What's fueling your self-doubt? 5 habits that hold you back

Is self-doubt stopping you from reaching your full professional potential?

Are you not where you want to be in your career because of that little voice in your head telling you that you're not good enough and keeping you stuck? 

You're not alone.

Self-doubt is a complex psychological phenomenon that involves a lack of confidence in one's abilities, decisions or judgement. It can be influenced by various cognitive, emotional and social factors, which we'll dig into in just a minute. But I want to start by saying that self-doubt is normal. We all experience it from time to time. While nobody is free from self-doubt altogether, it is possible to dial it down to a level that serves us rather than holds us back.

Your mind uses a small and healthy dose of self-doubt to help keep you safe. For example, if you're venturing off to do something for the first time, it assumes that your unfamiliarity with the task may pose a risk, so it encourages you to pause and gather more information before moving forward. In this scenario, self-doubt can be useful as it motivates you to gain more clarity before jumping into something unfamiliar.

The problem happens when this inbuilt response gets out of control. If you answered yes to the first couple of questions in this article, I suspect this has happened to you.

If left unchecked, self-doubt can become a limiting factor in your life.

It can hold you back from taking action and seizing opportunities. It makes starting and finishing things harder than they need to be. Instead of keeping you safe, it chips away at your confidence and makes you question yourself more than you need to. It's therefore important to spot unhealthy self-doubt and understand what causes it and what you might be doing to make it worse.

Understanding the factors that fuel self-doubt is an important step in addressing and managing it. Self-doubt can be fuelled by a variety of internal and external factors that interact to create feelings of uncertainty and insecurity.

As a leading career confidence coach for women, I support women in dialling down their self-doubt and building up their confidence every day, so this is something I see regularly. Here are the top five factors that most commonly fuel self-doubt.

1. Comparison

This can be comparison with others, but also comparison with past versions of yourself. Every minute you spend comparing yourself is a minute you could have spent getting closer to your goal.

2. Criticism

This can come from other people such as your friends, your partner, your parents or your boss. But the biggest thing I see is self-criticism. Women are often incredibly unkind to themselves, judging themselves and speaking to themselves in ways they would never speak to someone else.

3. Avoidance

The absolute worst thing you can do when you don't feel confident about something is to avoid it. I know it feels like the safest and most comfortable option, but in the long term it usually makes the problem much worse.

4. Lack of self-care

Neglecting your physical, mental or emotional wellbeing can contribute to negative self-perception. Taking care of yourself, meeting your own needs and engaging in activities that bring you joy can help boost your self-esteem.

Every time you put yourself last, you're sending a message to your brain that you're less important than everyone else. Over time, that can chip away at your sense of self-worth.

5. Limited self-reflection

Not taking time to reflect on your accomplishments and progress can make it easy to overlook your successes and reinforce feelings of self-doubt. It's therefore important to make celebrating your wins, both large and small, a regular part of your routine. Otherwise, you may continue to overlook your successes, doubt your abilities and fail to recognise just how brilliant you are.

So, what about you?

What are you doing that is fuelling your self-doubt and stopping you from achieving your career goals?

 Is it comparison, criticism, avoidance, lack of self-care or limited self-reflection?

Maybe it's all of them, or maybe it's something else entirely.

If you're reading this thinking you're not entirely sure, something that works well for my clients is keeping a trigger tracker. Every time you notice those feelings of self-doubt creeping in, pause and look at what happened in the lead-up to it.

Who were you with?

Where were you?

What task were you doing?

What were you thinking or feeling in that moment? Notice what you notice.

Tough love is incoming…

I appreciate this may sound direct, but if these patterns continue unchecked, they're likely to reinforce your self-doubt and make it much harder to build confidence in yourself.

By raising your awareness of the things that are fostering self-doubt, you can take positive action to turn the volume down on that inner voice. This can leave you feeling empowered to build self-belief and self-esteem in ways you may never have imagined, helping you live and work with greater confidence, happiness and impact.

Self-doubt may never disappear completely, but it doesn't have to control your decisions or define your potential. The more aware you become of the patterns that fuel it, the easier it becomes to challenge them and move forward with greater confidence.