Overcoming Doubt

Ask yourself – what doubt stories are you telling?

Try completing these sentences:

I’m not ____ enough. I’m too ____ to be successful. I don’t have enough ____ to reach my goal. Too old, too young, too ugly, too broke, too fat, too skinny, too shy, too, too, too…. so I can’t.

Author and historian Steve Pressfield says ‘the ability to overcome resistance, self sabotage and self doubt is way more important than talent.’

The story I’ve told myself for years is “I’m not educated enough to have the life I want.” My recent version is “I’m too old now to acquire the education so it’s too late to achieve professional or financial success. I need to make the most with what I have and settle for good enough.” One of my latest is “I’m not pretty enough or interesting enough to build a successful brand on social media”.

One of my mentors taught me ‘We see the world through the filter of our beliefs. Change your beliefs, change your life.’ You are what you think you are, and if you want to change what you are, you have to start by changing your thoughts.

So how do we overcome negative thought patterns manifesting as doubts and beliefs? The first step is to replace the old story that’s not serving you (if the thought results in you feeling badly, its time to let it go) with your new story that supports you achieving your goals.

Here is a list of questions Brendon Burchard, best selling author, and world’s leading high performance coach recommends to ask yourself when thoughts of inadequacy surface, and how I’ve applied them to my life:

1. Is this thought or worry helpful to my joy and new story? The stories I was telling myself made me feel small and certainly did not make me feel joy. Time to release them.
2. Will this belief carry me to my desired life? I’ve reframed my old belief that my value in this world is not measured by my level of formal education but by my willingness to learn, grow and share through service.
3. Is this belief verifiable and fair? Is it a fact that people my age don’t continue to achieve goals and change their lifestyles? Ummmm….no. My own mum went to University of Guelph in her mid 40s and started a business that has become very successful.
4. Is this situation in my control? ‘I’m not pretty or interesting enough to build a successful brand on social media’ – I will never have control over what people think of me – and besides, what I think they think is rarely correct. Let it go. Brendon says ‘you can pivot whenever you want NO ONE KNOWS YOU’.
5. What judgement can be released now? I think its fair to let go of decisions I made 25 years ago and move on. *head slap
6. Whats the next right action of integrity? First of all letting go of the beliefs that I’ve carried around for 25 years and replacing them with beliefs that initiate action. If I fail? ‘Whats the next right action of integrity?’ The key is minimizing time between actions as thats where the pain lies. The longer you wait to get up and take action again, the bigger the pain.

The realization that most of what I believed was merely stories I made up and I have the power to re write them has been truly empowering to me.

Learning to accept that what people think about me is out of my control and irrelevant to my life has begun to set me free.

Check out the full podcast that inspired this post: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-brendon-show/id821746377?i=1000473013923

Check out his best selling book High Performance Habits https://amzn.to/36qoiLo

I recently bought his High Performance Habits planner and am LOVING it !! https://amzn.to/3eavnSQ