How to Overcome Self-Doubt
Self-doubt is a lack of belief in our abilities, who we are, and what we can do that limits our potential
Self-doubt is a common obstacle that many people face when intending to do something new or step outside their comfort zone.
It is characterized by feelings of not being good enough, not being worthy, and feeling as if you lack sufficient skills and ability, even if you have a lot of experience and skills.
Self-doubt makes you procrastinate and keeps you from taking inspired actions to reach your goals.
The thing about self-doubt, just like any limiting belief, is that the more you believe it, the more you see it materializing in your life.
Where does self-doubt come from?
Usually, self-doubt comes from different situations we have experienced in childhood that have made us feel not good enough. Those are situations where we have experienced failures and have faced criticism because of that.
Those are often not even real failures — that can be simply not living up to someone’s expectations. For example, a teacher criticizes the child for something incorrect. Or peers at school laughed at the child because of their looks or behavior. Or parents that have been comparing their child with their other brother or sister.
And a part of the process can also be the lack of experiences that would have helped build the necessary self-belief and confidence.
“Our lives are a product of the beliefs we believe in the most.”
We always need experiences that make us step outside of our comfort zone and grow. When we lack these experiences, we don’t have a chance to train our self-belief muscles. And if those muscles don’t get trained, self-doubt creeps in without delay.
As a child grows into teenagers, they start comparing themselves with others even more, which adds more self-doubt to the mental cocktail. The more the child or teenager finds things where others are better or has something better, the stronger the belief of “I am not good enough” forms.
Eventually, our lives are a product of the beliefs we believe in the most. Whatever we think in our minds the most becomes the actual reality in our lives.
My Story
For example, I had believed that I was not good at communication for many years. The belief formed in my school years, when I was quiet and liked to spend more time alone than partying with classmates.
The more I stayed to myself, the more classmates felt like I didn’t want to talk to them or that I was weird. I felt uncomfortable around them because I knew they did not see me as one of them.
There was more and more estrangement between us, which I started to see as my fault. And I was telling myself constantly that I am not good at communication. Until upon graduating High School, I fully believed that.
When I had the opportunity to go for the summer to work in the USA and sell books after my first year in University, I welcomed the opportunity. Still, I went into this opportunity with the limiting belief and self-doubt that I am not good at communication.
This summer job involved selling educational books door-to-door in the USA, so it involved direct communications with people. And, it was only commissioned-based — no hourly salary. This means that my results were solely dependent on how much I sold. I worked hard, which gave some results; however, my belief that I am bad at communication manifested itself big time.
My belief that I am lacking good communication skills manifested itself big time.
I had constant fear when communicating with people that I was not good enough. I often pleased people by trying to say things I thought they wanted to hear. I feared that I would say something wrong, and I often came up as timid and low in confidence. Needless to say that in sales, trust and authenticity are crucial. My self-doubt was blocking me from achieving results that would be above average.
Now, ten years later, I am very good at both communication and sales. But that breakthrough didn’t come until I changed my limiting belief about myself that I am not good.
“Self-doubt is not real; self-doubt is a lie that we believe in.”
The truth is that we are good enough and that we can develop all the necessary characteristics with time and practice.
What are the by-products of self-doubt?
Procrastination
This is one of the biggest things that people who struggle with self-doubt face. If someone wants to get rid of procrastination, they need to look at the things behind this procrastination — self-doubt, perfectionism, people-pleasing, etc.
People who doubt themselves avoid taking action, especially if it requires stepping out of their comfort zone because they fear failure, mistakes, and criticism. Yet, stepping outside of my comfort zone is the exact cure for getting rid of self-doubt.
Constant comparison
People who doubt themselves always look at others and compare themselves. They try to match up with others so they would feel at least as good as others are in their mind. This makes someone lose their authentic expression. A person starts silencing and censoring themself because of fear of standing out.
Fear of failure
Self-doubters procrastinate because they want to avoid situations that would make them feel like they are not good enough. Because that is the belief, they have about themselves. They fear that circumstances will prove that to be true. They often identify themselves with mistakes and failures.
Fear of success
Fear of success is just as common as the fear of failure. Fear of success means that we are afraid of doing something because we fear that we will get a successful outcome and won’t be able to handle it further from there.
