Maybe you doubt your abilities.
Maybe you doubt you’ll succeed.
Maybe you doubt you’ll finish.
Maybe you doubt your value.
Maybe you doubt anyone will like / want what you got.
I have doubts about myself and what I can do in my business basically every day…ranging from a huge “I can’t do this at all!” to a less huge “Uhhh I don’t think I can handle this.” or “I wonder if I can handle this.” 🥺
Especially around the value I provide to my clients as a Productivity Coach…the self-doubting part of my brain worries soooo much about providing value and worries about giving my clients enough value. Will it be enough? What if it isn’t enough?
And the doubting voice in my head even tries to talk me out of coaching clients at all…the self-doubting part of my brain would rather I just don’t even try because it’s so worried I won’t be able to live up to my clients’ expectations or that I’ll just fail, period.
And that’s exactly what I see a lot of my clients going through too – they’re letting that self-doubt part of their brain win and it’s stopping them from serving and sharing their gifts with their clients, from contributing to the world and from giving something a shot because it lights them up.
I see self-doubt expressed as:
👉 Not taking action
👉 Not following through
👉 Consistently jumping from one thing to the next
👉 Distraction and shiny object syndrome
^^^ These can be masks for self-doubt.
Do you all know the person who job hobs and just constantly moves on from one company to the next, each and every year, or from one business to the next over and over…I’ve known some people like that and I always thought “Wow they are so confident to go out and get those jobs and create these new opportunities for themselves!”, but it wasn’t until recently I realized there’s a good chance they’re dealing with self-doubt. Like they need to move on quick before they’re found out to be a fraud or incompetent.
So you know I’m all about taking action, and not just that but following through on that action! Here are some strategies that will shift your self-doubt to a more confident perspective, self-trust and inner knowing:
–> Look for the evidence of what you’ve accomplished
Sit down and list all the things you’ve finished in the past, when you did follow through and take action and/or you did something brave and wonderful that you feel proud of.
It’s easy to forget that stuff! We forget the good things really quickly and for some reason remember clearly all the things we feel didn’t go well or go right or when we didn’t live up to our own high expectations of ourselves.
Keep a Google Sheet document called “My Wins List” and list every week of the year down the left hand side. Every Friday go in and list all the stuff you did that week: what you spent time on, worked on, what you started and what you finished. It’s a constant reminder of everything you did do.
–> Think about how withholding your gifts from the world is effecting others
How is holding that project, idea or offering inside yourself, and not putting it out in the world, is effecting those that need it?
And how is it affecting your biz? If you took action, followed through, got it finished and shared and offered that awesome thing with others, wouldn’t your biz grow? Wouldn’t you add value to someone’s life? Even if it’s not a huge success, won’t you have learned something that you can apply to your business to make it better? Yes, yes and yes.
–> Just sit with the self-doubt
Sounds counterproductive, but simply hear the doubting thoughts in your head.
That alone is a huge first step, because a lot of us just don’t even hear it, ignore it and pretend it’s not there. We just give up and move on and we don’t think about why.
Listening to the thought and just being aware it’s there is the first step to getting past it.
–> List things that prove this thought wrong
As example: if I’m doubting that I can provide value to my clients, my reasons to prove that wrong would be:
1) Well I’ve provided value to my clients in the past [insert specific examples] so why not now and in the future?
2) Literally no one ever has told me I didn’t provide them with some value.
3) I am human so of course I have value to give.
If you’ve been feeling self-doubt, I hope this email helps to shift your perspective at least a little bit. You are human, and that means you do have value. Please share it with the world. 🙏
Great post! Self-doubt was a big problem for me until I started working on it. It can really bring you down but you just have to push through it. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much – that’s great you’ve worked to move past your self-doubt (challenging but so worth it!)
yeah, same here. thank you for this post.
You very welcome Marija!
I love your tip about creating a Wins List! We all need to be reminded of all the things we have accomplished 🙂
So true Livia, and it’s such an easy thing we can do every day!