A Journey From Self-Doubt to Self-Respect
By: Muhammad Amir Iqbal
Tags: Self Respect, Self Doubt, Confidence, Personal Development

As the old adage goes, “We all have two wolves inside us, fighting with each other. Who will win? The one we feed the most.”

Our daily choices are nothing but the food for either of the wolves living inside each of us. One wolf is “Self-Doubt” and other one is “Self-Respect”. As the rules goes, “We reap what we sow”, we all are sowing seeds through our choices. What we reap then? Food for either of the wolves.

Treat every single choice you make on a particular day as a seed and then figure out what are you planting? Food for self-doubt or food for self-respect.

You can search hundreds of short-cut solutions to deal with anxiety, stress, self-doubt and day-to-day frustration but none will work until you stop feeding the wolves inside you through your choices.

In this article, I will talk about seeds of self-doubt and seeds of self-respect so you can feed the right wolf.

Seeds of Self-Doubt

1. Trap of Instant Influencers

One sure way to feed the self-doubt in your life is to participate in the race of being an influencer. If you are racing to become an instant influencer, you must realize that what you really is doing is not “Influence” but you want to “Impress”.

In this age of social media, where we listen stories about famous social media influencers who are earning hundreds of dollars through their posts and videos, we too want to participate in that race. Many of us start a page or video channel with an aim to reach millions of followers as soon as we can to tap on monetary benefits.

What we forget is nobody is famous. They’re being made famous by brands and other companies.

As an average person, if you are trying to be part of “Instant influencer” race, you are heading towards self-doubt. Being part of a race is by definition is being part of some sort of competition. Competing with each other on fake things is nothing but sure way to gain more self-doubt.

Once you become part of what Common Toff called “Instagram Illusion”, you will go to any limit to sustain your social media image even you have to go through financial disaster. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Becoming influencer take time. It takes decades of work and practice and alignment of positive intent with massive action.

2. Filtered World of Social Media

We are living in a filtered world of social media. Want to get disappointed, frustrated and overwhelmed in just 10 seconds? Open your social media account and there you go.

I am not against social media. I am against the way we are using it.

We are treating social media a form of getting approval and platform where we measure ourselves with others.

Is there any shortcut to self-doubt? Yes there is. We call it “Social Media”. At the root of self-doubt lies the comparison and need for getting approval. Both are the hallmarks of social media platforms.

We all have days when we feel great and we feel momentum but all of sudden we log in to our social media feed and we find everybody else more beautiful, more intelligent, more entertaining and more rich. All of sudden momentum turns into doubt that we are not as beautiful as they are, we are not as wise as they are, and we are not as rich and hardworking as they are. In those moments of self-doubt, we forget the fact that we are comparing our real world with other person’s filtered world.

3. Culture of Fastness

We are witnessing the culture of fast . We have fast fashion, fast food, fast solutions, fast technologies, fast this and fast that.

We love fastness. Who wants to stop? Nobody. The ones who stop and wait and think are treated like old-modeled philosophers. We want to be hustlers.

This sense of fast everywhere are sowing the seed of self-doubts. We, as human beings, cannot catch up with the pace of this fast ever. We always feel short of money, short of beauty and short of wisdom when we compare ourselves to others. Problem begins when instead of slowing down and thinking we start pacing up to reach the levels where we can say “Yes, we beat that guy or girl”.

Remember, if you are on a wrong train, faster you travel, farthest you get to real destination. No matter how many stations you stop on, just because you are on a wrong train, every station you reach is the wrong station.

Fueled by our constant visibility on social media, it is becoming normal for lots of people to become the followers of trends quite fast. Just in order to be part of the fast trend, we try to reach out to anything faster and before anyone else reach there.

What all of this doing to us? It is just feeding the self-doubt in us. Day after day, more you become part of this fast culture, more you will find doubting yourself.

4. Micro-Trends of Wellness

Wellness is $4.2 Trillion Industry worldwide with mind-boggling rate of growth. There are hundreds and thousands of micro-trends of wellness going on right now. We have ultimate coffees and drugs and meditations and mindfulnesses and massages and furnitures and exercises and gyms and yogas and therapies and oils and shampoos and creams and treatments and lifestyles. In short, we millions of things available for one simple basic need: to feel significant.

Inside all of us, we want to feel secure and significant. We want to be respected. Wellness industry is dwelling on this basic human need. They are providing all sort of quick solutions to fix our inner problems. And guess what? We are following those micro-trends.

Millions of people buy online everything they can to showcase themselves as significant person. But still millions of people are feeling anxiety and self-doubt too. More we search for wellness, more anxious we feel, more self-doubt we will have.

