How to Trust Yourself Again: Overcome Self-Doubt and Build Inner Confidence
There may be moments in life when you feel disconnected from your own judgment—second-guessing decisions, doubting your instincts, or feeling unsure of your path. If you’ve been struggling with self-doubt, it’s time to learn how to trust yourself again. Rebuilding that trust takes patience, reflection, and a willingness to grow, but it’s entirely possible. This article will guide you through the reasons behind your self-doubt and offer simple, empowering steps to help you reconnect with your inner confidence.
Learn the Reasons Why You Don’t Trust Yourself
Many people don’t trust themselves for one reason or another. If you include yourself in this group, ask yourself why. Knowing the cause can help you break the issue down and begin to change. Once you discover the problem, you will be well on your way to learning how to trust yourself.
Start with your childhood. No, this doesn’t mean you have to spill your guts to a shrink lying on a couch. However, if you think back to your childhood, it can give you some clues as to why you have developed a distrust of yourself. Perhaps your parents were distrustful of themselves. It could also be siblings or other relatives. The purpose is not to blame them. Just recognize that it happened and use it to move forward.
Do you find it difficult to trust others? It’s a situation that causes you to be in a constant mode of distrust. It isn’t too much of a stretch for that mode to extend to you. Therefore, you have to learn how to start putting trust in other people. Most people will appreciate you for it.
Are you an overly sensitive person? If so, this could cause you to be mistrustful of yourself. You may take what others’ say out of context. That is because of your sensitive nature. It’s not wrong to be sensitive. You just have to realize that it can cause you to misread what others are saying or feeling.
Putting your trust in others is sometimes going to backfire. Some people are simply not trustworthy. They may even put on a front that they are. You should accept this as a part of life, and try not to project experiences from a few onto other people. Otherwise, you are going to continue to maintain your wall. This wall will make it difficult for you to trust others as well as yourself.
Another reason for not trusting yourself is that others don’t trust you. If you are not trustworthy, how can you expect to trust yourself? You may not even realize this is happening. You may think you are doing right by others when in fact, you aren’t. Ask for an honest assessment as to whether your friends and family feel you are trustworthy. That can be a hard pill to swallow, but it will offer great insight. Try not to get upset if people tell you that you aren’t trustworthy. It’s a learning experience.
Learn How to Trust Yourself from Others
Have you ever observed people who you felt were confident? They know what to do in most situations. Even when they don’t, they know how to find the answers. They never let problems get in their way. They always know how to talk to people. Their confidence is their power.
It’s likely these confident people trust themselves. It is impossible to have confidence when you don’t trust yourself. The confidence comes from an internal trust. It makes sense when you think about it.
If you don’t know too many people who are confident, try to learn about successful people. One great way to do this is to check out TED Talks. If you are not familiar with these, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It’s an organization that exists to spread ideas usually in video form. You can find many of these talks on YouTube.com. Just search for TED Talks.
Many of these videos are short but with high impact. It’s unlikely you will find speakers that don’t have confidence. You can observe the speakers in the video and see how they speak. Also, observe their body language. Do they smile a lot? How do they engage with the audience?
Another source to draw inspiration is Amazon books. Read biographies of successful people. It’s a bit more difficult to find stories about confidence when reading through the biographies. That is because their stories may not be specifically about confidence. But, it usually resonates through the story. If nothing else, you will pick up on some inspiration from other areas along with confidence.
Look to take on a mentor. You will know when someone is right for you because you will both form a good relationship from the start. Mentors are people who trust themselves and have confidence. Otherwise, it’s unlikely you would pick those people to be your mentor. You can establish a formal mentor relationship, or you can just keep in contact with someone who you respect.
You will naturally take on some positive attributes just by being in this relationship. However, it doesn’t hurt to observe how your mentor interacts with others and how they solve problems.
When you observe or reach out to confident people, it will help you become more confident. You can see what you are doing wrong and make changes. When you become confident, lack of trust in yourself will be a thing of the past.
Learn How to Make Mistakes
A big reason why you don’t trust yourself is you are afraid to make mistakes. It’s a common situation for many people. However, it could be holding you back in your success. When you learn how to make mistakes, you will be ready to start trusting yourself.
You may have heard people say that nobody is perfect. You should make it a rule to live by because it’s a true statement. When you make mistakes, you learn from them. That is what makes them so valuable. Of course, if you don’t learn from them, you will be doomed to making the same mistakes repeatedly. That’s why you have to do a post-mortem of your actions and evaluate where you made your mistakes.
If you try too hard to avoid mistakes, you end up making more of them. That is because no one is perfect. You simply cannot avoid mistakes and you shouldn’t.
Sometimes, the mistakes that you make will make people angry with you. It’s a part of life. If this happens, you first have to determine if your mistakes truly affected those people. If it didn’t, they have no right to call you out on them. If it turns out that your actions did affect them, do what you can to rectify the situation. A simple apology may be all that is needed.
Just as you would like others to forgive you when you make mistakes, be forgiving of others when they make mistakes, and it affects you. It’s not fair to expect others to forgive you if you aren’t willing to do the same. It’s okay to get angry in certain situations. But, open your heart and let them make amends.
Once you give in to making mistakes, you will find it a freeing experience. You will no longer need to put too much pressure on yourself to avoid them. Another factor to consider is that mistakes can lead to positive unintended circumstances. Just look at sticky notes by 3M. The researchers at the company set out to create a strong adhesive that resulted in a weak one. Someone at the company took the idea and used it to create the sticky notes product. There have been many instances of mistakes that lead to alternative solutions. These would not have happened if they were trying to avoid the mistakes.
Permit yourself to make mistakes, which will help you to trust yourself.
