From Doubt to Confidence: A Guide to Silencing Your Inner Critic

Today, I had a one on one with my manager and he was like how's everything going. I told him that the new task I have is a bit challenging, because I had an open ended task that I had gotten recently. I told him that I was not sure if it will work out fine as its the first time I was doing that, but he told me that I have full faith that I will be able to do it. That's when I realised that maybe I am simply doubting myself for no reason. Although, I understand it's natural at times and no one can have all 5 days of the week perfectly, it's better to recognise and break the bad pattern as soon as we catch it. So let's talk about what is self doubt, how it creeps in, why it's not good to have self doubt and then what can we do to mitigate self doubt. 

Self doubt is simply the state of mind where you do not believe in yourself and your own abilities. It might be a transient state or it might be a state where a person goes in very often. The way google defines it is as follows: lack of confidence in oneself and one's abilities. That's it a simple statement, lack of confidence in oneself and one's abilities. But what's more important to remember here is what I said before, it's simply a state of mind. Which means it's very malleable and the state can be changed at any point in time. 

This is a beautiful quote where they say, don't doubt yourself, many people will do it for you. This quote essentially means that the world is going to doubt your abilities, the world will question whether what you are doing is right or wrong, the world will say that he/she cannot achieve his/her dreams, but that's the very reason you should not doubt yourself and actually achieve your dreams proving the world wrong. That's the very reason you should have faith in your abilities and not doubt them. 

Vincent Willem Van Gogh, was the founder of the Van Gogh museum, and with the little I know, that museum is an extremely famous museum for its artistic paintings. Here is his quote stating that if you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. So inorder to paint, you must believe that you are able to paint. In order to be a great coder, you must believe that you can code, in order to be a wonderful engineer, you must believe that you are a great engineer. You see, the belief comes first and then comes the actual doing. So whatever we are setting out to achieve we must believe that it's possible to achieve it. So that's my point here, we must believe.

Interesting, when you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt. That's so interesting, every human being has some power, whether they believe it or not, but the moment a living being questions it, is the time more power goes to the question not the power within. 

Causes of Self Doubt: 

1. Negative Past Experiences: Whether it is someone who criticised you when you tried something and failed or whether it was your repeated mistake in something that made you believe that you will fail again this time, these negative experiences are a major cause of our self doubt.

2. Comparison with others: We live in an age where social media is prevalent and it's very natural to compare ourselves with others in the day and age. Honestly, with what I understand, those people are also comparing themselves with the world. Social media like instagram give a very unrealistic view of what someone's lives is. People can post any kind of pictures of how cool their life is, but everyone's daily lives is normal. People post highlights, not their daily experiences in social media. So please please stop comparing real life with social media because social media is what people show, not what they really are. 

3. Lack of Experience or Knowledge: This is what I was talking about earlier, sometimes we just lack experience and knowledge while giving something new a go. For an example, the task I have right now in my sprint is very open ended and since I have not done something similar before, I do doubt whether I will be able to complete it. So the best thing I can do, is gain knowledge and understand more and more about how to complete the task. 

4. Cultural and Societal Influences: Society influences us to think that we should be perfect in every event, in every function and in every place of work. However, is this really realistic? I mean what are we even trying to achieve by being perfect? We are achieving nothing by being perfect, yes we should dress well, do our stuff well but doing everything because the society expects us to do something, that's just so wrong. 

There are many such causes, like fear of failure, lack of support, sometimes we need supportive relationships in our lives to make sure we cross the bridge of self doubt and take the bridge of confidence. 

Now the question is how do we practically eliminate self doubt. Imagine you wish to go from California to New York via road and there are no maps. I am so sure you would start doubting yourself on whether it's possible today or not, because you have never really lived without google maps. But think about the days in the 90s, the early 2000s, before maps were even invented, people would actually go from California to New York just by a map on paper. Would they find it difficult? Absolutely not, talk to someone who's a bit older to you and you will realise that it was pretty normal to carry a paper map and then figure out where you need to go. If the source and the destination is clear, you can figure out the steps in between. Taking this analogy further, how do we really eliminate self doubt?

1. Challenge and reframe your negative thoughts: I am sure we all have days and occasions where we think we can't do something. In such situations, identify that thought and speak the opposite of that. i.e Reframe your negative thought into positive one. For an example, "I'll never be able to do it" can be, "I'll give my best shot", "What if I fail?" can be "Even if I fail, I will definitely learn something out of it", "People will think that I am not smart or intelligent if I ask questions", can be "Asking for help is a sign of strength and the willingness to learn something new", "I have already failed at this before, should I just give up?", can be "Failures are the stepping stones to success", so remember there's always one thought negative thought and there can be a positive connotation to it for sure. No matter what your situation is, or what kind of self doubt it is, just remember, you wouldn't know if you don't try and even if you fail at something you will learn something. 

2. Limit Comparisons: 

* Focus on your own path:  The best way I know you can really stop comparing is to focus on your own journey and your own path. There's absolutely no point looking towards the left or the right, you just have to focus on your own path.

* Remove negative influences: If there are social media accounts through which your self doubt gets triggered, it's better to remove those apps, or rather remove those accounts from your following list. Whatever works for you, make sure that you don't have too many negative influences in your life. Quality over quantity is the way to go. You can follow 1000 people, have 1000+ followers, but if that does not give you joy, what's the point? Rather if you have 200 people and if those 200 people are quality, that's worth having. (imo)(Unless you are a social media influencer itself)

3. Continuous Learning: 

When we focus on our own learning, our own journey and our own development, these little things about who says what, who does what, it does not really matter. In fact, those things just blur out automatically. 

4. View setbacks as opportunities and failure as a part of the process: There's a very famous quote by someone, if you have never failed means you have never tried something new. Understand that failure and setbacks are just as important as success. It helps you learn, it helps you adapt to the changing environment and whether that's failing or succeeding it's just temporary. Failure really is the stepping stone to success. 

5. Take action despite doubts: Whether it's achieving something small or big, we all need to take action and work towards our goals. We might have doubts, but still we simply need to take action on it. Maybe you want to learn how to cook a pasta or a pizza or maybe you want to learn to cook roti, something as simple as that, you doubt yourself whether you would be able to do it, but what if you just start by making something, good or bad is fine. But just start. The rest of the learnings will come. 

So these are the little things we can do to eliminate our self doubt. However, it's also important to understand that self doubts are very natural, every human being goes through self doubt, it's important to be self compassionate towards ourselves. Just make sure that you do the best that you possibly can, failures and success does not matter as much. In fact, my opinion is that failure and success is not even real, it's an imagined thing, it's just a feeling, so don't really care too much about the failure or the success just keep doing what you do in the best possible way you can. Failure means learning and success means success that's it. Have a wonderful day !