5. Dings and Rings of So-Called Emergencies

One last see of self-doubt is our amazing ability to create daily so-called emergencies. Look around you and you will find people running here and there like world will shatter tomorrow and they have do everything now.

Everybody have packed daily To-Do lists. Bosses are saying deadlines are important, families are asking to attend home affairs as quickly as you can, marketing and media is showing you limited time offers to get benefit of, and in between all of these, you have hundreds of reminders of your own inner creative voice and calling.

As I said, we are living in a culture of fast and social media influencers and filtered world. There is lots of data. To gain attention of someone, we need to put scarcity on our offer and message. That scarcity and deadline will catch us attention of others. That sense of emergency, earn us the most important resource of this century: Eyeballs.

What all of this doing to us? It is making us anxious and mad. It is making us feel that we don’t have enough time. It is making us feel that we need to do everything NOW. It is feeding our inner self-doubt.

Seeds of Self-Respect

Want to feed your self-respect? Here are the 5 things you can do daily:

1. Start Measuring your life with “Amount of Work You Do” instead of “Number of Followers You Have”

Instead of measuring yourself with followers, you need to measure yourself with the amount of work you do daily. I am not saying that you need to work 24 hours a day. What I am saying is that if you want to measure your last one year, don’t ask: “How many followers I earn this year?”. Instead ask, “How much my portfolio of work grow and how many projects I completed this year?”

There is no remedy to heal the self-respect than doing the work you love to do. If you want to be a writer, don’t measure yourself with the number of blog readers you gain this year but measure yourself with the amount of writing you do this year. If you are photographer, don’t measure through number of likes and shares on your photos but numbers of photos you capture this year.

Building strong portfolio of work year after year will definitely earn you the reward and fame. You just need to stop focusing on reward too much and start focusing on today’s work.

2. Build “Character” not “Social Media Profile”

Again, I am not against social media. I am against the way we are using it.

Want to have self-respect? Work on your character not on social media profile.

Once you start working on character, you will accept your weaknesses and flaws. You will accept yourself as it is. You will start focusing on nourishing long-term virtues like patience, passion, courage, kindness instead of short-term virtues like being looking good, earning compliments and approvals from others, becoming competitor, and being fake.

You cannot build character in one day. You need to put hour after hour, day after day, year after year on this one big project. Start building it today and you will feel respected even nobody noticing you.

3. Practice Stillness

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Just for few weeks, cut off from your urge to become fast and plug in to practice of being better.

Have stillness instead of rush. Walk. Read. Sleep well. Spend time with family. Write in journal. Pray. Witness the nature around you. Give yourself much needed break. Stop consuming and start reflecting.

Stillness will offer you the insights and respect you are searching for amidst of fast . Stop pursing and start enjoying. Stop wishing and start thankfulness. Stop worrying and start believing.

4. Discomfort is the ultimate luxury

I am not against wellness. I am not against self-care. But I am against getting weaker and weaker just because you need quick solution everyday in every area. Through all kind of therapies and treatments and trendy gadgets, what are you hiding from? You are hiding from exposing yourself to discomfort. You love to stay in comfort.

Remember, discomfort is the ultimate form of luxury. How? A person who is comfortable with discomfort will never be worried about failure or losing something or rejection or insult or even have never self-doubt.

A person who train himself to be okay with discomfort can earn serious confidence on his ability that he can survive and thrive even in worst case scenarios. You need to build that capacity to earn self-respect. You need to stop hiding and start exposing yourself to bit discomfort.

Start challenging yourself daily and you will witness the level of amazing growth. Growth is much better than fake sense of certainty. Yes, growth involve fear and pain but by giving yourself temporary comfort can destroy your inner peace for lifetime.

Again, choice is all yours. Which wolf you want to feed?

5. Start pursuing Excellence not Achievement

When you pursue achievement, you try to do as much as you can to feel like you are busy and you are doing lots of work.

On contrary, when you start pursuing excellence, you only do what is needed to be done and you do not try to rush through tasks to get more done.

Sense of achievement always push us to do more in less time and get reward as quickly as we can.

Pursuing excellence is about building slow and steady mastery on the craft and it always focus on the long-term.

Want to come out of day-to-day emergencies? Stop treating everything on the To-List as most urgent and important task. Give priority to excellence instead of To-Do list.

Master your craft daily. Practice it daily. Get okay with boredom and frustration of slow progress. This is what earn you the much need self-respect.

Conclusion

At the end, it is all about your daily choices. What you want to feed daily? Self-Doubt or Self-Respect.

I deeply desire that this article help you to shift your approach and challenge you to earn the self-respect. I believe we all have one masterpiece to deliver to this world but our masterpiece is waiting to be delivered just after we earn the self-respect. Today is your chance.