What do you do when Self-Doubt and/or Imposter Syndrome pop Up?
As a so-called expert in the self-help personal development space how do we still leverage all we know, but find ways to overcome our own self-doubt when it arises? That’s a damn good question.
These questions may be coming up right now…
- Aren’t you supposed to be beyond self-doubt?
- Aren’t you supposed to know the way to avoid suffering?
- Don’t you have access to all the tools to beat this kind of thing?
As you can imagine having a stroke like this would be pretty devastating for most people. Most people would give up and probably want to wither away and die. He continued on. He continued tea meditations with his sangha community or small groups.
Does seeing others handle suffering well inspire us?
Well, this is a tricky question. It could totally inspire us or it could also allow self-doubt to sink in deeper and open us up to thoughts of us NOT being a superstar like Thay. In my case it inspires me, but I also question why I’m making such a big deal over smaller struggles in my life.
What do I have to complain about?
That is a great question. This morning a friend in my circle shared they was homeless for 5 years. Luckily, I have never experienced homelessness, so how can I complain? I have a home, a great family, regular meals – so what is there to make me feel so lost at times?
I think, for me, I don’t know – what my issue actually is. I struggle to define it or put it into words. All I know is I feel lost at sea, alone, helpless, failing, sad, incompetent, and just worthless at times.
Why?
Probably lack of consistent sleep. My mind is busy and goes crazy if I wake up to go to the restroom or if I’m warm or something. For some reason my sleep routine is not great and getting the 8-hours of sleep I want hasn’t been easy for the last year or two. This is why I started looking into understanding and studying sleep as I cover in my new Deep Sleep Course.
Living in Texas, I struggle to get outside regularly. I mind the heat and we had a stretch of 100+° weather for 75 days and no rain in this time (summer of 2022). It was a brutal summer. Sadly I spend too much time in my home because I work from home and serve clients around the globe. This makes me lethargic for the last 20 years and I think it is taking it’s toll.
Recently, I have had my refuge, my meditation sangha group, going through many changes. Our fearless leader moved and we are now scrambling to get several members to step into fulltime-ish leadership roles. Several of the leaders, including myself, are stepping into bigger roles to keep the day-to-day stuff going. This is great, but also a struggle to share the leadership details as a group instead of being lead by a single individual for the most part.
Raising my kids over the summer took it’s tool on me. I felt I was not being the parent I knew I once was because I had different things on my plate and my boys needed different things that I felt very unskilled or ill equipped to provide.
For about the last 3 weeks we have noticed a raccoon broke through the roof of our home to seek a safe nesting place. This hindered my sleep as I could hear her right above my head at night usually around 2:00 am. We had a mini-staycation planned right when this happened which slowed down getting her out.
And try to live by doing no harm took research to find a safe resource to get her out without killing her. When someone or something is invading and destroying your home, it is hard to NOT move to wanting to kill them.
This was a costly removal (thousands of dollars) and being in a slow season with my business, this weighs on me a bit. This is were self-worth questions come in – what am I doing? Who am I to want to do this? Why is it not happening faster? Etc, etc.
Wow! That was some list and this is only scratching the surface, but hopefully you can see where I am at.
What Is Self-Doubt? (A Definition)
Berkeley Wellbeing Institute shared this as a definition…
Self-doubt can be defined as a state of uncertainty about the truth of anything (Braslow, Guerrettaz, Arkin, & Oleson, 2012). It could be about our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, opinions, decisions, self-views, or any “truth” we hold in our minds. We have a sense that we are not stable. However, researchers further suggest that self-doubt specifically involves questioning our own self-competence (Braslow, Guerrettaz, Arkin, & Oleson, 2012).
So what do you do to overcome self-doubt and suffering?
I truly believe a big part of this is related to mental health and positive and consistent self-care.
As I jump into the HOW, I will first share a few thoughts from a Forbes Magzine article titled How To Beat Self-Doubt And Stop Selling Yourself Short and some of their insights before sharing my own thoughts today.
In the Forbes article, they shared these tips…
- Embrace Doubt As Part of Being Human
- Doubt Your Doubts
- Call Out Your Critic
- Make Your Mission Bigger Than Your Fear
- Build A Tribe of Believers
- Train The Brave. Daily
So I started writing this article in late summer or early fall of 2022. I am picking it back up and although all the above feelings and emotions are true. I can tell you some of the wisest words I’ve learned from my Buddhist teacher are on impermanence – basically – this too shall pass. So yes, the imposter syndrome has moved on.
How, you may be asking?
Well, in all honesty it was through keeping on, keeping on. Through persistence a few things changed. The kids went to school. We got my youngest in daycare/preschool first for 3 days a week, then for 5. This freed up time for self-care and the ability to serve my business and in the wither I picked up 3 decent sized accounts and a few small ones. I again had autonomy.
I was able to start getting things fixed that were just weighing on me before. I felt good about myself because I was able to do some great work and prove it was valuable work. Sadly getting self worth from your job is NOT recommended, but this is one of my struggles.
I was able to take the family on a roadtrip to Pennsylvania to see family over Christmas and have a blast on our trip with time to sightsee. Currently I now have built a new course and a new free tool that seems to really be resonating with my audience and accomplishing many things I’ve been working on for the last 2-3 years.
So part of the answer is commitment and stick-to-ited-ness. My persistence paid off. My marketing business is moving in a positive direction and now Hellagood Life is growing and gaining traction that is very exciting.
I’m not going to bullshit you and say I never struggle, never have self-doubt, never see waves of low self-worth, but I will tell you this… deep down, I know I bring a lot of value to the world and I do believe even in the darkest of times I am helping make a positive impact on the world.
This may be souly because I live by my purpose to challenge people to become innovative leaders so that we can change the world together. When times are dark, I push on through doing little things that will move the needle forward and THAT is what truly helps.
Find your purpose in life and you may be surprised how it helps you to get through the tough times.
If you do not have a clearly defined purpose defined for yourself, I’d ask… would you like to create one? This is something I’ve done a little bit of consulting on and know it can be a game changer. Right now it is a bit time consuming, costly, and very 1-on-1 which is great but most get scared at the thought of time consuming, digging deep and also the money to be honest.
That said… I AM working on refining the process and building a more systematized approach to do everything in a more timely manor and at an affordable rate. So if you are interested, let me know. This is a compass of sorts helping you always point in the right direction which makes dark times easier.
The last piece I will say related to this is sometimes it is our own head-trash and negative self-talk that causes these big problems If you are struggling with any of these self-worth issues maybe you’d like to try me new Limiting Beliefs Assessment Test to see if you have any of the main self-limiting beliefs that gets many people stuck and pushing us to the downward spiral of self-doubt. Trust me, I continue to do work on my own limiting beliefs.