What successful athletes can teach us about self-doubt, even if you’re not into sport

At the start line of the 10,000-metre Tokyo speed race in May, athletes bounce up and down, and look around nervously. One makes the sign of the cross. Not Isobel Batt-Doyle.

The 29-year-old Olympian from South Australia remains still.

She has a mantra she repeats to herself: “You’ve trained for this, you’re ready for this” and “you are strong”.

Overcoming self-doubt has been a work in progress for Olympian, Isobel Batt-Doyle.

Those mantras help her recentre and maintain her confidence.

It is a mental state Batt-Doyle has had to train for as much as she trains herself physically.

“The longer you run, the more time there is for negative thoughts to creep in,” says the ASICS athlete who has a psychology degree.

Even the best athletes in the world experience self-doubt, says sports psychologist Meg McClurg.

Removing self-doubt isn’t the answer to success, she says, but it helps.

It can be managed through the three Cs: courage to do it even though there’s fear you can’t; compassion for the self-doubt; and confidence to know you’ve overcome it in the past and can do it again.

In his now-viral commencement speech for the 2024 graduating class of Dartmouth College, tennis great Roger Federer said that learning to master self-doubt is what makes a true champion.

“It’s natural when you’re down to doubt yourself and to feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “Your opponents have self-doubt, too. Don’t ever forget that.

“The best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It’s because they know they’ll lose again and again, and have learned how to deal with it.”

As we head into running season, hundreds of thousands of Australians are preparing to challenge themselves in one of many street events.

Likely, there will be times of self-doubt. These elite athletes can teach us how to navigate it. And, if you’re not a runner? Well, this is about running, but it’s also not about running.

Draw on the positives

Elite marathon runner Jess Stenson writes positive words on her hand and picks tough points during the race to look at them.

Jess Stenson may be one of the country’s best marathon runners, but she’s not immune to self-doubt.

She admits being thrown by the 2024 Olympic marathon drama where she was selected over fellow Australian runner Lisa Weightman and public debate ensued.

“I’ve had some self-doubt for sure,” she says.

The 37-year-old mum-of-two chose to channel the positives, such as thinking about the day she phoned her family to tell them she’d made the team.

“We were all crying, and they all said ‘we are going to come and support you’,” says the Lululemon-sponsored athlete.

This was poignant: In late 2020, her father was diagnosed with a tumour. A difficult year of treatment followed and he was unable to see Stenson win gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Paris would be her 18th career marathon, so she focused her attention on the dream of having her whole family there to watch her for the first time.

Ahead of any race, Stenson also anticipates having a mental wobble, so she writes positive words on her hand and picks tough points during the race to look at them.

“If there’s been a theme of bravery in the lead up then that’s the word I’ll have,” she says. “That word will trigger memories of this session I did when I didn’t think I’d get through it.”

Remember your resilience

Betsy Saina built resilience as a child growing up in Kenya uncertain of where the next meal would come from.Credit: ASICS

Sometimes it’s the not positive experiences that help us through self-doubt, but the humbling ones.

Kenyan-American athlete Betsy Saina, winner of the 2023 Sydney Marathon, was the favourite going into US Olympic trials in Florida last year.

But she went in overtrained and underweight and by the 34 kilometre mark, the 36-year-old was suffering from dehydration and had to pull out.

She sat by the side of the road and cried with frustration. “There was no second chance,” she says.

After giving herself the rest of the day to feel the depth of her disappointment, she decided she couldn’t let it get the better of her. One month later she finished the Tokyo marathon in two hours and 19 minutes. She was the first American over the line, and her time was a three-minute personal best.

“It changed the perspective in me,” says the ASICS athlete, who came fifth in the 10,000 metres at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “You always celebrate when you get the chance to do it again – it’s the redemption.”

If it’s redemption that helps her get back up when she’s down, it’s knowing her own strength that sustains her when the going gets tough mentally or physically.

“You don’t know what or when you’re eating next,” she says of growing up in Kenya. “That builds resilience not just in racing but in life.”

Redefine success

Batt-Doyle: “You’re reshaping what success looks like – it’s not just one goal.”

Batt-Doyle enters each race not with one goal in mind but multiple. In Tokyo, her plan A was to run sub 31 minutes and break her own Australian record. But, if she realised during the race that her A goal was unattainable she would move to B, and, if necessary C or D.

“You’re reshaping what success looks like – it’s not just one goal and if you can’t achieve it, it’s all over.”

She accepts that self-doubt may creep in at any stage of a race, she just needs to know what she will do with it when it appears.

In this journey of 10,000 metres in Tokyo, her confidence and Plan A prevailed: She crossed the finish line in 30 minutes and 44 seconds, setting a new Australian record.

It’s an experience she will draw on the next time the going gets tough.

“I think of confidence as a bank,” adds McClurg. “Every time we do hard things we drop a coin in the bank, so the next time we do something hard we have something to draw on.”

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The writer was a guest of ASICS in Tokyo.