How to Trust Your Own Instincts: Practical Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt

For much of my life, I had a hard time trusting my own decisions.

I would have an instinct about something, but instead of trusting it, I would start asking other people what they thought.

“What would you do?”

“Do you think I’m making the right decision?”

“Am I looking at this the right way?”

The more important the decision, the harder it was.

And even after getting someone else’s opinion, I wasn’t necessarily any clearer. Sometimes I just had more information to analyze.

I still catch myself doing this today.

For years, I thought I was simply someone who overthought things. But as I’ve come to understand myself better, I see it differently.

The overthinking wasn’t really the problem . . . I didn’t trust myself.

Looking back, I can connect some dots that I couldn’t see when I was younger. I grew up with a lot of criticism. I learned to question whether I was doing things the right way, and making a mistake felt like a very big deal.

So of course I looked to other people for reassurance.

If someone else agreed with me, maybe I could trust my decision. If they didn’t, perhaps I had better rethink it.

What I didn’t understand at the time was how much of my own worth had become tangled up in being right and getting things right.

A mistake wasn’t always just a mistake. Somewhere underneath it could feel like evidence that maybe I wasn’t capable enough, smart enough or good enough.

When you look at it from that perspective, all that overthinking starts to make a little more sense.

And this is something I see so often.

We focus on the thing we’re doing—overthinking, second-guessing ourselves, asking everyone else’s opinion, and deciding that’s what we need to fix.

But what if we went underneath it?

Why don’t I trust my own answer?

Why does making the wrong decision feel so uncomfortable?

What am I afraid it might say about me?

Those questions can take us somewhere very different.

This isn’t about blaming our parents or spending our lives looking backwards. It’s about understanding how we learned to see ourselves and recognizing when those old beliefs are still influencing our choices today.

For me, understanding where my lack of self-trust came from didn’t suddenly turn me into someone who never second-guesses herself.

But now I can recognize it.

I can catch myself asking for opinions and stop to wonder: Do I genuinely need another perspective, or am I looking for someone else to tell me that my decision is okay?

There is a big difference.

Self-trust doesn’t mean believing you’re always right. It doesn’t mean ignoring good advice or never asking for help.

It means trusting that your voice belongs in the conversation too.

And perhaps even more importantly, it means knowing that if you do make the wrong decision, you will be okay.

You can change direction. You can learn. You can make another choice.

Understanding ourselves doesn’t give us certainty, but it can help us see what’s been getting in the way.

And sometimes, once we can finally see it, we can begin to choose differently.

Patricia Carr is an Ottawa-based mindset coach who helps people connect the dots underneath the challenges they’re facing, so they can better understand themselves and make different choices. patriciamindsetcoach.ca

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