How to Recognize and Overcome Insecurity in Your Work and Life

You're a boxer at the end of a late round in a big match. You're bloody, bruised, sweaty, and

sore. You've been fighting for so long, and you're exhausted.

two boxers fighting with lights in background

Your opponent, on the other hand, looks like he's still fresh out of the gate. When the bell rings, signaling the end of the round, he trots off to his corner and leans casually against the ropes, absently sipping water and eyeing you with an amused grin on his face.

You so want to beat that stupid grin from his lips. But in all honesty, you don't know if you have the strength to throw another punch. You get cleaned up by the medical personnel and are cleared to fight. The bell sounds again, and you drag your feet forward to meet your opponent once more.

But you have no fight left in you. After just a few seconds of feinting and dancing around, your opponent introduces his gloved fist to your sagging jaw for the umpteenth time and you hit the deck. Hard.

The referee kneels beside you and counts to ten. It's over. You're spent.

The match is called, and your opponent raises his arms into the air as you are carted away on a stretcher.

As you are wheeled out of the arena, you faintly hear the announcer shouting into the microphone: "Ladies and gentleman, your defending heavyweight champion of the world: Insecurity."

The crowd erupts in applause as you fade into unconsciousness, certain there's no way you will be able to step into the ring against that opponent ever again.

EMTs putting patient on stretcher into ambulance

The First Thing to Know about Insecurity

Insecurity is everywhere. I have it. You have it. And pretty much everyone you know has it too.

We all face some level of insecurity in our lives. It doesn't matter if you're a creative type, an athlete, a busy professional, or a mom/dad. If you're alive on the planet, doing something you may have never done before, there's a good chance you have felt like that defeated boxer at some point in your life.

The United Nations Development Program cites that six in seven people worldwide are plagued by insecurity, with a report saying that people's sense of safety and security is at a low in nearly every country. Even those populations with access to good healthcare, wealth, and education reported feeling greater anxiety than they did just a decade ago.

So understanding that almost everyone lives with some level of insecurity, how do we break down the issue and develop a manageable means toward mitigating its effects in our lives?

In this article, I'm going to share with you some ideas on how to recognize the traits of insecurity before unpacking ways you can begin to recognize those traits in your own life. Then, I'll go over steps you can take to mitigate the effects of insecurity in your life so that you never have to feel like that boxer ever again.

Let's begin by explaining the supervillain Insecurity's powers so that you might gain an understanding of how to spot him when he tries to attack you next.

Four Characteristics of Insecurity

1. Insecurity is good at changing form

One of the most devious traits about Insecurity is its ability to change shapes. One minute it attacks you in the form of a passive aggressive comment from a boss or coworker, the next it rises up from within you as you're looking in the mirror brushing your teeth before bed.

2. Insecurity comes at you from different angles

Imagine you're a running back in the NFL. Except instead of linemen and linebackers trying to chase you down, Insecurity is the one coming at you seeking to rub your face in the grass.

Insecurity can travel through time, rearing its head as a memory from some bygone day on which you failed miserably in public. Or it could hit you when you least expect it as you imagine some terrible outcome that hasn't even happened yet.

Just when you think you're prepared to receive a blow from one angle, Insecurity sidesteps you and whacks you from your blind side.

3. Insecurity knows where and when you are weakest

Insecurity knows you extremely well. Oftentimes better than you know yourself. It knows your habits and tendencies. It knows your fears and hopes. And it knows what you are looking forward to or dreading over the course of your day.

As a result, Insecurity knows exactly when and where to strike in order to achieve maximum damage to your ego.

4. Insecurity never goes away

It can be tempting to think that, as you develop your skills, carve out your own unique niche, and even meet and work with the people you idolize, your insecurity will diminish and eventually disappear over time.

But as previously discussed, Insecurity's superpower is shape-shifting, not invisibility. Even as you make your climb up your personal and professional mountains - gaining status and significance, connections and capital along the way - it's important to know that Insecurity knew you when you were down in the valley. And it will still know you when you reach the peak.

Now that we've gone over some of the tactics Insecurity will try to use to bring you down, let's take a look at how to spot it when it comes for you, and then go over some things you can do to keep it from overpowering you when you're at your weakest.

How to Overcome Insecurity and Mitigate its Effects

In order to keep Insecurity at bay and minimize its power, you need to develop strategies for recognizing it when it approaches you and learn how to fight it once it throws the first punch.

