Progress your career and prove yourself and your doubters wrong.

We love the above quote from Michelle Ruiz. It not only suggests that you can ignore the people who doubt your ability, but it also encourages us to push ourselves so far forwards in our careers that we leave them behind – a double positive and a great goal to set yourself!

However we are realistic enough to know that overcoming doubt is not always this straightforward; in many ways it is easier to quieten external voices than to shut up the voice in our heads saying we can’t achieve. Self-doubt can hurt you both personally and professionally, making you feel insecure, inadequate, and overwhelmed by creeping thoughts of failure. When we experience a flood of self-doubt, we simply don’t do the things we need to do, are scared to try new activities, and lose the motivation to perform. It prompts defensive actions to avoid failure which places huge limits on our growth and change potential.

Everyone has been or still is a self-doubter to some extent. At its most pervasive it can be that often found psychological tendency of “feeling like a fake”. Studies have shown how successful women professionals have struggled with legitimising success despite high achievements and have regularly underestimated their own ability, making inaccurate attributions about success and failure and living in fear of being ‘discovered’ by others1.

Van Gogh reportedly said this:

“If you hear a voice within you saying ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

Many people challenge themselves and get past self-doubt, only to find themselves at the mercy of other people doubting them once again. It seems some of us are never far away from those invasive internal voices and external pressures; and to cope, we need to understand what is happening to us at work and to have some tools we can use.

Comfort, stretch and panic zones

The pressure from external or internal doubt can come at all stages of a career. Having spent some time in a job role that you have outgrown you may find yourself having to reach out from a ‘comfort’ zone into a ‘stretch’ zone (or even your ‘panic’ zone) in order to apply for promotion.

You get that promotion and justifiably bask in your success and take pride in your achievement. However, the doubts don’t stop there. Once the celebrating is over and you have settled into your new role the stakes are now higher, people expect more of you, and you will set yourself more challenging targets too, once again bringing you into your stretch zone and exposing you to your own doubts and the expectations of others.

At this point, you have gone from a situation where you know everything about your role, to being something of a newbie where the employer’s expectations are higher and you feel that everyone is watching to see whether you can become successful in your new role. In some cases you have obtained a post that others were hopeful of gaining, or have become senior to those who were previously your peers. You find yourself having to deal with your own initial insecurities and self-doubt and those of other people!

If you find yourself in this situation always remember: You cannot control what people say to you, how they behave towards you or what you suspect they may say to others, but you can control how you respond to it. Even amidst the bleakest of career landscapes, you always have that ultimate control. You can flee, freeze, or you can fight and demonstrate your ability so that those that doubt you will not see you for dust (thank you Michelle Ruiz).

Some simple strategies to help include:

• Remember your employer believes you can do it and do it well – they have confidence in you so use this knowledge to improve your own confidence in yourself.
• Be yourself and be true to yourself, this will allow you to feel and act authentically and be more comfortable in your role.
• Don’t compare yourself to other people (or your perception of who they are!)
• Keep a success journal and use it to remind yourself of your achievements
• Replace any negative chatter with positive affirmations
• Build yourself a support network of positive people with whom you feel comfortable
• Always ask for clarity when required in order to avoid any blunders and to demonstrate that you want to do your job in the best possible way
• Focus on yourself, your role and the satisfaction of your manager with your work whilst still ensuring you play your part within your team.
• Ensure you obtain feedback from your manager and any other stakeholders. If there is no system in place to facilitate this, then ask if you can set something up.

Finally, think of all the amazing innovations and inventions that we now take for granted that simply wouldn’t exist if their designers or originators had listened to their negative chatter…

Imagine if Dame Anita Roddick had, in 1976 doubted her revolutionary concept – that there was a market for natural beauty products and there was no Body Shop. Imagine if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had not got together to develop what would become Apple Computers – or if when ousted from Apple in 1985 Steve Jobs had not returned in 1987 to become CEO and take the company forward to what it is now today – the most recognised logo in the World.

Imagine the time when you will be able to look back at those who doubted you and think ‘imagine if I had allowed myself to be held back by them’. We are not all going to be the new Anita’s or Steve’s, but we can take their ‘say no’ attitude as inspiration. This doesn’t mean being reckless, but if we are listening to the voices in our heads too much, and act on every self-doubting thought, we may never achieve our potential, whether personally or in our careers.