Fighting to overcome self-doubt is a lifelong task. But working to overcome self-doubt can and will unlock the world you want to live in for the rest of your life.
“Plant one bamboo shoot – cut bamboo for the rest of your life.”
It struck me the other day that this bamboo-related adage can be applied to my ongoing struggles with self-doubt, and the daily work I must undertake to attempt to overcome self-doubt. If it is to have any hope of being effective, taking action to overcome self-doubt needs to be a lifelong daily habit.
A daily work
Self-doubt can affect anyone and everyone. My New Zealand-based friend Tash Pieterse shared some compelling thoughts on self-doubt last year. In a series of seven captioned photographs on Instagram , Tash encourages us to look beyond the sun-is-always-shining-on-me nature of so many folks’ social media feeds. Tash’s post is brave, honest and authentic. She writes of her ongoing struggles with self-doubt.
The Tash I know is a lovely, intelligent and hard-working person. She runs a successful coaching business, working to instil a positive mindset for success in her clients. She balances this hectic working life with motherhood. Yet, as she writes in this Instagram post, she also finds herself needing always to battle self-doubt. She says:
“I’m a mindset coach and I STILL have to do this work [on my self-doubt].”
Self-doubt can undermine your belief in who you are and what you do. Tash writes:
“Even though I’ve been doing it for almost five years in my coaching business, I still worry that I don’t/won’t do it well. My default mindset is fear and scarcity. Built from childhood, I have to constantly work on focusing on the gains and things that are working to trust that I’m moving forward. It’s a daily work.”
I can relate. Self-doubt (for me, at least) is a foe that can never be finally and fully defeated. No matter how old you are, how far you come in life, what you achieve – you can guarantee that self-doubt will keep coming back to haunt you. Even if you feel as though you have your self-doubt in check one day, you would be well advised not to rest on your laurels. As Tash says, living with and struggling against self-doubt requires daily work. It can be repetitive and wearing. Tash describes the grind of dealing with self-doubt beautifully:
“I often feel like I’m failing, but remind myself that I’m doing the best I can moment-to-moment.”
There will always be days when the best thing you can hope for, and the best thing you can possibly do, is to keep doing the best you can, moment-to-moment.
A secret shared
Self-doubt would seem to be a secret that many of us share. So many of us feel it, but so few of us acknowledge it. Tash’s words ring so many bells with me. I am sure that many people reading this will feel the same, too. Self-doubt can be unkind to those who experience it. But does that mean that those who experience self-doubt should keep it a secret?
Back in 2023, in a post entitled Self-doubt, I wrote:
“It is too often seen as a weakness to own up to self-doubt. But why should that be? It is quite possible that self-doubt actually stems from a healthy instinct, namely to think through (and hopefully anticipate and if possible head off) potential weaknesses or downfalls in particular situations in which we may or may not find ourselves. And for those of us who know the feeling of self-doubt, perhaps any achievement that we can pull off when faced with self-doubt should be acknowledged and celebrated?”
The bad news is that if you feel self-doubt, it will likely plague you for the rest of your life. The good news is that you can work to overcome self-doubt each and every day for the rest of your life. It will be tough work, but it will be rewarding.
One of the best and most succinct descriptions of the endless nature of the fight against self-doubt came from an episode of the RuPaul podcast I heard years ago. Ru said: “Every morning, my tail grows back.”
For the life of me, I can’t remember what episode those words appeared in, so I can’t link you to it. But a wee bit of googlage reveals that RuPaul also talked about this topic in his 2016 interview with Time magazine. RuPaul said:
“To win at life and to win in this competition, you have to be willing to die a thousand deaths and be reborn a thousand times. Every day I have to do the work to build myself back up again because my proverbial tail grows back every single day and you have to shave it down.”
Fighting to overcome self-doubt can feel like endless, thankless work, a life sentence. You will be cutting the bamboo of self-doubt for the rest of your life. But the positives of this ongoing work will always outweigh the negatives. Working each day to overcome self-doubt can and will unlock the world you want to live in for the rest of your life.
May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.
May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.
IMAGES
- Bamboo leaf canopy (Unsplash) via Wikimedia Commons.
- [Detail from] Xia Chang – Bamboo-Covered Stream in Spring Rain – 1950.2 – Art Institute of Chicago via Wikimedia Commons.
- 明 夏昶 清風高節圖 軸-Bamboo in Wind MET DP154132 via Wikimedia Commons.
MJCarty 
.jpg){kind=link}