To do that, you have to be aware of your own vulnerabilities and when you are most susceptible to feeling them the strongest.

Recognizing Insecurity

It's important to note right off the bat that Insecurity is a wimp. It's a weakling who never got its way as a kid, so it feels the need to bring everyone else down with it.

Knowing that should give you some sense of how to recognize Insecurity when it comes around you. Bullies are insecure themselves. They're horrible at developing and maintaining relationships. They don't know how they can help people, so they defer to the often easier alternative of hurting people.

In every moment of every day, Insecurity is trying to pierce you with one of its many slimy tentacles and extract as much of your strength as it can to feed its own ego. If you recognize that that is what the wimp is trying to do, then you're already one step ahead of it.

But try as you might to fend off Insecurity's attacks, eventually it's going to succeed in sinking one of its tentacles into you. So in the next section, I'll outline a few ways to mitigate the negative effects on you when it does.

Steps to Mitigate Insecurity's Effects

medal with the word winner engraved in it

1. Create a "Winning Wall"

One thing you can do at home with just a few simple tools is create a collage of images, notes, awards, letters, and other memorabilia that remind you of all the times in your life when you helped someone else or succeeded at something you care about.

Depending on your preferences, your "Winning Wall" could be a digital file you have saved as your desktop background, it could be a photo you keep on your desk, or it could even be in the form of a daily reminder notifying you of previous wins you've experienced.

The important thing here is to generate a schedule of positive reinforcement that you can look at and/or listen to with minimal effort. Something that you can do hourly, daily, and weekly that stimulates a sense of confidence so that Insecurity has fewer opportunities to infiltrate your thoughts.

2. Seek out Others' Success Stories

At the time of this writing, there are an estimated 8,077,126,410 people on the planet according to the World Population Clock's website. Of all the humans walking this Earth, research shows that 5.3 billion (or about 65.7% of the population) are on the Internet.

It is easier now than it ever has been to interact with other people online. So whenever you're feeling insecure and in need of some hope that humans are capable of doing extraordinary things, all you have to do is open your computer or unlock your phone, Google a phrase like "inspiring stories of success", and you will get a dose of confidence delivered straight to your eyeballs.

Coincidentally, this is exactly what Insecurity would hate for you to do. So it sneakily filled the Internet with all kinds of insecure people who want you to be insecure as well.

In order to dodge around Insecurity's ploy, strive to follow as many of the people who bring you the kind of value you're looking for and ignore everyone else. That may mean you have to block or unfriend some people you've known for years. Oh well, so be it.

3. Phone a Friend

Research suggests that if you build in regular meetings with an accountability partner who can check in with you about your progress towards your goals, you become 95% more likely to achieve them.

Without accountability, or a sense that someone else is in your corner fighting alongside you, Insecurity is going to pummel you.

But if you have just one other person you can reach out to who will give you a shot of confidence when you need it most, Insecurity won't be able to defeat you.

Remember, Insecurity is a weakling dressed up as the most intimidating wrestler you can think of. But no matter how intimidating Insecurity may seem, it's still just one fighter. And if you can pair up with someone to fight it two against one, your odds of at least winning a round against it will greatly increase.

hikers helping one another up with sunset in background

4. Plan Ahead

All of these steps to mitigate Insecurity's effects can be boiled down into those two words.

Because if you know the kinds of punches Insecurity is going to throw at you, and you're aware of the likely combination in which it is going to throw them, they will be much easier to duck around so that you might best position yourself to strike back.

If you know Insecurity loves to hit you right when you open a new Word document to start writing, position your Winning Wall so that you see it immediately beforehand.

If you're about to go in for a big job interview and you're worried your skills and qualifications don't stack up against your competition, search for a video online of someone jumping up and down after they landed a dream job of their own.

And if you're going out on your first date and you think your breath might smell bad or you've got a bad zit on your nose, call or text a buddy saying you're leaving the house and you could use a confidence boost to make a good impression.

In all of these examples, you are actively seeking out ways to say to yourself "I got this. I'm going to do this. And no trick that Insecurity will try to pull on me is going to work."

That's a confidence boost right there. And when you get to a point where your entire day is comprised of you stringing confidence boosts together one after another, you will have successfully squeezed Insecurity out of your day altogether.

referee raising arms of champion in boxing ring

A Personal Example

I'm going to be honest with you: I've never started a business before. I never went to business school, and I haven't taken a single business course at the university or even high school level.

