Recently my Facebook feed was clogged with photos of brooms standing on their own. Just a bunch of photos. No explanation. I wanted to make jokes about why they were taking photos of the brooms instead of using them to sweep their dirty floors, but I resisted. Instead I went to Google and asked why people were standing up brooms. The cynic in me thought it had to be a trick.

It wasn’t a trick, but there was some misinformation driving a strong power of suggestion to get people to 1) believe it was possible 2) attempt to stand the brooms up and then 3) share photos as evidence it was possible.

The misinformation was the supposed fact that a special day of the year the gravitational pull was different, thus making the broomstick challenge possible. There’s a similar theory about the spring equinox and standing eggs on their ends.

After my internet sleuthing, I went and attempted to stand my broom up, with a little repositioning, I got it to stand on its own. Then I went and tried to balance an egg. That one was much harder, but I finally got it. I got it after I watched someone else successfully do it.

The reason why the brooms and eggs stand on their own has nothing to do with a difference in gravity or where the earth is at in its circle around the sun and everything to do with suggestion and belief. Never before in my life had I pondered whether or not a broom could stand on its own or an egg could balance on its end. If you had asked me if either were possible, I probably would have told you no. But instead, I saw others successfully doing it and went to go try it for myself, believing it possible after seeing that others had accomplished it.

Here’s the thing: We don’t always get to see others post photos of our metaphorical brooms standing up or eggs balanced. Whatever your broom or egg is, you may not get to see someone else you trust and believe accomplish what you wonder if you can accomplish for yourself. Sometimes you’re going to have to wonder about and believe in your vision when no one else does. Whatever that vision is.

I am quite bad at this for myself. There were two things as a little kid I thought I would never accomplish: reading and driving. The first one is laughable. I consume books. But at the time, the task seemed so daunting, and for whatever reason, I just didn’t think I’d ever get there. Driving seemed like such a foreign concept, such an “adult” activity that I never thought that would be possible either. Granted I envisioned myself driving a red Ferrari convertible exactly like my plastic Barbie car, but I did eventually learn to drive (on a 1986 stick-shift Datsun!).

I have repeated these cycles of self-doubt through my adult life as well. At 19 years old I was hired at Victoria’s Secret as a sales associate. I remember being on a tour of the place looking at all of the merchandise in the stock room and thinking I would never know where everything went and how much it cost and how to suggest to someone that they buy more than they intended. I learned how to do all three. The last one is the reason I decided I didn’t like working in sales.

I have a friend who I freely agonize to about the struggles of writing: the rejection, the writers block, the doubt. Doubt that it matters, doubt that it’s any good, doubt that I’ll ever see a book deal. She has told me more than once to believe in myself. So I get it if you’re reading this post and feeling irritable at me, like “Just believe!” is some kind of new-age way to duck out of giving actual advice.

BUT, we all just went to our pantries, and closets, and the space next to our fridges, pulled out our brooms and stood them up. Because we believed our friends’ examples that it was possible.

Believe your friends. Believe in yourself. Whatever you’re working toward, believe that it’s possible.