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I’ve been riddled with his recently.

With the release of the Sport Yogi. The thoughts of ‘will it work’, ‘will people like it’, ‘is it any good’. All of these flying into my mind.

I felt them during my professional career too, doubting performances, doubting my ability, what others thought of me, it goes on.

First off, it is totally natural to have self-doubts, because it’s usually around something you care about, and you want to come across the right way, you want to give the best performance, you want to do well.

So how to we combat them?

Here I’ll give you a few way in which you can recognise your self-doubts and then combat them.

Use self-awareness

Becoming aware that you are having self-doubts is the first step to being able to stop them in their tracks. If you aren’t aware of them, then they will continue to run you and your mind.

You can do this in a number of ways, it could be meditation or even writing the thoughts/doubts down. This way you are able to see them objectively, rather than subjectively. You give yourself a chance to remove the emotion from them which often clouds the truth of them.

Check-in with your close circle

Those who you are close to, trust and value their opinion allow to give a more objective view on things. They may be able to highlight something that you haven’t been paying attention to. But sometime just being able to talk about your self-doubts is what you need. Whether they are justified or not.

Make sure the people you surround yourself are people that are able to fuel your self-belief rather than fuel your self doubts. 

Use a mantra – but mean it 

A mantra is a phrase or word that you repeat in order to become what it is intended for.

However, an important part of this is linking emotion to the mantra. Your brain will know if you do not believe it. So make sure it is something you deep down believe before you go repeating it over and over.

You may be looking to become more confident but just saying the words “I am confident’, won’t have any effect unless you truly believe you have the ability to be, or can visualise a moment when you were, confident.

It’s important to link the emotion and belief to your mantra to really overcome your self-doubts.

Some steps to take…

Write it down – writing down your fears, worries, stories that you are telling yourself.

You’ll make them objective and can view them for what they really are – usually untrue bullsh*t.

Talk about them – again go to your circle of trusted friends, ask their opinion, their view. They should give you the dose of optimism that you need.

Make a plan – Having a plan, gives us the confidence to overcome self-doubt. So whether it’s a plan of how you feel best to combat the self-doubts in the future. Or a plan of what you need to do in order to stem where these self-doubts come from. A plan is an important part of feeling that confidence again.

In summary, self-doubt is totally natural. It’s a part of the process with things that mean something to you. But if we are able to recognise them, recognise where they have come from and use some of these methods to combat them. You’ll become stronger and more confident than before.