Verified by 
Key points
- When a person accomplishes things above their supposed grade level, they have reason to be proud.
- When people remain open and receptive to new data, they are less likely to prematurely declare “case closed.”
- An attitude of humility mixed with self-compassion promotes empathy, compassion, and forgiveness of others.
- If someone doesn’t let their self-doubts paralyze them, they’ll eventually become more resilient.
Like so many other human qualities, self-doubt exists on a continuum.
A person can be inflicted with so much doubt about themselves that it virtually guarantees their failure to embark on a challenging but doable activity. But if they’re not self-doubting at all, an unjustified overconfidence can make them just as likely to fail in what they ill-advisedly dive into.
So, similar to other character traits, it’s a matter of experientially discovering your personal sweet spot, an intriguing topic I’ve explored in past writings. Because, in a sense, there are few things more advantageous than consciously cultivating a situation-specific Goldilocks perspective.
Here are five major benefits of, ironically, holding on—but not too tightly—to some skepticism about your innate potential and capabilities, whether that pertains to work tasks or relationships.
Consider that mild to moderate self-doubt, which doesn’t leave you overwhelmed, can contribute to the following:
1. Healthy Growth and Development
Being a “know-it-all,” assuming you already possess more knowledge about a person or subject than others do, can lead to a complacency that prevents you from expanding your knowledge base.
But regularly questioning yourself—vs. nonchalantly, mindlessly, or smugly taking for granted your possessing adequate or superior knowledge about something—can motivate you to set your sights higher and so facilitate more substantial learning.
Clearly, exploring alternate viewpoints and orientations can’t happen if you avoid an initially uncomfortable pursuit of new information or skills. Paradoxically, the more you learn, the more you realize not what you now know but what, contrariwise, you still don’t know. And that’s a good thing, for it feeds—not thwarts—your curiosity.
2. Striving for Excellence
When you accomplish things that, at the outset, felt above your grade level, you have ample cause to be proud. Despite the perceived “iffiness” of the challenge, your willingness nevertheless to take it on indicates a certain courage that over time will elevate your self-esteem.
Sure, the success of your endeavors is hardly guaranteed. But as a self-starter confident enough to at least try tackling something difficult, you’re better able to learn which of your limitations, with sufficient effort, can be transcended—as well as which have to be apprehended as irremediable and therefore abided by.
Moreover, as long as your ambitions aren’t foolish or wrong-headed, they’re also praiseworthy. And that doesn’t mean you’re free of personal insecurities—just that you don’t let them control you. As the saying goes, “Nothing succeeds like success.” So despite lingering self-doubts, your repeatedly taking productive action will result in old insecurities eventually fading—maybe even transforming.
Having the confidence to create new realities in order to “repair” comparatively ancient ones—which most likely were experienced in childhood when there were so many things you weren’t grown up enough to say or do—enables you to demonstrate a dexterity unimaginable earlier.
As a caveat, striving for excellence isn’t the same as aiming for perfection. For the latter, pursuit tends to eventuate in avoidance or paralyzing procrastination. But with a far more realistic mindset of achieving progress rather than perfection, you’ll become increasingly successful as your judgment becomes ever more knowing and sophisticated.
3. Increased Self-Insight and Awareness
Getting into the self-examining routine of questioning your thoughts and actions can make you more cognizant not only of your weaknesses but your strengths, too. In turn, assuming that you’re motivated to improve your performance in endeavors meaningful to you, your goal-setting and decision-making will be more rational and informed.
It’s not that you don’t, or can’t, trust yourself but that lacking certainty, you’ll evaluate—and reevaluate—the prudence of your personal choices. And when you develop the habit of remaining open and receptive to new sources of information, you’ll be less likely to prematurely declare “case closed.”
There are times when, aware of your knowledge constraints, it’s appropriate and even recommended that you request others’ assistance. As long as your “I-have-to-be-better-than-others” ego doesn’t intrude, qualifying your own authority and respecting that of others is unquestionably the more enlightened way to go.
It should be noted that one principal downside of certitude is that almost everything in life is subject to fuller understanding and improvement.
4. An Attitude of Humility, Which Also Promotes Empathy and Compassion for Others
Non-defensively recognizing your defects and deficiencies renders you less resistant to criticism or negative feedback. Unless such a response smacks of cantankerous spite or retaliatory vengefulness, you’d actually prefer knowing how your behavior can adversely affect others.
The whole point here is that, regardless of how successful you may be in life, if you retain some humility, your accomplishments will not of themselves lead to a closed-minded (not to say, narrow-minded) arrogance.
After all, a pompous, egotistical attitude predicts an antipathy toward productively collaborating with others, thereby precluding your taking advantage of the diversity of their perspectives to broaden your own.
Plus, if you’re arrogant, you’ll make a poor listener—because, again, that attribute would make you a know-it-all. It would then seem a waste of time to attend to the opinions of others. But with a humble willingness to admit that their knowledge of a subject might well exceed your own, you’ll be receptive to contrasts in their viewpoint.
In addition, having compassion for and acceptance of the confines of your knowledge makes it more possible for you to identify others’ self-doubts and constrictions from a similarly compassionate outlook. And that will contribute favorably not just to a few but all of your important relationships. In most cases, you’ll experience less conflict and more harmony with others.
5. Growing Your Resilience
Finally, as long as you don’t let your self-doubts defeat you and don’t give up on your objectives simply because you’re experiencing discouraging setbacks, you’ll become more resilient. Modern German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has written that what “does not kill us makes us stronger,” from which it follows that suffering may be good for you because it grows your resilience.
Obviously, such a hypothesis must be viewed relatively since, if taken as an absolute rule of human behavior, it’s false in overstating its case. Still, with the right sensibility, failing at something has the potential to boost your ability to cope effectively with adversity—vs. shying away from it.
Therefore, it’s reasonable to believe that having enough confidence to take risks in the face of self-doubt will build your doggedness to continue applying yourself to that which you haven’t (yet) hit upon the right way to succeed.
Perseverance, also one of the more unheralded virtues, is what precipitates resilience. And if a mild to moderate amount of self-doubt encourages stick-to-itiveness, then you will be the beneficiary of that so-enviable trait as well.
© 2024 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.
