Why do we doubt ourselves

Yes, we can prepare, but there will always be unknowns. The key is to find a way to say yes anyway and figure it out as you go along — pray, get wise counsel, look at all the reasons why you should say yes. It would be great if we all had perfect lives with no problems or issues.

We all come with our own history and our own baggage. And some of those past experiences make us doubt ourselves and our abilities.

Each of us has a past and that past leaves scars. Some are deeper than others, but they can all undermine your self-confidence and lead to self-doubt.

Realizing that is the first step towards overcoming that doubt and with it your past with all its baggage. We all have families that can look very different. Sometimes the advice is sound. There are things in your heart and soul that God only whispered to you. Prayerfully keep moving forward. Fear is a strong motivator and in this case, fear causes self-doubt and motivates in-action. In other words, it stops you in your tracks.

All for fear of being let down. But guess what? When we let that fear rule us, we lose any chance we had for positive change. We already talked about how self-doubt is a lack of confidence in our ability to get something done.

The two usually go hand in hand. You could read lots of books, watch YouTube videos, try out different running schedules and diet plans, test a variety of different shoes and equipment, etc. But you could also hire a personal coach or trainer who could give you a customized plan, saving you much time and effort and helping you avoid common pitfalls.

Specifically, t ry comparing yourself to past versions of yourself rather than other people. Instead, try shifting your comparison to your own performance when you first started the job. And one potentially powerful alternative to self-doubt is self-compassion. Self-compassion is the simple idea that after a mistake or setback, instead of beating yourself up for it or doubting yourself, you could treat yourself like a good friend and be understanding instead.

All I do is doubt myself and put myself down. How often do you practice being kind to yourself and acknowledging your positives and successes. A great little habit to get into that will help you avoid self-doubt and actually improve your self-esteem is what I call keeping a self-gratitude diary. You could be proud of yourself for remembering to take out the trash. And regardless of where it came from, you can work to free yourself from chronic self-doubt by building better habits.

I need to have more love and compassion for myself. Everyday I have to challenge myself to trust my own judgements. Nick your pieces are very timely, and this alleviates my stress. Thank you very much for the awesome piece.

Incredibly insightful as always and very practical advice. It is what I needed. Thank you so much for sharing this Nick. I feel like having completed a full therapy after reading this!

Lots of insight with practical examples. A much needed article for me. Yes, I got the guide, and yes, I had to fight several self-doubt arguments to post this comment. Thank you for helping me win that fight. Hi Nick I enjoyed very much your article. As a therapist myself I have been working for the last years with people that I called Link Personality whom has doubts coming from an specific condition in their upbringings.

I would love your opinion about the origin about this specific kind of self doubt I just began to present this insight in public in my webpage Susanabalan. U Beauty Nick, absolutely fantastic. We are blessed to have you. Sty Happy, Healthy, and Happening. With Profound Regards. This was just what I needed. November , a fire destroyed the whole town of Paradise, CA.. I was going on a backpack trip in the Sierras, so needed to do my daily 6 mile on the flume, in the canyon, below my house.

Needless to say, the day was spent fleeing, in one sense, bodily, but also mentally, picking up people on the way to safety. My house survived! Here is the mental issue of self doubt!

I even find myself wishing this house had burned!! So that I could flee to other places like so many have done. My friends, chorus are gone everywhere. My volunteer work is over, because of Covid Yes, I got some insurance money, for minor things, that painted the house, tree removal, stump grinding.

This is a long message, but you opened the door. Thank you for letting me have a space to express anxiety. It is such a small thing compared to losing jobs, making rent! His wife is pregnant. I have never seen my Great Gson in Seattle. My niece wants me to illustrate a story. I never thought that I would voluntarily subscribe to a newsletter one day but this one I enjoy genuinely and do not regret having subscribed to AT ALL. Good job Nick! Very interested and life changing Am happy so much to read this inspiring words ,am self doubt not able to feel passionate about what am doing all time and fearfully of unknown things I think this what I have read will change how i feel about my self Thank Nick.

Nick thank you for helping me and my family. I have shared many of your articles with my 20 yo son who also struggles with self doubt. I grew up in dysfunction and have been in therapy many years, but your articles have a way of truly helping me like no other therapy has. I see them as my daily work outs — they help me be healthy. This article is so timely in my life.

But after reading your article I realize I can not put too much meaning in my self doubt and more importantly there are practical ways out of the habit! After all, second-guessing yourself is second-nature when your work means so much to you. This inability to reconcile the difference between being a creator and a viewer creates the illusory gap that Self-Doubt lives in, which leads us to the next rule that it loves to follow:.

If the first rule explained why we doubt ourselves in relation to others, this second rule is what internalizes that doubt into something destructive.

Envy is a complicated emotion that has its roots in survival and sexual selection, but in the domain of creative work, it has an especially sinister quality that makes it such a negative force for us. Given this, envy has learned a devious trick that threatens to destroy this sense of community altogether. Envy has this nasty ability to flare up strongest amongst people you are closest to, primarily because it only appears amongst folks you can readily compare yourself to.

So counter-intuitively, it is strongest amongst peers, friends, and family:. And weakest amongst those that may be enormously successful, but are too far removed from your way of life:. Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.

Envy takes a group of familiar and loving faces that should make up our support systems, and instead warps them into sources of inadequacy that only makes us doubt ourselves even further. If Rule 1 creates a perceived gap between you and other creators, Rule 2 solidifies that gap by turning you away from the people that matter most.

Ultimately, all we really have are our peers, friends, and family members, but if you perceive their lives through the lens of envy, your sense of progress will always be relative to theirs, and you will view them as sources of competition rather than beacons of inspiration. It is here where Self-Doubt can grow so large that its voice becomes thunderously compelling. In many ways, pursuing any meaningful endeavor is a vote for the rocky path of uncertainty.

If you combine this with the belief that everyone is more capable than you are Rule 1 , it will only seem rational to quit. These are the fatal questions that Self-Doubt throws to get you off this journey for good. And for many people, these questions will sound compelling enough for them to accept the end of the road, pack up their bags, and walk away with no return date in sight. This ability for Self-Doubt to sound like the rational voice of reason is its grand finale — the greatest tactic it uses time and time again to prevent people from doing work they love and from reaching their potential.

The thing about Self-Doubt is that it lives solely in the now ; it knows nothing more than what can be seen and experienced at this precise moment.

It sees that you spent ten hours making a blog post that only five people saw, and will convince you that every single post you create afterward will have the same result. But of course, the truth is far from that. All meaningful endeavors and careers take time to shape and develop, and this type of long-term thinking is something that we all have the power to understand.

However, when Self-Doubt hijacks our journeys, it makes us believe that the results we are experiencing today will run onward in perpetuity…. In my case, whenever I doubt myself based on current results, I try to remember that I must view my writing career through the lens of decades, not days.

If we can commit to playing the long-game, this acceptance of patience brings a clarity that will keep you focused and ready for the challenges that await you today.