It was a drizzly, darkening afternoon on the train from Yorkshire, and I was writing and re-writing this piece on belief.There’s irony in that.
I’ve been introducing this theme of belief in my recent writing, and energetically it marries with this time of year. The light thins. Days contract.Nature empties itself and asks us not to give up on ourselves just because we see some things die off.
As the natural world retreats, so do we. The quieter pace makes space for reflection, but reflection can play tricks on us. When everything around us slows or darkens, the mind can start to see only what’s missing or unfinished. That’s often when belief waivers not because it’s gone, but because we mistake stillness for decline.
So maybe it makes sense that I’m here, mid-journey, in the stillness of a carriage, caught between Delete. Rewrite. Delete again. The tug of war begins in my mind, one side whispering "let go, allow, trust all will be well," the other insisting "stay sharp, stay on it, keep going."
That same tension had followed me into other parts of life. Today was my last day of group coaching supervision with a supervisor I’ve had for seven years. It was deep, emotional, and collectively reflective. What I noticed was that self-belief was hard for each of us to own completely, and yet belief in each other’s presence, capability, and capacity to do great things was there in abundance.
Self-belief, then, isn’t about absolute certainty. It’s about staying inside the unseen exchange, the moments between giving a part of ourselves and then how we begin to receive ourselves over and over again.Perhaps that’s all belief really is: the discipline to stay in motion, to keep travelling between the giving of ourselves and that surrender to trusting ourselves
What I’m learning is that belief doesn’t arrive through pushing or proof. It grows when I let myself receive the rest, the insight, the timing. When I stop treating my presence as something to earn. Maybe that’s what self-belief really is: staying open to your own life long enough to look through the lens of celebration rather than doubt and to keep coming back, steady, unforced, still here.
