[csnewb]

#2: Have almost too much self-belief. Self-confidence has been something I've struggled with my entire life, to the point where its crippled my career growth as a developer. I've been told that I'm a good developer, but if I only believed in myself I could go a lot further and become truly great. However, it's hard for me to believe in myself when I don't have a lot of data points to prove that I AM competent and capable. Over the past 3 years of working full-time yes I've accomplished some things, but none of them were truly difficult or ground breaking. I'm always pushing myself harder to learn more and get better, but it never feels like its having enough impact on me actually growing. So if all I have are at best average/mediocre accomplishments, how do I convince myself that no, I AM great, that I CAN do this? I feel like if I start having a lot of self-belief it'll just become a lie that will blind me from my weaknesses and cause me to stop growing.

[bonestamp2]

> Over the past 3 years of working full-time yes I've accomplished some things, but none of them were truly difficult or ground breaking.

3 years? Fuck. It sounds like you're on track for a long and successful career. Not everyone peaks early. Give yourself a break, spend a little more time networking and a little less time on your hard skills and you'll probably find greater opportunities for ground breaking things through relationships than through your skills.

[curiousfiddler]

I hear you.

I've been trying to find solutions myself - I'm trying to use some strategies listed in this book: The inner game of tennis, by Timothy Galloway, and I'm seeing positive results so far. He talks about 2 versions of self: self1 - the doer and self2 - the judgemental self, which is constantly evaluating self1, and adversely affect self1's potential. He has some useful suggestions on how to limit the impact of self2, and I found those pretty helpful so far.

[xattt]

If there's a common pattern of anxiety or lack of concentration in life, then it may be worth it to go to a family doctor or therapist to talk about it. This isn't an easy black-and-white decision to make either. It may take months or even years of self-reflection to come to terms with that, and even more time to work up the courage to seek help for something so ambivalent.

It's hard to be your successful when you're not the best version of yourself.

[euske]

Hmm, your post made me think of machine learning somehow, because a life does seem like finding a good place in a maze/forest/mountain to me. Do you want to reach the absolute highest (i.e. global maxima)? I can tell you that it might be impossible, because you might have landed at a bad starting point! Some people try that anyway, but I found that's not really my style. Instead, I try to reach some local maxima and be happy about it (depending on your situation or upbringing). It's quite doable. Every day you nudge yourself to a slightly better point that is reachable. Sometimes you want to choose a steeper slope which is harder but also gains a lot. Rinse and repeat. It won't get you to some remote place like Mt. Everest, but hey, a nearby hill can be still pretty good! What's important is that you get an actionable plan instead of a vague and seemingly unachievable goal. Here's my favorite quote which put it quite nicely:

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. - Theodore Roosevelt

[thomk]

"it never feels like its having enough impact on me actually growing"

Then you aren't outside your comfort zone enough because when you are, there will be NO DOUBT you've grown.

Do you know what the difference between a shitty golfer (like me) and a slightly better golfer (like my brother) is? Maybe 25 rounds of golf per year. If I played 25 MORE rounds of golf, I could beat him solidly.

Do you know what the difference between say Tiger woods and the very best Amateur golfer in the world is? A thousand rounds of golf. Ten thousand?

Point 1: Down here in the land of the unwashed masses of basically average developers like you and I, you can make noticeable strides by just consistently working a little harder. You can make leaps and bounds by consistently working A LOT HARDER.

Point 2: Once you start advancing past people, it gets harder and harder to advance past people. There's only so much room at the top, in every possible hierarchy. Check out some Jordan Peterson on Competence Hierarchy.

And I guess....

Point 3: The only real way to be successful is to be comfortable in your own body. I have some bad news for you buddy, this part of the article is complete horse shit.

"The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more."

Cultivate what early? Delusion? Self confidence? \eyeroll

Success means actually liking yourself and nothing more. Some people call this CONFIDENCE. Same exact thing.

How do you become confident? Achieve. How do you achieve? Apply your knowledge. How do you get knowledge? FAIL AT THINGS How do you fail at things? Try new things.

By the way "success" is such a stupid word. I have worked very, very closely with someone who has $100M in the bank. I was his computer guy for all his properties around the world and guess what? He's jealous of another guy we know with $1B in the bank.

Success != Money Confidence != Money

Success == Confidence

OH and guess what shows up when you have confidence?

Only everything you want.

[DoreenMichele]

You need objective metrics of two kinds: absolute and relative.

Relative metrics will show if you really are better than most other people. Absolute ones will show whether or not you can, in fact, do X to some standard.

I do not suffer from Imposter Syndrome. That's why. I find measures that show me what I can do, and to heck with all the sturm and drang from most people.

[yesenadam]

OMG, you've been working for 3 whole years and haven't done anything ground-breaking?! Seriously though, maybe you aren't 'great', whatever that means exactly, and I doubt it's necessary for you to believe that, whether it's true or not.

You might find (books like) Albert Ellis' New Guide to Rational Living useful - I did! It's about observing and recording your recurring thoughts, particularly ones that make you feel bad, and replacing them with more accurate, helpful ones - stopping the self-sabotage. It's amazing how mean we can be to ourselves without noticing. We're trained to be nice to others, without including ourselves in that. I used to do a lot of extremely negative, paralyzing self-talk - saying nasty things to myself I'd never dream of laying on someone else; sounds like you do this too, maybe. This falls under "How to love yourself", something I had to learn to do. Louise Hay has a great 12-point list of things under that heading, stuff like "Treat yourself like you'd treat someone you really love." Then as you get older, you realize you aren't so terrible, and others aren't so great..

I think 'self-belief' comes naturally with untangling that stuff, and otherwise isn't always a good sign, e.g.

"Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." ...I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief.." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images#id00026