The pressure to achieve and meet expectations can leave students feeling insufficient. Self-doubt can be a result of several adverse incidents that have occurred in one’s life. Some of these damaging events may bruise a person’s self-esteem for their entire life. Therefore, we must learn how to deal with incidents that bring us down to avoid breeding self-doubt. As a student, confidence is one skill you will need to navigate your academic life. You cannot afford to give up an instrumental virtue that will help you overcome several obstacles. So here are some quick tips that can help you shelve self-doubt.
Practice Self-Compassion
Before you beat yourself up about a setback, ensure you remind yourself that you are human and you are prone to make mistakes. These mistakes provide a pedestal for us to gain experience and resilience. However, if you keep referring to your past mistakes, then you can easily fall into depression and a dark pit of self-doubt.
Doubting your ability is always because you believe in perfection. However, once you realize that mistakes are what will make you grow, you will be more kind to yourself despite the fallbacks you might face. Moreover, when you are open to making mistakes and learning from them, you will be more open to taking risks and strides that will drive you toward your goals without fear. With newly found self-confidence, you will even be able to handle the assignments from topics you dread without hiring a paper writing service.
Acknowledge Your Achievements
Your past winnings can give you the confidence to face future uncertainties since you will believe in yourself more. As a student, you will need such acknowledgments to fuel your ambitions and zeal to continue despite the challenges. For example, identifying a challenging school project you passed with good grades will help you acknowledge that some things in your life may be blurry initially, but there may be a silver lining at the end. Also, as you refer to your past achievements, do not forget that each day brings new opportunities to make amends in areas you feel insufficient and improve on yourself.
Do Not Make Comparisons to Your Colleagues
Positive competition is encouraged; however, you should not use your colleagues’ achievements as reference points. We are all gifted differently; thus, you must recognize that your strengths and weaknesses make you phenomenal. As a student, you are bound to deal with imposter syndrome since you spend much time with your schoolmates who may be overachievers. But how you deal with such situations is what makes the difference. If you let it get the best of you, you will sink into self-doubt, but if you acknowledge your strengths and efforts amid all self-loathing, you can easily overcome this imposter syndrome.
Self-Affirmation
Validation from your loved ones may be effective, but you must also give yourself some credit. Self-confidence is an inside job that starts with trusting in your capabilities and efforts. Once you trust in yourself, then you cannot be overwhelmed by feelings of self-doubt. Most times, we rebuke ourselves by only looking at our weaknesses. However, if you do not acknowledge your effort, it may water down even the small steps you try to take toward greatness. Words of affirmation, such as “I can do it,” can spark positivity in your daily routine.
Seek Help From a Professional Therapist
Sometimes some things may be way beyond us, and seeking intervention may be the right thing. Therefore, if you feel like you have hit rock bottom, you can seek professional help. Therapists have years of experience in helping people rise above their insecurities. Self-doubt is a mindset that can hold you back from achieving even the most straightforward attainable goals. Nobody has us to higher standards than ourselves. Therefore, if seeing a therapist can help you with this, you can take the therapist route.
Take-Home Point
Our doubts are straight-up traitors since they hinder us from achieving easily attainable goals. Therefore, you need to be more open about dealing with self-loathing. The first step is acknowledging that there is a problem and then finding solutions for the problem. Self-affirmation, self-compassion, and counseling are some of the ways you can use to deal with self-doubt. As a student, there are several things you will have to learn and unlearn. Confidence is among the essential skills you can learn since it is not a virtue we are born with. We develop confidence as we go on with our self-identification journey.
