belief that you can, fear that you're not enough

“Highly successful people have delusional self-belief.”

“Highly successful people feel like they aren’t enough.”

Which is it? If two contradictory traits hold to be the true main contribution about the successes of many, then what does that say about our ability to change our way of thinking depending in what present we’re living in?

Can’t you have both? What does that mean?

Belief that you can. Fear that you’re not enough.

Fear that you can. Belief that you're not enough.

A stressful tension.

Those people believe that they can yet they cover it up with the fact that they aren’t doing enough and there is more needed to be achieved. And, therefore, that unfulfilled feeling of not having, of lacking, could lead to the delusional self-belief of knowing what one wants and the determination to not stop until they get what they want due to that need and desire to achieve more and be better, rooted either from the deep wound of self-hatred or the genuine curiosity to pursue more or, at times, both. Both look like ambition. Both can look like success. But they feel very different.

The culmination of success is indeterminate. One can have delusional self belief but no execution. One can have self-hatred and fall into that spiral.

But if both traits exist in "successful" people, then success doesn't resolve the internal contradiction. It doesn't heal it. It doesn't simplify it. Success might actually just amplify whatever was already there.

Curiosity, self-hatred, self-belief.

One is for possibility.
One is for movement.
One is for sustainability.

The conflation of all are what could lead to success. But what truly determines it is up to the individual choices over time (and luck).