I spent my early 20s believing that I was not good enough. If there was only one piece of advice I could give to those of you starting your careers, it would be to work on your self belief. This is not easy to do. It’s hard to back yourself when you have few signals to convince you that you are good enough, especially when you are entering the working world at the bottom, surrounded by people with far more experience than you. And if you’re anything like me, you carry with you the doubts and insecurities that you developed in your early life.But lack self belief and you can find yourself doing things that are bad for you to feel like you are enough. So how do you cultivate self belief? It comes down to inner work and self reflection. It means exploring why you feel that you aren’t good enough in the first place and questioning whether those beliefs are really true, or a fiction that was formed from your past. What would it take for you to be okay with the way you are? To feel like you are enough as you are now? It also means intentionally reminding yourself of your positive qualities. All of this isn’t easy to do by yourself, which is why I am a big advocate for therapy. But it is a strange thing to me that the norm is to self-deprecate rather than to be proud of yourself. I believe this does more harm than good for young people. This does not mean that you should not listen to advice. You absolutely should hear a range of advice from people leading different lives. But you should also be discerning because the person delivering the advice is different to you and probably at a very different life stage. Over time, try to develop your own world view. Work out what you think about different topics, based on the advice you have received and the life experiences you have had.Developing a strong inner confidence will have compounding effects across your work and relationships. You get better at saying no, standing up for your worth, delivering feedback and speaking about yourself with confidence.