He is an atheist who does not believe in himself!

He is an atheist who does not believe in himself: A beautiful quote by Swami Vivekananda impressing the power of self-belief and confidence. I’m a huge fan of understanding how our beliefs shape us and continue to help us grow. In this article, we talk about the meaning of this quote, atheism, self-belief and how we grow our confidence continually. Atheism says that I do not believe in god – but I think it boils down to the very question of how we define god, and who it is. Or is god a set of values that we aspire to become and represent through symbolism?

You can see that what appears to be a simple word immediately becomes a complex dimension. Perhaps that’s the beauty, isn’t it? Time and again we are taught to love simplicity, but complex things are beautiful. They tell us that the world has so many things to appreciate, like the meaning of atheism and how it all affects us.

Meaning – he is an atheist who does not believe in himself

I love this definition by Swami Vivekananda. Although I’m sure that you’ve heard this a few times. It brings the point about self-belief to the forefront. Whether you want to believe in god or not, it all starts with you. Unless you believe in yourself, there’s no point in passing the ownership to an external being. And what is this god anyway – is it a person or a representation of values. Let’s start with these basics right -perhaps it was a way to create best practices at some point in the world. This has then evolved as escalated standards which have taken the form of god to establish amazing standards for our spirits.

The moment you say you don’t believe in yourself – it also moves away the responsibility from your actions. Even if we tell that we believe in god, we separate it as a different entity. This makes it easy to shift blame and responsibility. It also creates this disconnected environment where we can escape. But what if, god is already within us – in the thoughts that we get and how we implement them?

Taking charge of our self-belief and confidence

We take charge of our life and everything that’s presented to us. This includes the definitions or narratives we give to our actions, and the responsibilities we take. As we know already, we’re responsible for everything around us. Whether we decide to do something or not – action/inaction or whatever the outcome is – we still are responsible. If we don’t believe in ourselves, then it is as strong as atheism itself. Again, I want to keep my views about religion or god outside of this article. It is certainly all about you or I building and owning our confidence.

The power of self-belief tells us that there is no god without you. Without defining who you are as a person, having confidence in yourself or your beliefs, the beliefs of god, atheism etc lose meaning because it is shaken fundamentally. Unless we have this confidence in who we are, and what we become, everything else becomes a moot point.

Meaning of Atheist

An Atheist means or refers to someone who doesn’t believe in god. I admit that it is a wider debate and probably even foolish of me to venture into a debate about god. But, I’ll focus on Vivekananda’s quote about the meaning of an Atheist. The whole point about god, a higher power or even belief about someone else vanishes when we begin to doubt ourselves. This also raises another question – if we believe something is better than us, we are already shifting responsibility, trust and even confidence in something else. Maybe it is less about atheism and more about trust and confidence issues.

This quote by Vivekananda talks about something fundamental – about trust in ourselves and self-belief which can elevate our thinking. Our self-belief has phenomenal power to define who we are. This is a definition that we stick to and also evolve with as we grow and experience more things in life. Let’s start with this immense self-belief that tells us that we are more capable than we limit ourselves to. We are bound by these limitations that hold us back. Perhaps the definitions of what atheism is or can mean could also be one such limitation – it depends on what we are willing to see.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

What is Self Belief?

Self-belief, as the name indicates is the confidence and trust in your own abilities. I like the word trust because it indicates a stronger bond with your internal self. As a student, I used to believe that confidence is something that you are born with and helps influence your results.

Of late, I love the research that indicates – confidence is a result of your achievements. It gives you a belief or conviction in your abilities to face challenges and produce desirable results. Your current confidence is an outcome of previous successes. Naturally your confidence increases or decreases depending upon the similarity or awareness of the type of task that you are doing. If however, you feel confident about something that you have no clue about – something is definitely wrong. I’d even argue that as overconfidence.

This line of argument immediately indicates a fascinating point – confidence is something that you can train and improve on. It fills me with relief to know that like any valuable skill, even confidence needs work, consistency and effort. This makes it even more valuable than the charismatic view that you’re born with something and it is a commodity of a lucky few people.