Self-doubt is one thing I never thought I would struggle with, especially as I never even knew I would have trouble with it until 2017.
The year in which I struggle a lot with my mental health, the year in which I keep wondering and questioning if I’m doing well enough or if I’m prepared to face all of the uncertainties that may arise as I grow older.
For this and many reasons, I understand the feelings of doubting decisions and choices you’ve made, or you simply believe you’re not good enough.
Over the last year, I learned three things about self-doubt;
- You usually have self-doubt cause you’re uncertain about things you can’t control or worry about things not going as planned.
- When you lack confidence or feel incapable of doing what you need to do, you experience self-doubt.
- Having some level of self-doubt can be good as it makes you do better, but only when it’s not persistent plus you’re not waiting for it to be perfect.
That’s why am sharing this post on how I’m navigating through self-doubt, yes navigating not overcoming as I still do experience self-doubt, especially when during the monthly check-in.
How to Navigate Self-Doubt
Self-doubt happens more than you want to admit, here are 5 things you do to navigate it.
1. Take a Breath
Your mindset is very important than anything called work or chores, once you discover there are negative voices running inside your head, hit pause and take a break from those thoughts, environments or situations.
Recently, I was hit with random thoughts cause I was not getting the result that I wanted – what I did was hit pause on everything, take a breath and cancel my plan for the day regardless of the deadline or not.
Doing this allows you to get your mindset right and stop you from all the self-blaming and lack of concentration that you’ll experiences.
2. Allow Yourself To Feel Everything
Do not force your feelings in, as one of the most unhealthy things you can do to yourself is suppress your feelings.
Cause these feelings you’re suppressing would lash out either at you or around you in the form of some toxic behaviour.
For this reason, embrace your feelings and understand what it actually telling you and if you want to break something, lash out at something, cry your heart out or yell; do that but make sure you know when to draw the line.
You’re feeling is valid, and it’s coming up for a reason.
3. Focus On The Positivity
Once you had paused everything and taken a break, try to stay in the present moment and focus on the positives thing you can do that would allow you to process that voice out.
For you to be able to focus on the positive aspect of things, I list out some of the ideas you could implement to help you navigate self-doubt as staying stuck and panicked for too long will not help you.
- Take out your phone recorder and talk about your thought at that moment, and why you are feeling that way.
- Take a notebook and write out the pros and cons, when doing this do not put pressure on picking a side.
- Take out some papers and write out things or moments that are happy memories for you.
- Check out your favourite scene in a Drama
- Do any activity that would allow you to sweat it out.
4. Be Compassionate To Yourself
Being compassionate to yourself helps you to see the reason for that voice in your head this will also allow you to find out that you’re often a lot harder on yourself than on others.
Being compassionate allows you to acknowledge your pain and also to figure out how you can comfort and care for yourself at this moment.
5. Remember Those Small Achievements
With successes to define, ambitions to achieve and goals to tick off, sometimes you often forget to focus on those achievements that you believe are small and instead focus on the big life-changing ones.
Navigate self-doubt by remembering those small achievements as this would allow you to focus on the tunnel rather than the light at the end of the tunnel.
Get out of the loop as soon as possible and spend time working on yourself. Self-doubt does not have to be a hindrance.
Let Chat
- How does self-doubt affect you?
- Which of these tips will you put into practice?
- How do you navigate self-doubt during deadlines?