How is self-doubt ruining your life?
For me self-doubt seems to have this way of infiltrating your life and it really undermines any efforts or any energy that you put into your business, your personal life. It reaches into any aspect of your life where you are really wanting to grow and to reach new heights. When self-doubt comes into the mixture it can really destroy all your efforts and all the energy that you bring into these things.
The thing with self-doubt is that it is almost a bit sneaky.
It creeps into your life and before you know it, years may have gone by and you haven’t realised how strong your self-doubt has become. It almost feeds off itself, it starts off small and then it keeps growing and growing.
In order to take you out of this repetitive cycle of self-doubt, there is this need for us to really anchor in, really connect into our faith, into the deep sense within us in. We need to really believe in ourselves, to believe in what we are capable of, to believe how magnificent we are and how amazingly we can show up and shine in this world.
If you want to get out of the the energy of self-doubt, just having positive thoughts in your mind and thinking them, can get you a long way. These positive thoughts won’t really shift the energy though. They won’t alter the energy of the self-doubt. Just the thoughts on their own are not enough.
There is this real need for you to anchor the belief into the cellular level, into the energetic layers of our being.
If you have had self-doubt in your life for a really long time, simply saying a statement that is in total contradiction to where you are at is really hard to believe. Let me give you an example to help you make sense of this. Let’s say that you have come to a place in your life where you frequently say things like:
- “I am really bad with money.”
- “I am really terrible with finances.”
- “Anything to do with money – I really struggle.”
Now if I came along, or someone else comes into your space and tells you that you need to start saying something like:
- “I manage my money amazingly, I am really excellent at managing money.”
There would be this massive contrast between how you feel about money based on what your self-doubt has brought into your life and these statements. The contrast is too much. For you to believe these statements may feel like an impossible task – the stretch is too far.
There is an in-between step though:
What I want to encourage you to do, is to find an in-between step, somewhere in between the two, something that does feel believable for you. Even if there is only a slight shift in the energy. It is a start – a way for you to start reclaiming your power. Getting back into your power space.
Maybe maths and finances are not your strong point – perhaps you will always struggle with these in your mind (and this is perhaps just a belief too :-)). Regardless of whether finances are your strong point or not, there are ways for us to get into a space where we are empowered enough to make decisions and make choices around these things. (Even if we currently have massive self-doubt around them).
Perhaps we don’t have to do the entire task, maybe we can outsource certain parts of it. However, if you are running a business, and if you are trying to manage your finances in your personal life then totally outsourcing this and giving the power to someone else is in itself extremely dis-empowering. We need to get to a place where we have enough knowledge and enough understanding and enough confidence and belief in our self, to be able to make good decisions in these spaces. Then perhaps the actual doing of these things we may leave up to someone who has more skill set then us. The key is that leading into that process and at the end of that process we are aware enough and we understand enough about it to know what is happening.
Shifting from self-doubt to self-empowerment
For us to get into the space where we begin shifting our self-doubt there are a multitude of things that we could do.
- One of those is to educate ourselves. To educate ourselves enough so that we can make empowered decisions.
- Take the time to get to know what things truly fall into your zone of genius, and which do not. It is possible that the idea that you are not good with money, or that you don’t know how to manage your finances is just simply a belief and it has nothing to do with ability, nothing to do with skill set, and unless you explore that you will never actually know. Perhaps it is your zone of genius and you just have beliefs around it that have got you to this place where you think that you are not.
I want to encourage you to spend some time understanding where the self-doubt is showing up for you. You will know it because you will actually FEEL dis-empowered when these things come up. The way it shows up physically and energetically is:
- Your energy shrinks back. You know that feeling when you want to just become invisible.
- Resistance tactics come into play such as:
- Procrastination
- Resistance
- Avoidance
- I’m too buy for this right now
When these show up, they are telling you that you can’t do this because you are not good enough at it. These are all really just masks for the really issue.
Ultimately the “I am not good enough” is the underlying layer, right?
Our self-doubt and the idea of “I am not good enough” is the underneath piece that drives all of the resistance and avoidance tactics that get you away from doing a specific task.
I will admit that there are many things that cause my body to scream “Aahhhh get me out of here! I can’t do this. I’m not good enough. I can never do that”.
