Overcoming Self-Doubt

Well hello self-doubt.

There you are again.

Like a back-seat driver that won’t ever shut up!

It can be hard to deal with self-doubt when those voices are sometimes deafening. There are many risks associated in hanging on to self-doubt that you should be aware of. If you suffer from self-doubt, it’s important to understand the type of harm you’re doing to yourself if you continue to hang on to it. Not dealing with your self-doubt affects both past, present, and future when we let it eat us up inside.  Below are some of the ways self-doubt can show up in your life.  Any (or all) of these examples can have a serious impact on your relationships as well. I only use these examples to shine a light on why some of these things are happening. Once you realize what’s going on, we can work on where it’s coming from, and ultimately, how to move past it.

As a Human Design Specialist, I can spot self-doubt pretty quickly in someone’s chart. Human Design is a human blue-print; it’s like a Myers Briggs test on crack.  The main difference between the two is that Human Design involves no test questions; it simply uses your birth data. Similar to Astrology and the Chakra Systems, it gives you a highly accurate energetic blue-print of who you are and why you do the things that you do.

Self-doubt is a huge topic that comes up when working with my clients. We usually have it in some form, but it’s difficult to pin-point where it comes from and why we keep having to overcome negative self-talk over and over and over again! What I like to do is reverse-engineer the problem. Below I’ve listed the “how” of self-doubt. How this looks like when it plays out in your life.  Then I will address the “why”. Sometimes being able to pin-point where this all comes from can push us in the right direction. If we can identify it, then we can change it.

HOW SELF-DOUBT SHOWS UP

•             Motivation – When you don’t think you can do much, and don’t trust yourself to do something right, fear can get in the way of doing anything. This can turn into a severe lack of motivation to do more than you have to just to get by. It can affect your entire life because you may have fewer satisfying relationships, a job you hate, and not enjoy life much. Ever wonder how you are going to just get through your day, or get up off the couch? I’ve been there too. Those ugly voices, (you know the ones I’m talking about!) start whispering in your ear that you might as well not even try because chances are you’ll screw it up anyway.

•             Procrastination – If you don’t think you know how to do things "right" then you may end up thinking you can’t do it at all because it will never be perfect.  This type of thinking can lead you to procrastinate and never finish anything or finish it at the last minute. This is how you set yourself up for failure. No one is perfect and perfection is not necessary to thrive in this life.  But self-doubt can lead you down a path that makes you think that unless you’re perfect, you might as well not even try.

•             Regret – When you miss opportunities, you will experience regret. Regret, when left unresolved, can lead to chronic stress and anxiety. This will then build upon itself to create even more self-doubt, which will create more regret, and so on. It’s easy to get stuck in this cycle and paralyzed by fear.  This is when the “shoulda, coulda, woulda’s” start rearing their ugly heads. You start beating yourself up along with your self-esteem.

•             Defeat – If you allow self-doubt to continue, you can start to become almost morbid in your belief that you cannot experience anything good or happy. It’s essentially an acceptance of failure. Have you ever worked with someone who reminded you of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh? They always seemed to have a dark cloud looming over their heads because they always felt like (no matter what) they were doomed to lose, bad things would happen, or they would screw it up anyways? This form of expression is some serious self-doubt making itself known.

•             Inhibited Self-Improvement – When you have no faith in yourself, it’s hard to even think about self-improvement. You think you have too much to improve because you can’t do anything, and maybe you even think you’re a victim of your circumstances to a point that you cannot achieve what you want-even if you try. I’m the queen of all the excuses. I can’t because I have kids. I can’t because I have a full-time job. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Sometimes the hardest part about starting something is just changing your attitude towards it.

•             Stifled Inspiration – When you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to get inspired to do anything new or to create anything new. Ending the self-doubt will bring out the creativity you already innately posses. Did you ever have a brilliant idea that just didn’t work out for whatever reason? It can absolutely make you doubt yourself. Get enough of these “failures” underneath your belt and it can keep you from accessing your creativity and flow that you were innately born with. You start playing the comparison game.

She’s prettier.

She’s more successful.

She’s a better mom.

This can put the brakes on our creative expression real fast.

So if any of these have applied to you or someone you know- where the hell did all of this negativity come from? Let’s get to the root of the problem so that we know how to fix it. Learning the “how” and “why” of self-doubt are the first steps in order to make a change.

