself hundreds of times, starting from your childhood, and by the time your adolescence ends, you are an adult, crippled with insecurity, anxiety, and constant fear of not doing or being enough to others.
The Role of Childhood Struggle and Trauma in Low Self-Worth
Social relationships can be a struggle when you are young because you interrupt people due to impulsivity and honestly express yourself without inhibitions, even when it means being rash and blunt.
Even if you don't unintentionally hurt others, bullying and mockery are commonly weaponized against children who have different needs and special interests and are not afraid to be their true selves. Verbal reprimand and emotional abuse only get worse the more you become an outsider.
The inability to meet standards, conform to expectations, and the struggle to avoid misunderstandings and conflicts in communication can all lead to low self-worth. You are either directly criticized, or over time, you begin to trash yourself for not fitting in and being different. A young mind ends up believing that they are unworthy of love, attention, and opportunities
Have you ever seen scenes in animations of a snowball growing larger and larger as it goes down and eventually transforming into a full-blown avalanche? Well, childhood trauma can compound in a similar way.
Admitting you don't feel good enough, muttering "I'm such an idiot," and shouting at yourself for being "lazy and stupid" begins only as self-talk. However, the more you repeat those words to yourself and others, the more normalized they become.
Over time, you begin to act and carry yourself like someone who doesn't deserve care, love, respect, and attention. Just as your emotions and experiences can give birth to thoughts, what you think begins to define who you are over time.
Many manage to carry their shame, perceived inadequacy, and self-hatred hidden behind a mask. However, even if not expressed through words, it begins to reveal itself through actions.
Feeling ashamed naturally pushes people to seek isolation. If there is something wrong with your actions, and you supposedly didn't do enough to stop or modify them, then there is also something wrong with you by proxy.
According to this logic, it becomes normal not to try to reconcile after a conflict because you save this person more pain. It also makes sense to sabotage your healthy relationships because you can at least be the captain of a ship you believe will inevitably sink.
The Perfectionism Trap
Perfectionism is one of the most common coping mechanisms for people with ADHD who struggle with shame and a sense of not being enough. If you feel imperfect, then the natural solution is to compensate by always trying as much as possible to be perfect.
Unfortunately, the pursuit of perfection is more likely to sabotage your ability to be successful. Perfectionism often leads to paralysis, where you don't do anything despite being motivated to do as much as possible. It sounds like a total contradiction, but this paradox is very real.
This is because trying to be perfect is very challenging. Being the hardcore kind of perfectionist means you make everything very challenging because you want to be the very best. Everything you do now has much higher stakes due to your huge expectations, which creates a lot of stress and anxiety when you try to start and work on a goal.
Just like you will procrastinate on a huge project because it feels overwhelming and intimidating, being a perfectionist creates action paralysis and worsens procrastination because the default discomfort you feel from more tasks is much higher. If the task isn't very small, you won't get a reward any time soon, so your brain is very likely to do everything possible to escape because all it sees is pain and stress.
Experimenting, having an imperfect first attempt, and learning along the way become unacceptable because you need to get it right from the very first time.
This is why you either don't start a task or distract yourself with productive procrastination - thinking, planning, and organizing how you will approach the task, assignment, or project. You do everything except actually starting it. You plan for the perfect execution but don't come around to actually starting the process.
Burnout is also very common when being a perfectionist.
As we mentioned in the article about burnout management, working on something for a while requires you to get a large enough reward to justify all the effort. However, if you are a perfectionist, you never recognize the full extent of your achievements, undermine your success, and focus on the next big goal instead of stepping back for a moment to cherish and celebrate what you have done until now. It's a recipe for a mental health disaster.
Perfectionism works in theory but collapses in practice. It may be a noble ideal created with good intentions, but as a mindset, it leads to counter-productive behavior, more worrying and stress, and reduced satisfaction with your successes and achievements.
Why It Feels Impossible To Change Your Beliefs
Imagine an ideal version of yourself where you've completely accepted who you are and no longer feel ashamed about your ADHD.
You don't feel the need to apologize for the non-harmful neurodivergent behavior. Perfection is something you will never reach, but you've embraced your flaws and imperfections, determined to keep progressing, improving, and treating yourself with kindness and compassion whenever you go through challenges and obstacles.
Unfortunately, simply reading the information above will not change who you are. You may have gotten an emotional revelation, which provided a much-needed relief and sense of clarity, but having an epiphany alone will not change you as a person.
That's because beliefs take a long time to form and change.
