How many times have you doubted yourself in your lifetime?  In the last decade?  The last year?  Yesterday? The last hour?

If you’re like me, it’s probably A LOT.  

For many years, I let other people’s opinions, thoughts, and feelings about me or what I should (or shouldn’t be doing) direct my actions, thoughts, and feelings.  I questioned everything I was doing.  I needed too many people’s opinions or suggestions before I could make a decision.  In fact, there have been more times than I can count where my need for others’ opinions caused an argument between my husband and I.  On many occasions, I would think I should take a certain action, discuss it with my husband, not trust myself, ask my father his thoughts, and then agree with him.  So many times, it wasn’t until I got my father’s “approval” that I would act.  Even though what I wanted to do and what my husband suggested were the same.  It still took someone else to tell me what to do before I made my decision.  I told my husband that it was because I needed to get several opinions before making my decision.

But the truth is, and it’s taken me a long time and self-reflection to figure it out, I didn’t trust myself to decide what was best for me.  In other words, I let my own self-doubt stop me from doing what I knew I was the best choice for me.  (It was not, as my husband assumed, my lack of agreeing with or trusting him.)  Rather, I needed more to collect more data before making a decision.

And the irony is this:

Every time I chose not to listen to my intuition or gut, it was a mistake.  Sometimes, the ramifications of not trusting myself ended up being pretty disastrous.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about why I have lacked the confidence and trust in myself only to discover that there are more reasons than I can count.  Some are personal to me, my upbringing, those around me, life circumstances, etc.  But others are societal – the treatment of girls and women in general.

Think about it.  How many times in our lives as girls have we been told that women and girls are the weaker sex?  That we make decisions based on emotions and not facts?  Need I go on?  

The funny thing is that the concept of “female intuition” is strong.  We hear it all the time.  AND, for me, trusting my intuition as a mom has been strong.  Each time my girls were struggling with health issues, I never gave up until we finally got an answer – even when there were doctors who couldn’t give us any.  I just KNEW in my GUT there was something more going on.  And I was right.

But when it comes to other areas of my life, I’ve spent so much time questioning and doubting myself.  

Aside from the societal influences that women in general face, I have really looked at my circumstances and life.  I have begun to see patterns.

Was I given enough opportunities to learn to trust myself and my decisions?  Were my decisions questioned?  Did the decisions I made lead to “bad” consequences?  

In reflection, I’m not sure that I can answer these questions definitively.  I probably had too much guidance along the way so that I didn’t learn to trust myself.  I have had my decisions questioned.  That said, I don’t think the decisions I made were “bad” ones.

I also believe that in my life I have listened to people too much and allowed them to affect my beliefs about myself.  This comes in the form of people close to me as well as those not so close- both in my younger days and as a young professional.  People who meant well but whose opinions and comments were not always positive or kind, whether intentional or otherwise.  Do I think those people had nefarious motives?  Most – no, of course not.  There are always those few people who don’t want you to succeed or who allow their own issues to get in the way of their being supportive of others.

But as I am reaching the next phase of my life, and raising my daughters, I have really started to take notice.  As I am working on my own transformation, I find those moments of self-doubt that I thought I had knocked to the side, aren’t as quieted as I thought.  Especially, when I allow the voices of others to be magnified.  Especially, when others are judging and questioning my actions or who I am at my core.

I want to make sure that I am raising my girls to be strong and to believe in themselves.  I want to make sure that they don’t experience the self-doubt that I still find myself experiencing in my 40s.

And I see it in them.  When my oldest looks around and questions her acting ability.  I see it.  When my middle daughter is constantly “failing” her tests or assignments and strongly believes it but actually receives an A. I see it.  When my youngest daughter says she’s dumb (and means it) even though her grades and IQ test say otherwise.  I see it.

I question whether my husband and I have contributed to this self-doubt and lack of confidence on these matters.  I am sure we have played a role however unintentional – and it is something I am striving to fix.  BUT I also know that some of this self-doubt comes from their interpretations of their experiences, the stories they tell themselves as well as their own internal pressures.  I can’t help but wonder, too, especially on the academic side, if these are things they have learned and taken in from society’s assessments of them as girls.

There are other things, like my middle daughter’s lack of confidence in her field hockey skills, that come directly from people she has interacted with while playing.  Like the coach who constantly pulled her out of games and made negative comments to her but allowed other players making the same mistakes or doing the same things to continue playing.  The worst part of such conduct is that her interest in playing something she once enjoyed has decreased.

Many times, we don’t see how our actions and reactions affect those around us, especially those directly involved.  

How can we help our daughters, and ourselves, learn to trust intuition and become more confident in who we are and the decisions we make?

It’s not easy and it takes effort.  It requires each of us to constantly fight the voices in our heads, and of those around us, who are telling us that we aren’t good enough.  

For me, it requires a reminder to myself to remember that I am a work in progress.  It requires me to remember that other people’s feelings and thoughts about me are exactly that – their thoughts and feelings, that they are not living my life, and they are likely battling their own self-doubt and lack of confidence. It also requires me to surround myself with people who are positive and supportive. 

As for my girls, I need to make sure that I am building them up and supporting their ability to make decisions on their own.  I will encourage them to look at their interpretations of situations from another point of view and encourage them to recognize that they are seeing the world through only their lens and that their interpretation may be true to them, it may not be the Truth.

I know that my struggle with self-doubt is going to be a constant battle but I also know that as I increase the volume on my intuition and positive thoughts and turn down the negative voices, that voice of self-doubt becomes quieter and my confidence grows.  

And the more I practice this, the more unstoppable I will become.