HOW TO IDENTIFY WHERE YOUR SELF-DOUBT CAME FROM

Knowing how you developed self-doubt can sometimes help lead to recovering from that condition. You can build self-esteem by getting to the bottom of how it happened. You had self-esteem at one point, then lost it somewhere along the way. Remember rocking all those crazy outfits when you were a kid? You didn’t care what anybody else thought of you. You liked Power Rangers, so you were going to sport that (Pink Ranger) t-shirt every day. It didn’t matter if it had a huge ketchup stain on it! Now that’s confidence!

Your lack of confidence didn’t have to be a traumatic child-hood experience. It didn’t have to be one horrific instance in your young adult life either. Often times, it’s the minor experiences we’ve had along the way that leads to our negative self-talk. No matter how you determine what caused your self-doubt, you can work toward building your belief in yourself again, and start falling in love with yourself all over again.

 LIMITING BELIEFS LEARNED IN CHILDHOOD

Unfortunately, many people learn to put off their dreams and limit their ideas due to well-meaning parents who are also stuck in their own self-doubting lives and cannot ever envision anything different.

It’s not usually the fact that parents want to keep their kids from dreaming; they’re just trying to be realistic. When their child tells them about their big dream to travel the world and become a writer, they react in fear and make statements that may be statistically true- but these “facts” are ultimately limiting and can be very hurtful.

For example, they might discourage their child from becoming a writer by telling them no one makes money writing, or they might discourage their child from becoming anything that is above what they’re used to due to the fear of the costs and the fear that their child really can’t do it even if they try. But this is only due to their own lack of success and understanding of life.

This type of thinking then rubs off on their kids. That’s why statistically most people do not break out of the class they were born to. The exciting thing to remember, though, is that some people do, and the reason they do is they were able to see and envision the possibilities and then take the action to see it through.

PAST EXPERIENCES FROM BAD RELATIONSHIPS

If you used to have a positive self-image and didn’t suffer from much self-doubt but then started to develop self-doubt, it’s possible that you allowed your past experiences and bad relationships to get into your head and create this self-doubting experience.  

These relationships can come in any form. It can be a parent relationship, a friendship, a love interest, a spouse, even a child who is dragging you down and creating the self-doubt in your life. These relationships are sometimes defined as toxic relationships. Unfortunately, a toxic relationship can involve any type of relationship, both relatives and non-relatives. I’ve had toxic relationships from a previous boss. Nothing will ruin your self-esteem faster than working for someone who always puts you down. But I’ll dive further into that in just a minute.

If you are still in any of these relationships, it may be time to end it if you cannot get the support or kindness you need and deserve for simply expressing yourself. Cutting ties is a hard thing to do, but you can do it in a loving way. I’ve had to sever ties in many relationships. I had to do it because I had to put myself and well-being first. It isn’t selfish. I repeat (and say it with me!), it isn’t selfish. I harbor no ill will against the people in my life that I’ve had to cut ties with. I still wish the best for these people.  I love these people. I honestly think I can hold them in this regard because I intuitively knew when our time together was over. I honored it, respected it, and moved on.

BAD WORK ENVIRONMENTS

At some point in your life, if you had a job of any kind that turned into a bad experience (especially if it started with your first job), this can stunt you for a lifetime if you let it. Like I said before, I also had a bad experience and suffered from self-doubt because of a superior. It was my first job out of college and I was a single mom. My boss rolled her eyes and made threats to fire me if I had to take the day off when my daughter was sick. She would constantly criticize my work and tell me that mothers did not belong in my profession. I ended up quitting my job six years later with stress so high, it literally gave me nightmares.  .

I also want to add, sometimes we can’t understand why something is happening to us. For me, I knew that I was giving 100% at my job, I knew I was a good employee, and I knew my performance was excellent.  I didn’t see any way out of this horrible situation and I wanted to find a new career path altogether. All because of one person. ONE! That’s all it took. One person’s opinion of me caused such a huge ripple effect on my career. I feel compelled to tell you this so that you don’t let the same thing happen to you too

LACK OF LIFE EXPERIENCES

Sometimes a person can suffer from self-doubt simply due to a lack of experience. If you were overly sheltered in childhood, were sick, or had issues that caused you to not have a lot of experiences in life, that can turn into fear, anxiety, and even other problems such as agoraphobia that prevent you from stepping out of your comfort zone. If you have no successful experiences to look back on, it can be hard to imagine success. If you have only experienced failure, it can be twice as hard to envision success later.

