How to Prevent Self-Doubt from Eating Away Your Confidence

Self-Doubt

Fear and self-doubt are the greatest killers of personal genius.
Ziad K. Abdelnour

Have you ever had the experience of being excited about something, something you wanted to go after, and then, as if sneaking up from behind you the feeling of self-doubt crept up and stole away your excitement? It’s like it steals your life, it steals your Self. Then you have to wonder---“Am I confident that I have what it takes to handle the challenges, surprises, uncertainties, and desires that arise in my life?”“

For those who suffer from self-doubt the answer is an agonizing “I don’t know.” To answer “Yes” is best because you have a foundation for action. And even “No” is better because, although it’s negative at least it’s certain. But “I don’t know” creates doubt for any chance of resolution that could lead to action and change. It leaves behind an emptiness that can’t seem to be filled.

Self-doubt is a soul killer. It erodes and undermines the very basis of the Self. We are plagued by the question of our competence---“Can I really count on myself to act in a way that realizes my intentions?”

Self-doubt is a nag that’s always back there. Some people experience it as a critical voice,

others just feel unsure, like the bottom could give way at any time. And to make it worse self-doubt is free-floating, when you think you have a handle on it you don’t. It slips away, recedes back into the darkness of your uncertainty disabling you in a variety of ways: fear, fatigue, disorientation.

Self-doubt is an inner traitor and the cause of great loss because it debilitates your attempt at doing something. Free-floating self-doubt is a poison that saps your will and turns what might be strength into weakness seeming like it’s beyond your power to understand, influence, or control.

But there is an option.

Self-Assessment

I made my own assessment of my life, and I began to live it. That was freedom.

Fernando Flores

To assess is to judge the value or worth of something, and I will add the truth or illusion of something. In this case that something is you---what you’re thinking, feeling, believing, your experience in the moment. When self-doubt strikes it’s critical not to let it dominate, not to let it set the conditions of your reality.

You need to take objective stock of what you know about your Self. Even though doubt will try to snatch away any competency or worth you possess, your doubt is a liar. If you believe it you are both creating and believing a lie.

It’s critical that you focus on the facts of who you are. Facts are a death-blow to that slippery insidious doubt. Here’s an experience from my own life as an example.

I recently published my first novel. I’ve always wanted to write a novel but I did not trust I could tell a story. I knew I could write good sentences and paragraphs, but could I tell a story worth reading. When I faced the first blank page I felt an intense sense of loss. Whatever skill I had developed was gone. I was left bereft, empty of desire and certainly bereft of courage. “I can’t do this,” I thought. I was looking into my long held desire to write a novel and all I could see was emptiness. I was not who I thought I was. I had been invested in a false idea, a false hope and should have known better. And my novel could have come to an end at that point.

But then I thought, “I have to do what I tell other people they have to do when they hit the self-doubt wall.” I have to do what I know to do to stop this self-defeating slide. So I started listing my assets---my skill, my imagination, my experience writing six other books. They were non-fiction, but still. That helped but the doubt still controlled.

Finally I remembered that I’d faced this kind of doubt before and I’d always come through. You’d think that memory would have been the first to come to mind but when doubt reigns objective assessment has to fight its way up through the fear-driven fog. I had demonstrated my competence, even though not as a story teller, so the worst thing that could happen would be that I’d learn to let go of the desire to write a novel. Although that would be painful I’d let go of wishes and hopes before and found that the energy I had invested in what was not real was then made available for other efforts.

I could feel the doubt subside. The truth of my reality emerged through my assessment, my self-assessment, and as Fernando Flores said above, I began to feel the freedom of possibility. The blank page wasn’t as scary. Ideas began to flow and I began to write. Fifty-five thousand words later my novel was finished. And to my joy I’ve received pre-publication reviews telling me, although not in these exact words, that I am a very good storyteller---something I would never have known if I allowed doubt to rule.

Self-assessment triumphed over self-doubt. Possibility replaced emptiness. Joy stayed with me throughout the whole process. Righting my own mind led to believing in my Self, and to quote the poet E.E. Cummings , “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit”

Replace self-doubt with self-assessment, they are fundamentally and profoundly different.

(Photo Credit: thiscity_burns/Flickr)

Jim Sniechowski has published his first novel, Worship of Hollow Gods, at Amazon.com. In Worship of Hollow Gods Jim bears witness to the world of a sensitive, nine-year-old boy, subjected to the underbelly of his Polish Catholic family in working class Detroit. The year is 1950. The family gathers for a Friday night family poker/pinochle party. The outcome reveals a world no one ever talked about then and are forbidden to talk about now---the unspoken, the impermissible, the reality beneath every family’s practiced facade---and what lies beneath when the front has been ripped away. Worship of Hollow Gods is available now in Kindle and paperback for at https://tinyurl.com/hollowgods

James Sniechowski, PhD and his wife Judith Sherven, PhD https://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabulous. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing. They are always succeeding. The question is, at what?

Currently working as consultants on retainer to LinkedIn providing executive coaching, leadership training and consulting as well as working with private clients around the world, they continually prove that when unconscious beliefs are brought to the surface, the barriers to greater success and leadership presence begin to fade away. They call it Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous. https://OvercomingtheFearofBeingFabulous.com