3 things I do to deal with self-doubt
Something happens when you start telling people you used to be a confidence coach. People assume you always feel confident and secure about yourself.
And oh, are they wrong.
Uh…. Samantha, why should I be listening to you then? Well, my friend, I’d be lying if I didn’t ask myself the same question sometimes but in today’s post I am going to talk to you about some of the things I do when negative self-talk or generally self-doubt comes up.
The good news for both of us is that these practices have led me to recognize thoughts like “Why should anybody listen to me?” as the voice of my negative self talk.
Once I’m able to get myself out of it, what I always remember (and I absolutely want you to understand so you can make an informed decision about whether I am somebody you want to keep listening to) is…
I would rather learn how to invest my money from someone who’s fallen to temptations of some bad tactics in the past and is able to tell me why I shouldn’t listen to xyz temptation in my head because it’ll steer me in the wrong direction rather than someone who’s never made a wrong investment decision in their life. I’d rather learn to dance from someone who has felt awkward in the back of the room and knows the courage it takes to still do the routine full out than someone who was naturally gifted from age 3 and never understood why people were scared to perform.
If you want to work with someone who’s always felt confident, who didn’t have to battle self-doubt because they always felt like they knew what to do, and who feels like it’s a no-brainer to just love yourself and know that you’re enough, feel free.
On the other hand, if it would be helpful for you to hear from someone who learned to put on a strong face and show the world that everything was fine, but inside was questioning “what if they figure me out?” or “what if all this work I’m putting in isn’t good enough,” someone who’s had the “good stuff” six figure salaries, luxurious vacations, or schedule flexibility and still didn’t feel like she’d “done enough,” and somebody who has navigated through thoughts like these and truly understands the persistence and commitment it takes to really see changes in how you feel about yourself (and how much better it feels every time you come out the other side, even if you still have stuff to work on), then welcome, I’m so so so glad you’re here.
I know how hard this work can feel because I am doing it right along side you - I just may be a few steps ahead.
And it’s for this reason that I thought it might be helpful for me to pull back the curtain a little bit on the real things that I do, in present day, when the self-doubt or negative self-talk pops up, as someone who’s full time job is to work through and address these types of challenges, so you can steal them for yourself and also so you might not feel as alone that you still have to remind yourself of these things regularly.
So without further ado…
How to deal with self-doubt and negative self-talk so you can be more confident
I’m going to walk you through a few of my most go to tactics for the times when the voice in my head starts to get real brutal. But before we jump into the tactics, there’s something really important we need to talk about.
We don’t have to believe the voice in our head.
When I first came across this quote, I remember it completely bowled me over (so prepare yourself):
We began to ask ourselves, “What evidence do we have that the voice in our heads helps us?” It’s an intriguing question considering how much we revere the advice it gives us. The voice is so often speaking from the neediest, most fearful, most lonely parts of us. - Tiago Forte
How many of us walk around every day and we hear the thoughts in our head - “you look fat,” “you’ll never have a relationship like that,” “wow, that was embarrassing” - and never for a second question the validity of what it’s saying!
It makes sense really. I think about it this way - for tens of thousands of years, monkeys and early versions of humans ran almost completely on what we’d consider the “animal” brain. We were guided almost exclusively on “saber tooth tiger - time to run!” or “cavewoman look pretty. want baby. go talk to her.” (Dramatization, obviously, don’t quote me on that one!) And back in this era, our bodies didn’t need to get clever in order to get us to do the things that it wanted us to do to keep us safe and ensure the preservation of the species.
But as we evolved and got smarter, we learned how to analyze behavior, to write, to create great art, build civilizations and as we got smarter, our bodies weren’t as effective at controlling us. Humans had instincts like to say stab Caesar, and some people’s brains were able to mediate those instincts (and some others weren’t, as it were). It began a sort of internal battle between our animal brain and our sophisticated human brain.
So how did our body adjust (because it ultimately is the one responsible for keeping us alive - Shakespeare can’t write great plays if his body doesn’t make him hungry enough to eat and tired enough to sleep)? There developed something that sounded like a rational thought, but actually came from those same instincts of “saber tooth tiger - run!” and “cavewoman look pretty,” which are our more fear and safety based thoughts.
The best way to get us to listen to our irrational, fear-based instincts is to make them sound very very much like rational thoughts.
