When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt. ~Honore de Balzac
Whenever you start or think of starting anything new if you are stuck with “I can’t do it”, ” I am not good enough”, then you must change to win in life and by winning I mean “living”, yes you read it right! Don’t just survive.
My Story
When I was a kid I loved to play cricket but the society implanted fear in me that you can’t be successful playing it, you need to get good grades and then get into reputed college which will give you the highly paid job. And that’s how you’ll be successful and I started believing them. After that, whenever I had thought of doing something new in life the fear of not working out would result in self-doubting. What if I do something and it is not good enough for society? And my life started revolving around “What-ifs”.
One fateful day I realized I can’t run away from things by doubting myself, I need to face the feeling of self-doubt head to head.
I didn’t eliminate the self-doubt but I changed the way I thought when self-doubt arose. If I had a thought in my head “I’ll not be able to lose weight before the annual party and people will call me Mr. Fat”, I started answering it with “What can I do to lose weight before the party?” and started strategically planning it out.
Self-doubt is perspective, you can’t say it to be minor or really big. The following tips will surely help you in dealing with self-doubt.
1. Recall your achievements
Achievements are succeeding in something which you worked really hard for.
Everyone has something which they have achieved in life may be small or big. Although it’s quite challenging to recall your achievements when you are low and doubting yourself but it will really help you out in defeating the negative thought. You can look at your trophies, certificates and even the prizes you won to recall the moment and effort you put in to achieve them. You can recall the moment when you helped a poor man with food and achieved his blessing. Practicing this on repeated times will give your mind peace and courage to face the situation without doubting yourself.
2. Love Yourself
Love yourself as much as you want to be loved.
You spent most of the time cursing yourself without even realizing you have to be with yourself forever. Will you curse your mom-dad? So why do you do that for the closest person you know? Start loving yourself. Just say to yourself “I know you do let me down sometimes but I know you really work hard and one day you’ll make me proud” and see the magic happening.
3. Set doubt triggers
Every failure starts with a doubt.
It’s impossible to stop doubts from occurring into your mind but identifying and dealing with them positively will help you feel a way better.
For example, instead of saying “I cannot do this because of X”, say “I can do this because I did Y in past”. But you can give yourself an opportunity of answering back only if you consciously set alarms to your negative thoughts else you’ll be just stuck in that negative loop.
4. Let yourself to try again
Try again. Fail again. Fail Better
You must have failed in something before but get one thing in your head straight that failure in one task cannot decide in another. You must list down what you learned from the previous failure and how you will use those learnings to your strength this time. This will give you the courage to try again. In fact, failing after trying is far better than never getting into the court.
5. Shut the external voices
Turning the down the external volume will let you listen to what your mind is speaking.
Cut yourself out from the people who keep on screaming in your ears that you can’t. These are the people who have neither themselves done anything great nor will they let you do. Instead, surround yourself with the passionate and successful people who motivate you to achieve your dreams. This will help you to keep your mind in a positive peaceful state.
I am sure these tips will help you to deal with your self-doubts. Just keep one thing in your mind, you are way too stronger than you think you are.
