Kavya stood outside the staff room door, her hand hovering over the handle, unable to push it open. Inside, she could hear her colleagues laughing, sharing stories about their weekend, their voices confident and easy. She’d been teaching at Riverside Public School for three months now, and she still felt like an imposter, someone who’d accidentally wandered into a profession she had no business being in.
Her overcoming self doubt journey had started long before this moment, probably around the time she was eight years old and her third-grade teacher had called her “lazy” in front of the entire class because Kavya took longer to solve math problems than the other students. That single word had planted a seed that grew into a persistent voice in her head, whispering that she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough, didn’t belong anywhere that required competence or confidence.
She’d somehow made it through school and college despite that voice, choosing education as her field because she loved children and wanted to be the kind of teacher she’d needed but never had. But now, actually standing in a classroom with thirty pairs of eyes looking at her expectantly, the voice had become deafening. What made her think she could teach anyone anything? What did she possibly have to offer these children?
“Are you coming in or planning to stand there all day?” The voice belonged to Mrs. Deshmukh, the school’s senior English teacher, who’d appeared behind Kavya with a stack of papers and an amused expression.
Kavya jumped, embarrassed, and pushed open the door, mumbling an apology. Mrs. Deshmukh followed her in, set down her papers, and studied Kavya with eyes that seemed to see more than Kavya wanted visible.
“You know,” Mrs. Deshmukh said conversationally, “I spent my entire first year of teaching convinced they’d figure out I was a fraud and fire me. I had nightmares about it. Actual nightmares where the principal would call me in and say there’d been a terrible mistake, that I clearly wasn’t qualified to teach anyone anything.”
Kavya looked up, surprised. Mrs. Deshmukh was the most confident teacher in the school, the one everyone admired, whose classes were legendary for their engagement and results. The idea that she’d ever felt inadequate seemed impossible.
“You?” Kavya asked. “But you’re… you’re amazing. Everyone says so.”
“Now,” Mrs. Deshmukh said with a slight smile. “Twenty-three years later. But my first year? I was a disaster. I cried after almost every class. I rewrote lesson plans obsessively because I was convinced they weren’t good enough. I compared myself to every other teacher and always came up lacking.” She paused. “The overcoming self doubt journey doesn’t happen overnight, beta. It’s built from tiny moments of choosing to keep going despite the fear.”
The conversation stayed with Kavya as she walked to her classroom for the afternoon session. Grade six students, thirty of them, already settling into their seats with the chaotic energy of eleven and twelve-year-olds. Among them was Arjun, the boy who’d been struggling with reading comprehension, who shut down completely whenever Kavya tried to help him. There was Priya, brilliant and bored, who’d mastered the curriculum months ago and sat through classes with visible disdain. And Rohan, painfully shy, who hadn’t spoken a single word in class since the term started.
Looking at these children, each with their own challenges and needs, Kavya felt the familiar wave of inadequacy. How was she supposed to reach all of them? How could she possibly be what each one needed?
“Miss, are we starting?” Priya asked, her tone implying that Kavya was wasting her valuable time.
Kavya took a breath and began the lesson she’d planned on comprehension strategies. It went poorly. Arjun zoned out within five minutes. Priya openly rolled her eyes. Half the class was whispering to each other. By the end of the period, Kavya felt like she’d failed every single student in the room.
That evening, she sat in her small rented room, seriously considering quitting. She could find another job, something that didn’t require standing in front of people and pretending she had answers when she barely understood the questions. Her overcoming self doubt journey felt impossible when the doubt was so loud and so constant.
But then she remembered something her college professor had said during her teaching training: “Teaching isn’t about being perfect. It’s about showing up, trying, learning, and trying again. The teachers who fail are the ones who stop trying, not the ones who struggle.”
The next day, Kavya tried something different. Instead of following her rigid lesson plan, she asked the students what they found difficult about reading comprehension. The answers surprised her. They weren’t bored or unwilling; they were confused about how to find main ideas, frustrated by vocabulary they didn’t understand, anxious about being asked questions they couldn’t answer.
