If you learn to trust yourself and develop faith  in your own abilities to solve your own problems,

you will feel at home  wherever you are in the world.

I don't think there's a greater prize in life  

than faith in your own capacities to survive  and thrive. It's of inestimable value.

And the younger me would probably ask me  how, “how do I learn to trust myself?”

The Royal Society has a motto:  

“nullius in verba”, which roughly  translates to “take nobody's word for it”.

“Take nobody's word for it.” that's what  I would tell myself, “not even my own.”.

Verify all things for yourself, come up with  your own beliefs, and try to disprove them.

And as you disprove your own beliefs,  

eventually you'll stumble upon a belief  that you can't disprove, try as you might.

And as your list of unshakeable beliefs  grows, you will develop a trust in yourself  

that is not naive. You will trust  yourself not because you choose to,  

but because it's the inevitable byproduct  of not being able to disprove yourself.

I would tell myself to ask questions, propose  answers, and falsify those answers. I would tell  

myself to destroy all my precious beliefs,  because the truth needs no protection. Only  

those beliefs which cannot crack under pressure  carry the potential of being valuable diamonds.

Here's an example. Vanessa struggles with focus,  

so she states her problem in the form  of a question: why can't I focus?

She gives herself an answer:  I have a medical condition.

So she goes to the doctor to get checked up,  and the doctor tells her everything is fine.

So that answer is, in theory, disproved.  

So she states another answer: I can't  focus because of external distractions.

So she starts to eliminate noise from the  background, take away distracting items,  

and go to the library if she  needs to. This works for a bit,  

but eventually she finds herself  getting distracted by her own thoughts.

So she disproves her last theory, it's not just  

external distractions that are  stopping her from focusing.  

So she comes up with another answer: I can't focus  because of external and internal distractions.

So she sorts out these internal distractions,  something I talked about doing in another video,  

link in the description if  you want to check it out,  

and she finally achieves the  level of focus she wants.

Her working theory, that she  hasn't been able to disprove yet,  

is that focus occurs when external and  internal distractions are fully eliminated,  

and she has individual processes  for eliminating these distractions.

And she develops a trust in her  abilities to focus when she needs to,  

because she's gained reliable insight  into the workings of her own mind.

So Vanessa goes through a process  of asking herself a question,  

coming up with an answer, and trying  to disprove that answer. Going through  

this cyclical process allows her to discover  valuable insights about the world and herself.

And Vanessa continues this process for other areas  of her life too, figuring out what foods are best  

for her to eat, what workouts are good, what she  should study in university, so on and so forth.

And slowly she learns to trust her own  abilities to navigate through the world  

and accomplish the goals she sets for herself.

This question-answer-falsification  process may seem tedious,  

but I think it's necessary, because  it's really the only way Vanessa can  

develop her abilities to successfully  navigate through the world on her own.

And I'd leave my younger self with this. I know  you want directions. You want the exact turns,  

left, right, left, left, that are going to get  you to where you want to go. You want the tactic,  

or the book recommendation, or the  app, or the step-by-step system  

that's going to get you where you want to go.  Directions only work if someone knows your exact  

starting point and your exact ending point. You  will mostly never get good directions in life.  

Then you might become more sophisticated,  and instead of looking for directions,  

you'll begin looking for a map. A map of the  territory so you can guide yourself from your  

starting point to your end point. The thing is,  all maps eventually become false. If you wait  

long enough, even the mountains and the oceans  move. So you may find a good map, but all maps  

eventually become false and unreliable. In the  end, what you were searching for was a compass.  

Something that could always point you to True  North. And this compass is inside you, but it  

needs to be calibrated. Get to work calibrating it  as soon as you can, that way you can always find  

out where you need to go, from where you are. If  you can do that, you don't need any other advice.

But nullius in verba. Don't take my  word for it. Verify it for yourself.