“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” — William Shakespeare
This past weekend I had the pleasure of spending time with dear friends at Rockaway Beach.
One friend (who also happens to be a graduate of my 12-week Reset and Recharge program) recently returned home from the Tokyo Olympics.
She is an umpire for field hockey and earning the Olympic position was a long term goal of hers. She had to sacrifice a lot and work incredibly hard (both on her inner and outer game) to get to this point in her career.
So let me just interject here to say, Maggie I'm so proud of you and honored to call you a friend! 😘
Anywho, we hadn't seen her since she got back and so naturally we wanted to hear all about her experience.
As she was retelling the story of her time there as well as her preparation leading up to the Olympics, she mentioned what she called her "Spirit Board".
It was a simple piece of paper she taped onto the door in the room where she trained that served as a reminder of who she wanted to be and how she wanted to show up each day.
And one of the phrases written on her board was "Doubts in your Doubts".
Have you ever had someone question your abilities or just down right tell you that you can't do something?
Have you been the recipient of comments like,
You'll never be a successful ____ (writer, athlete, musician), so just focus on getting a "real" job.
Or,
Are you sure you want to ____ (start a business, run a marathon, move out of the country)? It's going to be really hard.
Or, (my favorite)
These bags are really heavy. Are you sure you can carry them by yourself? (Ummm...yes, I'm sure. Thank you very much. 💪)
If so, then you know how crappy it feels when other people doubt your abilities.
But you know what's worse?
👉 Self-doubt.
When YOU are your own biggest skeptic.
Now some level of self-doubt is healthy, as it helps us to recognize that we aren't always right, gives us humility and allows us to relate better with others.
But chronic self-doubt — where we have a hard time seeing our own good qualities or believing in our worth and our ability to succeed — isn't healthy.
Unhealthy self-doubt is like a greedy parasite that consumes more and more of you.
It's that little (or not so little) voice in your head that collects all of your failures and uses them as proof of your unworthiness.
And most struggling dieters hear that voice and believe it.
When that voice says,
"You can't lose weight!"
"You have failed so many times before!"
"You shouldn't even try!"
Struggling dieters BELIEVE it all and say to themselves,
"It's true, I can't!"
"There's no point!"
"I AM a failure!"
Self-doubt can get a hold of us and cripple our progress.
But the beauty is that once you learn how to control your doubts, new opportunities arise.
Because doubts are just emotional beliefs that we have created and given power to.
And even though those emotions can FEEL like facts.
THEY AREN'T.
Most of our doubts are fictional stories — beliefs that we have made into fact.
And when we believe all of these fictional stories, we get consumed by them.
We make decisions based on them.
The actions we take (or more often DON'T take) are influenced by them.
But once we see them for what they are — emotional beliefs, not facts — we have the opportunity to question their validity.
We get to put "doubts in our doubts".
And when we do that, we give ourselves the opportunity to believe something different.
To believe in our ability to succeed.
To believe in our talents and our worthiness.
To believe in ourselves.
So the next time that little voice tries to convince you that you can't or that you aren't good enough,
👉 Stop doubting yourself and start doubting your doubts.
Do you often find yourself struggling with self-doubt? If so, check out this live session on Instagram or on my Facebook business page where I share a powerful framework to help you doubt those doubts.
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