You are a combination of millions of experiences, thoughts, and emotions. They all eventually lead to beliefs, which only grow stronger and more persistent over time as they get reaffirmed over and over again. If beliefs are formed gradually, then changing your mindset will also have to happen slowly because a lot of mental effort is needed to override all the information, experiences, and interpretations you've made in the past.
Furthermore, unless you've hit absolute rock bottom where you perceive your life to be in danger, in the vast majority of cases, your mind refuses to change massively. A fundamental transformation of who you are happens very rarely because of your mind's ego-defensive mechanisms.
Put simply, not changing how you feel about yourself is highly desirable because it massively simplifies life and makes everything more predictable.
If you are alive, that's good enough for your mind because we are wired to prioritize survival over happiness, and the two often clash. For example, you have phobias designed to keep you safe even if you are paralyzed with fear, a fight-or-flight stress system keeping you alert for threats even if it leaves you miserable due to chronic stress, and the novelty of anything you love wears off as your mind returns to baseline.
This can be both discouraging and motivating, depending on how you look at it. On the one hand, taking weeks, months, or even years to change your mindset sounds painful. On the other hand, once you create a healthier version of yourself, challenges and moments of adversity will not be enough to destroy your progress because of your solid foundation.
How To Start - The Psychology Behind Belief Changing
I think changing your beliefs for the better is a fight worth fighting, even if it feels impossible at times.
If you agree, then let's take the first step together. Changing your beliefs begins by getting a basic understanding of how and why your beliefs are formed.
Here is a very simplified explanation of the psychological mechanisms which can influence your beliefs:
Value - You buy into every belief you have for a reason, even your negative ones. For example, perfectionism keeps you chronically stressed and dissatisfied, but your mind thinks pushing yourself harder is necessary. You don't have high self-esteem because you don't meet your high standards, but those standards exist to keep you accountable and push you to succeed. The belief may be misguided and fail to reach its end result, but there is always a purpose to what you believe in.
Evidence - Most beliefs are formed by and justified through lived experiences and observations about the world. For example, your lack of confidence and low self-esteem is born and maintained from multiple past experiences where you failed to meet the standards of others or got ridiculed, criticized, and dismissed despite trying your best, leaving you to feel ashamed and inadequate.
Repetition - What do you do when you hear an opinion you obviously disagree with? You grumble counter-arguments. Whether internally in your mind or from the people around you, if you hear something repeatedly without disagreeing, you passively accept it as true. Of course, this doesn't happen at once, but repeating something a thousand, ten thousand, or a million times makes it more familiar. The more familiar a belief, the more likely you are to accept it as true.
(Note - This can seem a bit abstract right now, but you will see those principles play out in the exercises below).
Beliefs are shaped both internally in your mind or externally based on your lived experiences and the world around you.
For instance, targeted advertisement is a form of external influence, while repeating a personal mantra is an internal way of shaping your thinking.
In the context of belief changing, you want to use both strategies ideally. For instance, if you suffer from clinical depression alongside ADHD, you likely have a tendency to over-credit and concentrate on information confirming your negative attitude while being more dismissive of positive experiences.
So, you can journal, practice personalized affirmations, and try to change negative self-talk, but this may not be enough. This is why you can get better results by going to individual or group therapy, proactively reaching out to friends in person or online, seeking support from communities of people going through the same, volunteering, and doing other social activities. By having supportive people around you offering a different perspective, it’s much easier to modify your beliefs in a healthier direction.
The boring theoretical part is over. Now, it’s time to create an action plan. Here is what you should consider while making it:
Pick a single belief - Changing who you are is hard enough as it is. Focusing on more than one is overwhelming at best and unsustainable at worst. Even if they are interconnected (thinking you are not enough and perfectionism), it’s best to stick with one in the beginning.
Prepare not to see instant results - I know this is an ADHD-er’s worst nightmare. This is why your action plan should ideally include multiple activities you can do so that the variety of different exercises keeps you occupied if the repetition of the same journaling technique gets boring. It’s okay to have periods where you stop doing anything for days and weeks as long as you eventually get back to it.
Below, I will include a few evidence-based options and a small case study to give you some inspiration.
Self Forgiveness - Why It Is Necessary & How To Practice It
It's borderline impossible to make a romantic relationship get better if your partner repulses you. Similarly, it's very hard to think of yourself as a better person capable of more if you hate yourself for your past. Whether you like it or not, you are stuck with yourself, so forgiveness is very important
Forgiveness is the pre-condition for you to get a fresh start without the burden of the past weighing on your shoulders. In the absence of forgiving yourself, it’s very easy to weaponize failures, rejections, and problems from the past as an excuse that it’s impossible to change and that there is no point in trying.
