How to Empower Yourself To Move Past Self-Doubt.

Self-doubt, or the lack of confidence in one’s self and one’s abilities can really eat away at your self-esteem. When you allow self-doubt to stop you from engaging in opportunities that come your way, you are participating in self-sabotage where you can no longer be constructive. It’s time that you begin to trust yourself again, and you have the power to do it. Here are five ways to empower yourself to move past self-doubt and believe in yourself again. Conquer self-doubt now. Your previous circumstances don’t define you.

Stop the Excuses

When we doubt ourselves, we often come up with excuses for why the opportunities in front of us are not good fits for us, but this is only us coming up with rationalizations so we don’t have to deal with our fear. If you want to move past self-doubt, you have to move past the excuses. When it comes to a new opportunity that you begin doubting, ask yourself “what’s the worst that can happen?” When you enter this frame of thinking, you start to see that the worst that could happen is not that you failed, but that you didn’t try.

Pause

When an opportunity presents itself and you begin to doubt yourself and feel overwhelmed, take a moment to pause. Take a break by shifting your focus away from the fear and self-doubt and on things that calm you. This could be a moment of prayer. A walk on the beach. The playing of an instrument. Painting. Listening to music…Anything that alleviates your stress. You will then begin to focus away from everything we’re stuck on. Make these “pause” moments a daily or weekly practice

Make a to-do list and follow through with it

If you fear something, the only way you can conquer that fear is by setting a goal and achieving it. Make a to-do list of goals that you’ve feared that you want to achieve. Not the one that just sits in your bag or on your desk. One that you look and interact with everyday, and reexamine weekly. Anytime, you achieve a goal, check it off your list. Each week, or month you can look back at the list and see how many goals you’ve achieved. This will help you beat self-doubt by showing you how much power you have to accomplish anything you put your mind to.

Beliefnet.com