And so negative self talk and self-doubt were born.
So as I tell you more about how I handle these thoughts when they come up, one of the biggest things I’m doing over and over again is trying to get my rational brain back on line. Just giving my brain enough time before I make a decision or spiral into an emotion to catch when I might have a fear-based thought imposter in my midst.
So how do I do that?
1 - Modulate alone time
I used to think I was a complete extrovert. But in my ripe old age of 30, I probably identify more as an ambivert now. But looking back to my 20s, I really think I kept myself so busy with other people so that I didn’t have to be alone too much with my own thoughts.
As I started to spend more time alone, I learned to enjoy it more but this was almost in direct correlation with the ways I was learning to love myself more and not trust some of these more negative thoughts.
Today, I recognize that I need alone time to do the deeper inner work. When I have a critique of myself that seems to be coming up repetitively, the only way I sort through it is if I allow myself the empty space to reflect on where these thoughts are coming from, to journal on what’s been coming up for me or look at any patterns, or to go to my toolbox of healing techniques to see if I can address the deeper root of what’s coming up for me.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, when I give myself too much alone time, especially if I’m in a period of pretty nagging self-doubt, I can make the problem worse. I begin to look at the alone time as proof that there’s something wrong with me or I’m destined to be alone (obviously not true, but when you’re in a sad place, it can feel easier to believe these things).
So I pay very close attention to my balance of alone time and time with people who I know to be good support systems and lift me up. If I notice that my spiraling is getting hard to battle, I will try to get a plan on the calendar with somebody as soon as possible and most importantly, challenge myself to be a little vulnerable with them when we’re together that I’ve been doubting myself. Often these conversations immediately allow me to get a reflection back from someone who loves me that I’m usually being WAY too hard on myself and immediately, I feel the negative self-talk skitter a little more back to the darkness.
And then I also watch to make sure this doesn’t go too far into booking up my calendar or filling up quiet time with things like TV and podcasts that might indicate I’m running from my thoughts and ultimately the healing that I probably really need to do.
This is a balance and shifts regularly for me, but the more I am aware of these cycles, the more I can use both time with my people and alone time to my advantage.
2 - Make lists (to counter the self-doubt)
When the self-doubt creeps in, often it feels like it’s trying to convince us of an objective truth. (Side note: there’s no such thing as an objective truth, but our brain doesn’t like to acknowledge that part.) You haven’t made a million dollars. You’re a failure. You don’t have a boyfriend. You’re unnattractive. You don’t run your own business. You’re not successful.
As crazy as it sounds, our brains are actually trying to be helpful. Because if you believe you’re a failure, you won’t keep putting yourself out there to try to get the promotion, which means you won’t put yourself at risk of rejection or making mistakes publicly. And your brain knows how painful rejection can be, so that feels like the right path.
But we come back to the most important phrase in my entire business (clients, say it with me…):
Our brains are wired to keep us safe, not to make us happy.
So if we want to be happy, fulfilled, and connected, these tactics of our brain are steering us in the wrong direction. So let’s fight “objective” with “objective.” What does that mean?
I make lists. Lots of them.
If my brain is trying to convince me that my business isn’t succeeding because I’m not making $30k a month, I’ll pull out my journal and list out 10 things I’ve done in the past 2 weeks that I’m proud of. I’ll pull back up my goals from 6 months ago (this is part of why I love journaling and other written exercises so much because they give you a time capsule to be able to jump back to rather than relying on memory) and notice how many of those goals I’ve already achieved. I’ll write lists of all the things that I am good at (even if there are still areas of improvement).
My whole goal is helping me be more aware that there is more than one conclusion I can come to about myself, purely based on which data I pull and how I frame it.
Ironically enough, I find some of the hardest moments for high achieving women and perfectionists when it comes to self-doubt are actually when things start going well. (That’s not to say that there isn’t self-doubt and negative self-talk when things aren’t going well, but it can often catch high achieving types off guard that things start to go well and they don’t magically feel good about themselves.)
I battled a stint of this in the past around a viral video (5.3M views now. It’s totally wild!). For all outside indications, things were rocking and rolling! And they were! But my brain took this moment to point out all the ways that I wasn’t ready, all the things I hadn’t done yet or all the ways that all this attention could actually be a bad thing.
