Why You’ll Never Rise Above Your Self-Image
How Big Trust rewires self-doubt—and expands what you believe is possible
The Big Idea: If you don’t trust how you see yourself, the world will feel harder than it is.
Why it matters: Your self-image quietly shapes your confidence, decisions, and performance—often more than talent or experience.
Try this today: Notice one “invisible label” you carry into situations (“I’m not ready,” “I’m not leadership material”). Rewrite it as a strength and act from that version once today.
These ideas come from the new book Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence, and Fuel Success by Shadé Zahrai and Fayçal Sekkouah.
1. You will never rise above your opinion of yourself.
In the 1970s, Dartmouth professor Robert Kleck ran a fascinating study. He sent participants into conversations with strangers, but before he did that, he took a group and applied a scar to their face. They saw the result in a hand mirror, confirming that they had a disfigurement. Then both scarred and non-scarred groups were sent into conversations.
Afterward, the scarred participants reported that people treated them differently—they felt that others were less friendly, more tense, and more uncomfortable. They were convinced the scar changed how the world saw them. Except…the scar never existed.
Right before the interaction, the researchers pretended to “touch up” the makeup but secretly wiped the scar off completely. So, they walked in with no scar at all, but they believed they had one. And because they believed it, they expected they would be treated differently.
Expectation shaped their interpretation. That’s confirmation bias and selective attention in action. They didn’t respond to reality. They responded to the reality that their self-image prepared them to see. This is the power of self-image. You don’t respond to the world as it is—you respond to the world your brain expects to see based on how you see yourself.
“They responded to the reality that their self-image prepared them to see.”
So, ask yourself: What invisible scars am I carrying into every room, every opportunity? How are they shaping the way I show up?
In my work with high performers, I’ve seen this pattern again and again. When someone’s self-image is distorted, every room feels threatening. Every text left on “read” feels like rejection. Every silence feels personal. Every piece of feedback feels like a verdict.
One of the fastest ways to uncover these invisible scars is by identifying the labels you’ve attached to yourself. Labels like “I’m boring,” “I always mess up,” “I’m not confident,” “I’m not leadership material,” “I’m too much,” or “I’m not enough.” Most of these weren’t created by you. They were given to you—by family, early teachers, old bosses, past partners—at a time you were too young and too unsure to question them. But labels are just stories. And stories can be rewritten:
Swap “I’m indecisive” with “I’m thoughtful and deliberate.”
Swap “I’m intense” with “I’m passionate and deeply invested.”
Swap “I’m boring” with “I’m steady and grounded.”
Simple, but neurologically powerful. Every reframe weakens an old neural pathway and strengthens a new one. Bit by bit, your brain updates its blueprint. When the blueprint changes, your self-doubt loses its grip. The essence of Big Trust is updating your blueprint to trust your worth, capability, and capacity to show up fully when it counts.
Prefer to listen? Hear Shadé share these ideas on Spotify or Apple Podcasts:
2. Transforming your self-image with Big Trust.
Big Trust is that deep, internal sense of self-trust, and it’s shaped by your self-image. Self-image isn’t abstract. It’s made up of four measurable dimensions that psychologists call your core self-evaluations. Decades of studies (including meta-analyses of over 100 papers) show that these four dimensions predict job performance, career satisfaction, happiness, and earning potential.
The idea that personality is fixed is outdated. Yes, we tend to stay consistent over time, unless we intentionally target a specific aspect with new habits and experiences. When we do, we can reshape our traits in meaningful ways. And core self-evaluations are based on four psychological personality traits:
Acceptance –your sense of “Am I enough as I am?” It reflects what psychologists would call self-esteem.
Agency – your belief in your ability to make things happen. This is the lived experience of self-efficacy.
Autonomy – the degree to which you feel in control of your life and choices, instead of feeling like it just happens to you. This reflects your locus of control.
Adaptability – your ability to stay steady when life doesn’t go to plan and regulate your emotions when things feel uncertain. This maps onto emotional stability, sometimes called the opposite of neuroticism.
Together, these form your Doubt Profile, the psychological fingerprint for how and where self-doubt shows up. Here’s what this looks like in real life:
If you’re low in Acceptance, you constantly feel like you need to prove your worth. You take feedback personally and chase approval as though your value depends on it.
If you’re low in Agency, you doubt your abilities. You compare yourself to others, feel like an imposter, and wait to feel “ready” …which means you rarely take action.
If you’re low in Autonomy, you feel powerless. You get stuck in blame, resentment, or old stories that keep you small.
If you’re low in Adaptability, emotions like anxiety or overwhelm take over when the stakes are high. You know what to do, but you can’t bring yourself to do it.
None of this is fixed. These four elements of your self-image are trainable. When you strengthen the Big Trust attributes, you reshape the underlying personality patterns that have been keeping you stuck:
You build Acceptance so your worth stops feeling conditional.
You strengthen Agency so you move even when doubt is loud.
You grow Autonomy so you reclaim your power.
You cultivate Adaptability so your emotions don’t shrink your potential.
