To be completely honest, I did not become successful because I believed in my ability and talents. Why would I be so vulnerable as to share this with the thousands of people who will inevitably read this article? I share this because there is a good chance that you may not have the confidence you need to move forward with your dream, idea or next step.

So, you may be wondering how I have been successful if I did not believe in myself. Therein lies the benefits of surrounding yourself with the right people. For me, this meant getting a coach and a few mentors who knew me well. These are people who care about me — not because they have to, but because they want to.

One of these people is someone I hired to be my coach. Yes, I have a coach. Coaches need coaches too. If I am not working on myself, then I am holding back the others I am trying to help grow. My coach was confident enough to push me where and when I needed it. My coach helped me step far outside my comfort zone, but for my own growth and good — my coach never encouraged me to do try anything that they did not believe I could do.

Among the other people I surrounded myself with were my mentors. My mentors have believed in me. They believed that I can do far more than I believed I could. They often pointed out the successes and impacts I’ve had to encourage me to believe in myself. When someone you look up to — someone who is far more successful and talented than you are — believes in you, it is an extremely powerful experience.

Finally, I have surrounded myself with other people who think like me, who are growth-minded and also believe in me. It has been said that you become the average of the five people who you spend the most time with, and I have found this to be true. As soon as I changed who I was spending the most time with, I started to grow and to succeed.

Now, how did I get to a point where I believed in myself? To get where I am today, I have had to borrow belief from those who believed in me. What do I mean by that? During the moments when I believed in myself the least, I tapped into the knowledge that someone I respected believed in me. That’s it. Doing that kept me from getting in my own head and filling it with self-limiting beliefs. I did not have to rely on my own beliefs when I had someone else’s belief to borrow.

Borrowing someone else’s belief in you works — but not forever. There comes a point when I believe you can overuse the borrowing of others’ beliefs. You must know that when you borrow someone else’s beliefs, you must try new things. And when you are successful in doing those things, you need to use that success to start building your own belief. What happens is, after you try and fail, learn from your failures and eventually succeed, you will start to need the other person’s belief less and rely on your own belief more.