6 Genius Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt, According to 'Worthy' Author Jamie Kern Lima

Parade aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.

New York Times best-selling author Jamie Kern Lima has achieved a great deal of success, including selling her mom-and-pop IT Cosmetics company to L'Oréal several years ago for a staggering $1.2 billion.

But she will also be the first to tell you that money and status do not always lead to happiness. Her new self-help book, Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life, (Hay House), released on February 20, comes from a three-year journey (following her first best-selling book Believe It: How to Go From Underestimated to Unstoppable) to explore self-worth and learn how to overcome self-doubt, providing simple steps and tools to help readers achieve life-changing results.

“In life, we don’t become what we want, we become what we believe we’re worthy of,” Lima, a global keynote speaker, tells Parade. That's why doubting ourselves has a much larger impact on our lives than we might realize.

“When deep down inside we don’t feel like we’re enough, it shows up in so many areas of our lives,” she adds, explaining that even if you feel confident in certain settings (like at work) or with specific skills, that doesn't mean you don't struggle with self-esteem. “I always thought that self-confidence and self-worth were the same, but now I know there is a massive difference.” 

Related: 10 Ways To Become Someone Who Avoids Negativity, According to Psychologists

Jamie Kern Lima's Journey With Self-Worth

As a young girl, Lima loved watching Oprah Winfrey on television and dreamed of one day meeting her iconic role model. When her cosmetics career was soaring, her lifelong dream came true: she was invited to Winfrey’s home for lunch and they spent three hours getting to know one another.

“Everything around me was going so well. I was extremely self-confident, but underneath it all, I did not believe that I was enough. I did not have strong self-worth,” Lima recalls in her new book. 

Related: 100 Oprah Winfrey Quotes on Strength, Love and Self-Worth That Will Change Your Life

“This is why when Oprah gave me her cell number that day and said, ‘You can call me anytime,’ I hesitated and did not call her for four years.”

She continues, “In the four-year window I told myself that I just need to wait until I have the right thing to say and then I’m going to call her, or everyone wants something from her and I’m going to prove I don’t need anything. I told myself those stories,” Lima explains. “It wasn’t until four years later that I realized the real reason I didn’t call her was because deep down inside I didn’t believe I was worthy of being her friend.”

Getting over these fears led to Oprah becoming the first guest on Lima’s new podcast, The Jamie Kern Lima Show, another exciting step in her journey.

Even when she landed on Forbes America’s Richest Self-Made Women list and became L'Oréal's first female CEO brand in the company’s history, she still had doubts about her self-worth.

Lima advises her readers that without having self-worth we will sabotage ourselves and stay stuck, or we will go for what we want and remain unfulfilled.

“When I figured this out that was the day that I became obsessed with studying self-worth,” she said. “If you do not believe you are fundamentally enough as you are, then nothing will ever feel fulfilling or enough. With my book Worthy, I am so fired up to be on a mission of helping every single girl, woman, and person learn to believe that they’re worthy.”

Related: 4 Important Steps to Break Out of a Pessimistic Mindset, According to a Psychiatrist

How to Overcome Self-Doubt

Lima shares six genius ways to kick self-doubt to the curb.

1. Pay Attention to Your Self-Worth

“Some 80% of women don’t believe that they’re enough," Lima explains. "Most of my life I believed that if I could just achieve enough, then I would finally feel enough. What I’ve learned in the journey—from going from a struggling Denny’s waitress to building my company, IT Cosmetics, in my living room and becoming a billion-dollar entrepreneur—all of the things we do professionally build a lot of self-confidence and a lot of growth and contribution, but underneath it all, they don’t build self-worth.”

Related: 14 Tiny Behavior Tweaks That Make People Respect You More, According to Psychology

2. Learn the Difference Between Self-Confidence and Self-Worth

“Our self-confidence is fragile and it fluctuates," Lima explains. "It’s an internal trait that is based so much on what’s going on for us on the outside and what’s happening around us. Our self-worth is the deep, internal knowing and belief that we are worthy of love and belonging exactly as we are. Not as our past mistakes, our failures, or our regrets. Not as our successes and how much the world tells us that we should feel enough. Our self-worth is our innate belief that we are worthy of love and belonging exactly as we are.”

3. Turn Down the Volume on Your Negative Thoughts

"Self-doubt kills more dreams than almost anything else," Lima warns. "One of the most important things for people to realize is that your self-doubt is made up of your thoughts, but it is not who you are.”

Related: Do You Constantly Feel Like a Fraud? You May Have Imposter Syndrome—Here’s Everything You Need To Know

4. Build a Strong, Healthy Foundation

“A lot of us have this experience where we think, 'One day, if I just get that thing—a job title, the dream car or house, or a number in our bank account—then I’m going to be happy and fulfilled,'” Lima says. “We work so, so, so hard and we finally get that thing and we are happy for a while, but before we know it, we are back to feeling like something’s missing like it’s not enough or we’re not enough. So, we think the solution is that we just need to work harder and achieve more and more.”

But relying on the results of output and chasing after validation that comes from achieving specific goals only goes so far.

“When we believe we are worthy and we believe that we are enough underneath it all, it’s not only our foundation, but it also establishes a level of the ceiling of our level of fulfillment in life,” shares Lima. “Most of my life, I did things that build self-confidence and I thought that is what I needed more of." 

Related: 6 Behaviors That Show Low Self-Confidence, and What To Do Instead, According to Psychologists

5. Focus Your Energy Into Self-Belief

“At the end of the day, self-doubt and self-belief take an equal amount of energy to manifest something that has not happened yet," Lima explains. "What we want to focus on will determine the life that we want to experience.”

6. Stop Believing the Lies

“[Stop believing] that you are not enough and that you are not worthy of showing up in the world as who you truly are,” Lima says. “Or thinking that you won’t be loved if you show up as who you are. This is one of the lies that we tell ourselves."

“My new book, Worthy, has over 20 tools to overcome self-doubt," Lims continues. "It’s about how to un-learn those lies that lead to self-doubt and how to ignite the truths that wake up worthiness. This book is for the person who wants to take on their inner critic and win. It’s also for the person who has some self-doubt to destroy and a destiny to fulfill.”

Next, 50 Positive Affirmations To Boost Your Confidence (And Change Your Life)