“Okay,” Kavya said, abandoning her prepared lesson entirely. “Let’s try this differently. I’m going to read a passage out loud. While I read, I want you to notice when your mind wanders or when you stop understanding. Don’t feel bad about it, just notice it. Then we’ll talk about what made those moments hard.”
It was a small shift, but it changed the dynamic. Students started admitting when they were confused instead of pretending they understood. Arjun revealed that he got lost whenever passages included words he didn’t know, then spent the rest of the reading trying to figure out the missed word instead of following the story. Priya admitted, reluctantly, that she sometimes got so focused on analyzing that she forgot to just enjoy reading.
Even Rohan, silent Rohan, raised his hand slightly and, when Kavya called on him gently, whispered that he understood everything when he read silently but got confused when trying to follow someone reading aloud.
These small revelations didn’t magically transform Kavya’s teaching or solve all her classroom challenges. But they represented something important in her overcoming self doubt journey: the realization that her students’ struggles weren’t because she was a terrible teacher, but because learning was genuinely hard and everyone faced different obstacles.
Over the following weeks, Kavya started experimenting. She created vocabulary lists for Arjun, providing definitions before passages so he wouldn’t get derailed by unknown words. She gave Priya more challenging texts and let her work independently while Kavya focused on students who needed more support. She allowed Rohan to read passages silently first before class discussions, giving him time to process at his own pace.
Not everything worked. Some lessons still flopped. Some days, she still left school feeling defeated. The voice in her head that said she wasn’t good enough didn’t disappear; it just became one voice among others, rather than the only voice she heard.
The turning point came during parent-teacher conferences three months into the term. Kavya had been dreading them, convinced parents would complain about her inexperience, question her methods, maybe even demand their children be moved to different sections.
Arjun’s mother came in first, and Kavya braced herself for criticism. Instead, the woman sat down with tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing,” she said, “but Arjun is reading at home now. Voluntarily. He never did that before. He’d avoid it, make excuses, get frustrated. But last week, I found him reading a book in his room just because he wanted to. When I asked him about it, he said you taught him it’s okay to not know every word, that he can figure things out as he goes.”
Kavya felt something shift inside her chest, a tiny crack in the wall of self-doubt she’d built so carefully. She hadn’t fixed all of Arjun’s reading challenges, hadn’t transformed him into a star student. But she’d given him permission to struggle and keep trying anyway. She’d shown him that not knowing something wasn’t a failure, just a starting point.
Priya’s parents had different feedback. “She’s still bored in most of her classes,” her father said, “but she talks about your class differently. She says you actually listen when she has ideas. That means more than you probably realize. Gifted children are often told to be quiet and wait for everyone else. You’ve made her feel valued.”
And Rohan’s mother, soft-spoken and clearly as shy as her son, shared that Rohan had started talking about school at home, mentioning Miss Kavya who didn’t force him to speak before he was ready but also didn’t ignore him.
These weren’t dramatic success stories. None of these children had become honor students or overcome all their challenges. But they’d made progress, small and significant, and Kavya had been part of that progress. Her overcoming self doubt journey took a significant step forward that day, not because she suddenly believed she was an amazing teacher, but because she started to believe she might become one eventually.
She sought out Mrs. Deshmukh during lunch the next day.
“The parent conferences went better than I expected,” Kavya said.
“Of course they did,” Mrs. Deshmukh replied. “You care about the students. You’re willing to adapt. You show up even when you’re scared. That’s ninety percent of teaching right there.”
“What’s the other ten percent?”
“Experience. Which you’re gaining every day, whether you realize it or not.”
Kavya started attending workshops on weekends, reading books about teaching methodologies, observing other teachers’ classes when she had free periods. Not because she thought these things would magically make her confident, but because taking action felt better than drowning in anxiety. Each small step, each new strategy learned, each technique practiced, was part of her overcoming self doubt journey.
