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How to deal with insecurities

“What I am is good enough if I could only be it openly.”- Carl rogers

There are many things that shape our self-image and influence our behaviour from negative attitudes directed towards us to attitudes and opinions that come from the environment you live in- parents, teachers, peers and the attitudes they had towards themselves. As we get older, we internalise these points of views as our own and shape our inner critic that constantly scrutinises and criticises our every action based on our so formed beliefs. We all experience and encounter these self-critical thoughts making us insecure either in our personal or professional lives while we pursue our goals.

Insecurity is one of the root cause that impedes our ability to achieve success. We experience it in many forms like self-doubt, fear, distrust, uncertainty, skepticism, cynicism, indecisiveness, avoidance, ambiguity, or complacency. This inner-critic that accompanies our feelings of insecurity makes us compare, evaluate, and judge ourselves. This behaviour also results in over dependence, constant anger, jealously and vulnerability. To be insecure for a short period of time is natural. But when insecurity persists, it takes into a pattern of self-sabotage and/or underachieving or persistent indecisiveness. When you are insecure, you miss out on many opportunities and it can be quite damaging to your self-esteem and self-image. It not only holds you back from achieving your goals but also causes feelings of not being and doing good enough.

So, what it means to be insecure?

Insecurity is a tendency to lack confidence or certainty in oneself causing feelings of helplessness or inadequacy due to false self-perception. It is having negative thoughts about one’s ability to fit in with peers, reach goals, or find acceptance and support. These insecure thought patterns can exaggerate feelings of jealousy or possessiveness or might leave you feeling rejected and unworthy.

Our fears, inhibitions, and low self-confidence thrive when we don’t have clarity. It not only affects the confidence you need to be successful negatively, but also results in over dependence, social anxiety, and creates a self perception of inadequacy. Looking into your insecurity and its causes and what has shaped your feelings of insecurity can help you to deal with them constructively.

How it affects your productivity

We tend to express our deepest self-feelings in an inner voice that is at times heavily influenced with self-critical messages. For many, these pose a major hindrance to their productivity. Some self-critical thoughts can turn into workplace insecurities that can make you think as you are not quite as smart, informed or competent as you ought to be and create a constant concern about being judged. This might leave you dissatisfied, less creative and efficient. Our irrational interpretations about ourselves or our ability to get something done, makes us feel insecure about being judged, rejected or criticised.

Sometimes to compensate for all our inadequacies, we tend to indulge in defensive, selfish, excessively competitive or overly critical behaviours when around others. We might react to our critical inner voice by holding back from personal or professional relationships or project them onto the people around us. Insecurity not only limits your ability to form healthy relationships, but also makes it difficult to share your emotions. This perceived lack of ability creates unhelpful and limited perspectives in work and life. Chronic insecure thought patterns hold you back from living your life in an optimal way or from tapping your full potential.

Why are we insecure?

As human beings we must feel safe for who we are in order to feel secure. But our critical inner voice consciously adopts to and integrates the negative past experiences which we witnessed or experienced towards ourselves and others. And we keep these attitudes alive by believing in our insecurities as we go along in life. These insecurities can stem from childhood experiences, past failures,or genetic predisposition of worrying or fearing. Rejection and failure sometimes leads to seeing others and yourself more negatively at least for some time.

Also the other main reason of many people’s insecurity is because of social anxiety. Fear of being evaluated by others and found to be lacking can make you feel anxious and self-conscious. Past experiences can feed your sense of not belonging, not feeling important or just not being good enough. Growing up with critical people around can also make you sensitive to how others perceive you and create distorted beliefs about your self-worth. Some of us have high standards for everything we do. Such perfectionist attitude sometimes results in disappointment and self-blame for being anything less than perfect thereby making you feel insecure and unworthy. Other common causes include fear of disappointment or being discounted, broken trusts, conflict aversion, or dependency.

How to deal with fear of insecurity?

By understanding where your insecurity stems from and how this view point affects you, you can start to unpack your insecurities and work towards overcoming them. Here are some strategies that will help you to progressively deal with your insecurities.

Identify your insecurities

Evaluate and identify the origins and roots of your insecurities. How do you currently reinforce your negative self-image? Find ways to overcome a fear and be self-aware of how you have come to develop these insecurities. Often the root cause of our insecurities comes from irrational beliefs and unhelpful thoughts or behaviours we had held onto for many years. They may be the result of your interpretation of your past experiences. How effectively you can overcome them will depend on your ability and willingness to grow out of such limiting beliefs, habits and attitudes you had subscribed to. It’s perfectly natural to be afraid of failure or of not being perfect. Everybody has these fears from time to time. It’s unnatural, however, to be plagued with worry that holds you back from achieving your goals.