Subconsciously, it again comes from the belief that we are not good enough. When we think we are not good enough, we may fear success because we fear we won’t know what to do with that success. It feels not normal to us.
For example, if you have been used to earning 1000 euro/month for the last ten years of your life, and now you have the opportunity to make 2000 euro/month, this new state will not feel normal to you. Even though you want it. But your subconscious is used to you being someone who earns 1000 euro/month. Usually, in such moments comes the self-sabotage, for example, missing out on the opportunity because you do not believe you are worthy of it.
How to overcome self-doubt?
1. Self-awareness
Slow yourself down and become more conscious of your everyday thoughts. Why is self-awareness so critical? Our thoughts are also habits. Imagine, for 20 years, you are used to saying in your mind certain things about yourself, for example, that you are not good enough. Such thoughts have become so engrained — automatic habits usually go by default unless we start paying conscious attention.
The thoughts we think regularly are also habits. It means — we think them automatically.
Take a whole week for the self-awareness exercise. Usually, you can notice those thoughts the best in the most challenging situations. Carry a notebook with you or use your phone’s notes app.
Pay conscious attention to your thoughts and write down all the negative thoughts you think in your mind in different situations. Try to be aware. Put sticky notes with reminders at your desk, bathroom mirror, etc.
You can look through these notes and circle the most repetitive ones at the end of the week.
2. Understand the root cause
See if you can understand the root cause of these negative thoughts. Can you remember the first time when you decided such things about yourself? Was there an event in your childhood that made you think like that? Was there something your parents or teachers said that made you think that?
Once you can understand where these thoughts come from, you can release them.
3. How can you look at these experiences differently?
When negative events occurred, or hurtful words were said during your childhood, you most likely unconsciously took them as the truth.
Especially from the ages 0–7, our conscious minds have not yet developed, so everything that happens is interpreted by the subconscious mind directly. In other words, it is taken as truth because the critical faculty of the mind has not yet developed.
For example, if you heard, “You never do anything right” from your parents or teachers, you formed a belief that you never can do anything right.
Through the years, as similar situations have repeated, you still have acted out as that child.
“We can keep on acting out our childhood trauma for the rest of our lives if we don’t become aware of it and heal.”
And that unconscious chain of reactions is repeating until you become aware of it and cut the power off from the experience that started it all.
Now, you can look at that situation with your critical mind. And most likely, you will see that the problem in that situation wasn’t you as much as it was the hurt and unhealed part of the person who said or did the wrong things.
4. Work with a mentor
Sometimes this process can be more challenging because the situations are more nuanced. That’s why a great idea is to work with a mentor — a therapist or a mindset coach who can help you work through these memories and emotions and set you up for a successful mindset.
This is the type of work I do with my clients as a mindset coach.
5. What are the lessons and learnings?
When you can look at the past experiences differently, what are the lessons are the learnings? Perhaps, you learn that what happened was not any of your faults. Maybe you realize that your parents were hurt when they were children, and they never really processed their hurt. And as you probably know, unprocessed hurt gets passed forward.
“Hurt people hurt people.”
6. Turn the negative beliefs into positive self-talk
Use the lessons and learnings to make new positive statements about yourself. Most likely, they will be somewhat opposite of the previous negative beliefs you discovered you had told yourself.
Use these positive statements as your self-talk or positive affirmations.
7. Make sure you only hang around people that influence you positively
If you have people who constantly drag you down with their words and actions, remove those people from your life. If they make you feel guilty, continuously criticize you, say bad things about you, etc., stop hanging around them. Only spend time with people that uplift you and whose presence empowers you.
In Conclusion
If you want to become free of self-doubt, there is no better way to do it than by becoming aware of the negative thoughts and limiting beliefs you think about yourself and understanding where they come from. Unless you remove the root cause of these limiting beliefs, they will have power over you. Therefore, realizing how the negative and limiting thoughts you have thought about yourself are lies is crucial.
If you have also been held back by these self-sabotaging tendencies, such as perfectionism, self-doubt, people-pleasing, etc., and you are ready to let go of those so you can step fully into your power and take inspired action towards your goals, then book a free consultation call with me (20-30 min)!