Whatever the reason for these experiences: helicopter parents, an illness, undiagnosed mental illness, being super-shy... whatever is causing it needs to be addressed so that you can start experiencing small successes and know what if feels like. If you don’t know what that feels like, it’s going to be hard to move forward.

YOUR ZIP CODE

This can be hard to accept for some people, but where you are born makes a huge difference in how you view the world and your own place and potential in it. Even if you’re born into a well-off family, you can still experience self-doubt if you have controlling parents who see only one way that you can have success, such as following in the family business when you don’t want to. But most of the time it’s because you were born either in a place without a lot of opportunities or you were born to parents who, while loving, just didn’t have the financial means to support you.

The sad fact is that most people do not escape the situation they were born into today. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t. It just means that due to lack of vision, most people only know what’s inside their own small portion of the world, and don’t have their eyes open to the possibilities out there for them.

Just by reading this, no matter what your situation is, you are getting your eyes opened to the possibilities in the world to escape your circumstances and make the most of your life in a way that makes you thrive. Repeat after me… you are not your circumstances!

ANXIETY

Anxiety can actually be a symptom of self-doubt, but it goes in a circle. Self-doubt can cause anxiety and if you can find a way to address the anxiety, you may be able to lessen the effects of your self-doubt. Many people who have anxiety describe it as a bad feeling of a million butterflies in their stomachs whenever they think of doing something that makes them uncomfortable.

Often, this feeling is so bad that the person suffers from panic attacks, which can be debilitating. Some people don’t get the panic attacks but they don’t push themselves beyond that feeling of butterflies that they experience as unpleasant. Anxiety and self-doubt can go hand in hand. So if you find yourself suffering from anxiety, getting help in any manner that feels good to you- seeking out a medical professional, talking to a psychiatrist, trying meditation and/or exercise… could help improve some of the self-doubt you’ve been experiencing.

YOUR UNIQUE BLUE-PRINT

What if I told you that based off of your birth date, I could tell you why self-doubt, negative self talk, and all of your fears stem from? Yep, you read that right! Fear and self-doubt are my specialty. Why? Because I’m a Human Design Specialist. Human Design is the last personality assessment you’ll ever take. You don’t have to answer any questions and is more in-depth than a Myers Briggs test.

Human Design is a relatively new system of personality analysis that combines elements of Eastern and Western Astrology, the Chinese I’Ching, the Judaic Kabbalah (Tree of Life), the Hindu Chakra system and modern Quantum Physics. Human design can’t predict the future; however, when your start living your life out in the highest expression, it allows you to create your own luck, so to speak.  Your personal Human Design map, calculated from your birth data, gives you very specific knowledge about how you process energy.  Here is what your unique blue-print looks like:

Remember those limiting beliefs in your childhood we talked about earlier? In Human Design, we call this type of experience “conditioning”.  If you’ve had a chance to look at your Human Design chart, or any Human Design chart for that matter, you will notice 9 different shapes on the chart. Those shapes will either have a color or they will be white. We have the deepest amount of conditioning in those white shapes.

Let me explain. Say you have the triangle at the very top of your chart is white. Then say your parent’s didn’t believe in your ability to be a phenomenal writer. You would be “conditioned” to think that you didn’t have what it takes to be successful.  It takes a lot of time to “decondition” these beliefs.

I can help coach you through the fears that have been holding you back and keeping you paralyzed from moving forward. I can do this because I can see the beauty of who you really are, not who you’re pretending to be. It’s OK to be vulnerable. It’s how we grow. I know this, because self-doubt used to keep me paralyzed too. Human Design was the tool that helped shed some light on my darkest fears.

We can work together to take you from self-doubt to self-assured. You can sign up for my free email series if you’re still uncertain (located below this article). It walks you through your open centers and can help you pin-point any conditioning that has happened over the years. I’d like to support you in any way. Self-doubt is something very near and dear to my heart.

You don’t need to fix yourself; you just need to fall in love with yourself all over again.

Much love,

xo