By Megan Buning
(February 16, 2023)

Self-doubt can create havoc on your performance. People everywhere find themselves doubting or lacking confidence in their ability to perform a task. Take a moment to reflect on the past three days in your life. How often have you questioned yourself on if you should be the one doing a specific task or receiving recognition? How often have you witnessed someone else struggling with similar thoughts about themselves? Doubt is everywhere. Even if just a fleeting thought, self-doubt can influence performance on any task to varying degrees. Ultimately, self-doubt is a challenge to your self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is your belief in your own ability to perform a task (or do the job) (Bandura, 1977). Confidence is a part of the equation. Confidence describes the strength of belief but does not focus on the person’s belief in their own ability (Bandura et al., 1999; Harris, 2023). Just to clarify, you can be extremely confident (or not) that a new play you have been working on will stop the defense of your next opponent. That is different than holding a high (or low) belief in your ability to call appropriate plays during the next game (self-efficacy). When we experience self-doubt, we are experiencing low beliefs in our ability to perform or do the task.

What is Doubt?

The first step in dealing with doubt is to recognize it for what it is. When you have a thought of self-doubt, often what is happening is you are being challenged. Doubt can be a byproduct of a defense mechanism (e.g., fear) (Doorn et al., 2021; Tartakovsky, 2014). Let us think about the fear response for a moment. One of your brain’s natural protection mechanisms is the feeling of fear (Northwestern Medical, 2020). Think about what happens when you experience fear. Often, you are in a situation where you could legitimately be physically, mentally, or emotionally injured (e.g., heights, car accidents, followed in a dark alley), and the situation is either completely new to you or a replication of a previous negative experience. Think about physically and mentally what you may feel. You may feel your heart rate or blood pressure rise. Your stomach may get uneasy or extremely uncomfortable. You may have a heightened sense of awareness. You may be telling yourself to get away from the situation. Now think about what you want to do during that moment of fear. You may freeze/stop what you are doing, you may turn around and go the other way, or you may fight physically or move into action. All these responses are your brain’s way of alerting you that you may be in danger and to be aware. Self-doubt can work similarly and to varying degrees as a defense.

In situations where you experience self-doubt, you may be in a situation that is new to you, is a challenge to you because it will push you beyond your typical skill set, or is a replication of a situation where you were not successful before. Again, think about what your body experiences in those moments. Perhaps you feel uncomfortable, your heart rate quickens, your stomach flips, or feels uneasy. Think about what actions you want to take in those moments. Maybe you want to quit or put off doing that task. All these responses are your brain’s way of telling you that the task/situation is new to you, is difficult, or is something you have failed at before (and felt poorly). Your brain is engaging in a defense mechanism similar to the fear response to protect you from feeling uncomfortable in those moments.

What Happens When You Feed Doubt?

Feeding an emotion or thought is when you continue to give attention, energy, and value to the emotion or thought. Essentially, you allow yourself to get caught in a negative thought pattern which could lead to cognitive distortion (Harvard University, n.d.; Sage Neuroscience Center, 2021). A cognitive distortion is a term mental health professionals use to describe a variety of thought patterns that present an often-skewed sense of a person’s reality about a situation. For example, if your team loses one game (or even a series of games), you may question if you are a good coach. When you have that thought connected with that team result, you are essentially basing your knowledge and ability to coach on the combined outcome of athletes and staff. When you think about all the factors that contribute to a team win, does it make sense to assess your ability to coach as a whole on a few team losses? The outcome may trigger self-reflection and assessment (all good practices), but it is not reasonable for you to base your ability to coach on that outcome; hence, your thought may be a distortion. Patterns of thought (particularly distorted thinking) can develop when you continue a line of thought. Using the example provided, here is how you can feed that self-doubting thought:

• You have the initial thought coupled with a second similar thought: The team lost. “Am I the issue? Am I not as good of a coach as I thought I was?”
• You follow it with another thought: “Am I even good enough to be coaching at this level? The team has lost 3 games in a row.”
• Again, you continue the thought coupled with emotions (e.g., embarrassment, disappointment, sadness, irritation): “What if the team/staff think I don’t know what I am doing? Do I know what I’m doing?” The pattern continues for various lengths of time.

