The trick for me that I need to master is to learn to sustain my confidence. Sometimes I will have it, other times I'll be absolutely flattened. Sometimes I can sit back and think logically about how to solve my problems and I will come up with answers that make sense and are tested, shown to have worked for others in the same situation. I KNOW, factually, that people have escaped ruts before that were exactly as deep and slippery as mine.
The problem I have is getting it to stick. I know I need to do this, because no one in any position of prominence or has any measure of success got there by telling themselves they weren't good enough for it. But at the same time, sometimes I feel like there just isn't enough "predator" in me to do it. I feel like a minnow who wants to become a shark, but minnows stay minnows, and sharks stay sharks. I sometimes think of the guys my age who went on to get good jobs and girlfriends and I remember back to before, and idk, we are not the same...they came from some measure of money to start with, and had a certain kind of meanness to them that I did not have. I know this is at the root of some of the limiting beliefs I have about me and success - that you have to be a bully to have it and I was never a bully so I can't have it - because that's what I was conditioned to believe at a young age. It's hard to shake that, even with logical arguments. If only I could find a way to be stronger, but without the meanness.
I don't want to believe that I need to be meaner, that that is the answer. But I have a hard time convincing myself that it's not.