As with anything that requires serious investment, self-confidence plays a huge role in your ability to face challenges and bounce back from failures. Even a small failure can chip away at your confidence and send you into a vicious cycle. I’ve experienced the cost of low self-confidence first-hand in my learning journey.
There is no clear path to healing. Give yourself the time to recover from failure and life might surprise you…
Lack of self-confidence can be costly but it’s something you can overcome.
After reading, share your thoughts:
Are you currently struggling with learning a programming language? Tell us about the challenges you have already overcome and the ones that you are facing now!
Do you often struggle with self-confidence? What strategies have you used to overcome it and grow?
Learning the programming language is a galaxy on its own. As someone trying to learn and apply it, I feel like I’m gonna be savoring on learning it for a loooong time! Which isn’t a bad thing Because it’s so rewarding and the possibilities of using it is endless .
… growth isn’t about credentials. It’s about showing up, learning, and trusting yourself.
Yes to this! I consider believing in oneself similar to showing up for yourself even when times are hard. This mindset this supportive community makes it a whole lot easier too, don’t you think? * wink wink *
Its a very good article about the very human side and challenges of learning.
One are I can relate to is doing local app builds and code debugging, motivated by its gives me a lot of insight into doing my testing better. I hit multiple walls on this.
Readme’s set up with experienced developers in mind.
Loads of set up tools not mentioned in the readme each with their own configs, forgetting to add something to my path was driving me nuts.
Designed for mac and just did not work as guided on my windows env.
I started and gave up multiple times due to time taking me away from other things or just other priorities.
It took a developer to sit down with me and troubleshoot alongside me to get my confidence up.
I also find AI as a reasonable substitute but its more time consuming for me than the developer buddy.
Now its fairly standard and I am reaping the testing benefits so very glad I persisted.
Programming for me is a bit different, I can code and was a developer but I just could not get to the point that I enjoy it so I’ve never gone to an advanced level. So this was a fun factor blocker, perhaps if I could make it fun I’d go further.
Languages french, italian, chinese etc I struggle with for different reasons, I get mental and logical blocks with these, its almost like my brain is no longer designed for these. This one I have not solved and perhaps accepted and hope AI universal translator will take over, trekkie style.
Automation - this is again different. I can do, I need to focus full time on it and sometimes I even enjoy it. My reluctance is that I struggle with the value side of it and that value element is a blocker to my learning and motivation.
Fun, value and ability/suitability can be both blockers and motivators but unless you give something a really good try, take some courses, get a mentor, practice and get over the non human blocker side you might never know if it is something that is fun, high value and a match for you or not.
I really felt this.
The part about how even small failures can shake your confidence that’s so real. It’s something I’ve gone through too, especially while learning new things or stepping into unfamiliar spaces like testing or automation or even a tool. One setback and suddenly everything feels harder than it really is.
There were times I’d second-guess every decision I made, thinking maybe I wasn’t cut out for this. But slowly, I started focusing less on doing things “perfectly” and more on just doing them. That shift helped. I learned to celebrate small wins even if it was just figuring out a piece of logic or writing one working test script.
What’s helped me most is being honest with myself, asking for help when needed, and reminding myself that struggling doesn’t mean failing it just means learning. And it really does take time. Some days are still tough, but I’ve found that showing up consistently, even when I’m unsure, builds confidence in a quiet way.
If you’re in that space now trying to learn, feeling unsure then you’re not alone dear.
Keep going. Keep smiling.
You might be closer to a breakthrough than you think.
A wonderful wonderful article, thank you for writing it . You must be so proud of yourself from where you’ve come to where you are
I’ve got a similar article coming up in a month or so around leadership talking about my biggest mistakes and what I learned from them. At the time, some of those mistakes made me get out of leadership, I didn’t think I was cut out for it.
But all it takes is someone to see the best in you and want to grow that part of you, and suddenly you get the belief in yourself that you can do this. You start to understand that your previous experience, whilst deflating at the time, was not all your fault - it was the environment you were in.
On the coding side, so many parallels with @andrewkelly2555. I was a developer, I can read code and understand it. But coding doesn’t excite me and others could do it far better than me and were excited by it. (I touch on this in my “leading with quality” discussion with Rosie).
But I’m learning more up to date coding practices by reviewing the tech testers code and am learning to support them on frameworks so they’re not alone. The goal is they can go on annual leave and someone like me at least can turn the wheel in their absence. So I found the most important thing for me to understand the basics of code management, then write an “idiot guide” (I use the word “idiot” because as I said to my team, I’m happy to be that idiot) document to explain it to anyone who knows nothing about coding. You understand that, you can play with coding…if you want to.
Once again, I really enjoyed reading your article. Do more
@Amandine Learning a programming language—or any new skill—feels easy in the beginning. The first few days are exciting. But as challenges and issues start to appear, I often enter a phase of self-doubt, questioning whether to quit or keep going.
Sometimes, due to other priorities, I’ve had to stop, because learning alone isn’t enough. It’s only when I start implementing what I’ve learned that the doubt begins to fade—and that’s when it shifts into a growth mindset. I am currently learning JS with playwright 1st week good progress but as mentioned earlier its always easy at the start. Persistence and celebrating the wins which will help.
I can corelate myself I have been in situation where after redundancy I was in a phase of self doubt that’s when I joined MoT. Read many articles from MoT, listen to various talks, attended week in Testing which boasted my confidence and increased my network. Receiving badges from MoT made me feel like I am improving and that’s when the self doubt turned to growth mindset.
Great piece, thank you for sharing your story with us! I’m glad you kept pursuing testing, found MoT, started STEC and are now a writer! So many great things to be proud of. Lovely to have you here, in the MoTaverse.
The most important is to be consistent, and to show up no matter what. In French we have a saying: “Il n’y a qu’en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron.” literally meaning: “Only by forging will you become a blacksmith.”
I’m looking forward to reading your article! It sounds really interesting and definitely related to mine.
As I mentioned to @andrewkelly2555, I can totally relate to what you said about coding too! Coding on its own doesn’t really excite me either. But coding to automate tests is something that I genuinely enjoy. It’s similar to how you found a motivation to learn frameworks through wanting to support your colleagues’ well-being. We need to have a motivation, to make sense of what we are learning, and to find any kind of satisfaction in it, in order to learn!
Definitely agree with you! The first phase of excitement quickly vanishes and becomes a phase of choice. You have the choice to either commit yourself to this new activity, stay consistent even during hard times and failures, or to quit and do something else.
The community, being surrounded by people doing the same thing as you with various levels of proficiency and experience, is absolutely helpful and motivational!
Because it’s so rewarding and the possibilities of using it is 
endless 
Yes to this! I consider believing in oneself similar to showing up for yourself even when times are hard. This mindset 
this supportive community makes it a whole lot easier too, don’t you think? * wink wink *
. You must be so proud of yourself from where you’ve come to where you are 
. I was a developer, I can read code and understand it. But coding doesn’t excite me and others could do it far better than me and were excited by it. (I touch on this in my “leading with quality” discussion with Rosie).
