Is self-doubt really the opposite of confidence, or is there more to it? Because evolutionarily, self-doubt and confidence were both meant for us to do better. Confidence to fearlessly try out new things, and self-doubt to know when we need to skill up. And so to overcome self doubt means knowing exactly what we need to work on… find the root cause every time self doubt holds us back to know which exact strategy to use.
How to overcome self-doubt
1. When not feeling confident enough
The most common cause for doubting our ability or decision to do something is a lack of confidence. It’s when we aren’t sure whether we have what something demands, whether we will be able to get the results we want. See, confidence isn’t an overall trait. It’s not like you are a confident person or you are not at all. It differs from situation to situation.
People who have a lot of self-doubts are thought to have a lot of variation in their judgment of their own abilities… and may be uncertain about their ability to cause a desired outcome.
– Braslow, Guerrettaz, Arkin, & Oleson, 2012
What Helps –
- Feel more in control:
Self-doubt makes it tough to know whether how we feel about our ability is right or not because it could very well be our negativity bias throwing up these thoughts of self-doubt.
So, use the second position of perceptual repositioning to take an objective look at things. Think of it as if your friend is in that situation, not you. Then check how much expertise is really needed, how much is there realistically right now, and if there’s a gap then what needs to be done?
- Cut back the need to overcome self-doubt – But, moving forward, it also helps to cut back on situations that make us doubt our ability.
So, make sure that there’s enough time to fill any knowledge gap or to get the help needed before agreeing to something. It’s about proactively cutting back those situations that can make us doubt ourselves. It’s easier than trying to overcome self-doubt.
2. Overcome self doubt when there's a lack of courage for risks involved
Courage is different from confidence because it fuels our actions when we know we do not have quite a wide knowledge about something… when we wing it trusting that we will be able to learn along the way to keep moving forward.
And when there’s a lack of courage, self-doubt is about avoidance – avoiding failure, embarrassment, disappointment. It’s when we hold back, like when we procrastinate.
Procrastination (is an)… example of self-handicaps that enable us to blame our struggles on something other than our incompetence. Unfortunately, this strategy often just leads to worsening self-doubt .
– Braslow, Guerrettaz, Arkin, & Oleson, 2012
What Helps –
- Do want:
Avoidance makes us feel stuck because of the paradox of choice, too many options. Like, “I don’t want this to happen, or that to happen, or that other thing to happen”. So, focus on what you do want to happen.
- Specifics to overcome self doubt: General ideas like “I want this to work” don’t really help. So, use reframing technique to get into specifics. Instead of “I don’t know” or “I don’t think I can”, find out what specifically you think is going to stop you, or what hurdle are you expecting.
- What can you control:
And so, what can we do about that? What can we change? This will give us a specific goal and an action plan showing us what we can specifically work on to feel more confident, feel more in control.
When we start seeing the possibility of failure as just another problem to be solved along the way, courage comes naturally into the mix.
3. Subconscious root cause (self-esteem and limiting beliefs)
But, when self-doubt sounds like, I am not this enough or that enough, or shows imposter syndrome… feeling as if we succeeded by fluke, it points towards a deeper problem. Our experiences while growing up work together to shape our beliefs which guide our choices and decisions in life. Now, some of them work at a subconscious level, meaning we are not even aware of them. And when some of these beliefs start to limit what we think is possible for us, they come out as self-doubt.
Many research studies have shown that “basically, anything that leads us to question our existing beliefs, thoughts, emotions, etc… can lead to self-doubt”
– Tchiki Davis, PhD
What Helps –
- Importance for motivation:
If we can find the importance of why we have to do something, find out how it’s going to get us closer to what we truly want in life, the importance will override the resistance and doubts we have. Because that creates an internal locus of motivation which can tide us over self-doubt and setbacks along the way.
- Leverage strengths:
Then, mould whatever you have to do around your strengths.
Like, I am not very comfortable with public speaking. So, to overcome self-doubt, I would use my strength – creativity. I will create an engaging presentation to go with it so that people can focus more on that than all eyes on me. That means, it would work twice. First to distract me from all those self-doubting thoughts and then to feel more comfortable and confident when speaking.
- Audit to minimize self doubt: Watch the video up top to know how to do this and also to learn all about the 4th very sneaky root cause of self-doubt. Meet you over there.
