Believing in yourself as per the old media coming-of-age trope is a really good way to get exploited in the twenty-first century, in which we harvest talent shows even more for cringey acts by which the good acts can be presented.

There is nothing wrong with you (we can a commodate for a lot of disabilities, such as paraplegism or blindness) In a better world you wouldn’t be obligated to make yourself useful, but would find opportunities to do so and the natural motivation to take one. (If you don’t have that motiviation, that is avolition, a symptom of depression.)

However, our world is fiercely competitive and based on dominance hierarchy, only slightly more cooperative than the wild jungle. Furthermore, every industry is gamed to make employment openings scarce and in demand, hence the high level of abuse and bullying that is epidemic in the industrialized commercial sector. You can be awesome at your job and still end up unemployed or locked into a shit job because of pure bad luck and because no corporation takes management or talent hunting seriously.

And if you’re an adequately sexy human specimen, you will get harassed, extorted or exploited. Multiple times.

So it’s not you, it’s the world we live in. And the whole believe in yourself trope presumes the world will meet you half-way given a bit of luck and pluck. It won’t. And going in believing in yourself will get you chewed up and swallowed, or turned into an abomination of your former self, broken from within.

But this isn’t a call to just give up. It’s a call to go creatively renegade. Believe in plan A, but have Plans B and C and a bug-out bag just in case.

Maybe take a pointy knife lined with ricin, just in case.