Do you need tips on how to deal with self-doubt?
Do you struggle with self-doubt?
Do you find it difficult to trust your in decisions?
Perhaps you constantly think you cannot accomplish your set goals.
You can’t complete a given project.
You doubt your own abilities.
Self-doubt is usually associated with that tiny voice that constantly rings in your head telling you all sought of negative words such as;
- You can’t do this.
- You can’t handle that project.
- This task would be too difficult for you to handle because you lack the skills.
These are among other negative thoughts.
Self-doubt can make you feel less of yourself and stop you from taking action either in business, at work, or in life generally.
Hence, the need for you to work hard to deal with self-doubt so you can achieve success in every area of life.
Let’s dive in to discover how to deal with self-doubt.
How To Deal With Self Doubt
For you to effectively deal with self-doubt you need to understand what it is you are dealing with.
Hence, before we move on to discuss how to deal with self-doubt let’s try to understand the concept fully by looking into the following;
- What is self-doubt?
- How self-doubt can be good(healthy) and bad(unhealthy)
- Signs that show you’re struggling with self-doubt
- How self-doubt affects you negatively
- How to overcome self-doubt
What Is Self-Doubt?
Merriam Webster defines self-doubt as ” a lack of faith in oneself; a feeling of doubt or uncertainty about one’s abilities, actions, etc”.
In other words, self-doubt can be defined as a lack of confidence in your abilities and decisions.
More so, it is the feeling of uncertainty concerning yourself, your abilities, and your decisions.
The Good (Healthy) And Bad (Unhealthy) Self-Doubt
Another important thing you need to know about self-doubt is that self-doubt can be good and bad.
So the big question here is when is self-doubt considered to be good and when can you say self-doubt is bad?
Self-doubt can be healthy when it makes you cautious and careful.
When self-doubt makes you probe your decisions, actions, ideas, or people, so that you can make the right decisions to achieve the best results, then that is healthy self-doubt.
On the other hand, self-doubt can be a bad thing when it makes you overcautious such that you refuse to take action.
When you refuse to take action on your goals as a result of self-doubt, this is the unhealthy kind of self-doubt that you should be wary of.
This is because this kind of bad self-doubt keeps you stuck, hence making it difficult to achieve success.
Overall, healthy self-doubt can help you take extra caution when acting on our goals and decisions.
Thus making you use self-doubt to your advantage.
However, the unhealthy kind of self-doubt stops you from taking action at all and realizing your full potential.
Hence, this is the kind of self-doubt you should strive hard to overcome.
Signs That You’re Struggling With Self-Doubt
Now you know that self-doubt can be good and bad at the same time.
How can you tell if you’re struggling with the bad kind of self-doubt so you can take action to deal with it?
Firstly self doubt springs up as a result of anxiety and uncertainty about your abilities and decision.
Hence, if you express so much anxiety and uncertainty about yourself and your abilities, then you’re struggling with self-doubt.
More so, you can tell that you’re struggling with the self-doubt if you;
- struggle with the fear of failure.
- are afraid of what people will say.
- are unwilling to take up new and challenging projects.
- second guess every decision you make or action you take.
- have low self-esteem.
- find it difficult to make decisions
- compare yourself to other people
- lack confidence
Now if you show some of these signs it shows that you’re struggling with self-doubt.
Hence, you need to take action to deal with self-doubt so that you can successfully achieve your goals.
How Self-Doubt Affects You Negatively
Constantly living in self-doubt affects your life negatively.
Some of the ways that self-doubt affects you include;
- It keeps you stuck and stops you from making progress in every area of life.
- Self-doubt limits your ability to be creative and innovative thus making it difficult for you to achieve success at what you do.
- It makes your decision-making process difficult.
- Furthermore, it makes it difficult for you to set clear goals and work hard to achieve your set goals.
- It’ ruins your confidence in yourself and your abilities.
- Self-doubt makes you develop negative behaviors such as perfectionism, pessimism, procrastination, negative self-talk among others.
- It stops you from living up to your fullest potential.
- It makes you unproductive and inefficient.
- Self-doubt also leads to anxiety and depression which in turn affects your mental health. Thus making you less productive and inefficient at what you do.
