How to Overcome Self-Doubt

How to Overcome Self-Doubt

I want to start off with a quote by Brendon Burchard:

“You are training and conditioning as you are now.”

It was said during a live appearance that was broadcast on his podcast. He was discussing how your thoughts and actions today are training you for the future you are creating.

Whether those thoughts and actions align with your ideal best self and best life or just more of the same.

Self-doubt is a significant roadblock that prevents us from training ourselves to attract the future we want.

Instead, when we operate in self-doubt, we train ourselves to produce more of the same.

Self-doubt is what makes us “stuck” in life.

Currently, I’m going through Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza. This book is a deep dive into re-wiring your thoughts and feelings to produce the outcome you want in your life.

A key takeaway from this book is your thoughts must align with your feelings to attract your desired outcome in any given area of your life.

Your future is not determined by happenstance-it’s determined by your thoughts and feelings.

If you were to examine your thoughts and feelings from today and the actions they produced, do you think they’d be in line with your life goals and your best future self? Or are they producing “more of the same?”

Let’s talk about self-doubt.

What is self-doubt?

Self-doubt is a lack of confidence comprised of the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself in a particular area of your life.

Here are some examples:

I’ll never make enough money with my small business to quit my full-time job.
Losing the last 5 pounds is so hard, I’ll never lose the weight.
I’ve had such bad luck with guys in the past, I just don’t think I’ll ever find the right guy and get married.

Self-doubt leads to inaction, indecision, and that feeling of being “stuck” or “on repeat.”

You want something more (a profitable small business, to weigh your ideal weight, to meet the right guy) but your thoughts and feelings-i.e. self-doubt-is preventing you from getting what you desire because they don’t support these outcomes.

Self-doubt is often seen as a problem. But it’s only a problem if you make it one.

Let’s talk about what causes self-doubt.

What causes self-doubt?

Low self-confidence.

Your self-confidence is your opinion about yourself.

How would your “Self” rate your relationship with her?

Would she say you look at her in the mirror every morning and think bad thoughts about her on a daily basis?

Or would she say you have a very loving relationship with her?

I know this sounds weird, but try it-what would your “Self” say to you about the way you treat her?

If you need help with boosting your self-confidence, check out my article 3 Keys to Building Self-Confidence.

Formulating your thoughts and feelings based on the past.

A good example of self-doubt caused by thoughts and feelings based on the past is in the topic of relationships.

How often have you heard someone who is single say something like, “I’m single because I was burned in my past relationships and I just can’t trust others.”

Or, “I’ll never get married because I’ve been let down by people in my past.”

Formulating your thoughts and feelings based on your past is one of the most self-sabotaging things you can do to yourself.

Your past only determines your future if you let it.

I once dated someone who had a complicated relationship with his mother growing up and was also burned by past relationships, which led him to wall off his feelings in our relationship. As a result, this relationship was toxic in its own right and eventually hit a wall.

Contrast this with my husband, who also had a few toxic relationships in his past, but didn’t let it stop him from being all-in with me from the minute we started dating. He dropped everything he knew from his past relationships and didn’t hold old thoughts and feelings from those relationships against me. We were engaged after a year of dating and married the following year.

**Being “stuck” and staying “stuck” in “I don’t know.”**

If you find yourself stuck in indecision, ask yourself this question: “If I did know what to do, what would that be?”

This gives you the power to make a decision-any decision-and move forward.

Another way to help yourself get un-stuck is to practice making decisions.

Start today and pick one thing to make a decision about. It can be something as minor as deciding what to cook for dinner or where to go out to eat for date night.

Every day, practice making at least one decision per day.

When you repeatedly practice decision-making, it gets easier. Even if you’re just practicing on minor decisions, it will build up your ability to make the bigger decisions when they come along.

Decision-making is a skill you’ll need to master to conquer self-doubt.

No decision is “wrong” because even if it ends up feeling like the wrong choice afterwards, you still learned something by making that “wrong” decision that allowed you to progress forward with new insight. s

A lack of self-accountability.

Do you show up for yourself?

A lack of self-accountability is breeding grounds for self-doubt.

I was just discussing my own self-accountability with a friend.

While I’ve been self-accountable with my fitness goals lately, I’ve not been self-accountable in other areas of my life.

As a result, I don’t experience self-doubt with physical fitness because I’ve kept myself accountable to workout five times a week and walk or jog 10,000 steps a day, which is my goal. (Side note: If you want to read more about how I did this, check out my article here).

My thoughts and feelings regarding physical fitness serve me and are completely healthy.

But when it comes to some of the other goals I’m working toward, I haven’t been consistently self-accountable, and as a result I have thoughts and feelings of self-doubt in those areas of my life. I feel “stuck” in those areas.

So, how do you overcome self-doubt then, you ask?

How to Overcome Self-Doubt

Acknowledge the thought and feeling you have pertaining to any area of your life.

Pick one area of your life and write down the thought and feeling you have regarding it.

For example, let’s say I’m writing down the thought and feeling I have regarding physical fitness.

Thought: It’s easy to maintain my fitness regimen. I don’t have a hard time staying motivated to work out because I understand the underlying reasons why I do it in the first place.

Feeling: I feel energized and physically fit, even if my body isn’t perfect. The high I get from working out keeps me motivated to continue doing it.

I’m going to include one more personal example:

Thought: It’s hard to only drink on weekends. I guess I don’t have the discipline to maintain this habit long-term.

Feeling: Defeated, doubtful.

Decide if this thought and feeling is useful.

I intentionally included two examples from my personal life.

One example where I’m winning, and one where I’m struggling.

The first example I gave regarding physical fitness is an example of a useful thought and feeling. It is clear I don’t feel self-doubt in this area.

However, in my second example, my thought and feeling regarding my drinking habit isn’t useful.

In this article I explain how I broke the bad habit of drinking wine on a near-daily basis, and I was able to uphold this for many months. But recently, I’ve had a hard time abiding by this plan.

As a result, I feel defeated for my lack of self-accountability and doubtful I can resume only drinking on weekends again.

This is not useful.

I will never go back to weekends-only drinking with this thought and feeling, so I need to change it.

Choose a new thought that serves you, then practice it.

If you wrote down a thought and feeling that doesn’t serve you regarding a specific area of your life, the next step is to create a new thought and feeling that does.

In using the example of me not abiding by my intentional drinking plan to only drink on weekends and the feelings of doubt and defeat I feel that coincide with it, here is an example of a new thought and feeling I created:

Thought: I’m having a tough time abiding by my personal plan to drink on weekends only, but that’s okay because I know I can do hard things.

Feeling: Motivated, powerful, in control of the outcome.

Try this exercise with the thought and feeling that doesn’t serve you.