What if I fall? Self-doubt creeps in silently, takes over your thoughts, cancels your dreams, nullifies your plans. Can you completely eradicate it and remove it from your thoughts? Probably not! But why should you?

Self-doubt is a conversation you have deep inside of you. You are telling yourself that ‘you don’t have what it takes!’, ‘you can’t handle this’, ‘what the heck are you thinking?’ You are saying these things, not someone else. Sadly, it is a lack of confidence in your own capability to do something.  Usually this includes you comparing yourself with someone you admire, envy, love, are jealous of, etc. Right?

Do you know that even successful people have self-doubt?  The ‘I am not good enough’ moment? Think of the person you most admire having a moment of self-doubt? Hard to believe hey!

As a life coach, I deal with clients wanting to set goals for themselves: start a new business, a new career, to start studying for a new qualification, to lose weight, to be in a new relationship, to end a relationship, to get a new job, to start a family and be a responsible parent! The list of goals goes on and on.

The client goes through the process of ‘smarting the goal’ making the goal specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and of course, time bound. That’s the easy part.

Ok! Goals set, now ACTION required!

Then something happens.  Enter SELF-DOUBT. The mind starts up with these conversations in the head – hey, you can’t do that! You haven’t got what it takes! Remember you have been told before: you will never amount to anything; it will never work out for you! The brain very reliably remembers these very well. It has kept these thoughts in a safe space and on cue, brought them out in the open just when you are thinking of stretching yourself and evolving your life.

You need to recognize these thoughts for what they are. Yes, these thoughts have an energy about them, you need to channel that energy and change the way you think about these them when they arise. Why? Well, because they appear when you are ‘growing’: growing, evolving, transforming your life, when you are moving out of your comfort zone, when you are stretching yourself and asking more of yourself. So why not change the way you think about these thoughts and channel that energy into something positive. Actually what I am saying is that having self-doubt is not such a bad thing. It can be an indication that you are on the move in your life.

Instead of self-doubt manifesting as a barrier or a wall or an inaction, you use it to your advantage.

Self-doubt does not mean that something has gone wrong. No! Change it’s meaning to growth, a process of overcoming, becoming the person you are meant to be, and an indication that you are on the right path!