Second guessing yourself

[trees]

Hello everyone,
I'm wondering if you guys have any antidotes to second guessing yourself.
My biggest worry/issue is becoming stubborn and "stuck in my own world". Not so much because people will "judge" me, but because it's important to me that I'm effective in the world and responsive to changes to situations around me.
But at the same time, second-guessing yourself sucks. But I feel like it's not something you can do some of the times and not others; it's a habit that if you start, you will always do (as I can attest).

So my goal is to eliminate it, but I can't get myself to do it at the risk of becoming stubborn. How can I be open and flexible, while remaining decisive, sticking with my decisions, and avoiding second guessing myself?

Thanks.

[WisdomDome]

Firstly, any habit that you have CAN be broken with conscious effort and willpower, and second guessing-yourself is, as you said, a habit, due in large to lack of confidence or the fear of failure.

There's a big difference between second-guessing yourself and being stubborn, and if you're at one end it's not likely that you're going to end up on the other without realizing it.

The only remedy that I can suggest to second-guessing yourself is to build confidence, and the best way to do that is to make a choice and stick with it. If the choice turns out to be something that you didn't like, then you accept it and learn from it. If you're not making choices then you don't have the confidence to make a choice and see it to it's end. It's kind of like a catch-22, in order to become more confident with yourself and your choices you have to make choices and stick with them.

This depends largely on what you're constantly second-guessing yourself on.

Stop worrying about being stubborn, especially since it seems to be preventing you from overcoming a challenge that you want to overcome.

[RonSouther]

You are second guessing....why are you guessing at all? Because you're dealing with the unknown. Only one way to solve second guessing.....test your guesses! Get out there and live. Find out how good your guess was.

Probably all your guesses are wrong because your guesses are logic and life is not. Logic never encompasses all of life so you have to step out into the unknown, get experience, see what was missed, make corrections....thats called the learning curve.

Since everyone is judgmental of themselves, to guess wrong is a failure that the ego can't bear so the second guessing is exactly about ego. You want to guess right to feel good about yourself. We've been trained in culture that mistakes reflect on us instead of being a building block to higher intelligence.

Break the habit of second guessing by seeing that we only learn through mistakes. Get out there and make mistakes.

[Prinie]

What I do when I begin to second guess myself is I go do what I initially wanted to do. For example, if I feel like I want to go for a run but I start to feel like it's too cold to run today, I put on my work out clothes and go do it anyways. The worst that could happen is that I freeze.

Or if I want to go give my presentation to the class and I begin to feel nervous and second guess raising my hand to volunteer, I do it anyways and even ask to go first.

[trees]

Thanks for your responses everyone. I like everything that's been said....facing the possibly of making a mistake is difficult, but I realize it's inevitable for progress. I guess it's also about trusting yourself more.