How I work with this myself and how I get myself into a place where I can actually start stepping into these uncomfortable spaces is to really feel into and begin anchoring within myself some level of willingness, some level of belief that this is possible for me, that I can do this and owning it. Feeling it right down into the core of my being.
Our power center is our Solar Plexus Chakra, and it is near to where the gut is. We have all heard that term – “I can feel it in my gut.” This is where you want to anchor in your power – in your gut area, in your sacral chakra area, below your rib cage and above your belly button.
When you are feeling dis-empowered, this is where it will show up physically and energetically for you. You may get butterflies in your stomach, or a churning feeling in there. Sometimes it might even feel like someone has punched you in the stomach, like they have really punched the air out of you and dis-empowered you.
What you want to do is notice these feelings when they come up and then be able to go into that space and to take a few breaths and notice the stream of thoughts that come up around this thing that you are telling yourself that you are no good at. When you say something like: “I am no good at my finances.” Notice how the dis-empowering feelings come into this gut area.
Then mentally in your mind and energetically in your space you want to STOP.
Even if you need to say the word STOP out loud, then do it. Use this word as a marker point, to say, I am stopping here, I’m not going to allow things to go further, I’m not going to allow my thoughts and my self-doubt to continue in this way.
If you allow it, you already know where it leads – on a downwards spiral, with each one of the negative thoughts leading on a self-perpetuating cycle, where you say it, feel it and ultimately believe it and the world just continues showing up for you in this way. You will find that everything you do matches these thoughts and beliefs.
You will keep making mistakes, you will make poor money decisions. We want to stop that and we want to get ourselves into a more empowered energy space.
All you need to do is to just start this new conversation within yourself. Start saying things like:
- “I am willing to learn more, to understand more about my finances, about managing my money.”
- “I am willing to step into this space, being empowered and knowing more about where I stand and where I should be moving into when it comes to money and finances.”
By using the word WILLING / WILLINGNESS – it helps us to start stepping into this space and helps us to start reclaiming our power.
The trick here, or the accent that you need to bring in when doing this is to FEEL IT, OWN IT. If you say a statement such as “I am amazing with my finances,” and it feels totally fake, it feels really unbelievable, then step it down a bit to a place where you feel you can really own it.
The idea is to be able to own it, then step it up to the next level. Own that and then step it up. Own that and then step it up. You build your courage, you build your empowerment, you build your core strength in this way. Then you can get to this place where you can say and believe. “
- “I am actually quite kick ass with my finances.”
- “I can do this, I do believe this”.
You feel so much stronger and more alive and ready to take things on.
Self-doubt, if we allow it to, will undermine everything. It will ruin everything. In one moment we can switch that, we can step in the opposite direction. Instead of going down and down and down with our self-doubt, we begin stepping up and up and up towards who we want to be and how we want to show up in this world.
In order to do that, we need to start owning it, in the moment, in a way that feels believable to us.
We need to own it on a cellular level. To own it on an energetic level. This is the key. That is the step that is needed.
Repeating a statement that you do not resonate with, that you do not believe, that feels fake, will feel too hard for your energy, for you mind, for your whole being to absorb and to accept.
You should absolutely set your end goal to get to the point where a statement such as: “I am absolutely amazing with my finances,” feels true for you. You want to work towards this, however jumping straight here if you don’t believe it will be too hard, it will be too much of a stretch. All that will happen is that you will start beating yourself up again and nothing around you will show you that you are amazing with your finances. You will get back into the loop of telling yourself that you are not good with your finances and down you will go on the negative spiral again.
I encourage you to become aware and notice where it is showing up for you, where the tinge of self-doubt is creeping in. Where you have stepped into the space of self-doubt, and you are really beating yourself up, and just stop for a moment.
Think about where it is you want to go and what that in between step is to help you get there. A step that feels believable, that you can hold onto. Then continue challenging yourself, saying: “I am ready for the next step,” and stepping up and through to the next step and the next step.
If you approach it in this way, then things around you will start changing and before you know it you will be looking at the things happening in your life and will be able to say things like: “Wow that was an amazing financial decision that I made, and look where I am at now.”
Remember, to just start noticing and then begin stepping it up and before you know it you will be where you want to be.
Sending you love and light
Lynda