Notice the feeding of self-doubt with stacking thoughts and emotions. If you think of a time when you have experienced self-doubt (or witnessed it in others), how long did it take you to “get over” the doubt? The amount of time varies depending on the coping skills you use to help you change this pattern (or break the loop). When you are focused on the thoughts and emotions attached to this pattern of thinking, you are not able to focus sufficiently on what you need to do to perform the task. The “feeding” process can consume you to the point where you cannot function within that performance/task. One way doubt is fed is through making inaccurate assumptions about yourself, others, your or others’ performance, and/or your or others’ situation.

Do You Know What They Say About Assumptions?

Some dictionaries define an assumption as “something you accept as true without proof” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2023). When you read this dictionary definition, you may think making assumptions should be avoided, yet people make assumptions every day. Your next thought may wonder why we make assumptions at all. Assumptions are your brain’s way of working efficiently to help you arrive at a conclusion about a situation. Your brain likes to work quickly and use the least number of resources it can to find a solution (Han, 2010). Assumptions may seem useful in sport especially when you must make quick decisions. For example, you make an assumption when you need to make a defensive shift for the next play. Based on your knowledge and offensive positioning, you assume what may happen in the next play. In quick situations, assumptions seem useful if you make the correct one or can quickly adjust from an incorrect assumption. However, often, assumptions can be damaging. Think of an assumption as an ill-informed guess.

If you make a correct assumption about what the offense will do, you may start to draw conclusions about that offense, your defense, or yourself. For example, you may conclude your defensive shift will be successful against that offensive approach every time. You may then develop beliefs about your defensive shift or knowledge, or the offensive approach based on your conclusions. You believe that the offensive approach is useless and easy to defend, or your defensive approach will work every time without fail. This way of thinking could lead to overconfidence. What happens if your assumption is incorrect, and the defensive shift fails? You may then draw a conclusion that you do not know the game like you thought you did and form the belief that you are an imposter in the game, or you will fail to make the correct call on the next opportunity (which could lead to a fear of failure).

One issue with assumptions is people rarely go back and look for evidence to confirm or challenge the assumption. People may even find they use irrelevant or incorrect evidence to support their assumptions. Using the defensive shift example again, when you assume at the moment that the shift will be successful, regardless of if the shift works or not, you do not go back and look for evidence that the shift could work or would repeatedly fail (or be less successful). You proceed to draw conclusions and formulate beliefs on a thought you assumed would be true without ever confirming it is true (Adams, 2018). Making assumptions and then drawing conclusions without checking that assumption is called “jumping to conclusions.” Another way assumptions become issues is when you attach judgment to your assumption. For example, your defensive assumption was not successful, you noticed the athletes look frustrated, and your staff is staring at you, so now you experience self-doubt with the thought of “I am not a good play caller.” Or “I don’t know the game.” The judgment directly feeds the self-doubt which can impact your performance negatively and noticeably (Marcus, 2017).

How Can you Combat Doubt Through Inference?

Unlike an assumption (an uneducated guess), an inference is when you use evidence and reasoning to come to a conclusion (an educated guess) (Vocabularly.com, n.d.b). Argyris (1982) developed the Ladder of Inference which provides a useful visual of how we can make decisions and arrive at our conclusions through inference versus assumptions. Let us examine how the ladder can work for you to battle self-doubting assumptions. Per our example, you have formed thoughts (based on your assumptions) that you are not a good coach, or you do not know what you are doing in that situation.

Starting the Climb: Experiencing and Observing

Let us begin with making an assumption first then compare that outcome on self-doubt to making an inference. Continuing our failed defensive shift decision example, to start, you experienced the situation, and you made observations about what happened around you, to you, and with others. You observed your athletes, the field/court of play, the opponents, and the opposing coaches. When your defensive shift decision failed, you observed your athletes looking around at each other, your staff members exchanging looks, your fans silent, and your bench going quiet.

