How to Overcome Self-Doubt and Unlock Your Full Potential

When your inner critique gets the best of you it can turn your instinct into your worst enemy. But why? In some ways, second-guessing yourself can be good. However, it is in those tiny seconds that How to Overcome Self-Doubt can creep in and crush your confidence to take action. Self-doubt is a human reaction to all the difficulties life tosses your direction. Indeed, even still, it doesn’t need to prevent you from conquering deterrents and reaching at your objectives.

Why is it, then, that most of us eventually fall into the comparison trap and start to lose confidence in our skills? Our creativity, authenticity, and confidence get shaded in our own eyes by self-manifested doubts and shortcomings.  It leaves us dejected, uninspired, and sometimes even angry. We all seem to judge ourselves against someone else’s successes – be it money, opportunities or even social media fame.

We’ve all gone through the experience of setting ambitious goals for ourselves, following through for a couple of days and then giving up for one reason or another. Maybe we lost our motivation, forgot about our goals, or we simply could not muster the will-power required to achieve what we set out to do in the first place.

Accomplishing anything worthy is always difficult. But the good news is that it’s not impossible. Scientific research reveals there are various concepts and approaches you can practice to actually hit your goals and stay consistent in your performance.

So how does one overcome those self-doubts? Here are some tips I’ve found helpful when the ugly head of self-doubt cripples my creativity.

Tips For How to Overcome Self-Doubt

1) Silence Your Inner Critic

It sounds easy, but sometimes your biggest bully is looking you in the mirror. Make a written list (or a mental one) of all of the things you’ve accomplished — no matter how big or small. What are your strengths? Have you overcome similar tasks before? It won’t take long before you see just how much you’ve got going for you. 

Use this list to give yourself a pat on the back. Affirm your strengths, times when you faced adversity and overcome it. You’ve got a path of proven performance. Focus on the lessons learned and how you overcame the obstacle and use it to fuel your vision for what’s ahead.

2) Set Immediate Goals

In addition to adopting ambitious, long term objectives, make sure to establish p achievable, momentary ones. It’s easy to let doubt creep in when your big goals aren’t immediately realized. By accomplishing littler objectives en route, you can constantly bask infrequent wins

3) Stop Worrying About What Others Think

When you invest all your time and vitality attempting to manage other peoples’ perception of you, you’ll get stuck in an inadequacy loop There will consistently be somebody who appears to be doing better, getting further or having more. Don’t benchmark yourself against others’ achievements.

4) Develop a Can-do Attitude

Once you’ve declared your ambitious goals, doubt will inevitably creep in at some point, and you’ll begin to wonder, “Who am I to aim for these lofty goals? Maybe I should go for something more realistic.”

In this crazy pursuit of ‘realism’, you will gradually prune your vision until it’s so small that it no longer excites you. This kind of self-doubt is a major obstacle to all achievement. In order to overcome this tendency, you need to understand the concept of self-efficacy.

In psychology, self-efficacy is the belief in one’s own abilities to successfully face challenges and achieve one’s goals. People who have a good deal of self-efficacy are more comfortable setting ambitious goals and more likely to achieve them.

A simple way to enhance your self-efficacy is to remember the successes from your past — even the small one’s matter — and remind yourself that you are competent enough to succeed. So if you’re aiming to take your maths grade from a B to an A, recall the time you improved your grade in another subject, or remember how you managed to master a new skill when everyone said you couldn’t. Don’t be afraid of setting ambitious goals.

5) Overcome Procrastination

Once you’ve mastered your fears and convinced yourself to take on the world, you may find yourself face-to-face with the next obstacle, that is, procrastination, which can often feel like a horrible monster bent on holding you back from your dreams. You may really want to learn a new musical instrument or start exercising daily, or read more books that you planned to, but the very thought of the effort scares you away.

6) Find New Friends

Change your social circle. If you’ve been spending time with low-performing individuals, you’ve picked up their habits and attitudes. Maybe they squander their time on social media all day or pressurize you to hang out with them when all you want to do is study.

If your friends are not being supportive of your goals or if they do not have similar goals, it’s time to find new ones. Try and make friends with people who do believe in doing something great with their lives, in creating wonderful things and bringing positive changes in the world.

Conclusion

Finally, do not let fear or self-doubt dictate how you lead your personal life or operate your business. People who are afraid to fail never move forward or grow, personally and professionally. The more you push yourself, the more you’ll realize what you are capable of. Eventually, you may even be able to reverse the negative effects of self-doubt and use it to challenge your limitations and achieve greatness.