Overall, self-doubt can affect you negatively in so many ways.
This is why you need to work hard to deal with self-doubt.
Take, for instance, you’re a leader in your organization.
As a leader, you’ll be tasked with the responsibility of making decisions for the team as well as the organization.
If you struggle with self-doubt, it would be very difficult for you to carry out your responsibility effectively.
This is because you’ll constantly doubt your ability to lead the team and make decisions that would benefit the organization overall.
Thereby, making it difficult for you to build trust within your team and lead them successfully.
Hence, if you want to achieve success either in business or life generally, you need to deal with self-doubt.
You need to get rid of that voice in your head that makes you put limitations on yourself and your abilities.
Here’s how to deal with self-doubt.
How To Deal With Self-Doubt; Effective Tips On How To Stop Doubting Yourself
As said earlier, self-doubt is usually accompanied by negative thoughts such as;
- I’m not good enough
- I can’t do it
- This thing is beyond my level of intelligence and so on.
More so, everyone experiences self-doubt once in a while, even successful people.
However, rather than allow self-doubt to stop them from achieving their goals, they strive to overcome self-doubt and achieve their goals.
Here’s how you can too learn to silence negative thoughts, believe more in yourself, and overcome self-doubt.
Take Action
If you want to deal with self-doubt then you must be willing to take action on those things that are making you doubt yourself.
A quote by Vincent Van Gogh says it all about how to deal with self-doubt by taking action.
The quote goes thus; “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint’ then, by all means, paint.”
You can learn to deal with self-doubt by taking action on those things that you doubt your ability to accomplish.
Taking action on things you feel you can’t do and doing them successfully is a great confidence boost.
This is because when you accomplish those goals you thought you couldn’t accomplish, you feel good about yourself.
More so, you also feel motivated to take on bigger challenges and achieve success.
Thereby making you feel more confident about your ability to succeed even in challenging situations.
So, when next you start to doubt your ability to accomplish a particular goal/task, equip yourself with the necessary skills/information and take action.
Thus helping you deal with self-doubt.
Reframe Negative Thoughts
Another tip to keep in mind on how to deal with self-doubt is to reframe negative thoughts.
As established earlier on that self-doubt is that negative voice that keeps ringing in your head and filling your mind with negative thoughts.
Most times when you’re faced with tough or challenging situations, these thoughts can come crawling.
The thoughts of “you’ll never be good enough”, you’re not smart or intelligent enough” etc might creep in.
You don’t have to give in to these negative thoughts and allow them to stop you from taking action.
Instead, reframe those negative thoughts with more positive thoughts such as;
“Yes, I can do this; all I need is to acquire the right set of skills”.
“It might be difficult for me to do but not impossible so, I’ll try my best”.
Research shows that you can overcome self-doubt and build self-esteem by changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts.
So when negative thoughts start to creep in and you begin to doubt yourself and your abilities, reframe them.
Turn negative thoughts/self-talk into positive.
Thereby, helping you deal with self-doubt.
Let Go Of Past Mistakes And Failures; Forgive Yourself, Learn From Them And Move On
This is another reason why people struggle with self-doubt.
They refuse to let go of past experiences where they’ve failed or made mistakes.
If you want to deal with self-doubt as a person, you’ll have to learn to let go of past mistakes and failures.
You’ll need to learn to forgive yourself and move on each time you make mistakes or fail at something.
Stop seeing yourself as a failure or a good for nothing anytime you fail or make mistakes.
Rather see your failures and mistakes as experiences that would make you a better person overall.
More so, see failures and mistakes as a learning opportunity that can teach you things that could make your life better overall.
Don’t let your fear of failing or making mistakes again make you doubt yourself and stop you from trying to achieve your goals.
If you’ve failed at something in the past, that was in the past.
Let the past be in the past.
Forgive yourself.
Learn from your mistakes.
Try again but this time more intelligently.
Thus, helping you deal with self-doubt.
Remember Your Past Successes
It’s a good thing to always remember moments where you’ve done well/succeeded.
This would help you feel good about yourself and remind you of your unique abilities or capabilities.
So, when self-doubt begins to set in as a result of new and challenging situations you’re experiencing at the moment, take a trip down memory lane.