She started a teaching journal, writing down what worked and what didn’t, reflecting on difficult moments instead of just catastrophizing about them. Looking back over entries from earlier months, she could see her own growth, subtle but real. The problems that had seemed insurmountable in September looked manageable by December. Not because they’d gotten easier, but because she’d gotten more capable.
The school year’s second term brought new challenges. The curriculum got more demanding. Some students who’d been doing well started struggling. New behavioral issues emerged. But Kavya noticed she was handling these challenges differently than she would have months earlier. The panic was less immediate, the self-blame less automatic.
When a lesson completely failed, instead of deciding she was a terrible teacher, she analyzed what went wrong and tried a different approach the next day. When a student expressed frustration, instead of taking it personally, she worked with the student to identify the actual problem. When another teacher offered feedback, instead of hearing it as confirmation of her inadequacy, she listened for useful suggestions.
This shift didn’t mean Kavya never doubted herself anymore. The voice in her head still piped up regularly, still told her she wasn’t good enough, still compared her to more experienced teachers and found her lacking. But she’d learned to acknowledge that voice without letting it make all the decisions. Her overcoming self doubt journey wasn’t about silencing self-doubt completely; it was about not letting doubt be the only voice that mattered.
In February, the principal asked Kavya if she’d be willing to mentor a student teacher who’d be joining them for a practicum. Kavya’s immediate instinct was to refuse. How could she mentor anyone when she barely knew what she was doing herself?
But then she remembered parent-teacher conferences, remembered Arjun reading voluntarily and Rohan slowly finding his voice and Priya feeling valued. She remembered all the small victories that seemed insignificant individually but added up to something meaningful.
“I’d be happy to,” she heard herself say, surprising herself with her own words.
The student teacher, Neha, arrived in March, twenty-two years old and visibly terrified. Kavya recognized that terror immediately because she’d felt it so recently, still felt it sometimes. Watching Neha struggle with lesson planning, freeze up during her first class, nearly cry after a lesson that didn’t go well, Kavya saw her own journey reflected back at her.
“You did fine,” Kavya told Neha after a particularly rough day. “Teaching is hard. You’re not supposed to be perfect at it immediately.”
“But I made so many mistakes,” Neha said miserably. “I lost control of the class. I forgot half of what I planned to say. I probably confused the students more than I helped them.”
“Probably,” Kavya agreed, and Neha looked shocked at this honesty. “But you showed up. You tried. You’ll try again tomorrow. That’s how this works. Not through instant perfection, but through persistent effort.”
She shared strategies that had worked for her, mistakes she’d made and learned from, techniques for managing different types of students. In mentoring Neha, Kavya realized how far she’d actually come in her own overcoming self doubt journey. She wasn’t an expert teacher, wasn’t even particularly experienced. But she’d learned things worth sharing, developed skills worth demonstrating, gained wisdom worth passing on.
By the time the academic year ended in May, Kavya could look back and see transformation. Not dramatic, not cinematic, but real. She was still anxious before parent-teacher conferences, but the anxiety was manageable rather than paralyzing. She still had lessons that didn’t work, but she could adjust without spiraling into self-flagellation. She still compared herself to other teachers, but she could also acknowledge her own strengths instead of only seeing deficits.
Arjun had moved up two reading levels. Priya was engaged more often than bored. Rohan had spoken in class multiple times, including volunteering an answer once without being called on, a moment Kavya had celebrated internally like a personal victory. Not every student had made dramatic progress, some had regressed, some had stayed stubbornly stagnant. But overall, her students had learned, had grown, had moved forward in their educational journeys.
And so had Kavya.
On the last day of school, several students brought her small gifts: handmade cards, flowers, chocolates. The gestures were simple, the kind every teacher receives, but they felt significant to Kavya. Evidence that she’d mattered to these children, that her presence in their lives had been positive rather than detrimental.
Mrs. Deshmukh found her packing up her classroom that afternoon.