By forgiveness, I mean not allowing negative and painful past events to define how you feel about yourself in the present. Forgiveness doesn't mean you ignore and forget past experiences. You can still learn from them, but you need to cut your emotional connection to those events because they are holding you back.
Self-forgiveness exercises:
Letter writing - We all have specific moments in our past that cause an immense amount of shame, regret, and self-loathing (losing a great job opportunity, messing up a relationship, being too afraid to try something). When you write a letter, you will describe what happened, imagining you are writing it to your past self. Then, you will forgive them for what has happened and examine how you likely didn't have enough information, didn't know how to manage your ADHD symptoms, or had good intentions but failed in the execution of something, the time wasn’t right, or your circumstances prevented you from making the best choices. You can write multiple letters for different events for the best results.
Daily self-compassion - If you have a close friend, and they make a silly mistake, would you shout at them that they are a worthless piece of s**t that exists only to steal oxygen and nutrients from everyone else? Likely not. Being a bit strict with yourself can sometimes help, but you are also very likely to overdo it and tear yourself apart for the slightest mistakes. Is it worth risking it? Probably not. Next time when you struggle or make a mistake, be kinder to yourself and say something like, “It’s fine, mistakes happen to everyone, without setbacks, I wouldn’t be able to grow.”
Analyzing Your Thoughts
Any of those thought exercises can be done by a) journaling, b) scribbling digital notes throughout the day, c) creating voice recordings of yourself, or d) choosing one question and trying to bring it up in as many situations as possible throughout the day.
Is this true? What evidence can I find for both sides? - Sometimes traumatic experiences and highly uncomfortable past events can shake your belief in yourself so much that you repeat narratives, like not being enough, having to sacrifice and people-please, and not deserving to fit in (imposter syndrome) even if there is no evidence to support your belief. This question can remind you that sometimes your automatic reaction is not justified, or there is more evidence for the other side, even if you are somewhat right.
Is this type of thinking relevant right now? - Similar to the previous question, you have to evaluate whether the attitude you have used in the past is needed right now, considering how vastly different the circumstances may be. For example, people-pleasing may have felt necessary to avoid social isolation in high school and college, but it may be time to prioritize yourself and establish healthy boundaries right now.
Is this helpful? - If simple but brilliant was a question, it’d be that. This question is excellent for challenging self-limiting beliefs. For example, imagine you have a dream career, but specialization requires a mandatory university degree, and you have dropped out twice from different degrees in the past. You have all the evidence you need to justify not trying again, but if this really is what you want to do, it’s not helpful at all to sulk over how you are likely to fail, and it’s better to focus on what you can do to make it different this time instead.
How would I advise someone close to me in the same situation - See a close friend being a shameless workaholic by staying up to 2 am on “side hustles” and waking up at 7 am for work? You’d probably call them out and urge them to reconsider, but if it were you in the same situation, you are more likely to come up with a dozen excuses on how you have to push yourself above and beyond. Such situations are very common with low self-worth because your internal voice may be very harsh and strict, and you don’t prioritize your well-being enough because you don’t value yourself much.
There are two more ways of analyzing your thoughts that combine introspection with action:
Thought recording while doing an activity - Sometimes, the reaction we feel when encouraged to try something can be vastly different from how we actually feel after doing the activity because of past events. For example, living in a strict household can lead to many negative memories related to cleaning and keeping the house and an almost automatic discomfort at the sight of an overflowing sink. Exercising, reading books, and eating healthy are other common examples. By regularly recording what you think and how you feel before, during, and after trying any of those activities out, you can start to break down your instinctive reactions and maybe see that you actually enjoy doing some of them in a different context.
Behavioral experiments - This is a fancy way of saying you will become your own lab rat. The premise is simple: beliefs create actions, but actions can also shape beliefs. If your attitude has you convinced you shouldn’t do something because you will fail or won’t like it, then you will give it a shot for a week, month, or a set number of times. Think of it as a small-scale study that will soon enough end, which should make it less overwhelming. One simple example is physical exercise, which you may despise due to PE classes or dysfunctional parenting. Set a goal to do 3 workouts a week for a month (you can combine this with the thought recording exercise). After a month, you will either still hate exercise (you win for proving yourself right) or kind of like it (you win again for successfully starting a new habit).
Common Mistakes When Analyzing Your Thoughts - Why Conventional CBT May Not Be Working
The questions and exercises you just read are very common cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is very popular for the treatment of various disorders. However, many people with ADHD are not responsive to it. Even if they know what’s dysfunctional about their beliefs, there is no resulting change or attitude shift.
