You aren't successful because you care too much about other's opinions, trust yourself with your future, have more confidence. For every positive thought towards your future, there are 100 more against it. The 4 pillars of self-confidence are perspective (nobody is special), perception (act on opportunities), practice (don't shy away from challenge), authenticity (don't conform). Confidence is different from competence. In social situation where anxiety sparks, zoom out to realize it's just a normal situation and adopt others' perspective instead of treating them like they're different from you so nothing feels off. How you perceive a situation determines how you act. See people behind what they show at first glance and present yourself in a welcoming upbeat manner to influence their perception of you. How good you are at something allows you to perceive situations better meaning that skill acquisition is a way to increase your level in the game of life. You must practice skills available to you prior to learning new ones. You don't have the awareness of profitable opportunities because you don't have the skill to recognize, choose, and act on them yet. Never stop learning and practicing at your level to get dopamine and go to the next. Authenticity is doing what you want without interference from external thoughts, opinions, and beliefs that you need to conform to. Confidence through authenticity is a mental game you must play daily. The secret to self-confidence is to become a fountainhead of value through education and creation because no one will question you worth thanks to public proof. Contribution to society takes the form of money, entrepreneurship is creation, seek challenges. Providing value develops confidence because it demands that you either evolve or die, and most people die at 25 once they got their job, spouse, house, and car like society told them so they're comfortable, docile, and not a threat to the system they are trying to survive. Settle for a subpar life and you'll die. Because the world never stops changing, you must too. Subpar understanding will give you subpar results, hence the need to become an expert. It's not creativity or productivity, theory or practice, mong or warrior, peace or progress, being or doing, it's both. Educate yourself and execute what you've learned daily. If you don't get results, you're not valuable yet and need to improve. You will suck at the start obviously. Growth requires change as you won't reach level 2 with the same character that got you to level 1, and that's why most people settle early. Marketing, sales, writing, and speaking are the backbone of business success. Unless you're passionate about the backend of the internet, learn to use it for your content and know that creating content requires self-understanding but also to capture then hold attention in order to deliver value. Business is an unconventional path to self-confidence. Build your mind with books, self-reflection, and writing. Build your body with gym/sport, long walks, and nutrient-dense foods. Build your business with skill acquisition, problem-solving, and self-promotion. Become multi-dimensionally jacked to get a good life. When you feel anxious, pause, really consciously pause. The cure to anxiety is curiosity. You can have clarity when projecting into the future, bring your attention back to what you can do right now, which is learning something or about someone. Writing is the foundation of any content, it allows you to flex your intelligence while everyone else competes for looks. Writing requires understanding psychology to structure a message that captures, holds, and spreads attention. To study psychology, study marketing and sales. Choose a topic, learn for 30 minutes each day about tech/marketing/sales, don't skip a day, note ideas that stick out, post your ideas on social media, study social medias as a skill. You should get enough followers over 6 months to have confidence about the future of this business as, once you have enough readers, you can create a product or service to monetize your writing. After that, branch into speaking (podcast) to meet high-level people and get offered more opportunities. It is all an easy progression from writing, marketing, and sales. Communicating with others forces you to identify your blind spots and helps build relationship, the goal with podcast that isn't fame or money. It isn't the number of followers that matters the most but the number of connections with high-level people. Once you have enough people, create a product or service as it is the only way to make money and stay the master of it, not ads.
Dan Koe