Self Doubt is Good for You

Self doubt can torment you or it can inspire you.

Self doubt is useful when you need to question the value of:

⁃ your thoughts, feelings and actions.

⁃ your habits.

⁃ your motives, intentions, and personal values.

When you try to avoid this type of constructive self doubt, your mind becomes inflexible. Avoiding self doubt stifles your learning, maturity and wisdom. You tend to grow bitter rather than better.

You would know the impact of unhealthy self doubt. It reduces your confidence and self esteem, creates anxiety and can lead to depression.

Unhealthy self doubt takes the form of a scathing inner critic. It barks at you. And bullies you.

Drawing a line between healthy and unhealthy self doubt will help to reduce self sabotage.

While unhealthy self doubt is destructive, healthy self doubt inspires insights, guidance and new direction. You get new ideas about how to tackle a problem. It can give you a different perspective, cause you to generate a fresh approach, and take action on insights to implement change for the better.

Healthy self doubt takes the form of your inner guide. It whispers to you, and tries to gently prompt you into action, but if you ignore it for too long, then just like your mother did, the inner guide starts to nag at you. If that doesn’t get your attention, then it morphs into a scathing inner critic.

Unhealthy self doubt can produce the same result as healthy self doubt but really, that’s the hard way to do it. It’s easier to listen and act on the gentle prompts before the nagging starts then gets out of hand.

You can’t avoid self doubt, but you can question it. Catch it before it turns sour on you.