Do you struggle with self-doubt? Drs. Marci Fox and Leslie Sokol, authors of Think Confident, Be Confident, answer questions below about how to take concrete steps toward greater confidence.

Q: Why is confidence important?

Sokol: Confidence is absolutely essential to success, and projecting confidence means that you believe in yourself. Believing in yourself comes from two basic principles.

One, that you are basically a desirable, decent person. That means that if anyone in the world doesn't like you, rejects you, doesn't invite you, doesn't say hello to you or anything, it's not a reflection of your desirability. If you let somebody down, because you can't please everybody all of the time, you're still going to believe in you.

Two, that you are capable. No matter the problem, task or thing you have to do, you know that you'll get through it. Being capable doesn't just mean that you have to do it yourself – it means either that you can handle it personally or that you can use resources outside yourself to handle it. Armed with the belief that you're capable and desirable, you're going to be confident and that confidence is going to show in everything that you do.

Fox: And a really important part of confidence is recognizing that you are equipped with the skills, know-how and smarts so when you're projecting confidence it comes from realistic characteristics that you have and it's a matter of focusing on the strengths that you're walking around with because a lot of the time we focus on the weaknesses.

Q: What role does self-doubt play?

S: Lack of confidence takes the form of doubt – doubt about your desirability and doubt about your capabilities and doubt about your ability to survive someone being mad at you or a breakup. If you're riddled with doubt, what's going to happen when you're in a social situation? You're going to be second-guessing everything you say. You're going to be wondering whether or not you look right or if what you're saying is right. You can actually sabotage what you want. In a job interview, instead of selling yourself you're going to think you don't really have much to sell. As a result, why is anyone going to hire you?

F: We like to talk about doubt as a false alarm going off in your body. It just keeps ringing because no matter what you're facing you believe that you're not prepared and not skilled when you actually are. Doubt really gets in the way of success. What we're doing is that we're not recognizing our strengths and we're exaggerating our weaknesses.

Q: Where does this doubt come from?

F: Growing up, based on family messages or significant others or significant events in our lives, we all have to make sense of what's happened so we develop a belief about ourselves. And doubt is really that nasty name that you walk around calling yourself. With our life experiences, because we can't pay attention to everything going on in our environment we start to filter, and we filter through our doubt – what we call "doubt distortions." All of a sudden, a person is faced with a situation, but is interpreting it in a different way.

Q: Do people often have specialized doubt, where they only doubt themselves in certain situations, or is it more common to doubt yourself across the board?

S: It falls along a continuum. Typically, those of us that function have specialized doubt. The more impaired we are by our doubt, the more dysfunctional we are globally.

F: Some of us have doubt in terms of our achievement and our confidence and our capability, and some of us are more vulnerable in terms of our desirability. Some people have their feet in both camps. It's a matter of where you derive your self-worth. If you tend to derive it from your social relationships, that's where you're more likely to feel doubt. If you derive your self-worth from your accomplishments or achievements, then that's where your doubt is.

Q: Tell me about your four-step confidence-raising program?

F&S: The four steps are:
1. Label it – Figure out what that name is that you're calling yourself and uncover your buttons so they're not getting pushed.
2. Question it – Rather than just having lots and lots of thoughts that you're accepting as true about yourself, question the interpretations you're filtering through your doubt so you're not just pulling information to fit that doubt label.
3. Reframe it – Look at those "If then..." messages they have: If I do this, something specific will happen that will either protect me from the doubt or activate it. Like, "if I do everything perfect, then people will love me." We develop these working rule but over time they're very self-limiting, and we're holding ourselves to unrealistic guidelines. You put yourself in a bind where you're unable to experience positive feelings.
4. Grow the new view – This last step is about taking action. It's about going on the interview for the job you don't think you'll get, and about asking out that person you were afraid to ask out. It means taking chances and doing things even if they don't work out.

Q: Do you have any tips for things people can incorporate into their lives on a daily basis?

F&S: First, create a Commodity List. What skills do you have and what are your strengths? What are your assets? Are you funny and kind with pretty eyes? Include everything from your physical attributes to your psychological, emotional, temperamental, experiential and skill attributes. It's all part of the package that makes you who you are.

Second, the other thing is to keep a credit list of some of the positive things that happen each and every day. A lot of times we forget about the positives, and at the end of the day we're focused on the fact that we didn't get everything done that we wanted to. That only worsens our mood.

Third, we're also big believers in setting goals but breaking them down into realistic components. Setting goals isn't about the outcome, but about the process. If you try to make something happen and you put yourself out there, you're a success. It doesn't really matter what the outcome is. The outcome has to do with lots of variables we have no control over. If you want to a new job, the success is in applying for the job, not whether or not they hire you.