I Do Believe in Fairies (and in Myself)

When I Said I Believed in Myself

The dictionary defines belief as “an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially without proof.” For a long time, I applied that definition to everything except myself.

I grew up believing in God, mostly by default, through family and habit, until my teenage years, when anger and exhaustion led me to realise that no external force was going to fix what I was feeling. So I replaced that belief with something new: belief in myself.

It sounded noble at the time, like the ending of an inspirational film. I convinced myself that if I worked hard enough and pushed through, I could do almost anything, except, perhaps, parallel park. For a while, it worked. I felt unstoppable, like my own hero.

Looking back, I think I said I believed in myself because it felt like the only way forward. I genuinely thought that’s what self-belief was: trusting that I could handle whatever came my way. What I hadn’t yet realised was that there is a difference between believing you can do things and truly believing in yourself.

Out of Tune

Believing I was capable slowly became central to how I moved through the world. If I could accomplish x, y, and z, then surely I could do anything, so I did. I took on tasks I wasn’t deeply interested in, largely to prove that I could. Achievement became a form of evidence.

Over time, though, something felt off. The more I proved my capability, the less fulfilled I felt. What I had interpreted as self-belief gradually turned into strain, and then into emptiness. I was doing everything, but nothing with intention. I didn’t recognise it at the time, but I was out of tune. I can see that clearly now.

The Question

After quitting my first graduate job, and then being confronted with the stillness of the pandemic, I finally had space to reflect. Two realisations emerged:

• I had been directing my energy toward anything that made me feel capable, rather than toward what genuinely made me feel fulfilled.
• My understanding of self-belief was incomplete.

This led me to a question I hadn’t properly asked before:

What does it actually mean to believe in yourself?

The Three Pillars of Self-Belief

Through reflection (and, admittedly, a generous amount of overthinking), I arrived at what I now call the Three Pillars of Self-Belief:

Capability. Value. Deservingness.

Believing you are capable is one part of the system. Believing you are valuable - that what you bring matters, is another. Believing you deserve good things, opportunities, and care is the third.

These pillars do not operate independently; they work together. Capability without value and deservingness is like a two-legged stool - technically possible, but unstable.

This helped articulate something I had struggled to name. I believed I was capable of changing my life, starting something new, and helping others - but I didn’t truly believe I was valuable enough to do so, or deserving of it. That gap created a disconnection.

Each pillar exists on a spectrum. They are not binary states. Life events, experiences, and self-perception continually shift where we sit on each scale.

Why these three?

Because together they form the psychological structure that underpins much of how we act, choose, and relate to ourselves.

Capability speaks to action — the belief that effort has effect. It drives movement, problem-solving, and persistence. Without it, we remain paralysed by doubt. But when overemphasised, capability can easily slip into perfectionism: the compulsion to prove rather than to live.

Value speaks to meaning — the belief that what you offer has worth. When value is absent, action becomes hollow. You may continue to achieve, yet experience it as empty, like completing tasks that no one will ever read.

Deservingness speaks to permission — the emotional allowance to receive, to rest, and to enjoy what you have worked toward. It is often the quietest pillar, and arguably the most neglected. Many people believe they can, and even that they are good, but not that they are allowed to have good things.

Together, these three pillars describe the full architecture of belief:

• the doing (capability),
• the being (value),
• and the receiving (deservingness).

When one is weak, the entire structure leans. You may achieve endlessly yet never feel fulfilled, or recognise your worth yet struggle to act. True self-belief is not a loud affirmation, but a steady internal alignment between these three.

Recalibration

Self-belief isn’t blind confidence or relentless productivity. It's a view of oneself that is produced by the configuration and alignment of the pillars.

Self-belief is shaped by what we believe about our capability, our value, and our deservingness - and by how aligned those beliefs are with one another. Together, they form an internal model of the self: what we think we can do, what we believe we are worth, and what we allow ourselves to have.

These beliefs shift over time. There is no final state, no permanent calibration. As life moves, the internal view adjusts. Developing awareness of this internal compass and the beliefs that shape it allows us to understand our self-belief system more clearly and, when needed, to shift it with intention.

Be patient with yourself. Adjust gently.

Yours truly,

The Philomathic