11 - Charlene H: Selling Myself Short

Word of the Week: Doubt            

Feelings of self-doubt are normal, occurring when a person experiences a level of uncertainty about an aspect of who they are.

Usually, people learn to overcome self-doubt, and sometimes, short-term self-doubt is a good thing. Self-doubt can cause people to reflect on, question, and challenge themselves in order to improve. It can even be a source of motivation.

However, self-doubt can also be a vicious parasite, slowly eating away at someone and making it nearly impossible for the person to explore inner peace. 

I’m going to share something most people don’t know about me. From fifth grade to the end of middle school, I was plagued with self-doubt that consumed parts of my life. Sixth grade was one of the best school years of my life, I’m not going to deny that, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t constantly doubting myself.

Failure was one of the main reasons for my excessive self-doubt. Every time I made a mistake, no matter how minor it was, I was always embarrassed and I overanalyzed, and this happened daily. I sometimes spent hours after school thinking about mistakes I made and how I could’ve prevented them. It fueled those feelings of doubt that liked to shoot me down. I couldn’t see good qualities in myself; I was entangled in the idea that I was stupid and annoying.

But when I was in seventh grade, I discovered a quote: “If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.” Though this isn’t something I abide by, it was still eye-opening for me. Now, the quote obviously does not apply to major life events such as a financial setback or moving into a new place. It’s more specific to trivial things. Even with overthinking habits, I surprisingly had never once considered that most of what I had worried about became insignificant as I went from one worry to another. The moment I read the quote, I tried to remember the trivial mistake I was worrying about a year prior, but I couldn’t.

Currently, self-doubt doesn’t rule my life the way it did years ago, but I am still affected by it. My mind often becomes fixated on events where I feel I am not confident in my abilities, which gives me freeze responses and makes it hard for me to concentrate.

I am still learning that too much doubt can hold me back from my performance. The only antibiotic to the infections of self-doubt is self-belief, and it takes courage to keep going up against self-doubt and not succumbing to it.

Word Count: 434