Are you continuously worrying about everything that could go wrong? If you said yes, read on below to know how your self-doubt may be keeping you from living your best life. How Doubt Can Undermine Our Lives
How Doubt Can Undermine Our Lives
“Should I really be saying this?”
“Am I even capable of pulling this off?”
“What if I fail and lose everything?”
These are all thoughts that each one of us have had sometime in our lives. But are these things okay to think about? And what are the effects that this sort of thinking can have?
First things first – doubting your own self and your actions is completely natural. If you have recently begun to wonder whether you are good enough at something or not, don’t worry. This is completely normal. In fact, according to a study, this is how 40.5% of the people in leadership positions feel like.
And honestly, it isn’t such a bad thing either. A little bit of doubt helps you to reflect on your own actions. It keeps you humble, and opens you up to the suggestions of other people.
But when this same feeling becomes intense, it can majorly undermine your work and personal life. When you are constantly questioning everything you do, it puts you in a spot where you are extremely vulnerable to anything negative that happens around you.
Self doubt can quickly become a dangerous thing, one that eats up your personality and forces you into a shell.
Here is what happens when you begin to question yourself a little more than what’s considered to be healthy. With each problem that I discuss below, I will also talk of one way you can overcome it.
1. You do not allow yourself to make mistakes
Experience is the greatest teacher of all times. There is no school anywhere quite like the school of life. Your ability to make mistakes and learn from them is one of the first things to go when you succumb to self doubt.
If you are not allowing yourself to make mistakes, you are denying yourself the opportunity to learn a great lesson. To combat this, remind yourself that you do not need to be afraid of failure. When you attempt to do something, and you fail at it, you have not really lost as long as you have learnt from it.
2. You might have an unfulfilled professional life
People who are likely to doubt themselves tend to end up in ‘safe’ jobs. Because they are so afraid of what might happen, they never really explore their opportunities, and prefer to stay in a stable work environment. A negative consequence of this is that these people are often unhappy doing what they do.
If you find yourself stuck in an unfulfilled career, remind yourself of your capabilities. Know what you are good at, and what avenues you could try. Opening yourself up to the opportunities that life brings you is the way towards happiness.
3. You are too afraid to voice your opinions and ask questions
Too much of questioning your thoughts and opinions means that you might never end up voicing them. You tend to keep your ideas to yourself, and beat yourself up when someone else says the same thing and gets all the praise. When this happens, people begin to view you as an incompetent and dispensible member of the team.
To redeem your image in the society, you have to believe that your contribution to conversations is smart and useful. Tell yourself that your opinions and ideas have value, and they will benefit the team as a whole. This will give you a new confidence to say what’s on your mind.
4. You find it difficult to go through easy and simple tasks
People who suffer from self doubt often find it hard to complete even the simplest of tasks. This is because they are never satisfied with the result they have achieved, and end up redoing the same thing again and again. This greatly undermines your productivity and wastes a whole lot of time.
If this is something you struggle with, try telling yourself that others do not judge you nearly as hard as you judge yourself. Nothing ever gets done when you are endlessly trying to make it better.
5. You do not respond well to constructive criticism
Believe it or not, self doubt can make you extremely defensive of your actions. You are so busy criticising yourself that you have no time to take constructive criticism from others. Your first response to any feedback is always an attempt to justify your behaviour. And when you do listen to criticism, you end up taking it personally.
This halts your growth, and prevents other people from helping you better yourself. However, reminding yourself that they only mean well with their feedback can help you open up to it more. See any criticism as a way to identify your weaknesses, and build yourself up from there.
6. You constantly judge yourself against the wrong criteria
Excessive doubt can lead to a lot of self-damaging practices, but comparing yourself to everybody around you has got to be the worst of them all. People who doubt themselves too much tend to judge themselves against what their peers have achieved. This leads to them feeling inferior to the people around them, and damages their self worth.
It is important to recognize how wrong this criteria of judgement is. Understand that every individual grows and excels at their own pace. Yours does not necessarily have to match with that of your peers. Life is not a competition with those around you. All you need to do is be your best self.
7. You are not content in your personal life
Have you ever noticed how people with low self esteems tend to be trapped in toxic relationships? This is because they are more ready to settle for less than other people. By constantly questioning their self worth, they convince themselves that any person is doing them a favor by being with them. This leads to a whole lot of unhappiness in your personal life.
To get out of this rabbit hole, it is important to recognize what you have to offer in a relationship. Remind yourself that nobody stays with anyone for a long time just out of pity. Know that you are a beautiful individual with a lot of amazing qualities, and people would be lucky to be loved by you.
Patricia Love