Don’t doubt yourself too fast

Many of you might know by now that I am German. One thing that I feel like Germans are masters in is self-doubt. When anything is not going straight to plan, we start to firstly question ourselves and see the error almost always on our side. Personally, I think this is a big mistake which accelerates anxiety and unhappiness. We should spend more time celebrating our wins, rather than thinking about things that can possibly go wrong and making up all those theories in our mind about why things might not work out as we expected them. very often, the answer is a lot simpler than we think. So don’t doubt yourself too fast - look at the value you can bring to the table.

Self-doubt is very easy for many of us, especially for those that make great plans, try to always look ahead and have a lot on their plates. Those people very often follow a wrong level of perfectionism that can lead to a lot of things going wrong on the way. What we need to understand is that changes in circumstances happen and very often the mistake is not so much on our side or is something we can directly influence. The reason why things in the end might not work out as planned can be multi-facetted. Very often external factors are a heavy influence that we have no impact on in the first place. We need therefore to stop automatically claiming responsiblity on our side for when things go wrong or don’t work our as planned.

That does not mean however we should not stand up for our mistakes when we are the responsible party. Sometimes we as humans make mistakes and that is ok -the important thing is however to stand up to them, apologize, learn and move on.

The ideal here is therefore to strike a balance between owning up to your mistakes that you make and are responsible for and not falling into a constant feeling of self -doubt where very often we have nothing to do with the wrong or undesired outcomes.

The key here is therefore to focus on the things we can influence and make sure those are in line with expectations. As long as we are happy how things are going that we can directly influence, we have done all we can and can stop worrying about things that are clearly out of our hands that might go wrong. We need to focus on what we can do to achieve the best desired outcome and the great news is - that will always be enough to satisfy.

Don’t doubt yourself too much therefore - focus on what is in your hands to influence and make the best effort you possibly can for those factors. The rest is in God’s hands as they say.