From Self-Doubt To Self-Belief

Freedom from your programs 

This is a big one! What would be possible if you did not doubt yourself? 
A large number my clients have listed this as one of the goals they want to achieve and oddly enough this is normally the one thing that prevents you from achieving your goals. 
Before I go into how to get over self-doubt you need to know a little more about it. 

The very good news that nearly every person on the planet has suffered from self-doubt and the only ones not to are psychopaths. The fact that you are interested enough to be reading this is a good indication that you are not a psychopath.☺

So why do you have self-doubt when all it really does is stop you from achieving things that you want to achieve? If you have been following any of my blogs you will have read about the conscious and unconscious minds and how your experience of reality is made up of the combination of these two parts of you. They do not play an equal part though as your unconscious mind contributes at least 95% to how you experience reality and your conscious mind only 5%. Your unconscious mind is very important as it directs and gives the instructions for your heart to beat, your lungs to breathing and maintains all of the bodies functions that it would be impossible for you to run manually.

 It also interprets all of the information coming in from your senses all of the time. It compares them to data it has already collected to assess whether they are dangerous or pleasurable. Anyone who has had young children will know that they don’t automatically know that some things are hot and can burn them. It normally takes one experience for them to develop a program that stops them from touching hot things again. How these programs work is that once they are triggered by the information coming in from your senses such as heat or steam this activates one of your programs which will send thoughts which activate feelings which in turn cause you to respond in a certain way. If you have ever tried to do something you are afraid of you will know how hard it is to act against your feelings and yet all they are -is feelings! For instance I will assume that you have at some point burnt yourself and developed the program to prevent this from happening again. So if you were to decide that you wanted to walk on hot coals (as some people do), the only thing stopping you would be your thoughts and feelings; and believe you me getting past these is tough! This is how powerful your subconscious mind is at controlling your experiences of life. You have 1000’s of these programs that control how you interact with others, how you communicate, whether you are outgoing or introverted, self-confident or not. 

I am telling you all of this because this is where self-doubt comes in. When you experience self-doubt you are doing something that you have either never done before or something that you have not managed to do before. Your subconscious mind accesses its database of everything you have ever experienced and either says “Uh Oh we have no data -this could be a potentially life threatening or humiliating situation let’s put on the brakes and activate the self-doubt” or it will say “Ah Ha the data is not looking good we did this before and it didn’t work. Going on the data it won’t work again. This situation could be problematic lets activate self-doubt.”

I think it is so very important to know that self-doubt is not based on facts it is based on the past or on lack of information and it is something that most of us feel a lot of the time when we are pushing boundaries and growing. 

This is why fear contracts your life because if you give in to self-doubt and fear you will stop pushing the boundaries and your life will become less because of it. However if you choose to see fear and self-doubt for what they are - just programs - you can then choose to live your life to the full. 

But... If you are anything like me you still want to know, HOW to get past self-doubt. You may want a magic pill but unfortunately I can't offer you that. I can however share with you the way I do know - and that is; 

To move past self doubt you need to build up positive information in your subconscious that supports you rather than limits you. The exercise I am going to share with you I use with every single client I have and it is very simple but has to be acted on over and over again to really have impact. 

1. Set yourself challenges that streatch you by at least 20%. You can streatch yourself more than 20% but keep in mind that the more you streatch yourself the more challenging you will find it to keep your word to yourself. 
2. Be in action of keeping your word to yourself. This is the most important part of this exercise is that you keep your word. By keeping your word to yourself you will be telling your subconscious mind that you are someone who is able to overcome challenges. If you don't keep your word to yourself you will be reinforcing the belief that you cannot and your self-doubt will grow. 
3. Keeping your Word 80% of the time. For you to see a noticeable difference in your level of self-doubt you will need to  keep your word around 80% of the time. It is at this level that your subconscious will start to work with you rather than against you. To ensure you manage this I would suggest consciously choosing and setting challenges. Set aside time once a week and write them down. Give yourself a week to complete them and then go back to your paper and check to see to what % you managed to acheive them. Then repeat the exercise by setting some more challenges and checking back in with yourself to see to what % you achieved the. 
   

This little process I have described is why coaching is so very successful, because you are checking in with someone else every week there is more motivation to ensure you keep your word to yourself and before you know it you have turned your life around and cant imagine WHY you were so concerned in the first place! 

I would like to share an example with you. I am dyslexic and as you can imagine writing does not come naturally to me. It has taken me years to get to this place where I can sit down and rattle off an article without putting it off and finding something else to do. I did not find this easy but did keep setting myself challenges and did keep stepping forwards. Now I am fairly confident in my ability to write my thoughts down. I do still make the odd mistake (especially when it comes to punctuation!) but I no longer feel that my life is limited my by dyslexia.  ☺

Wishing you a wonderful week and hoping that you find the freedom that comes from  believing in yourself.

With love
​
 Britt

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