How to Free Yourself from the Exhausting Burden of Self-Doubt

The fallout from self-doubt can be devastating and render you incapable of continuing to make rational business decisions. It's like flailing yourself with a whip day in and day out - a torture so blistering that all you can think of the pain it's causing.

When you let the exhausting task of doubting yourself take over your life, you'll be less likely to seize opportunities and have a more difficult time in beginning or finishing tasks that could bring you success.

Moving forward can be difficult as the voice of self-doubt becomes louder and drowns out the reality of who you are and what you're capable of. Standing up to the chatter and telling the chaos and loudness to stop can help you break the destructive pattern of self-doubt.

It's like turning the flame down under a pot of soup that's about to boil over. You take over control of your thoughts rather than letting your mind overflow with doubt and take those thoughts where you want to go.

Remember past times that you've doubted yourself or that fear kept you from taking part in a venture that turned successful. You likely ignored your instinct and gave in to the negative voices in your mind that told you it wouldn't work.

This time could be different if you don't allow the voices to take control. Each time you leave your comfort zone and ignore the self-doubt torture, you come closer to realizing a positive outcome to your efforts.

Self-confidence will replace self-doubt and you'll finally be able to focus on your future success rather than past failures. Silencing the exhausting torture of self-doubt will also boost your optimism about the future.

You'll become more confident about your abilities and motivated and enthused about your ideas. Take action even though you don't feel like it. Freeing yourself from the loud and destructive self-doubt voices - if only for a few minutes - can calm the voices and help your mind find clarity and creativity.

You can always tweak the immediate actions you take later on. The real task of the moment is to get feedback, knowledge and experience so you can build your self-esteem and empower yourself to success.

Conquering self-doubt frees you to stay on the course and reach the goals you've planned for yourself. Don't let the voices of self-doubt exhaust you to the point of abandoning your future success.

Check in With Yourself to Recognize and Weed Out Self-doubt

Self-doubt can creep into your psyche without you even suspecting it's there until the first niggling thought makes itself clear. You have to be aware of your thoughts and how you're reacting at all times to weed them out before they grow and take over your creativity and destroy your goals.

Doubts can run wild in your mind, making you question your abilities about anything new or different. If you're prepared, you can recognize the doubts for the lies they are and let your knowledge and common sense get you through.

When you check in to reality, you'll realize that the negative thoughts are occurring for various reasons. For example, you could be lost in comparing yourself with others in marketing.

It may make you feel inadequate and doubt your ability to succeed. Make a firm decision and stick to it. When self-doubt about what you're trying to accomplish creeps into your thoughts, make a decision to either carry through with your goal or trash it and go on with something else you're more certain of.

If you do decide to go on to something else, don't think of it as a failure. It was a learning experience that taught you a lesson and you aren't wasting any more time on it. If you decide to go through with the plan, take action immediately.

Making a fast decision may seem impulsive, but most likely the decision is based on intuition and the knowledge that you've prepared enough for the journey ahead. You can always fine tune your plan as you progress.

At least you're taking action toward your goals. Replace negative self-doubt with positive thoughts. Choose any method that works for you. Meditation, journaling, affirmations, listening to music or reading a good book or simply chatting with positive-minded friends may give you the boost you need to move on.

All of us find ourselves dealing with self-doubt at some point in our lives. If you let it get the best of you by feeding in to it and actually believing the lies you're telling yourself, it can destroy even the best of intentions for success.

Learn to recognize and weed out the crippling, negative thoughts and get on with achieving the goals you've set for yourself. Begin the learning process by becoming aware of your thoughts - check in with them a few times a day. You'll soon be able to discern the "keeper" thoughts from the "discard" pile.

Start Small to Take Away the Power of Self-doubt

Beginning an Internet marketing business with a product launch that's much less expensive than some of your successful colleagues (who love to post their earnings from one launch that would pay your bills for months) can help alleviate some of your self-doubt.

Starting on a small scale - perhaps a $7 product instead of a $97 one - can mean less work to get it off and running and a launch that can teach you a thing or two. The feedback and knowledge you get from beginning with a small launch is invaluable to help you move up to higher ticket items.

You'll likely build your list with each small launch, too - meaning that when you do get to the big-ticket launches, you'll have more marketers who will buy from you. With each small launch, your self-confidence will build and self-doubt will begin to wane.

Even the small launches may fail, but that's a good thing, too - when you use the knowledge you gained to set your focus on something else or to use another strategy because the current one isn't working.

You won't have lost much time and energy if you discover these truths from a small launch. Self-doubt is often made up from failures of the past, but your small successes can provide positive thoughts about the positive outcomes you've realized.

The positive feedback you receive from small successes may serve to set you up for huge success. There's always something new to learn in Internet marketing. Beginning your business or venturing out in a different direction in small increments helps you sharpen your skills and become more confident in future business situations.