Ramping Up: Selective Evidence and Applied Meaning

When you select evidence to support your assumption (feed doubt), you then add meaning to the evidence you selected. The meaning you add is based on your cultural and personal experience which essentially is applying a bias to the evidence. If you assume you are not a good coach or you do not know what you are doing, then the evidence you selected perhaps includes how long your athletes stare at each other after the failure. The meaning you apply could be they are silently communicating that the failure was all your fault. The lingering looks and silence from the staff and bench must mean you do not know what you are doing, and they do not really like you because they are not offering support. The silent fans mean even they know that was a bad call and you are not fit to be the coach.

Running up the Ladder: Assumptions, Conclusions, Beliefs, and Actions

We have already established your assumptions (you are not a good coach, etc.) and your assumptions (self-doubt) are fueled by the selected (biased) evidence you used to make this assumption. Once you have made this assumption, you draw conclusions about yourself, others, and the situation. You may conclude (for example) that you really do not enjoy the sport/coaching and need to quit, or do not like your staff because they did not support you. Your conclusions form your beliefs about everything surrounding this situation. Because of your conclusions, you may begin to believe that you are not good enough to coach at that level. In future decisions/situations, these beliefs, your beliefs, will dictate which evidence you select in the future. Ultimately, what you believe about yourself, the situation, and/or others determine how you will act. So, if you do not believe you can coach at this level then you will continue to select evidence of your failures in coaching and may act like you do not know what you are doing (e.g., low confidence in decision-making, low belief in your ability, fear of failure, etc.).

Stopping the Assumption Loop with Inference

Now let us approach your self-doubt using the power of inference (educating your thoughts). Your brain is made to think. You will always have all types of thoughts and many of them may be negative (see Vaish eta al., 2008 on negativity bias). There will be times you will have self-doubting thoughts, so the discussion is now about how to avoid allowing those thoughts to form assumptions. Here are some questions and actions that will help you infer versus assume.

• Action: Become aware. Realize your thought is self-doubt. You are questioning your ability to perform the task and your brain is telling you this is a [new, different, challenging, bad memory about the] situation.
• Ask: Are you assuming this about yourself? What evidence are you using to support this thought/assumption? What is the root cause of why you are doubting your ability? Do you need that hesitation (protection) for that situation/moment?
• Action: Scan through your evidence to see if you are only selecting evidence to support your assumption/thought.
• Ask: What evidence are you missing (not considering)? Does that evidence further support, refute, or disclaim your assumption? How so? Remember to include past experiences, hard data, and others’ observations.
• Action: Explore all available evidence (including past experiences) to test your assumption. Eliminate evidence you selected that is not directly relevant to your assumption/thought. Challenge your assumption with this new evidence before you make inferences about yourself.
• Ask: How has your thought about yourself changed if at all?
• Action: Perform a quick risk assessment. Assess: What is the worst outcome that could happen if you perform the task? What is the worst that could happen if you do not? Which risk are you more willing to take? Finally, take action either way and move through the thought/emotion and put your focus on what you need to do next. Failure to act, or shift focus to the next steps, feeds your doubt.

After, engage in reflective thinking where you get to know your reasoning and understanding of your thinking (Australian Catholic University, 2013; Ross, 1994). It is relevant to note that through this process, you may find your original assumption is supported although with self-doubt you most likely will find the doubt in yourself is not firmly rooted in relevant evidence. Lastly, using inference to battle self-doubt is one example of how to challenge thinking, but this process can be valuable for better decision-making skills, conflict resolution, and mindset work.

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References

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Argyris, C. (1982). The executive mind and double-loop learning. Organizational Dynamics, 11(2), 5-22.

Australian Catholic University. (2013). What is reflective thinking? Retrieved from https://leocontent.acu.edu.au/file/fa99d4d9-917d-4bd1-955b-15af9ab5506f/19/GA4_reflective-PRINT.pdf

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Vaish, A., Grossmann, T., & Woodward, A. (2008). Not all emotions are created equal: the negativity bias in social-emotional development. Psychological bulletin, 134(3), 383–403. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.383

Vocabulary.com. (n.d.b). Inference. Retrieved from https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/inference