How many of you have ever dealt with self doubt in your life? If you’re raising your hand, I commend you on your bravery!! And smirking at you for raising your hand while sitting in front of your computer (I have to have some fun!!). While I try to keep things light-hearted and fun, self doubt is a killer of a disorder and one that millions of people deal with daily. Myself included.
Self doubt has kept me at arm’s length from my dreams for a long, long time, and only now am I learning how to cope with it.
Some of the steps that I use to defeat Self Doubt
- JUST STOP!! I find that yelling at myself almost like a parent scolding a child works. If you think about it, your self-doubting side is just that, a scared child.
- JUST DO IT! If you ever want to do something and start talking yourself out of it, do it. Force yourself to do the task instead of putting it off for another day. Procrastination is an evil king.
- ASK WHY!! This next part will be better if you have a trusted friend or a therapist you can speak with. Ask yourself why you doubt yourself. This will help you keep those self-doubts away longer.
- BE CONSISTENT! This is not a quick fix by any means. Self doubt can stay with you for a lifetime. The trick is to be consistent in not allowing yourself to doubt.
- FINISH!! While on my journey to self-improvement, I find myself beginning many projects and not completing them. This is just another way to keep me locked in the same spot I am in now. I will start an article or news story and get halfway through it or more, and then I get started on a new project. While having many projects is fine, don’t forget to go back and finish what you started.
Don’t be afriad to ask for help
Finding a good therapist will be a great tool to have in fighting self doubt. For me, it’s my writing that helps me defeat my self doubting ways. For you, it will be something else. If you think you can handle it on your own, that’s fine, but think about this. That little doubting voice has embedded itself into your psyche already, so any internal conversations you have to try and defeat self doubt will be tainted with that self-doubting voice, making you think you’re beating it. In reality, you’re just staying in the same spot. Never growing, never learning, never living.
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” – William Shakespeare