How to Deal with Doubt
Why do we doubt and second-guess ourselves?
How many times a day do we question ourselves? Are we saying the right things, wearing the right clothes, and acting the right way? Our minds are continuously in a state of flux between what we’re thinking and what we’re doing. There’s just too much noise constantly going on inside our heads. They’re filled with a variety of thoughts, judgments, and questions ranging from imperative to irrelevant. But no matter our thoughts importance, these never ending opinions invade our minds and cause us to question ourselves.
This then leads us to overthink what we should say or do. We end up allowing our mind to take control instead of trusting ourselves and following through with a sense of confidence. Even after a decision has been made, we continue to overthink whether it was the correct decision and contemplate the constant, “What if’s?” that follow.
This cycle of thinking, doubting, doing, and overthinking hinders us from ever feeling truly confident in ourselves and what we say or do. So how can we subdue our doubts since we can’t just “turn off” our brains?
When we don’t trust our own decision making skills, we wind up focusing our attention on all of the possible outcomes. We give control to our logical mind instead of trusting and listening to our gut -our inner voice. It’s difficult to escape the continuous voice inside our heads that’s constantly judging and shaming every move we make. We’re just trying to make the best decisions for ourselves, our jobs, and our friends and families. Yet we still hear that voice inside of us saying that we’re wrong or can do better.
As humans we search for external validation so that we know what we did or said was the correct choice. Whether it’s asking our teacher if we counted correctly, to asking our boss if we did a good job on a presentation, to asking our friends if they liked the movie we suggested. We all just want reassurance which shows us that we succeeded.
So when we doubt and overthink what we’re really searching for is internal validation. We want to know that the consequences of our choices will be beneficial. No one wants to make a mistake. But if we’re supposed to learn from our mistakes, then why do we fear making them?
We try to avoid making mistakes the best we can, so doubting and overthinking becomes a form of self-defense. To make a mistake means that we’ve failed on our intended path. So we must try again by finding a new one -which can be a scary choice to make. We wind up focusing all of our thoughts and energy into the potential outcomes instead of trusting our intuition and finding positivity in what actually is.
There’s no reason to focus on our various futures when we can try and create the best outcome for ourselves now. It is frightening to make a mistake. But it’s more frightening if we’re too afraid to follow our intuition, thus ending up right where we started. No matter how scary it may be to change our lives in a new direction we can’t be afraid to try. Once we learn to quiet our inner doubts from our logical mind, then we can trust our intuition and begin to bring about our desired future now.
“Remember, your power and your ability to create reality through your will ends where your fear begins.” — Bringers of the Dawn
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