Identify the unhelpful beliefs, worries and fears that are behind your insecure thought patterns. Write down all of the things that you are insecure about. Ask yourself how many of them are rational, and how many are just a product of negative thinking. Take the time to really think of what’s at the root of your insecurities and what uncertainty exists that makes you feel insecure. whether it’s making a fool of yourself, disappointing someone dear to you, or not having the life you want. Once you have a better sense of where your insecurity comes from, and what your fears are, you can see how many of your fears you can tackle, and can come up with positive solutions.

Overcome failure or rejection based insecurity

Past failure or rejection creates distorted beliefs about your self-worth and can lead to wrong perceptions of how others are evaluating you by making your inner-critic much louder. Instead of focusing on all the times you failed at something, take a long hard look at all the times that you’ve done really well. Think of the success you’ve had in the past. Take into account the strengths that served you and the process you underwent to move through the uncertain moments that otherwise have held you back. Give yourself time to adopt to the new norm and engage more with your values, interests and curiosity.

Insecure thought patterns from past failures can make you conscious and resentful to social events or situations making you socially anxious. It become a driver for chronic efforts to prove yourself or to fit in as it’s linked with your work, ambition or perfectionism. Instead of avoiding social situations, try and engage with others to know more about them like their work, hobbies or skills. Try to evaluate yourself based on how much effort you put in, rather than on the outcome, which is dependent on external factors. Do not resort to all-or nothing thinking, instead look at a more compassionate and understanding way to view a situation. Take your circumstances into account when you evaluate yourself. There is always something to learn from even if the result wasn’t perfect.

Make realistic assessment of your circumstances

Most of our insecurities stem from wanting things in a certain way and we convince that some things are going to be the way we want them be. This makes you incapable of taking proactive action in worst-case scenarios. If you do new things and a few people don’t like it, then it’s unlikely that it is the end of the world. Similarly, if you are a perfectionist, often you have conditional self-esteem that makes you dislike yourself when things don’t go your way. Don’t let these worries stop you from trying something different. Once you realize that the worst isn’t really that bad, you’ll be more likely to be dynamic and to take risks.

Therefore a realistic assessment of your circumstances can help you prepare for a little uncertainty. What is the worst-case that could possibly happen if you take action despite your insecurities? What is the possible outcomes once you move beyond your insecurities? Falling back on your personal attributes and values can make you confident of working through uncertain circumstances if any in optimal ways. Having a realistic assessment of your circumstances can help you deal with your insecurities progressively.

Vocalise your inner-critical voice.

Our subjective experiences and interpretations makes our inner-critic get louder on convincing us in our limited beliefs thereby creating insecurities. In spite of these being just opinions and perspectives on the surface, we forget to look at them more objectively and let our inner-critic takeover. It is especially hard to notice negative self-talk if you have been doing it for a long time. If you’re always telling yourself that you’re a failure, or that you can’t do anything right, then you’re bound to feel victim to your insecurities forever. Instead, work on telling yourself positive things about yourself so you’re more likely to attack new tasks with a positive mindset and a desire to do well.

Voice your thoughts based on insecurity and answer back to your voice attacks expressing your real point of view. You can write down rational and realistic statements to expose the irrational nature of these beliefs. Does you inner-critical voice remind you of anyone or anything from your past? This process can help you uncover the relationship between these voice attacks and early life experiences that helped shape them. This will allow you to reject these insecurities as accurate reflections of who you are.

Shift to an objective perspective

Another effective way to deal with your insecurities is to bring back your objective awareness to the present moment. Paying attention to your present moment can get you out of your excessive unhelpful and limited beliefs and can ease you out of the internal noise so created. Bringing all your attention to your senses can calm your mind and grounds you in the present moment. In this way, little to no room is left in your attention for all that unwanted and unhelpful thoughts that are causing your insecurities. Being mindful of the present moment brings you back from mind wandering when you get lost in your old habits, beliefs, and negative reaction patterns. Through mindfulness, you build your capacity to change the contents of your thoughts to ‘present’ rather than about insecurities from a remembered past or anticipated future.

To conclude,

Do you find yourself feeling filled with insecurities and self-doubt despite your accomplishments?

What do you feel more insecure about?

What worries or fears are behind your insecurities?

Are there any unhelpful beliefs behind your insecurities?

How do they affect your work and personal goals?

What events triggers the insecurity?

In what areas is this insecurity most influential?

Are they based on your negative interpretations?

What is the evidence for and against for your insecurities?

How could things be different to the way you are perceiving?

How else can you interpret the areas you are insecure about?

Are you filtering out the positive and dwelling in more negative?

Are you being shaped by your inability to measure up to unreasonable expectations from outside yourself? 

Answering the above questions can give you a right perspective of changing the insecure thought patterns. When you begin to think objectively, you can question the validity of your experiences and become more positive and realistic in your own abilities.

