Test: What’s your secret confidence saboteur?

Your secret confidence saboteur is also the aspect of yourself that you’re convinced keeps you safe. It’s second nature for you to anticipant future happenings – whether significant or just small and every day – through a lens of ‘what could go wrong’, mentally envisaging the worst outcomes.

You might dismiss it as harmless worrying or convince yourself that constant catastrophising is actually just ‘being prepared’ – if you expect the worst, you can’t be disappointed, right? But there’s no bigger confidence drainer than living with a mental focus that’s constantly tuned into disaster or danger.

Afterall, if every day life feels hazardous, you’ll have little energy and resources left for stepping out of your comfort zone. Over time, life can shrink, and your confidence in the process. Mentally living through crises that haven’t happened and may never happen also keeps your nervous system on high alert, which also impacts confidence.

It’s true that facing challenges can be empowering, but confidence only flourishes after you’ve moved on from panic mode, and at the moment, that rarely happens. The antidote isn’t positive thinking or pretending risks don’t exist – it’s learning to tolerate uncertainty without catastrophising. Remind yourself that you’ve handled unexpected challenges before and you will again. Confidence isn’t knowing everything will be fine; it’s trusting yourself to cope whatever happens.

Your next steps

1. Ask yourself: ‘What’s the most likely outcome?’ – not the worst, not the best, but the realistic middle ground. Let that guide your expectations.

2. Keep a worry log for a week, noting your catastrophic predictions. At the end, check how many actually happened. The evidence will speak for itself.