Believing in Yourself
Kestra is about to run her first marathon. Kestra has never run a marathon before-it is something she wants to try. The night before, she gets cold feet, wondering if she will be able to finish it. Kestra’s friend tells her to believe in herself. Kestra summons this belief and shows up the next day to run.
Let’s suppose Kestra is successful and completes the marathon. She would not have been able to do this had she not believed in herself. Believing in herself was, in some sense, a necessary condition for her success. What does it mean to believe in yourself? Is it a species of belief? Or is it some other state, like hope, or intention? I think believing in yourself is best construed as an aspirational belief-a belief for which you can only have complete evidence, or treat as evidence-based, after you have adopted it and acted on it.
To believe in yourself might seem similar to hoping. If someone tells me to believe I can run the marathon, I am going to think of running the marathon as something I hope to accomplish. Hope and believing in yourself have in common that both present an occurrence in a positive light, and in one that is desired. If I believe in myself to do something, I also want that I successfully accomplish the action.
But I do not think that to believe in yourself is the same as to hope that you accomplish something. I can hope for events to happen that I do not need to help make happen. Even to hope that I accomplish something seems too passive as a construal of what it is to believe in myself. We can imagine Kestra hoping she’ll complete the marathon but never leaving her house. Like the mythical passive subject, she simply says, “I hope it happens.”
Believing in yourself, on the other hand, is prefatory to action. When someone believes in herself, she takes on a belief for the sake of the action it will help bring about. It is not a passive hope, but a source of inspiration. As a talk I attended at the Central APA last year pointed out, often believing in yourself is accompanied by imagery: you imagine or picture yourself as able to do the action. I’m not sure to what extent such imagery is necessary in order to attempt an action on the basis of belief in oneself, but the idea that imagery prompts us to act is suggestive. William James, in Psychology, a Briefer Course describes getting out of bed in the morning thus:
we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs; we forget both the warmth and the cold; we fall into some revery connected with the day's life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, ‘Hollo! I must lie here no longer (James 400).
In James’s account, he falls into a “revery connected with the day’s life,” and this is what spurs him to get up. Envisioning the things he must do somehow makes it possible for him to take the first action needed to accomplish them: getting up.
To describe believing in oneself as envisioning one’s success doesn’t quite seem right, but I think the connection is more than accidental. Someone could of course believe in herself without falling into any reveries at all. The function of the reveries is to help us to believe something for which there may be little or no evidence. Kestra has never run a marathon before. Were she to treat her belief that she can run it as an ordinary belief, she would reject it as one for which she has no evidence. Usually we hold, or aim to hold, beliefs on the basis of evidence in their favor. But whatever kind of belief believing in oneself is, it is not one that needs evidence. In fact, it is most important to believe in oneself precisely when there is least evidence that one can accomplish the relevant action. If Kestra is instead someone who has run 40 marathons, she will have ample evidence that she is capable of running a marathon. In this version of the example, she will be unlikely to need to believe in herself in order to run this one. Or perhaps we could say: she believes she can do it, but her belief, unlike the original Kestra’s, is based on evidence.
Believing in oneself, as I am defining it, is a belief that one can accomplish some action, where the belief in question is not based on evidence. Any evidence that the belief is true-that one can, in fact, do it-comes only after one has adopted the belief and acted as if it were true.
To believe in yourself in this sense is more like the formulation of an intention, of representing something as a goal for oneself. Or rather, it is a presupposition of forming an intention. We usually intend to do only what we believe is possible. I might be able to intend to ride a real unicorn, but since I know unicorns are not real I will have difficult intending to do this. Similarly, I will not, if I am rational, intend to do things I know I cannot do, like age backwards, or things it is extremely implausible that I will be able to do, like win a hockey game for my team, cure cancer (since I am not a medical researcher), and the like. We mostly intend to do actions we believe we are able to do, with evidence. Our intentions are constrained by our beliefs about what is possible for us.
Sometimes, however, we need to try new things. In these cases we cannot always have any evidence about what we can and cannot do. Believing in yourself serves to fill in the role of intention-constraining beliefs in these cases. The imagery that so often accompanies it serves as our evidence for the belief. Envisioning the action as one we can do helps to convince us that we can in fact do it. It serves as a kind of evidence that the belief is true. Imagery also, I suspect, helps us to carry out the action. When an action is new, envisioning it helps us to see how it might go and how we should go about doing it.
Finally, believing in oneself is aspirational. An aspirational value (see Callard 2018) is a value one takes on, not necessarily valuing the object for itself, but rather for other rewards one might obtain by acting as if one cares about the thing in question. In the process of acting as if one values something, one often comes to actually value it for itself rather than for rewards. One has become someone who values something through the process of acting as if one does-a kind of habituation. Acting as if one values X makes one into someone who actually does.
Similarly, to believe in oneself is to adopt a belief without any evidence for the sake of making that belief true. Kestra believes without evidence that she can run the marathon, but she would not be able to run the marathon at all were it not for this belief. The belief, together with her successful action on its basis, makes it true that she can run the marathon. It is a belief whose evidence comes after adopting it, a kind of evidential bootstrapping. Acting as if it is true that you can do something, together with your successful action and maybe a bit of luck, makes it true that you can. Believing in yourself is a kind of belief, but it differs from ordinary beliefs in that its sole purpose is to motivate action in cases where evidence that you can accomplish something is lacking. Its purpose is not to be accurate to the present, but to the future-to a future you can only bring about if you believe.