It is absolutely normal to experience insecurities from time time because as human beings, we have an inherent negativity bias, where our mind is skewed more towards the negative rather than positive. So, despite all the efforts, certain insecurities can continue to rise to the surface. They aren’t likely to vanish overnight. But instead of allowing them to make you anxious and hold you back from achieving your full potential- by practicing the above mentioned strategies, you can be perseverant in your efforts to take the required action-steps to stand up and deal with them constructively. With practice, you can achieve this worthy transition from being controlled to overcoming your fears.

“Don’t let fear or insecurity stop you from trying new things. Believe in yourself. Do what you love. And most importantly, be kind to others, even if you don’t like them.”– Stacy London

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Turn your adversity into opportunity

“Success is not to be measured by what one accomplished in life, success is to be measured by what one overcomes while trying to succeed.” – Booker. T. Washington

How do you respond to adversity or when things don’t go to plan? Do you become aggressive or do you disconnect from life and hide? We all experience difficult times in our work and personal lives often through situations or circumstances outside our control and struggle with some obstacles and hardships. But while some people endure hardships and overcome the adversity, some cannot. They might give up when faced with similar circumstances. How you deal with difficult circumstances and obstacles life throws your way depends on your patience and perseverance. You can either let these obstacles bring you down and take you into a downward spiral or you can use them to motivate and lift you up. The key difference is how you perceive and respond to adversity or obstacles you face. If you consider them as bad and try to avoid, you end up closing your possibilities and avoid taking risks. On the other hand if you take them merely as challenges filled with opportunities to endure, learn and grow, you can profit from them both physically and emotionally. The ability to persevere such situations is the only difference between a successful outcome and a failed outcome.

When it comes to accomplishing your goals, you might face short-term failures along the way, or sometimes you may struggle as it might take longer than you expect. Even while making some change in your life like creating new habits, developing new skills or learning new concepts, short-term failure or challenges or difficulties can drain your motivation. They even might make you want to quit before you’ve put in enough time and effort to reach your goal. And how you respond to such failures, setbacks or difficulties when pursuing your goals depends primarily on your mindset and willingness to persevere. What ultimately makes you successful is your choice to persevere and overcome adversity or hardships. In the end, it is perseverance that translates into success.

So, What is Perseverance?

It is defined as your inner drive to persist steadfastly in pursuit of an undertaking, task, or goal even if hindered by difficulty, setbacks, obstacles or discouragement. It is continuance in a course of action in spite of adversity or opposition and is a necessary skill to overcome setbacks or failures. Perseverance enables us to take risks, learn from our failures, and forge ahead with new and better information.

It requires regular practice to develop the quality of perseverance. Only with strong determination can one achieve his/ her goal by perseverance.

Why is it important to practice perseverance?

Most often, people who accomplish great things no matter what field they are in, understand that failure or an obstacle is not a stumbling block but a stepping stone. They are the ones who have succeeded enduring hardships, challenges, or failures at some point in their life. Should you quit when you face obstacles or adversity? Should you quit if you are not able to achieve goals fast enough? Should you quit in case of disappointment or self-doubt?

The answer to above questions depends upon how much you are willing to and can persevere in times such as these and how hard are you willing to work towards overcoming such situations. And how much you can overcome further depends upon the foundations you base your life on. Those who built solid foundations as a base for their lives develop the persistence necessary to overcome adversity or setbacks. Take for instance, sumo wrestling, an ordinary person would have absolutely no chance of winning against a professional sumo wrestler. This is because of the gap in skills they possess. Professional sumo wrestlers practice in the ring everyday so they become strong, solidity and speed. When faced with someone like this, ordinary person would not be able to exert enough strength and naturally defeated. The same can be said of encountering troubles in life. By practising perseverance, you can be better prepared to face such situations in your personal and professional pursuits.

Strengthening your foundation by building on your internal resources like emotional and strength, resilience, courage and patience can prepare you mentally for any possibility and you can remain in control of your emotions and actions without creating much friction. And you can form a clear perspective to persevere. Through her research, Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit: The power of Passion and Perseverance, has identified four psychological assets that most perseverant possess.

•Passion– is important be genuinely interested in what you are doing so that you are intrinsically motivated to keep going even when things don’t work out the way you initially thought.

•Practice – The next step is developing the discipline to practice your passion. Your intentional actions help you develop productive habits that can support you to get better in case you facing obstacles or failure.

•Purpose – Developing a greater purpose where your work or actions or outcomes are beneficial to others and not limited to personal gratification can help you overcome short-term failures and struggles.

•Hope – Hope or optimism is what lets you challenge yourself when things get tough so that you get back up and keep moving forward. You can cultivate emotional strength and courage to persevere in the hope that you will overcome.

