How to Believe in Yourself and Overcome Self-Doubt

Unlike what most people think, self-belief isn’t something you’re simply born with: it’s something you build.

We’d all like to have a little more self-belief, it’s responsible for not only the magnitude of the goals we set, but how we handle setbacks during the journey towards achieving them, too.

Pursuing goals is hard, and you’re going to hit, bump and crash into hundreds of problems and roadblocks along the way, all of which not only question the path you choose, but whether you’re capable of venturing it.

And that’s if we even get to the point of trying, as self-belief, or the lack of it, can prevent us from ever even trying to improve our lives. Let alone chase our dreams.

That is why self-belief is so essential. If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re much less likely to succeed.

So how do you build it? Well, before you understand how to believe in yourself, it’s essential to first understand why you currently don’t.

What Causes Self-Doubt?

Not having any self-belief means doubting yourself. But why?

You don’t doubt yourself because you lack skill, competence, or potential. You doubt yourself because that’s the only thing that makes sense.

Every failed New Year's resolution, snoozed alarm, cheated diet, missed workout and broken promise has compounded, slowly eroding any form of self-belief or confidence you had.

And, if we’re being honest, why wouldn’t it?

Why would you believe in yourself to achieve your goals/dreams when you can’t even wake up on time? Or study enough for an exam? Or go to the gym when you’re tired?

The broken promises don’t just disappear the moment you break them: they’re saved, remembered, and used as evidence to determine who you are and how you see yourself.

Every action, no matter how small, compounds over time and turns into something much larger, something capable of stopping you from ever trying to make even the slightest of positive changes.

How To Build Self-belief

If self-doubt happens as a consequence of broken promises, then building self-belief is literally just the opposite.

Self-belief without evidence is just delusion. The real way to build true self-belief is to give yourself no other option but to believe, and that’s done through proof.

Prove to yourself why you should believe you can achieve your dreams. 

I know what you might be thinking: wouldn’t the only way to prove you can achieve your dreams be to actually achieve your dreams? A true chicken and egg?

Lucky for us, that’s not how we work.

So here’s what to do:

1. Stop acquiring negative evidence

You need to stop giving yourself evidence that suggests you shouldn’t believe in yourself. In other words, get up when you say you will, work out when you say you will, eat what you said you would, and stop breaking your promises and letting yourself down.

2. Build positive evidence 

Once you stop breaking the simplest of promises, it’s time to build some real evidence.

Pick something hard, but not too hard, something that’s just slightly above what you currently think you can do, whatever that might mean for you, and work until it’s done.

This could mean running your first 5k, getting to your ideal weight, or simply walking around the block. What it is doesn’t matter, it just needs to be challenging for you.

Then, choose something slightly harder, and repeat.

Keep increasing the difficulty of your challenges, and keep proving yourself right until you eventually have no choice but to believe in yourself.

That’s the goal: to get to a point where you’ve overcome so many self-limiting beliefs that it blows your mind wide open, and you’re left with no choice but to go from questioning what you can, to questioning what you can’t.

There is no magic formula or quick fix when it comes to self-belief, only proving to yourself that you can do what you want to do. It just takes time.

So stop wishing things could be different, stop looking up to people who are chasing their dreams, and go build your evidence.

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