Does self-doubt ever stop you in your tracks?

Well it happens to me to.  So today I want to talk about 3 ways to move past that crippling feeling and into achievement.  To listen to this podcast Click Here.

If you’re like me, any small failure, defeat, or something that just didn’t go quite like you expected can derail you entirely and the next thing you know you’re questioning everything about yourself…

I do this all the time… I get nervous and anxious before coaching calls and start questioning that I even know what I’m doing or why anyone would want to hear what I have to say. After my coaching calls I wonder if I’m actually helping anyone or making any sense.

Quickly these doubts, anxieties and insecurities take over and before I know it, I’m like Alice, falling further down into the dark rabbit role. I start to believe these things that I’m telling myself.  And then the slow death of productivity, results, and success come next.

As soon as we start believing our self doubts, we lose the desire to try and often we stop doing anything. This is probably the worst thing because it only further feeds into the paralyzing doubts we have.

William Shakespeare said: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

So today I want to share some things you can do to begin to feel more confident the next time you’re like me and find yourself lost in the rabbit hole of self doubt.

1) Reframe your thoughts

The mind is a powerful tool and often times it can work against us. When you’re stuck in the pit of self-doubt, your attention is consumed by it. Even if it’s not true and not a big deal, you make it true and turn it into a big deal in your head.

Often times I find that the clients I work with have taken all the courses, read all the books, and know and have all the skills they need to move forward but for some reason they’re still failing to move into action because it’s their stinking-thinking that’s holding them back. Our performance is driven by behavior, our behavior is driven by emotions and our emotions our driven by, you guessed it, our thoughts!!!

In the moments you find yourself stuck, what are the thoughts you’re telling yourself that are holding you back? How can you reframe it into something positive to help you move forward?

2) Focus on the WINS

Do you focus on the negative—the failures you’ve experienced? Or the positive—the successes you’ve engineered? If you’ve been following us or listening long enough than you already know celebrating wins is something we’re big on here at Team Emerge. And it’s not just something we do on every group call, keeping a daily record of WINS is something we practice within our own team.

So often in business we can be consumed by the busyness of all the things we need to be doing, want to be doing, and need to be fixed that we forget to take a moment and see what’s going well. And if we’re looking to replicate success in our business how will we be able to do it if we’re not even taking time to recognize when it happens so we can do it again?

Keep a daily impact journal: nothing fancy – 5 MIN at the end of everyday to reflect and here are some questions you can ask yourself.

  • What is one thing that went well and why?
  • What did you do to contribute to that?
  • Who did I positively impact?
  • What didn’t go well? What did you learn?

Small wins are motivating because you see real progress being made, and the momentum built by those tiny changes that add up over time.

3) Skill up

Let’s be honest, no one likes to do something they’re not good at, and the truth is that if there’s something you need to be doing in your business that you’re not good at, you can’t will yourself into getting better. Work needs to be done and this is where you need to skill up! Dedicate time to getting better at the skills you need in order to overcome your doubts and have confidence knowing that you have the right stuff to get the job done.

  • Identify where you feel you’re lacking
  • Take time to develop that skill
  • Practice

I hope you know that in your  moments of self doubt you’re not alone. Try one of these three tips (or all of them!).  I’d love to know what tip resonated with you the most today and what you might try the next time you find yourself in the rabbit hole.