Being a little insecure makes you a better person

No one likes uncertainty, yet we all know the feeling. The emotion that makes your voice falter slightly during that big conversation or makes your handshake a bit wobbly and sweaty during a meeting. At such moments, I tend to have a do-or-die mentality, but before and after, I also experience that uncanny feeling.

Recently, a behavioral expert told me that she approaches people who never say they feel uncertain with a certain distrust . She sees a certain degree of uncertainty as a tool to keep asking yourself critical questions and thus to grow and develop yourself. And I have never really looked at that normally unwanted feeling in that way.

In the more well-known dictionaries, uncertainty is linked to doubt. Perhaps that is why it is also an emotion we only show to people who are close to us. Because doesn’t doubt primarily make you weak? The internet is full of tips to wipe away your uncertainty and action plans to ensure it never rears its head again. But what if a healthy degree of uncertainty actually propels you forward?

Being uncertain is something natural, experts say. You may have influence over certain factors, but you never have full control. You might know what you are supposed to do tomorrow, but you have no idea if it will actually be that way. You hope someone likes you, but you can’t crawl into someone’s head to make sure it is so. Even the most successful and self-assured types are a little bit uncertain.

Instead of finding it annoying, you can also see the feeling as a companion that helps you ask the right questions and make the right choices. Professor of work psychology Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic even dares to claim that the slightly more uncertain person advances further in a career, precisely because they are more critical of themselves, more aware of other people, and open to feedback, and actually do something with it.

Uncertainty may be an uncomfortable feeling, but honestly: no one has ever risen above themselves because they felt so comfortable. So are you feeling a bit uncertain? Try to see the feeling as a signal to examine yourself or a situation. Who knows, you might gain much greater insights from that faltering voice or those sweaty armpits . It might have been good for something after all.