Doubt vs Confidence: What I’ve Learned From Going After What I Want

Recently I shared that I haven’t been confident about my own writing, and I also talked about a new coaching offer I’m working on. It might have come across as if I was seeking sympathy. I wasn’t.

Today I want to talk about opposites. Confidence is the opposite of doubt. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that doubt is the absence of confidence, and courage is what builds confidence back up.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Along with wanting to be a doctor, I never wanted anything more. As a child, I would always answer that I wanted to be a doctor, but as a preteen, my answer started to change. It went from medicine to writing.

When I was little, my father and I would take fairytales and create our own versions. My favorite was our take on Red Riding Hood, the grandmother and the wolf, and the silly situations we created for them. It made sense that I would love storytelling as I got older. And I did.

But when I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I answered, “I want to be a writer,” I was told, “Pick something else. Writers make nothing and you will starve.” That one sentence planted a seed of doubt I’ve been wrestling with ever since.

This experience isn’t unique to me. So many writers have heard some version of this discouraging message, and it shapes how we show up to our craft. Doubt changes everything. When it takes hold, imagination wanders. It stops making an effort to appear. You might get little glimpses, a story snippet, a line of dialogue, once even a whole dream about the story you want to write. But every time you sit down and type “Chapter One,” your brain screeches to a halt. The ideas vanish, replaced by the old voice that says, You’ll never make it. That’s what doubt does, it doesn’t just steal your confidence, it convinces you not to even try.

This is the writer’s version of impostor syndrome, and if you’ve ever battled it, you know exactly how this feels. You start with hope, then doubt creeps in, and before you know it, your confidence is gone.

For me, it starts with this idea that I’m not a good writer, or that no one will want to read what I write. I know I can write. I’ve done it before, essays for school, my thesis, stories for creative writing classes in college, even this blog. My truth, I haven’t given up. Every day I write I work on my courage, because courage is what quiets the doubt long enough for confidence to grow again.

My relationship with doubt goes back further than just writing. I wasn’t a great student. In fact, I almost didn’t graduate high school. I actually failed my math class, and if it hadn’t been for my teacher telling me he’d pass me if I promised to never go into a profession that required math, I probably would have had to repeat my senior year.

In my first college experience, I hated every single time I had to set foot on campus. I hated my classes. Every day I would know deep in my bones that I wasn’t a good student (that was my doubt talking by the way). The truth is, doubt was making me unhappy. I was going through the motions. I was there physically, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was living with doubt in everything I did.

Looking back, I can see that this pattern of doubt affecting every area of life is common for people who haven’t found their true path yet. We go through the motions in school, in jobs, in relationships, waiting for something to wake us up. But unless you are actively working on overcoming your doubt, you will stagnate, and one day life will remind you that you are supposed to live, not just coast through life.

Life has a way of forcing that clarity when you need it most. Sometimes it takes a major shift to see that you’re wasting your potential, that you’re letting doubt make your choices for you. For me, it was losing my sight. That experience woke me up to the reality that I was coasting rather than living.

That’s when I realized something important, courage isn’t the absence of fear or doubt. It’s deciding to act even when they’re screaming in your ear. And every time you choose courage, you give confidence a chance to come back. Because the truth is that it takes courage to go after what you want. The more you do it, the more confidence you stack back in.

Even now, as someone who’s walked this path from doubt to action, I still sometimes come across something that will stump my confidence and allow doubt to creep back in. But I’ve learned to do one thing to keep from sliding back to that fearful place where I wasn’t happy.

I make a list of all the things I have accomplished, even the ones that I was really doubtful about. The first thing that goes into that list? Writing my thesis. The list varies from there, some days it will contain my college graduation, other days overcoming personal challenges. Today, it’s writing this post.

This practice of acknowledging our accomplishments is something every person battling doubt can use. Because here’s what I believe, if you are capable of dreaming, you are capable of achieving those dreams. Not everyone has a blueprint to guide them toward making those dreams real. But you don’t need a blueprint. You need someone in your corner when the doubt gets loud. Someone to help you push through the block, shape your ideas, and keep you connected to the vision in your head. That’s what courage looks like in action, and courage is what gets you back to confidence.

As part of my life coaching course, I’ve been learning about conditioned beliefs. These are the automatic patterns of thinking and reacting that we’ve developed from our childhood upbringing and society around us. By the time we reach adulthood, we’ve all developed belief systems shaped by those around us. Research shows that about 45 percent of our everyday behaviors are repeated behaviors that happen almost automatically, meaning nearly half our day we’re running on autopilot based on our conditioning.

Here’s the thing about doubt, it’s often a conditioned belief. That voice telling writers they’ll starve? That’s conditioning from a society that doesn’t value creative work. The fear of typing “Chapter One”? That’s learned helplessness from years of being told our dreams aren’t practical. We’ve been conditioned to react to creative challenges with doubt instead of excitement.

The good news is that conditioned responses don’t define our future. First, we have to develop awareness that we’re simply reacting to our programming. Then we need to expose ourselves to possibilities that interrupt that conditioned response. Finally, we can replace our automatic reaction with the response we actually want.

One of the things I want to do as a coach is to help writers rewrite those conditioned beliefs. Help them understand deep in their bones that they can do it. They can write. They can create wonderful stories. They can imagine fantastical worlds. And they can hope again. Because I’ll be here, cheering them on, and helping them go after what they want.

The Hard Truths for Writers blog is morphing into a bigger blog that encompasses more than just writing tips. It’s taking a holistic approach to writing that includes the writer and their mindset. While I’ll still post craft writing tips, I’ll also talk about more than the process of writing.

I hope you keep reading. Exciting things are coming.