It's very common for a person to cling to beliefs that they don't want to believe anymore. Two common reasons include the following:
1. Excessive critique and harshness to yourself when trying to change
Beliefs take a very long time to build, and changing them doesn't happen instantly in many cases, so trying to rush the process by tearing yourself down for being illogical, irrational and having beliefs that don't make sense can actually be counter-productive.
You may be correct to refute your misguided beliefs, but being too harsh with yourself can make parts of you resistant to the message. This ego-defensive mechanism means you may hear and understand the logic behind your analysis but not internalize it (accept and adopt the change as part of who you are).
Tearing major parts of your identity in very harsh ways creates major existential anxiety and brings up subconscious questions, like “Who am I without those beliefs?” or “How could I have led such a life if my beliefs are so horrible?”
If you are told that there is something wrong with parts of you over and over again is why many ADHD-ers can’t stand CBT techniques and feel like it’s a professional form of gaslighting.
If you find a similar sense of discomfort, you don’t have to do these exercises. However, I would encourage you to at least give the following alternative a shot before dropping them entirely:
Try to acknowledge the function of your current beliefs and give them some credit by highlighting what good things they say about you instead of only tearing yourself down.
Let’s take a very simple example - perfectionism.
Perfectionism cons:
Increases action paralysis and stops you from trying out new and risky things
Makes it hard to celebrate winning because you always focus on being better
Creates anxiety around your performance
Perfectionism pros:
Shows you care about being the best version of yourself
Ensures you keep working no matter what and continuously strive for more
Allows you to come back to your work and refine it to perfection for better results
You can combine this with your usual analysis of thoughts when reflecting in a journal, making voice recordings, or randomly looking into your thought patterns throughout the day.
By accepting this belief is currently a part of you and has a function, even if the end result doesn't end well, you will be less resistant to gradually changing it.
2. Lack of viable alternatives that have to replace what you are trying to erase
Every belief you have serves a particular purpose, and even if it's not perfect, having something is better than leaving a vacant spot.
For example, you may feel horrible anxiety, shame, and fear of not being enough when you fail to keep your house clean, which paralyzes you and saps all motivation to try again. However, your mind may not want to let go because your fear of judgment and high expectations ensure you do the task just enough to get by, even if it leads to unnecessary shame, chronic stress, and burnout.
For the alternative interpretations and beliefs you create as replacements to work, they must be clearly seen as 100% true (there is a guarantee you are justified and certain to get some reward) and uniquely valuable (the new beliefs fill the gap by your previous belief and attitude).
A perfect replacement for perfectionism is the belief that you are half-assing and getting started is always better than trying to be perfect. This replacement fulfills a similar function of ensuring you succeed as much as possible, and it is 100% true because the more you try, the more experience you get, and the faster you grow (even if you encounter failure and setbacks).
When journaling and reflecting, you can combine both techniques. Let’s take another example of imposter syndrome. Instead of hyper-fixating on the shame and anxiety it creates, you will turn your attention to the positive side of imposter syndrome, like how a) it continuously motivates you to be better (even if out of fear), b) wanting to quit is protection from harm, c) being anxious about your performance and belonging shows you have very high standards and expect a lot from yourself.
This is also how any type of healthy coaching and teaching happens.
You spot a problem, gently offer suggestions and solutions to avoid resentment and resistance, and come up with viable alternatives when the current system and habits are dysfunctional. Just like when practicing forgiveness, self-compassion is important because it shifts your mindset to slowly pushi yourself to be better with small steps instead of trying to tear yourself apart.
The Interconnected of Various Thought Patterns & ADHD Symptoms
So far, we have analyzed many thought patterns in isolation, but once you get better at this practice, you will realize how interconnected they can be. Deeper explorations of the self will result in you spotting the connections and patterns between different parts of yourself.
For example, perfectionism (always pushing above and beyond) is connected to low self-worth because you need to push really hard to prove yourself if you don’t feel enough.
Those unhealthy coping mechanisms can also be connected to your ADHD symptoms. For example, perfectionism and imposter syndrome both encourage you to prove yourself because you are not enough, which some people may adopt as a belief if they constantly find themselves lacking motivation to do tasks. When you can’t consistently trust intrinsic motivation, you may turn to fear tactics, shame, and anxiety to fill the gap.
Changing Your Beliefs - Ashley's Story
Let's imagine a fictional person named Ashley.
She wants to improve her issues with self-esteem because they create constant pressure to compensate in all areas of her life - overworking herself in the office, people-pleasing in front of friends, not asserting herself sufficiently in front of her boyfriend, etc.
She hates the constant feelings of shame, guilt, inadequacy, and worthlessness. Ashley realizes that not loving herself often leads to her not caring enough about her basic needs, and even if it seemed fine at the moment when she skipped a meal, looking back at it, the neglect feels unacceptable and worrying.