When you work on these four attributes, you’re not just “thinking more positively.” You’re fundamentally reshaping the self-image that your doubt has been feeding on for years. When you understand the four attributes beneath your self-image, you finally know where to direct your energy. And once you strengthen them, self-doubt stops running your life.
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3. Overthinking isn’t a thinking problem—it’s a self-trust problem.
Overthinking is often what your brain does when it doesn’t feel safe handing over the steering wheel to you. When your self-image tells your brain, “You’re not safe in uncertainty,” your mind compensates by producing more thinking, more scenarios, more mental rehearsals. And because of our built-in negativity bias, the mind typically fixates on the negative: “What if I fail? What if I can’t do it? What if I embarrass myself?” You start catastrophizing, because your brain is trying to create a sense of certainty where none exists. It magnifies what could go wrong to keep you safe. If you’re aware of all the possible risks, maybe you won’t try. And if you don’t try, you can’t fail, or be rejected, or judged. On some level, your brain thinks it’s protecting you.
And to be fair…it is. But it’s also keeping you stuck. The antidote to overthinking isn’t clearer thoughts or more clarity—it’s deeper self-trust. When you strengthen the four Big Trust attributes, decision-making becomes lighter. You no longer need more information or perfect information. You don’t spiral into worst-case scenarios. You don’t get trapped in “What if I choose wrong?” because you know you can handle whatever happens next. You have Big Trust.
I often tell my clients, “You’re not overthinking because you’re unsure of the world. You’re overthinking because you’re unsure of yourself in the world.” When you shift that, when you trust your own competence, resilience, and adaptability, the overthinking naturally settles. You’re not forcing your mind to quiet down, but it no longer has a job to do.
“You start catastrophizing, because your brain is trying to create a sense of certainty where none exists.”
One of the simplest yet most powerful tools comes directly from research on anxiety and worry. It’s called Stimulus Control for Worry, and it’s incredibly effective at reducing overthinking. Instead of letting worries hijack your mind all day, you train your brain to contain them. Every time a worry or distracting thought pops into your head, write it down. Then say, “I’ll worry about you later.”
Then, each day, schedule ‘worry time.’ Up to 30 minutes to pull out your list of worries and let your mind run wild with worry. Once the time is up, that’s it. Close the notebook or the app.
After that, decide your next step. Ask yourself, “Is this worry real, or am I catastrophizing? Is there anything I can do about this?” If yes, commit to doing something. If not, redirect your focus to something that deserves your energy.
And finally, periodically review your worry list. Look for patterns. Notice how many worries never became problems. This strengthens self-trust because you begin to see, in your own handwriting, how often your mind predicted danger that never arrived. You start to internalize that you’re safer, more capable, and more resourceful than your brain gives you credit for.
This week, Book of the Day is brought to you by Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment, by Daniel Coyle. Flourish, a Next Big Idea Club Finalist, is a science-based, practical blueprint for cultivating a life—at work and at home—full of belonging, joy, and vitality, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code.
4. Confidence is an outcome of self-trust.
When I run workshops or speak to audiences, and I ask people what they think the opposite of self-doubt is, about 90 percent will say “confidence.” And what that tells me is that most people are waiting. They’re waiting to feel confident before they take action. They’re waiting for readiness, certainty, and the perfect moment. But that’s the wrong goal.
Years of psychological research point to the same truth: confidence doesn’t come before you take action. It comes after. Here’s the loop that builds confidence:
You take a small action.
You watch yourself do it, and survive it.
That creates a proof point.
Your skills grow. Your competence grows.
Your brain updates its internal script: “I can handle this.”
That’s self-efficacy rising, and as self-efficacy rises, confidence follows. Confidence is the result, not the prerequisite. It’s the outcome of action, not the gateway to it.
So, if confidence comes after, what comes before we take action? That’s Big Trust—the trust in yourself that you can handle whatever happens next because, even if the outcome isn’t perfect, you’ll learn, adjust, and improve. Even the word ‘confidence’ gives it away: it comes from the Latin con + fidere, meaning with trust. Don’t wait to feel confident to act; act to become someone you trust.
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5. Identity changes last—habits are how you rebuild self-trust.
Self-trust isn’t built in big, dramatic moments. It’s built through small, repeated habits that teach your brain a new story about who you are. We often think change happens when we finally “feel ready,” or when motivation strikes, or when we find the perfect strategy. But identity doesn’t shift from insight alone; it shifts from evidence.
If your habits say, “I avoid hard things,” or “I break promises to myself,” or “I wait until I feel confident,” your brain stores that as identity. It becomes your self-image. But when your habits say, “I follow through,” “I take small risks,” “I choose what matters over what’s comfortable,” your brain updates your identity to match. Big Trust is built through repetition of aligned action.
Really enjoyed this framing of the invisible scar experiment. The thing that got me is how the participants literally walked in with no scar but their brain still manufactured the whole experience anyway. I've noticed something similar when prepping for meetings where I'm convinced people will judge me negatively, then I realize later nobody was evn paying attention the way I thought. Breaking that cycle requires bascially retraining the brain's default assumptions.