Here's some more: I've always been extremely introverted, to the point where I would use any means necessary to avoid talking to people at social gatherings in high school and college. I've been told on many occasions throughout my adulthood that I need to learn how to communicate, speak up, and enunciate.

I'm not very articulate. I'm horrible with numbers and math. And for all my hard work over the first decade of my career, I haven't managed to stack up much money or even secure a full-time job with benefits.

Any one of these shortcomings taken by themselves would be a good reason why a guy like me shouldn't set his sights on becoming an entrepreneur. Taken altogether, they might end up sinking my start-up ideas before they even begin.

But despite all the reasons why I shouldn't take a risk and start my first business, I intend to use them all collectively as reasons why I absolutely have to.

If you are in the same boat as me and are just starting out on some weird, shapeless venture that you can't stop thinking about, let me say that I know you have reasons to doubt yourself.

young racers kneeling at the start of a race

You might have a thousand reasons why you're not the right guy/girl. You're not in the right place at the moment. It's not the right time. You're too "this", you're not enough "that".

All of those reasons for not starting out might be completely valid. As wantrepreneurs, you and I both have to recognize that we're human, we have weaknesses and insecurities that plague us every day. And we may never kick them for as long as we're in the fight we're choosing to wage.

But ask yourself, what are the consequences of not doing the work you know you have to do?

What would your life look like if you didn't go for your dreams and make something happen?

If you're a parent or plan to be one someday and you tell your kids they can be anything they want to be when they grow up, what would you tell them if they responded, "Well then Mommy/Daddy, why aren't you?"

Because truth be told, it's relatively easy to tell when you meet someone that they feel like they haven't done what they wanted in their life. They walk around with their eyes down. They can't hold meaningful or sometimes even surface-level conversations with other people. And they might even be combative or pugnacious, always looking for a fight.

They're the people who have failed to realize that this life will only ever be what they make of it.

Don't be like them. There are opportunities out there waiting for you that you couldn't possibly imagine.

empty hospital beds with medical equipment

But if you don't ever get out there and chase after them, would you be able to imagine a scenario where you're satisfied with your life when it's all said and done?

Call to Action: Start a Journal

If this article has had any effect on you, if it has made you want to step up and get started building the life you've always wanted, then one of the first things you need to do to overcome your insecurities is start journaling.

Five minutes a day. Or ten. Or twenty.

Or shoot for a half or full page.

Do it in the morning before anyone else wakes up and starts subtracting from your limited amount of attention. If you hate waking up early, then go to bed a half-hour before you normally would and set twenty alarms to force yourself to lift your head off the pillow.

Because keeping a written record of your daily tasks, thoughts, ideas, and emotions will force you to confront your fears and insecurities while also helping you keep track of your wins and the progress you are making along your journey.

As far as what you should write, that's mostly up to you. My journal is a daily record of the conversation I'm having with myself and the God I serve. It includes questions about things I don't understand, a log of what I'm worried or excited about, and pleas for help in the areas in which I'm struggling most.

Additionally, at night before I go to bed or in the morning soon after I wake up, I like to write down the two or three top tasks I aim to accomplish over the course of my day. These tasks are the ones I've determined are the most important things I need to tackle in order to get just a little bit closer to my objectives each day.

And then off to the side I'll note anything I need to take care of in my personal life to remain a functioning human being. Simple things like grocery shopping, running errands, and making calls or sending emails.

Once you start journaling, you'll realize that what you write down is a reflection of who you are as a person. One thing I personally need to get better at is going back through the previous entries in my journal and taking note of all the progress I've made.

Because when you circle back on what your life looked like in the past, you start reconsidering what you thought about in prior months. And you may even start laughing at the things you thought were so important at the time you wrote them, but usually ended up working themselves out in the end.

Once you start journaling, you'll begin to notice that you're more productive, thoughtful, and introspective. And those traits will translate to you being more engaged at work, in your relationships, and in your side hustle or hobbies.

Wrap Up

smiling bald man with facial hair in sport coat

Insecurity is a feckless leech whose sole purpose is to suck as much of your power out of you as you let it. It's a shape-shifting weakling who never amounted to anything in its own sad existence. So it feels the need to sap you of your strength in order to make up for its own shortcomings.

Don't let it.

Remember the four steps to mitigate its effects: