Doubt is a barrier and it can seriously mess with your mindset. It keeps creeping in and conflicting with our good self-talk when we’re wanting to put energy into accomplishing the tasks that bring us closer to our dreams.
Doubt in general and specifically self-doubt manifests as a negative internal voice that tells us we aren’t enough, or that others have more to offer.
Self-doubt is a monster of a barrier. When you let it.
How do I overcome the negative doubt voice? That’s a good question.
The first thing that helped me the most and got me moving deeper into conquering this villain of doubt was to really realize we are all unique.
I know we’ve all heard that before but why are we continually comparing ourselves with others? Its because we are constantly seeking as human beings to wonder where we are in life. Comparing ourselves is the easiest way to get a measurement of where we are.
You may be thinking well that’s fine! Yes that’s fine but it has a self draining effect while catapulting our mind into a negative thought pattern, unless we harness and guide it.
The second step is for you to harness and guide the thought pattern by seeking to find your purpose in life. With your purpose in the forefront of your mind, simply create your own little world inside yourself that you stay in.
This will stop outside factors from unnecessarily drawing you out of yourself. That’s not narcissistic or a bad thing. To have an inner sanctuary that you have complete comfort in is actually a force of confidence that radiates to others when you’re around them.
They feel your assuredness and it’s attractive. It’s leadership on autopilot. By creating your own little sanctuary inside yourself you’re breaking the cycle of inaction by controlling unconscious self-sabotaging thought patterns.
The third step to breaking the strangle hold of doubt is to identify the lies you believe.
You’ve been lying to yourself about yourself and its time to come clean with these thoughts. You need to write down the negative things you’ve been telling yourself, realize what’s true and what’s a lie and accept the good with the bad.
There are things I don’t like about myself and I’ve learned to do shadow work to accept them. We can only change so much at once so it’s important to realize and accept the things we can’t change right now.
Don’t suppress these thoughts because they will sabotage your thinking at times when you need clear thinking and decision making the most. Shadow work is a principle identified by Psychologist Carl Jung.
He was a Swiss Psychiatrist initially, and he founded an entire new category of psychology called analytical psychology. His principles are solid.
When accepting the bad things about myself I reflect back to The Serenity Prayer a girlfriend wrote down for me many years ago.
That is the common name for an originally untitled prayer by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It’s a prayer about learning how to accept hard things in life and has been adopted by organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous and other programs.
Chances are, you’ve heard all or part of this well-known prayer over the course of your life. It’s a long prayer, but this is the part quoted most often:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Note: Before you dive deep into shadow work you should consult with a professional psychologist because it can get really heavy. It can draw out feelings you may have suppressed for decades. We’ve been taught to discard feelings and suppress anything we don’t like about ourselves. This is bad advice, and could cause unnecessary trauma, so just beware. I’m showing you how to prevent this from happening again.
Once I started doing shadow work I learned how to make friends with my shadow. That didn’t mean I would start acting on my bad thoughts. It meant the opposite. Now when bad thoughts come up I’m ok accepting them and realize its just part of my shadow self. I don’t act on them or allow them to self-sabotage my belief in myself like I was doing before.
A bonus to making friends with my shadow was how it made it easier to stay in that own little world inside myself I previously talked about instead of allowing external forces to draw me out into a state of doubt.
The ultimate reward for doing the three steps I showed you above is to get to wholeness.
Carl Jung said, “I would rather be whole than good.”
It’s a great feeling to be whole. To feel grounded and and completely comfortable in your own skin. Many say they are but they’re really not. And it’s possible to be there now and to fall out of being whole later down the road.
What I showed you is a continual process that needs to be tended to on a regular basis. As long as you check back on the steps and do shadow work a couple times per month you should be ok. If not then ramp up the number of sessions while building your inner sanctuary all the while conquering doubt, and more importantly obtaining the feeling of being whole.
That automatically overrides the feelings of doubt.
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