I understand that my brain is on high alert in these moments because I’m so much more visible - which means more opportunities for trolls and for criticism of my work - and it also sees that if things keep going the way they are, it will be harder and harder to get me to stay in the safe zone that it wants me in, because I’ll be on the precipice of really believing I can do more and have more and deserve more.
How annoying is it that our brains are actively trying to keep us from having what it is we really want?!
Clients were always asking me: “How am I supposed to believe the good thing about myself when I don’t have evidence for it?” and then in the situations where the good things ARE happening, they immediately go to “well it doesn’t count because….” And they wonder why they feel stuck?
So last week was a practical exercise in that for me - for months, I’d been working on my beliefs about the business being successful, that I was doing enough, that it’s working, etc. all those positive beliefs you want - and in the moment where I actually had evidence to support those beliefs, I was trying to undermine them and actually use them to convince me of the opposite! But I caught the pattern and got to work on making my lists.
5 things this week that worked out better than I expected
3 things that happened this week that 2022 me would be so proud of
3 things I’ve done in the past 6 months that got me ready for this moment.
Rinse repeat.
3 - Inner child work
If you have never heard of Inner Child work, the basic premise is that when we’re experiencing fear, self-doubt, shame, etc., what’s being activated is a long pattern of beliefs about ourselves that were formed when we were very young and something painful or difficult happened to us. Because of our stage of development, our brains misunderstood the situation to mean something bad about us and we’ve been playing out that belief ever since. Inner Child work is the practice of connecting with that part of us who experienced an earlier version of the wound and supporting them in a way they didn’t get at the time. You may also hear this referred to as reparenting.
Inner child work is the foundation of so much healing and there are tons of resources out there with various approaches to inner child work. But the core is this…
When I’m feeling insecure or experiencing self-doubt, I try to identify when was an earlier (or the first time) I had this fear about myself and then giving that younger version of me what she needed at the time but didn’t get.
For example, if a guy ghosts and my thought to myself is “nobody ever chooses me,” I might give myself some calm reflection time with my journal, taking a few deep breaths and ask myself, “when was the first time I felt like somebody didn’t choose me?” For me, this usually calls up memories of my childhood when I was navigating being a child of divorced parents and bouncing back and forth between houses, which often left me feeling like an island on my own. (Important to note that both my parents tried their absolute best and both deeply loved me throughout all of these years but what matters here is my **perception** of the situation from my little brain.) I will consider, if I imagine that 5-year-old feeling that way, what would adult me want to give her? Usually in my imagination, I envision sitting cross-legged on the floor and asking if she wants to come sit in my lap. We usually end up hugging and me rubbing her back and reminding her how deeply loved and valuable she is and even when sometimes she feels lonely that it’s temporary and won’t always be this way.
Wow, y’all even writing that I started to tear up. It’s really really powerful.
I include inner child work in some form or fashion into most of my programs. But if you’re looking for another resource, I also love the Inner Child work inside of To Be Magnetic. They have guided meditations to help you do this type of reparenting and I find them to be very effective. (If you want to try them out, you can use SAMANTHA to get you 10% off)
Even if you do this sort of reflection on your own, I think you’ll be amazed how often the thing that you imagine yourself saying to that younger version of you is exactly what you need to hear in the current moment.
A final note
This post has definitely been a little different than what I’ve done for a while but if you remember a few months, I made a commitment to you all to try to share more of the messy so I hope this helped you see your own potential in maybe understanding a little more that perfection isn’t the goal here, resilience is.
I also want to remind you that you’re not broken because you have these thoughts.
Doubting yourself doesn’t mean all the self-development you’ve been doing isn’t working or that you’re not good enough regardless of the progress that you’ve made. There is no finish line for this work because the more you grow, the more the stage gets bigger or the race gets longer. Don’t let that intimidate you. It’s actually liberating permission.
If I know there’s not a finish line to cross, all that matters is that I do the best that I can with the next step.
If you tripped and are now sitting flat on your ass in the middle of the road, you can let that say to yourself, “ugh, I slowed myself down from finishing the race, I should just stop now” or you can say “well, the next step is to just stand back up and take another step.” Our whole life comes down to what we do in the next step - when things are going well, how do we tackle the next step and when things feel challenging, how do we tackle the next step.
We are all on our own paths, but we can all walk beside each other along the way.
I’m cheering for you my friend!
