How to Stop Second Guessing Yourself at Work

"How do I stop second-guessing myself?" my client, Sarah, asked.

Sarah was an accomplished executive. She had earned two PhDs and over the course of twenty years, she had worked her way up to director of business development at a luxury retail company.

Trusting your decision making skills is critical for leaders.

Source: Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

As a Sensitive Striver, Sarah was thoughtful, empathetic, and skilled at spotting opportunities others missed – a combination that made her a perfect fit to lead a team.

But Sarah operated under the false belief she had no idea what she was doing, she was overwhelmed with imposter syndrome.

Soon, her insecurity started to hold her back in other ways, especially when it came to decision-making. Sarah often found herself overthinking choices which stressed her out and slowed the team’s progress. She had trouble trusting her own judgment, and instead sought excessive amounts of outside approval before making a call.

Then after she would make a decision, she would find herself preoccupied with all the what-ifs. She would toss and turn at night and feel distracted during the day. Sarah was constantly second-guessing herself.

In other words, she couldn’t stop ruminating.

What is Rumination?

Ruminating is a type of overthinking that involves obsessing over the same thoughts. Typically these are “dead-end” thoughts that aren’t productive, positive, or useful. It’s as if your mind is a record, stuck on the same groove.

When you’re ruminating, you’re dwelling in the past. You analyze and replay situations over and over. You may rehash conversations, dissect people’s body language, and stress about what you did or didn’t say.

When it comes to decision-making, ruminating can look like:

• Beating yourself up for deciding too slowly
• Wondering if there were better options
• Replaying mistakes you made
• Worrying about other people’s reactions and judgments

Thinking about a decision can be helpful—especially if it leads to a resolution or provokes new solutions and insight. But rumination doesn’t do that. It simply causes distress and drains you of the mental and emotional energy you need to do your job effectively.

Why Rumination Affects Sensitive Strivers

Rumination to some extent is normal because we are hoping we’ll gain insight into a problem.

The problem arises when it becomes an ingrained mental habit with everyday decisions and begins to hold you back from your full potential.

As driven, deep thinkers, sensitive strivers pride themselves on being conscientious and thorough. When well balanced, their thoughtfulness can be a strength—contributing to above-average self-awareness and aiding in intuition and creativity.

However, when unbalanced, their thoughtfulness can become a hindrance, which is exactly what was happening for Sarah.

Sensitive strivers also tend to be perfectionists. So while they deliver high work quality, they are often extremely hard on themselves, which leads to rumination.

If this sounds like you, fear not! It’s entirely possible to rebalance your thoughtfulness. With new tools to channel your sensitivity and ambition, you can learn to regain your confidence and trust your judgment.

How to Stop Second-Guessing Yourself

Here’s a three-step process to end rumination that I coached Sarah through, which will also serve you.

1. Interrupt

Rumination operates on negative self-talk. These unhelpful thoughts can sound like:

• I’m such an idiot. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?
• This is all going to turn out to be a disaster!
• I bet everyone thinks I’m a failure.

Everyone’s inner critic is unique, so your brand of negative self-talk could sound different. Regardless, your first step remains the same, and that is to interrupt the unhelpful thoughts.

This works because rumination is like an automatic, knee-jerk reaction. It may be so automatic that you’re not even aware it happens. But interrupting the thoughts helps you build internal strength and command to be more in control of yourself.

You can interrupt your negative self-talk in a few ways, such as by silently saying, "Stop," or “This isn’t helpful,” or snapping a rubber band on your wrist. I also like to have my clients name their inner critic, so they can find the emotional distance from their inner critic.

2. Accept

Rumination and second-guessing yourself are characterized by wishing you or a situation were different or beating yourself up for all the woulda-coulda-shoulda's that exist in decision-making. In both cases, you are wasting valuable time and energy fighting against reality.

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A much more productive approach is radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is not the same as resignation or passivity. Rather it is about:

• Taking ownership and responsibility for yourself within a situation.
• Adjusting your perspective to willingly and realistically take in the facts, realizing you can’t change them even if you’d like to.
• Assertively moving forward without staying stuck in thoughts like “why me,” “this is unfair,” or “it wasn’t meant to be this way.”

Embrace radical acceptance by moving into the present instead of fighting it. Sarah did this by reminding herself “this is where I am now.”

3. Redirect

After you’ve interrupted and accepted reality, you can approach the final step in the process: redirecting your thinking.

By redirecting I mean channeling your depth of thought and intelligence more constructively. You can do this through self-coaching—asking yourself open-ended, growth-oriented questions that open up new possibilities.

Self-coaching questions include:

• How can I make the most of my circumstances?
• How might someone confident respond?
• How would I advise my closest colleague to approach this?
• What thought helps me feel energized and powerful?
• What’s the very best next step I need to take?

Keep in mind that you can’t attempt this process once and expect rumination to magically resolve. Changing any habit, especially a mental habit like second-guessing yourself, requires repetition and dedication.

But if you follow the steps above, soon you’ll experience greater success without so much stress.