Vincent van Gogh once gave this advice: If you hear a voice inside your head telling you that you can’t paint, then you must go forward and paint. Do that, and you’ll silence the self-doubt that holds you back.
Everyone has moments of self-doubt, and self-esteem moves along a continuum for most of us. If you have a long-term or deep-seated sense of self-doubt, though, it might be time to get to the root of the problem. Your awareness that something is wrong might be the jump-start you need to build up your character as someone you—and the world—see as worthy of respect and trust.
How self-doubt builds over a lifetime
For many people, self-doubt stems from the internalization of negative messages from parents and other authority figures. If you grew up with an authority figure continually calling into question your sense of self, you learned to also question your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. You learned that no matter what you did, in many or most cases you could never measure up. So, instead of trusting in yourself, you learned to doubt the value of your own experiences and insights.
If your feelings were discounted in your family, it’s much more likely that you are still experiencing self-doubt. Even as an adult, you might often push down your own feelings and need for respect in order not to rock the boat—even when you are the wronged party in an interaction. But if you don’t respect yourself, you’ll be more likely to be taken advantage of by others who sense your self-doubt.
The tragic limitations of self-doubt
It’s not healthy to keep your emotions constantly in check, calibrating them to what you think others expect you to feel. Discrediting your own feelings means you are discrediting yourself and denying yourself any opportunity to receive the care and respect that is due to you. The resulting frustration often leads to psychological and physical illnesses.
People who constantly feel that they need to guard and censor their emotions have problems learning to trust themselves. They often feel disconnected from their feelings, overanalyzing to the point of paralyzing their ability to move forward. You might have developed a pattern of procrastination that in turn causes feelings of self-doubt. Your avoidance then becomes a self-reinforcing circle.
What self-confidence feels like
It is certainly good to avoid hubris—the ancient Greek term for the unchecked pride and self-satisfaction that often leads to disaster. True self-confidence is different.
When we are confident, we take a 360 degree view of both our capabilities and shortcomings. We listen to our feelings while tempering exuberance with facts. We stay on an even keel, changing course to take advantage of new pathways and avoid sudden challenges, while guarding the advantages we have already gained. It’s this steady, confident mindset that has guided the world’s best leaders throughout time.
Until you decide to finally face and conquer your self-doubt, it will continue to limit your success and enjoyment of life. Here is some guidance on how to begin:
- Know that it’s human to feel self-doubt—Understand that it’s human to doubt ourselves. Embrace that fact and the mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Without the courage to push forward and make mistakes, no one would ever accomplish anything.
- Understand how your doubts grew—One of the first steps toward overcoming self-doubt lies in understanding and accepting your own feelings and experiences, and sorting out and confronting those that are holding you back. Once you’ve cleared away this emotional deadwood, new and healthier perspectives will have space to thrive.
- Confront your doubts head-on—Address your inner doubter directly. You might even want to express your thoughts to your inner doubter in a letter, addressing this limiting aspect of yourself as if it were another person. Take the sting out of its power over you by naming it, talking back to it, and even ridiculing its false beliefs.
- Banish your doubts—Use positive self-talk to help banish your doubts. In other words, doubt your doubts. Your self-doubts were formed in fear, and their limiting beliefs may have been a means of self-protection as your personality developed. Over time, this risk-avoidance became a self-fulfilling prophecy, boxing you into a smaller and more limited personality that fails to acknowledge your potential.
- Take action in spite of doubt—Don’t let the thing you are trying to avoid become more important than your goal of developing yourself as an action-oriented, results-focused person. That means you’ll have to make the difficult choice to just move forward regardless of the self-doubt that leads to inaction. Remember that inaction is corrosive, sapping your attention and your energy. In the end, you will end up devoting more energy to not doing what you know you need to do than you would to actually doing it. Wouldn’t it be a relief not to feel like that?
- Trust your mission in life—Stand behind a mission that is greater than your fears. Becoming the person and leader you have always wanted to be means building character and boosting your influence in the world. And that includes staying true to the work you feel you need to do to improve the world for yourself and everyone in your community. You owe your teammates and your loved ones the best and most confident version of yourself, one that can bring calm and steadiness to any situation and make the most of every opportunity.
Klemmer’s 2½-day, deeply immersive Personal Mastery Leadership Training has helped numerous participants make the most of their lives by cultivating their most powerful and successful selves that were concealed beneath layers of self-doubt.
This and other Klemmer trainings are designed to produce long-lasting, transformative change from within, as participants confront and discard whole lifetimes of limiting beliefs. Graduates have noted that Klemmer’s Personal Mastery program has resulted in improved communication, deeper personal and professional connections, and a renewed sense of purpose and satisfaction.
