A new project is so exciting. All the possibility lies in front of us. We haven’t started the grind yet. We haven’t started to hard work to make the vision a reality. Everything is exciting. Then we can have a moment, day, week, month or year where you get into a self-doubt funk? Do you remember when you started your adventure you now are on the fence about? What has changed? Are you less capable now? Probably not. We do however, convince ourselves with our internal self-defeating script, questioning everything we know or believe, we aren’t going to succeed.
Most of us have battled with self-doubt over the years. Some of us struggle constantly, some of us occasionally. In general, we all have taken a voyage on the U.S.S. Doubt at some point. Emotions are a funny thing sometimes. Possibly all times. We can point to why we are happy or sad when there is a defining moment or situation we are experiencing. However, a good part of the time we don’t know exactly why we feel the way we feel. It could have something to do with our diet, or our stress levels. Maybe, we are depressed & need to talk. Maybe we are in love. So many possibilities exist.
If we strip away the emotions for a few minutes (and this is really tough to do many times) & analyze our situation, take stock of where we are currently, we find the reality is much different than the script I our head. We are just as capable today as we were the moment we set out on our quest, project, or vision. In fact, maybe even more so than we were at the beginning. So, what’s different? The story we tell ourselves. The internal script telling us we haven’t achieved enough fast enough to be valued, to be validated tells us this lie. We could probably delve into the reasons why we have this script, but it’s not really important to this discussion. What is important is realizing it’s not true & taking action appropriately.
The challenge is the realization we are dealing with this issue at the moment we are struggling. It’s tough. Sometimes we just simply don’t see the bubble when we are inside of it. So, how do we recognize & adjust? What I find most effective is never letting self-doubt start in the first place. If we speak to our strengths each day it becomes tough to believe we don’t have them. We can accomplish this by speaking out loud to ourselves each day. It doesn’t have to be the classic “you are going to go out and win today, Bob” stuff we have heard & seen parodied throughout our life. However, it certainly can be. It can be as simple as reading some thank you notes from other people, or just acknowledging out loud to yourself a strength.
When we keep our strengths in front of us it becomes hard to negate them when the excitement fades. Remember, you may be a plain ordinary dragon, but a dragon is an amazing creature – just like you.