Brad Henry once intelligently said “Believe in yourself, everything else will fall into its place”. It is a very well-known fact that if anyone wants to succeed in life, they must believe in themselves. Faith as per dictionary is complete trust and confidence on someone or something which cannot be defined by logic. If we analyse faith as a single entity, it is consisted of two types “External Faith” & “Internal Faith”. The faith construct of our mind can be diagrammatically put forward in form of the following venn-diagram.

External faith is built upon experiences and events. Like for example, as kids, we keep complete faith about our security and development in our parents. As a child, we hardly doubt our parents. As we grow older, our faith and trust extend to immediate family, friends, colleagues, god, religion etc. Whenever, we are stuck in a problem we run to them to look for possible solutions and answers to our queries. External faith is dependent on someone or something to get a validation for yourself in your abilities and capabilities. Simultaneously, this also means that external faith if not considered or garnered appropriately might lead to blunders and disasters.  One must be cognizant of the fact that, external faith on family, friends and colleagues is very much limited to their exposure and experience of life. Hence, it becomes pivotally critical that external faith is carefully adjudged before it is given.

There is one more type of faith which does not need to express itself to someone or call up someone. The faith which resides within us. As per spiritual sciences, human experience of our brain and mind is part of a universal spirit residing in universal consciousness. It only means that everyone is networked into this consciousness knowingly or unknowingly. Many times, our actions are solely driven from the external faith and we do not tend to listen to our inner spirit. This inner spirit is called “Internal Faith”. The internal faith will talk to you becoming something which you were born for, let us say an artist or poet. On the contrary, the society and your external faith holders will push you to get through higher education, earn more money and do things in a certain way. The longer you ignore your inner voice, it will give rise to internal conflicts, frustrations, and restlessness and eventually the feeling of emptiness, even if you have achieved external success. So, tend to your inner voice as quickly as possible.

When you can tap into your inner faith, it is not easy to hold on to it because most of the times, the inner voice or faith is diametrically opposite to the external faith. That is when you would need courage and audacity to hold on to your inner voice. The inner voice/faith when trusted transcend into amazing and unexpected results. And soon enough, internal faith starts getting external validation. This is the sweet spot one wants to attain [marked by the intersection of venn diagram]. At this juncture, is where you find eternal bliss, enjoyable moments, and sense of being.

We must believe in ourselves and in our abilities because our inner faith will create our external results. People easily lose faith in themselves when encountering setbacks, failure, and fear. When you lack confidence in yourself, others will pick up on that and will not take you seriously. Not many people live the life that they have always wished to live; they give up on their life goals as soon as they encounter the first setback, and some do not even start due to worry about “What others will think ?”. One of the main causes for this is that they do not believe in themselves.

Hence, having faith in oneself and depending on it is critical to any issue or problem in life and life in general. Internal faith once trusted nourishes the external faith to bear fruits as expected.

Nihit M