Her self-esteem issues began in her childhood. Growing up with a neglectful mother, she began to think there was something fundamentally wrong with her; why would she not be deserving of love otherwise? It didn't help that she struggled in school because she'd zone out during class, impulsively interrupt people, and talk too much compared to what others were comfortable with.
Past failures and rejections eventually made her believe that she was incompetent, incapable, and not deserving of love, respect, kindness, and attention. Of course, she has moments of great happiness, success, and comfort, which make her feel brilliant and deserving of everything good in life. However, more often than not, especially during challenging and stressful times, she succumbs back to those dark thoughts.
In the beginning, the voice of low self-worth was a faint whisper. Over time, it became a loud automatic message ringing through the halls of her mind whenever she faced disappointment, rejection, or failure. For example, forgetting to pick up something from the grocery store or missing a deadline instantly led to words like "stupid," "incompetent", and "worthless" starting to spin in her head.
This is Ashley's story, but what is yours?
Here is a simple action step.
Reflect in a journal, pour your thoughts out on random papers, fill in a digital document, verbally contemplate on a recording, or talk to someone else you feel comfortable with. Low self-esteem, shame, and worthlessness are just labels for attitudes and feelings.
You need both introspection and expression to tie them together, specify, and give them the necessary context to fully grasp how they connect and affect your life. The process of reflection is a lifelong journey. Still, once you feel sufficiently confident in understanding how you think, feel, and believe, you can start crafting your personalized action plan.
Ashley did not have access to therapy and coaching because she didn't have the money to spare for consistent attendance. It was an uphill battle, but she created the following action plan
1. Journal
Either at random and sporadic bits during the day or intentionally to wind down during the night, Ashley would reflect on her day-to-day experiences and the common thoughts and emotions swirling in her mind.
The very act of writing down what she thinks, feels, and experiences helped her to create a distance, allowing her to think more objectively. Gradually, she came to see how tiny mistakes and struggles didn't justify feeling intense shame and seeing herself as a total failure.
2. Online Communities
Ashley knew she'd be much happier if she had support from friends and family while simultaneously cutting off the people who tried to gaslight her about her diagnosis. Unfortunately, changing your social circles is a slow process.
In the meantime, she joined online forums and servers for an ADHD safe space. It was anonymous, so she didn't feel judged and exposed, and there was always someone who could relate, validate her feelings, and offer some advice because everyone was on the same journey together.
3. Reminders
There were a lot of sensible responses Ashley could give herself, but she'd sometimes get caught up in the moment and forget. For example, when faced with mockery and insensitive criticism, she could remind herself that the opinion of others doesn't matter because people love to degrade others for the sake of feeling better about themselves.
Similarly, when comparing herself to more successful people her age, she could remind herself how their circumstances and cards in life are vastly different. Those are two of many situations, but the universal rule is to imagine she was defending and providing care and validation for her best friend, which often leads her to be more kind and compassionate.
Over time, she made herself a digital document with positive affirmations to read for specific situations and decorated half of her apartment with sticky notes of reassuring reminders of her worth. It sounds cheesy, but those words deeply resonated with her and made sense. She just needed to hear them more often.
4. Accomplishment List
Sometimes reminders and positive affirmations are not enough because your mind wants real evidence, which is tangible and specific. When Ashley's inner critic was especially harsh, she'd open up her accomplishment list and read from it to reassure herself.
Most people think of achievements as becoming the top 1% in a given field, winning a tournament, getting a prestigious prize, and other glamorous accomplishments. While Ashley had a few noteworthy triumphs that were written down, she mostly concentrated on writing about her progress and how she managed to survive emergencies and huge challenges in life.
This is why Ashley managed to keep her job despite a severe shortage and lack of access to medications, finishing her degree after three failed attempts, and teaching herself to create a healthy distance from her nagging and borderline abusive parents. All were huge achievements.
Confidence comes not only from what you reached at your peak but also from how you managed to crawl out from the trenches when you were feeling at your absolute worst.
Key Takeaways
Your perception of yourself and the world can significantly influence how you feel, think, and experience life.
Knowing this, you may try to change your perception only to get discouraged by the lack of results in the beginning. Don't worry about it. You are not a failure if you don't quickly change the way you think. Beliefs are not something you can touch, quantify, and see for yourself, which is why it can seem hard and even impossible to change them.
Despite those challenges, you can still get results. You will eventually transform the way you see yourself and the world if you have a clear action plan focused on a single belief, challenged with intention and long-term commitment. It's not impossible. It just takes time.
