Are these familiar dialogues for you: “I don’t have the nerve to try that!” or “that’s too risky!” or “I’m not sure I can do that” etc? Are you one of those people who always doubt your own ability? Well, you’re not alone. A lot of people do not have confidence in themselves. Every change in the normal way of life gets a ton of introspection and most of the time, self-doubt wins and not trying seems safer. However, safe doesn't always mean best; sooner or later you’ll get depressed always being stuck on a rut. You have to reduce these self-doubts in order to move ahead.
It will help if you can figure out why you feel wimpy all the time. Is it because of a past mistake that crippled you so much? Are you afraid to end up like someone you knew who took too much risk? Were you told often by authority figures – parents, sibling, teachers or officers – that you don’t and can’t amount to anything? You’ve probably heard it so often that you believed it as the universal truth all the time.
Deep down you know it’s not true, right? Not all risks will result into failure and you can avoid making the same mistake your friend did. Silence the inner critic in you then. You don’t have to listen to past criticisms. Nor should you judge all your other abilities based on a single failure. Instead draw on your strengths and keep them in mind. Granted, it’s not going to be easy. But you can take baby steps and not leap into anything that you’re not ready for.
Start by cataloguing your positives. Take out a sheet of paper and list the things that you know you can do. Fill it up from the whimsical – able to juggle four balls in the air, for example – to the downright great ones like a good grasp of grammar. Look back and try to remember how you learned those skills. Some of them were probably inherited or something that you learned instinctively. But the rest were skills that you got only thru experience. Therefore, you must have tried it before and found out that you can do it. That list becomes physical proof that you are someone who can do something and by the same token, can do a lot more if you can just get out of your safety zone and try something new again.
Banish those self-doubts and see how high you can fly.
Right now. I mean it.
Why are you still here?
by Jeff Cohen
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