How to Feel Sure of Yourself When Everything Feels Uncertain

18 Nov

How to Feel Sure of Yourself When Everything Feels Uncertain

by Kate Maxwell

“Changing our relationship with the unknown is how we start to become more sure of ourselves.”

When everything feels unpredictable, it’s easy to lose faith in your own judgment. Let's explore how to build self-trust in the face of the great unknown.

You’ll learn how to shift from self-doubt to quiet confidence, stop outsourcing your decisions, and trust that you can handle whatever comes next.

A gentle guide to feeling steady in the face of whatever is next.

SPOTIFY | APPLE

Timestamps

00:00 – Self-doubt shows up for us all

00:37 – What true self-trust really means

01:04 – The self-doubt cycle (and how to break it)

03:18 – The self-trust cycle: building quiet confidence

04:58 – Why taking ownership changes everything

06:31 – Redefining failure and learning through mistakes

07:29 – Practical ways to build self-trust

07:50 – Free workshop: How to Make Better Career Decisions

“When we outsource or we get stuck in inaction, we stagnate.”

Full Transcript

How to Build Self-Trust and Overcome Doubt

One of the first things that comes to light often with my clients is how much they doubt themselves. Part of our work is helping them to feel more certain and more sure of themselves. So this episode is for you if that’s also something that you are struggling with, and I hope it can shed a little bit of light on what might be going on and what you can do about it.

Feeling Unsure of Yourself

Do you ever feel like Bambi on ice? This is an image that often comes to my mind when I'm not feeling sure of myself, and I wonder if it’s something you can relate to. Feeling sure of yourself isn’t about never doubting or second-guessing, but rather coming to a place where you trust that you can handle whatever happens next.

Today, let’s talk about building that kind of quiet confidence and self-assurance.

The Two Cycles: Self-Doubt and Self-Trust

The two things I really want to dig into today are the self-doubt cycle and the self-trust cycle. I want to share these with you so you can start to notice which cycle you have a tendency to be in, and start making conscious choices to move from one to the other.

Both cycles start when we are met with an unknown. The example I often use is when we have to send an email that maybe we haven’t sent before. So maybe you are emailing someone very senior, or maybe you're giving some constructive feedback. Whatever it is, it’s something that is new to you, and you will be faced with this fear of the unknown, which is deeply human.

We are all afraid of the unknown—every single one of us. Changing our relationship with the unknown is how we start to become more sure of ourselves.

The Self-Doubt Cycle

The self-doubt cycle looks like this: we are confronted with an unknown. We’re afraid, and our immediate reaction is to doubt ourselves and our ability to contend with this unknown.

That doubt leads us to inaction—so that could be procrastination, avoidance, putting our head in the sand—or it could be outsourcing.

The modern version of outsourcing is ChatGPT.
“Yeah, I dunno how to do this,” and just outsourcing that to ChatGPT. Outsourcing the decision could look like constantly asking friends, family, your partner—“What do you think I should do?” Outsourcing your decision-making, outsourcing your learning. This comes from doubting ourselves.

And when we outsource or we get stuck in inaction, we stagnate.

So even if we do end up doing the thing—say we need to send that email, we get ChatGPT to write it, or we write it a hundred times and get everyone we know to proofread it—we are still stagnating because we did not learn how to do it for ourselves.

And the doubt increases because we’re not able to fully internalize any successes and move forward.

The Self-Trust Cycle

The cycle of trust also begins with this unknown. However, when faced with it, we trust that we can handle it—that we can learn what we need to learn in order to approach this thing, this newness—and we can take action from that place of trust.

So if it’s about a decision, we trust that we can make a decision for ourselves and take full responsibility and accountability for whatever happens afterwards, because we trust that we will be okay—that we will be okay if we fail.

If that email you send comes back and it’s kind of a shit show, you trust that you can fix it. You can bounce back from that, learn from it, and next time it will be different.

The Difference Between Doubt and Trust

The real difference between these two cycles is something about taking responsibility for yourself and taking full ownership of your successes and your failures.

When we don’t take action—when we outsource—we put that responsibility onto someone else. Especially with outsourcing, we are no longer responsible. That means if the thing goes well, we can’t fully own that success; it wasn’t entirely down to us. And that might feed imposter syndrome feelings too.

But if you are trusting yourself and it does go well, then that’s because you did that. You took action, you made a decision, and you can take full ownership over the success.

Obviously, this comes with the caveat that you’ve got to be okay with things messing up, and knowing that you can count on yourself.

“You can count on yourself to come back from it and to turn a failure into learning.”

You can count on yourself to turn that learning into growth, which increases your trust in yourself. So when the unknowns come around again, you know that you can be in this cycle.

Reflection: Where Are You in the Cycle?

What resonates here for you? What’s landing, what’s not?
What do you recognize in yourself?

Have a think about it:

Do you find that you are often in inaction out of fear and doubt?
Do you find you’re often outsourcing to others or to AI?
What are the types of tasks that you’re outsourcing?
What do you need to learn for yourself so that you can start to own that and grow with it?

Because we are always going to be a beginner, especially if something is new—therefore unknown. We’ve got to go through that uncomfortable process of learning, and part of learning is making mistakes and using those mistakes to improve.

A mistake does not condemn you for life. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure or that you’ll never succeed.

If you’re someone for whom failure feels really difficult—if you feel like a perfectionist—then failure might feel like a personal attack or an indictment of your worth. But that’s not what failure means.

“Failure means you are learning.”

Failure is an opportunity to learn, to keep growing, and to keep pushing yourself. The more you outsource or avoid, the less evidence you’ll have that you are capable.

So to feel more sure of yourself, start putting yourself out there, taking ownership of those new things and actions you’re taking—so that whatever happens, you can grow from it. Whether it’s a success or a failure, you’re going to be okay. You are on the path to your success.

Practical Tools to Build Self-Trust

In practical terms, you can start to keep a win log or a flex chest—I’ve heard them called all sorts of things.

It’s just a bank of proof that you can overcome failure and that you can succeed when you take accountability and full ownership. You can come back to that record and see that, yes, you’re capable, you can trust yourself, and therefore you can build this sense of certainty and self-assurance over time.

Next Step: Strengthen Your Decision-Making Confidence

That was a lot of information in a really short period of time!

If you want to dive deeper into decision-making, grab my free 18-minute workshop:
How to Make Better Career Decisions

Inside, you’ll discover:

Why you struggle to make career decisions
The hidden barriers that keep you stuck
A clear 3-step method for confident decision-making

You can watch it on YouTube or listen to it on your favourite podcast player. It’s short, visual, and designed for all learning styles—with a full transcript if you’d rather read.

I loved making it—honestly, I think it’s an absolute banger.

I believe in you. I’m in your corner. You’ve got this.

Next week, we’ll talk about what to do when you feel trapped in life and work.

See you then.

* This blog post was co-created with AI, using my transcript. My aim is for the blog to be as verbatim as possible, so you’re in contact with me not the robots! Using AI means the blog can exist in the first place so it’s a use that works for me right now!

Any thoughts, let me know!