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Self-doubt… Ah, the dreadful killer of all the motivation, enthusiasm, and happiness in our lives. For most of us, it lingers around anything we do, no matter how small or easy the task is. “What if I fail?”,  “ What others would think about me if I even can’t get this done?”

Everybody has doubted themselves at least once in their lifetime. No matter how successful a person is, he/she still might have self-doubt when engaging in certain activities. Sometimes it can be useful, helping us to see our current limitations or simply pointing out a half-baked or a bad idea. But most of the time, it is not the case. That troubling pessimistic voice makes us fear about unnecessary things and holds us back in life. So how can we get around or get rid of that fear and move forward in life with more confidence?

These are 9 ways to deliver the knockout punch to those pessimistic voices in the back of your head once and for all. let’s dive in!

Say “stop” to your negative thoughts

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Learn to say stop and close your mind to pessimistic thoughts whenever they are resurfacing. Don’t let those thoughts take control of you and put you in that discouraging pit, you always wanted to come out of. This might take some practice as we are used to letting those feelings get hold of us for almost all of our lives. But it doesn’t matter, you can always turn around to see the light if you choose to.

So whenever something negative comes to mind, talk to them. Tell them you are better than that and you can complete this task without a hiccup. Tell them you are not going to go down that negative road once again. If you want, take a card and write a small inspirational speech to say to yourself whenever those doubt starts bubbling up, and keep it in your wallet. It will help you to disrupt the negative thought pattern and prevent that destructive inner voice from taking over.

And don’t let those feelings come back to you when somethings go wrong. You are a human, not a god. So you are allowed to mess up things once a while, as we all do.

Use memories to strengthen you

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Nothing can disappear your doubts quicker than the feeling of you have done it before and can do it again. Think back, whoever you are you have done great things. It might not click instantaneously, but if you think rationally, there are many things you have not given yourself enough credit.

That is why keeping a journal can be a great idea. If you are not into that, there are several great apps that are designed to write about your day. No need to write several pages, write just one thing that you are proud of yourself on that day. It can be a small thing, but when you read it several months after, it feels like a much greater deed and can wash away the doubts about yourself.

And ask yourself, how many times when you doubted yourself or feared something would happen, and did that negative thing come into reality after you still took action? The answer is probably not very often at all. Remember that. Most of the fears we have are pointless and if we think rationally and act correctly, those things will vanish into thin air.

Get help from your friend

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Get it out of your heart. Tell it to one of your confidential friends. When you keep your thoughts hidden inside your mind, they can become distorted, exaggerated, and not very much in line with reality or reasonable expectations.

This is very much the case when it comes to self-doubting thoughts. Exposing your fears to someone and saying them out loud can often help you to hear how exaggerated these thoughts have become. And always, you can take help from your friend to get out of those dreadful thoughts haunting you.

Never compare yourself to others

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At some point in our lives, we all compare ourselves to some other persons. Most of the time you look at a person who is someway down the road on a journey you are starting right now and think you are just not good enough.

Just think about your Medium journey. It’s not remotely fair to compare your first-month earnings to earnings of a well-established writer in the Medium. You both do the same thing, but they have got more experience in writing, how Medium works, and most importantly they have a relatively large pool of followers expecting to read his writing whenever he put an article out.

So the best thing to do is to compare yourself to past yourself. Try to be better than yesterday. See how far you have come to this point. There were countless obstacles, setbacks, and doubts, but still, you made it and you are here today as a better human being. You can do anything you want. You just have to believe in yourself.

Never worry about what others think

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One of the biggest roots for our self-doubts is the thought that ‘what will others think about me if I screw up?’ Well, simply put, people don’t really care that much about what you do or say. Everybody has their hands full with problems of their own — about their jobs, families, financial issues, or even the next sports match — just like you.

The people who matter, such as family members or best friends will not think low of you just because you screw up something and they will actually help you to come out of failure. So don’t waste your precious time worrying about what others would think of you.

Don’t take criticism personally

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It’s not so strange to get down on yourself when you are faced with criticism. But most of the time criticism is not made on a personal level, but we tend to personalize every criticism thrown at us.

If someone criticizes you on a personal level, think about whether you actually have those weaknesses. If you do, work on them, and if you don’t just forget them. Anyone doesn’t have the right to take control of your mind without your consent.

But the problem is our minds are too weak now. Even if we give time to strengthen our physic, we rarely give time to make our minds strong. So whenever we are facing criticism, we take them personally and let our mentality and self-confidence take a serious hit. But what if what he or she said or did isn’t really about you at all? Perhaps your co-worker that verbally lashed out at you is having a bad day. That can happen to anybody. You don’t know everything that’s going on in another person’s life. Remember that the world doesn’t revolve around you. So be careful not to misinterpret and build blame and doubt within yourself without any reason. Just let it go, rather than hanging on to it.

Read a book, listen to a podcast that encourages you

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Set aside time every day to read a positivity book, or listen to a podcast that can encourage you. You don’t need to vacate hours out of your busy schedule for this. Just half an hour would be more than enough. Let the enthusiasm, motivation, and constructive optimism in those resources to flow over to you.

I used to read books by Norman Vincent Peale every day for years. Those books brought me some serious motivation with some amazing storytelling. They didn’t give me lists of ways to get motivated or get things done. They immersed me in stories of personal experiences of the author on people who made it to the top after hitting rock bottom.

You might have your own favorite. You can take that or find a new one. Anyhow, give 30 minutes from your daily routine for this and see how you shift your self-doubts into optimism and into thinking constructively about your challenge.

Develop your weak areas

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Identify your weak areas and work on them. You might have many weaknesses within you and it is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Take one at a time and start practicing on getting better.

For instance, imagine that you have to do a presentation at school or work in a week. Going in front of a group of people and talking is not that easy if you not prepared and mentally ready. So whenever you are given a presentation, start with ‘I can do this’ rather than ‘I might blow this’. Then start practicing for it every day. Practice at home in front of a mirror or in front of a friend. It doesn’t matter how, as long as you work on it. Weaknesses are just barriers in our minds that put there by ourselves. When we work on them, they disappear leaving no trace.

And don’t forget to thank yourself whenever you improve on anything. It will motivate your subconscious mind to drive you to improve more. Most of the time we do not give ourselves enough credit for the things we have done. We are too harsh on ourselves. Why is that? After all, we want to be happy more than anything else. So start rewarding yourself on your achievements, no matter how small it is.

Remember that not everything goes according to the plan

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It is perfectly ok to screw up because it happens to everybody. If you think about it, non of our well-planned moves really worked exactly the same as we hoped for. But we course-corrected along the way and still made it.

Trying to plan every move you will make on a journey towards a goal or dream can become draining and lead to quite a bit of self-doubt. So do a bit of rough planning and then start your journey. And remember that you can always course-correct along the way towards what you want.

You can always get on top of any set back with the new knowledge, experience, and feedback you gather along the way. So no need to doubt yourself and give up on your dreams whenever something doesn’t go according to plan. It was going to happen all along. We just have to be ready to tolerate it.

Self-doubt is one of the top enemies we have. As the saying goes “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will”. So learning to cast aside self-doubt is something really important when moving forward in life. We need it almost everything we do and it will help to take out a little of stress, fear, and insecurity from us. So it’s definitely worth a try.