This is a challenge we all face, but it seems so much more pertinent when we’re young. The real question is—why don’t we have confidence in ourselves?

There’s no other species I’ve seen or heard of that is unsure of its own ability to be what it is. For example, we never see a bird on a branch starting to move its wings and then backing out in fear of not being able to take flight. When a mother bird kicks out her baby bird for the very first time from the nest, halfway down, the baby realizes it can fly. After that, there’s never a time they don’t remember it.

Only humans have this lack of confidence, and that is because we feel so insecure about who we really are. We have a deep inner sense of who we are, but there is also an external, societal order that tells us what we should and should not be. What we’re trying to do is mould ourselves to be something that we are not.