Remind yourself of all the good things you’ve accomplished in the past.
If you’ve held a leadership position in the past and you did so well and helped the organization achieve success, remind yourself of that fact.
Relish in the thoughts and reassure yourself of your ability to achieve success.
Bear in mind, however, that this does not mean dwelling in past glory, such that you don’t make any efforts to improve yourself and be better.
Reminding yourself of past successes is about keeping track of how well you’ve done in the past.
It’s also about reminding yourself of how capable you are to handle tough situations and achieve success despite those challenges.
Thus, giving you the self-assurance and motivation you need to tackle challenging situations in the present moment.
Thereby, helping you deal with self-doubt.
Stop Comparing Yourself To Other People
Another way to deal with self-doubt is to avoid comparing yourself to other people.
Comparing yourself, your abilities, and your success to that of other people would only make you feel less about yourself.
Thus, fostering self-doubt.
More so, comparing your achievements to that of other people would only make you feel like a failure.
Thus, making you lose the motivation you need to work hard and achieve success.
Instead, use the lives and accomplishments of other people to motivate yourself to do better and achieve success.
Transform your comparison into a tool for getting inspired to do better for yourself as well.
Instead of thinking “this person is doing better than I am” and feeling bad about yourself, change your thoughts to more positive thoughts such as “If this person can do this, I can do it also”.
Thus motivating yourself to accomplish your goals.
Thereby dealing with self-doubt.
Develop A Positive Mindset
This is another tip to keep in mind when thinking of how to deal with self-doubt.
A positive mindset is a way of thinking that involves focusing on the positive side of situations and expecting positive results.
Most of the time self-doubt arises as a result of fear of failure, fear of the unknown, uncertainty, and anxiety.
With a positive mindset, you’ll be able to develop a positive thinking habit that’ll help you focus on the positive and ignore negative thoughts.
In other words, you’ll be able to avoid negative thoughts such as pessimism, complaining among others that give rise to self-doubt.
When self-doubt sets in and you begin to doubt your ability to accomplish your goals, use positive thinking to counter the negative thoughts that are giving rise to self-doubt.
Instead of doubting your ability to accomplish a given task/goal or project, remain positive by looking on the bright side of things.
Stay positive and think of ways by which you can accomplish the challenging project, task, or goal.
More so, keep a positive mindset and visualize yourself as a success already instead of doubting your abilities.
Thus helping you deal with self-doubt.
More Tips On How To Deal With Self-Doubt
Here are some more tips to keep in mind when thinking of how to deal with self-doubt.
- Avoid overthinking things.
- be open-minded to learning.
- Always celebrate your small wins.
- Don’t be bothered about what people would say.
- Practice positive self-talk and words of affirmation.
- Be around positive and supportive people
- Set clear and realistic goals.
- Improve your skills.
- Welcome new and challenging situations with an optimistic mindset.
- Avoid chasing perfectionism, instead focus on making progress.
- Celebrate your small wins.
Final Thoughts
Overall, it’s natural to feel self-doubt.
However, you shouldn’t allow self-doubt to stop you from making plans and taking action to achieve your goals.
As stated earlier, even successful people experience self-doubt or situations that could make them doubt their abilities.
Nevertheless, they don’t allow self-doubt to stop them from working hard to accomplish their goals.
Take, for example, Micheal Jordan experienced failure several times in some of his basketball games.
Rather than allow self-doubt creep in and discourage him from playing for the team, he worked had to ensure that he became better and achieved success.
Another great example of a successful person who didn’t allow self-doubt to stop him from accomplishing his goals is Thomas Eddison.
He had 10,000 failed attempts at inventing the light bulb.
This was more than enough reason for him to doubt his ability to invent the light bulb.
However, he overcame self-doubt and worked hard to accomplish his goal of inventing the light bulb.
If you find yourself doubting your ability to accomplish a particular task/goal, strive to overcome that feeling of self-doubt and work hard to accomplish your goal.
Use these tips today to help you deal with self-doubt and become more confident to work towards achieving your goals.
How often do you experience self-doubt in your business, work, and life generally?
How has it affected you in accomplishing your set goals?
We would like to hear from you.
Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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