You'll soon discover if something works - or not - and can quickly tweak or discard it at your discretion. Little will be lost if you haven't invested a great deal in something you lack knowledge about.

Correcting your course along the way is the same thing pilots do when they're approaching a bit of unexpected bad weather before reaching their destination. Look at the charts again, learn from the experience you've gathered during the small ventures and correct your course so that you're firmly on a safe and steady path again.

Learn from other marketers. Follow the business path of others to possibly discover more ways you can promote yourself and become successful with your own enterprise. It's sometimes easy to get lost in your own little world of strategizing and promoting, but you may become stagnant if you don't allot some time for learning from others.

Trust your instinct and values when making decisions about your business. There are many shady marketers out there who might turn your head with promises of fast money, but if you stay true to your own values, self-confidence will become the antidote to any self-doubt you may have.

Give Yourself Credit for Your Accomplishments

Being humble has always been a hallmark for kindness and esteem. But you can be humble while still giving yourself credit for your accomplishments. When you're proud about what you've done, the building blocks of self-esteem become tighter and tighter and eventually, you learn to trust yourself and your decisions.

As an online entrepreneur, patting yourself on the back is a required trait. Every success that's passed on to others will make them sit up and notice you - and respect you for your hard work.

If you can't toot your own horn, it's going to be difficult for others to know what you've accomplished - especially in an online environment. And don't simply give yourself credit for professional achievements - personal achievements are important, too.

You may have lost weight over a period of time or achieved another personal goal that you're proud of. Those are triumphs that are brag-worthy. While you don't have to talk about yourself and your achievements until people are bored, it's okay to use it as a way to motivate others - and yourself.

Rewards are an important part of building self-esteem and collecting the building blocks necessary for success. When you do achieve a long-sought after goal, reward yourself with something you can look forward to on your journey.

Even a day off spent with family or getting something for yourself that you've always wanted can be perfect. When you reward yourself, you're reinforcing your self-esteem building and making it easier to move on to the next project.

Online entrepreneurs seem to have a problem with defining themselves as worthy and successful. Instead, they think about failures rather than successes and avoid telling their fellow marketers and lists that they're proud of what they've done.

When you praise yourself and what you've accomplished to other online marketers and customers, they're likely to begin conversations and want to know how you did it - and be genuinely proud of your triumph.

Giving yourself credit for accomplishments can open a whole new world of feeling good about yourself. And when you feel good about yourself, the world becomes your oyster and you can make your dreams and goals come true because you aren't telling yourself that you can't.

Gandhi once admonished people to, "Be the change you want to see in the world." When you change for the better or have little or big successes that you're proud of, let the world know. You could become an inspiration for others!

Look Around You and Notice How Imperfect Everyone Is

While it isn't always good to compare yourself to others, it can be a boost to your self-esteem and give you a true picture of marketers in a way that lessens your own anxiety. Some of what you see will be good and encouraging and some might be eye-opening to your own struggles.

At the very least, you should learn that no one is perfect or always experiences success. As a marketer, it's likely that you follow many other marketers. Dig a little deeper into some of those you subscribe to and try to pick out a few things they might be doing wrong.

Maybe they have some gaps in their products or their video marketing could use some polishing. It could be that even those you admire constantly have some ideas and strategies that you don't agree with. No one is perfect and gets it right every time - even the most successful of online entrepreneurs.

All suffer from failures and setbacks, but you'll soon learn as you peer into the online lives of your fellow marketers, that the failures don't define who the successful ones are. The successful marketers view failures as a chance to learn, pick up the pieces and try again.

The successes will likely far outweigh the failures. And some marketing strategies may appeal and work for others, but not for you. When you see your fellow marketers as humans who have different tastes, ambitions and talents than you, perhaps you won't compare yourself unfavorably to them.

Online marketing is no different from any other part of life - different strokes for different folks. Striving for perfection can undermine everything you want to accomplish and set you up for failure because absolute perfection doesn't exist.

Chasing it can only add to your sense of failure and inadequacies and cause unhappiness and great disappointment in your life. It's best to think of your efforts as striving to be the best you can be.

If you can view your self-worth by knowing that you're living up to your own standards rather than someone else's, you can live the life that was meant for you rather than seeking perfection, which is only an illusion.

You may be waiting for the perfect time, place or scenario in your life to begin seeking success. You're poised and ready, but the world isn't - so you're stopped in your tracks. Realize that there's never a perfect time or place and move forward where you are right now in life.

The most successful entrepreneurs among us have begun on a small scale - refusing to wait until they had time, money and energy to begin their venture on a larger scale. Each success gave them more confidence to try something bigger and better until true success - not perfection - was within their grasp.