Let’s suppose Kestra is successful and completes the marathon. She would not have been able to do this had she not believed in herself. Believing in herself was, in some sense, a necessary condition for her success. What does it mean to believe in yourself? Is it a species of belief? Or is it some other state, like hope, or intention? I think believing in yourself is best construed as an aspirational belief-a belief for which you can only have complete evidence, or treat as evidence-based, after you have adopted it and acted on it.
To believe in yourself might seem similar to hoping. If someone tells me to believe I can run the marathon, I am going to think of running the marathon as something I hope to accomplish. Hope and believing in yourself have in common that both present an occurrence in a positive light, and in one that is desired. If I believe in myself to do something, I also want that I successfully accomplish the action.
But I do not think that to believe in yourself is the same as to hope that you accomplish something. I can hope for events to happen that I do not need to help make happen. Even to hope that I accomplish something seems too passive as a construal of what it is to believe in myself. We can imagine Kestra hoping she’ll complete the marathon but never leaving her house. Like the mythical passive subject, she simply says, “I hope it happens.”
Believing in yourself, on the other hand, is prefatory to action. When someone believes in herself, she takes on a belief for the sake of the action it will help bring about. It is not a passive hope, but a source of inspiration. As a talk I attended at the Central APA last year pointed out, often believing in yourself is accompanied by imagery: you imagine or picture yourself as able to do the action. I’m not sure to what extent such imagery is necessary in order to attempt an action on the basis of belief in oneself, but the idea that imagery prompts us to act is suggestive. William James, in Psychology, a Briefer Course describes getting out of bed in the morning thus:
we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs; we forget both the warmth and the cold; we fall into some revery connected with the day's life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, ‘Hollo! I must lie here no longer (James 400).
In James’s account, he falls into a “revery connected with the day’s life,” and this is what spurs him to get up. Envisioning the things he must do somehow makes it possible for him to take the first action needed to accomplish them: getting up.
To describe believing in oneself as envisioning one’s success doesn’t quite seem right, but I think the connection is more than accidental. Someone could of course believe in herself without falling into any reveries at all. The function of the reveries is to help us to believe something for which there may be little or no evidence. Kestra has never run a marathon before. Were she to treat her belief that she can run it as an ordinary belief, she would reject it as one for which she has no evidence. Usually we hold, or aim to hold, beliefs on the basis of evidence in their favor. But whatever kind of belief believing in oneself is, it is not one that needs evidence. In fact, it is most important to believe in oneself precisely when there is least evidence that one can accomplish the relevant action. If Kestra is instead someone who has run 40 marathons, she will have ample evidence that she is capable of running a marathon. In this version of the example, she will be unlikely to need to believe in herself in order to run this one. Or perhaps we could say: she believes she can do it, but her belief, unlike the original Kestra’s, is based on evidence.
Believing in oneself, as I am defining it, is a belief that one can accomplish some action, where the belief in question is not based on evidence. Any evidence that the belief is true-that one can, in fact, do it-comes only after one has adopted the belief and acted as if it were true.
To believe in yourself in this sense is more like the formulation of an intention, of representing something as a goal for oneself. Or rather, it is a presupposition of forming an intention. We usually intend to do only what we believe is possible. I might be able to intend to ride a real unicorn, but since I know unicorns are not real I will have difficult intending to do this. Similarly, I will not, if I am rational, intend to do things I know I cannot do, like age backwards, or things it is extremely implausible that I will be able to do, like win a hockey game for my team, cure cancer (since I am not a medical researcher), and the like. We mostly intend to do actions we believe we are able to do, with evidence. Our intentions are constrained by our beliefs about what is possible for us.
Sometimes, however, we need to try new things. In these cases we cannot always have any evidence about what we can and cannot do. Believing in yourself serves to fill in the role of intention-constraining beliefs in these cases. The imagery that so often accompanies it serves as our evidence for the belief. Envisioning the action as one we can do helps to convince us that we can in fact do it. It serves as a kind of evidence that the belief is true. Imagery also, I suspect, helps us to carry out the action. When an action is new, envisioning it helps us to see how it might go and how we should go about doing it.
Finally, believing in oneself is aspirational. An aspirational value (see Callard 2018) is a value one takes on, not necessarily valuing the object for itself, but rather for other rewards one might obtain by acting as if one cares about the thing in question. In the process of acting as if one values something, one often comes to actually value it for itself rather than for rewards. One has become someone who values something through the process of acting as if one does-a kind of habituation. Acting as if one values X makes one into someone who actually does.
Similarly, to believe in oneself is to adopt a belief without any evidence for the sake of making that belief true. Kestra believes without evidence that she can run the marathon, but she would not be able to run the marathon at all were it not for this belief. The belief, together with her successful action on its basis, makes it true that she can run the marathon. It is a belief whose evidence comes after adopting it, a kind of evidential bootstrapping. Acting as if it is true that you can do something, together with your successful action and maybe a bit of luck, makes it true that you can. Believing in yourself is a kind of belief, but it differs from ordinary beliefs in that its sole purpose is to motivate action in cases where evidence that you can accomplish something is lacking. Its purpose is not to be accurate to the present, but to the future-to a future you can only bring about if you believe.