Tales of a coffee-holic: To be fallible

We could all use a good dose of self doubt from time to time.

Of course it’s great to be confidant, aware of your own strengths and to have faith in your abilities to accomplish difficult tasks and to do well or even excel at your job. But overconfidence can not only put off those around you, but can make you careless in your work. A healthy amount of self doubt make us double check what we’ve done, spend a little more time on tasks and to worry a bit if we’ve done as well as we could have.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Overconfidence can make a person careless. Self doubt might motivate use to work a little harder than we might if we weren’t slightly concerned with our own abilities.

Self doubt also means you’re aware that no one person is good at everything. Everyone has weaknesses and doubting your abilities in some areas simply means you know yourself well enough to admit that while you’re a great designer or manager you might not be equipped to fix your own plumbing or to add a deck onto your home all by yourself. Self doubt in this case could lead you to avoid the necessity to swim across your kitchen to find the phone to call a licensed plumber or the need to explain to your neighbors that your deck—too uneven to sit on—was actually meant to be an abstract art installment.

I’m sure we all carry regrets from our teenage years. Although some of us can remember feeling almost nothing but self doubt during those year, these feelings for me anyway were often broken up by times that I felt that I was infallible. If some teenagers had just a little more self doubt, or maybe doubt about the right things, they might avoid embarrassing duck face selfies, a face tattoo bearing the name of a high school sweetheart or those years in prison for the belief that stealing a pizza delivery car wasn’t that big of a deal.

In many areas of our lives acting like we’re the best and that we know everything probably won’t benefit us much, even if we are. Talking down to people isn’t the way to make friends, extolling your virtues to those you meet won’t persuade them to believe it.

The only way to let people know you’re the best at what you do is to prove it by doing it. The only way to convince people that you’re a good person, is to exhibit traits that confirm it.

As long as it doesn’t overwhelm you, self doubt can help you excel at your job and maybe make you a better, more likable person.