“Survived your first year,” she said with a smile. “How does it feel?”
“Like I finally might actually be a teacher,” Kavya admitted. “Or at least like I’m becoming one.”
“That’s exactly right. Teaching isn’t something you are; it’s something you become through practice and persistence. Your overcoming self doubt journey will continue, you know. Every new class brings new challenges, new reasons to question yourself. But you’ll also bring more experience, more confidence, more evidence that you can handle difficult things.”
The next academic year started in June, and Kavya felt the familiar anxiety return as she prepared for a new batch of students. But this time, the anxiety was accompanied by something else: cautious excitement. She knew she could do this now, not perfectly, not without struggle, but adequately and sometimes even well.
She thought about the girl who’d stood outside the staff room door unable to push it open, paralyzed by self-doubt. That girl was still part of her, still whispered warnings and concerns. But she was no longer the only voice Kavya heard. There was also the voice that remembered Arjun reading voluntarily, Rohan raising his hand, Priya engaged instead of contemptuous. The voice that said: you’ve done hard things before and survived them; you can do hard things again.
Her overcoming self doubt journey hadn’t ended with one successful year of teaching. It probably would never truly end. But it had progressed from debilitating paralysis to manageable nervousness, from constant catastrophizing to occasional worry, from believing she was fundamentally inadequate to understanding she was still learning and that was okay.
Years later, when Kavya had become the kind of experienced teacher that new educators looked up to, someone asked her advice for managing self-doubt. She thought carefully before answering.
“Self-doubt never completely goes away,” she said. “At least mine hasn’t. But you learn to work alongside it instead of being controlled by it. You build evidence against it through small successes. You remind yourself that struggling doesn’t mean failing, that not knowing doesn’t mean you’re incapable of learning, that being scared doesn’t mean you should quit.”
She paused, thinking about that girl outside the staff room door, about Neha trembling before her first class, about every person who’d ever felt inadequate while trying to do something meaningful.
“The overcoming self doubt journey isn’t about becoming fearless,” she continued. “It’s about learning that your worth isn’t determined by whether you’re immediately perfect at something. It’s about showing up despite the fear, trying despite the doubt, persisting despite the failures. And it’s about recognizing that the small victories count, that incremental progress matters, that becoming is as valuable as being.”
That wisdom hadn’t come from books or workshops, though both had helped. It had come from lived experience, from choosing to keep going when quitting would have been easier, from accumulating evidence that she could handle difficult things even when her brain insisted she couldn’t.
And that, Kavya understood, was the real secret of overcoming self doubt: not making it disappear, but proving to yourself, again and again through small brave actions, that you’re capable of more than your fear believes possible. The journey isn’t about reaching a destination where doubt no longer exists. It’s about learning to move forward while carrying doubt as a companion rather than letting it be your jailer.
Every person’s overcoming self doubt journey looks different, but they all share common elements: the decision to try despite fear, the accumulation of small victories, the willingness to learn from failures, the persistence to keep going when quitting seems easier. Kavya’s journey had started with a girl too scared to push open a door and evolved into a teacher confident enough to mentor others through their own fears.
Not because she’d become perfect or fearless, but because she’d learned that neither perfection nor fearlessness were required. Courage wasn’t the absence of doubt; it was action despite doubt. Growth wasn’t a straight line; it was a messy accumulation of attempts and adjustments. And becoming who you’re meant to be wasn’t about erasing all your insecurities; it was about learning they didn’t have to stop you from trying.
That lesson, learned gradually through countless small moments of choosing courage over comfort, was worth more than any amount of natural talent or immediate success could have provided. Because it was earned through effort, proven through experience, and therefore impossible for doubt to completely destroy.
The girl who couldn’t push open a door had become a woman who opened doors for others. And that transformation, quiet and gradual as it was, represented the most inspiring kind of change: the kind that anyone could achieve through persistence, patience, and the willingness to keep trying even when everything inside screamed to give up.