How to persevere through adversity

“Adversity causes some men to break, and others to break records.”- William Arthur Ward

Adversity often provides us with a learning opportunity that can help us in improving our true potential. However in order to turn adversity into an opportunity for growth, you must first be able to adapt yourself well to life-changing situations. And the strength to persevere through them often comes from your internal attributes and learnt skills like acceptance, resilience, and being self-aware. Here are some ways to strengthen your resolve to persevere and turn adversity into opportunity to grow.

Flip your thinking

Just think about how you see the situation and the story you are telling yourself. The attitude you bring to the situation is reflected in the thoughts you allow yourself to dwell upon consistently while facing adversity. These thoughts manifest in internal dialogue that manufacture your emotional experiences that either empower or weaken your resolve.

If you are thinking of the setback as a negative experience, then reflect on the story you are making up about the circumstances. If it is empowering then you will be more focused on solution that help you move forward. But if it is based on blame, excuses and complaining, then you fall victim to your negativity bias where you close yourself to positive alternatives. Stay self-aware if your thoughts and emotions you bring forth into the situation. Stay objective and try to change your narrative to more empowering and meaningful that can help you persevere through the obstacles.

Questions to reflect: Am I being self-aware of my thoughts and emotions? What story am I telling myself? Is it empowering? What is the problem here? What can I learn from this experience? What can be done to improve the situation? How can I move forward in a better way?

Let go of your expectations

Fully accept your present situation by letting go of expectations you are holding on to. Challenges will come while pursuing your dreams, vision and goals. When dealing with bigger goals, acknowledge that things don’t always go according to your expectations. Holding onto your expectations makes you confined to fixed mindset and will not help you effectively deal with the situation you are in.

Expectations not only create resistance to alternative perspectives but also create internal conflict. Instead of holding on to your expectations of a particular outcome, accept the fact that you are experiencing an obstacle and try to see things more rationally. Clinging on emotionally to a particular outcome or the way you want things to turn out may not let you see the things clearly. Acknowledge that there are certain things beyond your control and choose to respond to them in positive ways.

Questions to reflect: Am I holding onto realistic and helpful expectations? Am I being attached to a specific outcome? Are my expectations flexible? Are there other alternatives to consider? Am I reasonable in my expectations of the outcome I wanted? Which alternative perspectives can help me in overcoming this situation?

Take one step at a time

Adversity and setbacks can often become overwhelming or knock you off balance. Many of us react to such unexpected circumstances hastily or rather unprepared and cannot take actions that will help you better the situation. This will result in making other mistakes and eventually end up regretting. The best way to persevere in the face of obstacles is to take a pause, assess and identify the problem. Break down the problem into smaller steps.

This helps improve focus which subsequently allows you to gain more clarity about the situation and about possible options to solve. Think of why they arose in the first place. Although not every obstacle is a result or a consequence, a personal reflection always helps to understand your bigger aim or sense of purpose and can come up with solutions. This way, you can display resolve against the odds and lay down the action steps you can take to help solve the problem.

Questions to reflect: How could I present this situation in the form of a question? Is there some solution that I am undermining or not considering? What process must I follow in order to solve this ? What part should I tackle first? How will I tackle this part of the problem? What is the first action step I must take?

Build your external resources

Cultivate a supportive network of friends and family. When you feel overwhelmed and anxious, just talking through helps. Often you might discover a friend who has had a similar experience and can help guide you through the difficult time. Nurture supportive relationships. Psychologists call this social support. According to their studies, social support enhances your physical and emotional health. A mind open to communication will think a way out of difficult situations.

Supportive relationships shield you from the negative effects of stress. Surround yourself with those people on whom you can rely, talk to, open and share your feelings. It can also serve as an opportunity to share ideas and get to know alternative perspectives or solutions. Don’t compare yourself with others. Everyone’s journey is different. Instead be inspired by others to persevere when you face criticism and opposition.

Questions to reflect: Am I building supportive relationships? Am I aware of any friend or coworker who endured such hardships? Whom can I rely on to persevere in the face of any obstacles or difficult situations? Am I being supportive of other people in their struggles when they go through similar challenges and hardships?

To conclude,

Think about a goal or a dream you are currently working towards. What obstacles stand in your way that might take you off-course? How are you prepared to handle those and overcome? How do you respond to obstacles or challenges? How do you perceive or what story you tell yourself? What is your willingness to persevere? How strongly you believe in the purpose of your goals ?

There is no such thing as success without failure or obstacles. The question is not about whether or not you will encounter challenges but when obstacles arise, you mustn’t quit or change directions and must be prepared to endure and persevere through them. Turn them into an opportunity with the help of above strategies and questions to mentally prepare for such moments and to build momentum you need to move through them successfully.

If your focus is on succeeding in life, then you also should learn how to respond to adversity or failures or obstacles or hardships. Regardless of your situation, you need to develop these essential skills to put forth the necessary effort and move forward after setbacks. Set yourself a long-term goal, connect deeply with its purpose, take action towards that goal and allow that to pull you through.

“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn