Self-doubt and lack of confidence: why they block your career change

At some point in your professional life, there was a moment where you simply did your work. Without the constant inner voice commenting on everything. Without your heart racing before meetings. Without the thoughts that keep you awake at three in the morning because you have a presentation in three days.

Now you sometimes wonder who you were back then. And whether you can ever be that person again.

Self-doubt can eat you up from the inside. It is usually the result of too much pressure, too little recognition, and a work environment that gradually fell out of balance. And it does not just block your professional self, it can make life genuinely hard.

What is really going on, where it comes from, and how you, even if you do not believe it right now, can rebuild trust in yourself: that is what this is about.

What self-doubt really does to you at work

Self-doubt creeps in.

At some point you hardly speak up in meetings anymore because you are afraid of not being able to answer a question. With new projects you say: Sure, I can do it, but really, you are absolutely terrified to take on this new project; you just want to show initiative. When you receive a compliment on your work, you quickly brush it off: "Oh, it was nothing, really." Or it feels genuinely uncomfortable, and you change the subject.

On the outside you look competent. Maybe you have even received praise. From your manager, from colleagues. And when you are recognised for good work, this dialogue starts up inside: Did they really mean that? Are they just being nice? And then the fear that you will be found out at some point. That everyone will realise you actually have no idea what you are doing. That you are not as competent as you seem.

You are in a meeting and you actually know the answer to a question. But you stay quiet. You keep looking at your notepad. Sometimes the tension gets so bad you slip out to the bathroom to breathe, to somehow get a grip. Tasks that you used to manage somehow now send you into a panic. And you doubt yourself more and more, your abilities, and trust yourself less and less.

It is genuinely exhausting. All that energy spent every day on appearing competent, when inside you do not feel that way at all.

Where does self-doubt actually come from?

You also know times when it was not like this.

You did your work without that constant inner nagging voice. Then there was more pressure at work. Everything had to happen faster, more efficiently. And at some point you were just feeling overwhelemd all the time. Trying to hide how stressed and anxious you were. Smiling, coming across as capable, while internally doubting yourself more and more.

Pressure without enough recognition or resources makes people start to distrust their own perception. And you start looking for proof that you are not good enough, observing everything you do and judging yourself. Then you convince yourself that you do not really belong there.

Then something quite paradoxical happens: the more afraid you are of making mistakes, the more likely they become. Not because you have gotten worse, but because the fear consumes the mental capacity you actually need for the work itself.

You picture yourself tanking the project. Losing your job. Never finding a new position again. Sometimes you really lose yourself in those thoughts.

Self-doubt has an origin. Usually it lies in situations where mistakes were judged disproportionately, in environments with little psychological safety, or in a workplace culture that became toxic over time. It is a reaction to circumstances, not a truth about your abilities.

And then there is this quiet wish to do something different. You have not been truly happy in your job for a long time. But you already have so many doubts, and you ask yourself: how could it possibly work to do something else when you currently feel like you cannot do anything at all?

And then you start comparing yourself to others.

Why comparing yourself to others sabotages your confidence

You open LinkedIn and suddenly everyone else seems to be building their career effortlessly. The former colleague just got promoted. A friend landed her dream job. And you are stuck, in a job that makes you unhappy, with the feeling that you are the only person for whom none of this is working out.

What we see of other people are the highlights. Not the effort. Not the sleepless nights. Not the
self-doubt hiding behind the perfect profile.

The social psychologist Leon Festinger described this back in the 1950s, the so-called Social Comparison Theory. We orient ourselves by comparing ourselves to others. This is deeply human. And in a world where we only see each other's best moments, this mechanism makes us even more unhappy.

What we do not see: the setbacks. The fear of not being good enough. The moments when others doubted themselves too. A lot of people carry this fear, but nobody really wants to admit it. Not on LinkedIn. Not at work. Basically nowhere.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. That sounds harsh when you are right in the middle of it. But there is something worth looking at: which comparisons are you giving space to right now? And whose story do you actually know?

Women tend to underestimate their own achievements more often, multiple studies on professional self-perception show this. Success is more frequently attributed to external factors: luck, good circumstances, help from others. This leads to projects being turned down because you do not feel good enough, or responsibility being avoided that you could have taken on long ago.

Comparing yourself to others is not a neutral look at reality. It is a filter. And usually a pretty merciless one.

Impostor syndrome: When success feels wrong

There is a term for the feeling of permanently fearing you will be exposed, despite having demonstrable competence: the impostor syndrome. And it often hits exactly the people who are doing the most.

The pattern is almost always the same. You deliver results, you receive praise, and internally you become suspicious. Did they really think that? Have they still not noticed that I am not actually that good at this? The idea that someone will eventually look behind the facade and see how things really are creates a constant underlying tension.

And so you stay in a job that makes you unhappy. Because you feel you are already not good enough where you are. How then could you possibly take a step into something new? New challenges mean new opportunities to be found out. So you stay. Even though you are unhappy.

Maybe you are wondering now: what do I actually do about self-doubt?

"Is That Really True?": The Work by Byron Katie

There is an approach that you might one to try. The Work by Byron Katie.

The basic principle sounds almost too simple. Byron Katie's premise is that we do not suffer from the things that happen to us, but from the thoughts we have about them. And she developed four questions to examine those thoughts.

First: Is it true? Second: Can you absolutely know that it is true? Third: How do you react, what happens inside you, when you believe that thought? And fourth: Who would you be without that thought?

Try it with a classic self-doubt sentence. For example: "I am not good enough for a new position."

Is it true? Maybe you say: yes, it feels that way. Fine. Then the second question: can you absolutely know that it is true? Now it gets interesting. Not really. You suspect it. You fear it. But know it, actually know it, you cannot.

What happens when you believe that thought? You do not apply. You stay. You invest energy in hiding, instead of trying.

And who would you be without that thought? Maybe someone who sends off an application. Has a conversation. Dares to try something.

This approach does not make your self-doubt disappear overnight. But it creates distance between you and your thoughts. And that distance is often the first real step.

There is no such thing as failure. Only experiences you haven't used yet

Maybe you are one of those people who never even starts because the fear of failing is bigger than the appetite for trying. You paint the worst-case scenario. Everything that could go wrong. How you embarrass yourself. How others will react.

But honestly: what does failure actually mean? You get a rejection and you struggle with it. Of course that hurts. And at the same time, there is something in it, information, an experience, a signal about where you can show your strengths even better next time. And because this one did not work out, the space stays open for something that might suit you far better.

Thomas Edison put it this way: he had not failed, he had simply found ten thousand ways that did not work. And Henry Ford added: failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently. Sounds like a motivational poster, I know. But there is something worth taking seriously here, namely that every experience, even the uncomfortable ones, moves you forward. That nothing is lost as long as you learn from it.

Perfectionism: The comfortable excuse not to leave your comfort zone

Let’s look at something that is closely connected to self-doubt: perfectionism.

The quiet reason why so many applications never get sent. Why projects sit in a drawer forever. Why you wait and wait and wait until everything is one hundred percent right. And then still do not act.

Because you tell yourself: it is not perfect yet.

What sounds reasonable at first can, on closer inspection, turn out to be a very convenient excuse. One you use to deceive yourself. It is somehow easier to say: "I need to go over the application one more time before I send it, it is not quite ready yet." Even if it is the twentieth time. Because that way you get to stay in your comfort zone. And keep tricking yourself.

That feeling of being truly ready usually never comes. You will never be perfectly prepared. And if you wait until you feel ready, you could be waiting a very long time.

"Better done than perfect" is therefore more than a slogan for your coffee mug. It can serve as genuine encouragement to get going, even when it does not feel one hundred percent right yet. To approach certain things with more lightness and a bit of humour. To just do it.

And if you are not familiar with the so-called 80-20 rule: with roughly twenty percent of the effort, you often achieve eighty percent of the result. Start. Make something visible. Get feedback. Adjust. The rest is fine-tuning, and that can come later.

How to recognise your strengths and start trusting yourself more

Often you do not see your own strengths because you take them for granted. Or because you are simply not aware of them. Or because your inner critic has been telling you for so long that it is not enough, that you have almost started to believe it.

If I were to ask you right now: name five things you feel you did not do well at work, how quickly would you come up with them? And if I asked: name five things you genuinely did well, what would come to mind? And more importantly, how quickly?

Most people with strong self-doubt have the first list ready immediately. The second is harder. Much harder than it should be.

What helps is collecting counter-evidence. Write down three things every day that you did well. Sounds simple. It is. And it makes a difference anyway. Look back at the end of the week at what you have achieved. And when you find yourself drifting deep into self-doubt again, you have something to look at. So that the next time doubt strikes, you can look at your "I actually did that pretty well" list.

A career change despite self-doubt: Why now is still the right time

You are stuck in a job that makes you unhappy. At the same time you feel you cannot switch, you are not even good enough for what you are doing now. So how could anything new possibly work out?

Yes, a career change is demanding. It brings uncertainty. But you do not need to have resolved every self-doubt before you start. Confidence does not grow in silence, it grows through action. Through small steps that show you that you are capable of more than your inner critic claims.

And when you give yourself permission to simply begin, even with the self-doubt still there, you can discover step by step what you are truly capable of. In a job where you can really use your talents and skills, those doubts will look very different one day.

So, what is next?

Anyone who genuinely wants to change something finds a way. Anyone who does not really want to change will find excuses. That might sound provocative, I know. So what exactly is holding you back right now, and which part of it have you perhaps been treating as truth for a while, when it is actually just a thought?

Self-doubt feels very real. I know. But it is just a thought. A pattern built from experience, from pressure, from exhaustion. And patterns can change.

If you feel you could use someone by your side to encourage and support you, feel free to book an introductory call. We can explore together whether we might walk part of this path alongside each other.