Done with Dieting Episode #44: Self-Doubt

You are listening to the Done with Dieting Podcast Episode number 44.

Hi, I’m Elizabeth Sherman, former corporate high tech executive turn life and weight loss coach. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was searching for that perfect diet, the one that would finally be the golden ticket to lose the weight that I so desired.

Fast forward past tons of failed diet attempts, exercise fads and painful lessons learned, and although I still have not reached the state of Nirvana, body love, my relationship with food exercise in my body is infinitely better than it was not only when I started this journey, but even as recently as three years ago.

The journey that has allowed me to ditch my scale, stop logging my food and exercise, eat food that I didn’t prepare and easily maintain my weight – something that I never thought was possible for me.

I created the Done with Dieting podcast to give you simple, easy to do and sustainable strategies to help you do the same without all of the drama that I went through.

If you’re a woman who’s looking to create a better relationship with food and her body, get off the diet roller coaster and free up a bunch of headspace spent on calories, how you should look what you should eat and beating yourself up for not doing what you think you should be doing. You are in the right place.

Let’s get started.

So, before we get started in this episode, I have something that’s just really funny to tell you. And that is that when I was recording this episode, I’m recording this little excerpt after I had so much self-doubt. When I was recording this, I was just so in my head. And

I was thinking about, do I even know what I’m talking about? Like, is this making sense? And what I want to share with you in telling you this is that all of this is self-doubt.

In this episode, I’m talking about self-doubt, but I want to let you know that there will never be a time that we don’t have self-doubt. And the point to that is that we think that we will be able to do whatever we want when we get rid of the self-doubt. And what I just want to point out here is that we can feel the self-doubt and do whatever it is that we want to do anyway.

And so, I just wanted to point out that when we have self-doubt, it’s always going to be there. But it’s through the process of doing what we want anyway, so that we can be successful in the goal. So, that’s all I wanted to share with you. All right, enjoy.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the show. Welcome to episode number 44. Today, we are talking about self-doubt, and it feels like I’ve been talking a lot about self-doubt lately, because it’s coming up a lot in with my clients and with the members of the Feel Good Sisterhood. The women that we’re talking about there are really talking about self-doubt and how it’s really keeping them from doing the things that they want to be doing.

And so, one thing I realized before, but then just forgot it and realized it. Do you ever do that? Do you ever know something and then forget it and then rediscover it again? So, what I re-realized is that for me, much of my anxiety actually comes from self-doubt. So, if we can solve, if I can solve for the self-doubt, then I can solve for the feelings of anxiety.

Because for me, self-doubt doesn’t have a ton of emotion, it doesn’t have a lot of physical sensation in it, but anxiety does. And one of my default go-to feelings is self-doubt. So, I realized that when I was going through a lot of the anxiety, a lot of the procrastination that I was feeling, I was struggling a lot with self-doubt.

And so, today, I want to talk about not just my anxiety, but I’ve also talked about my anxiety before on the podcast, and I talk about it very openly with my clients, and with my group. And what I’ve realized is that when I have anxiety, again, my anxiety is actually a secondary emotion. Meaning that I don’t feel a lot of worry, but what I feel worried about is something that’s going to happen in the future. And that happening in the future is generally coming from self-doubt.

What the anxiety is about is afraid that something is going to happen in the future, that something is going to happen badly. Right? And so, when I have the self-doubt, when I hear myself questioning, what’s going to happen if I do this decision or if I make that decision? That’s when I start to feel anxiety.

And when I really started tapping into how close anxiety and excitement felt to one another. The difference between the two being that excitement has a happy and wonderful feeling attached to it. Whereas anxiety has a feeling of dread attached to it. Right?

And when I started thinking about what I was worried about, what I started noticing that oftentimes, I was worried about what I was having self-doubt about. This decision that I was making in the present moment. So, the anxiety was showing up because I was starting to imagine all of these, what I call disaster scenarios. These disaster fantasies that really may or may not happen in the future.

And so, when I decided that I wasn’t going to experience self-doubt anymore, I just wasn’t going to be available to it. And I’m going to come back to that again later on in the show. But when I decided that I was no longer available for self-doubt. What was fascinating for me was that the amount of anxiety that I had in my body, the amount of anxiety that I experienced, the physical sensations of the anxiety also dropped dramatically.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t ever feel anxious. However, what I can now attribute it to is noticing when I’m feeling self-doubt, understanding why the self-doubt is showing up, and then understanding how the self-doubt is serving me, and then decide how I want to move.

So, what’s really interesting about self-doubt is that again, when I started this whole process of starting to feel my feelings, to process my feelings, and really not being afraid of my feelings, not being willing to resist my feelings, but embracing the feelings 100%.

I remember having just so many different feelings that would just all happen at once. And it was really confusing to me. It was difficult to tease apart exactly what I was feeling at any given moment. Because I think I had resisted them for so long. And so once I was open to it, my body was like, “oh, okay, we’re just going to fill all of them in.”

And it wasn’t until I started getting really intimate with the thoughts that were actually creating the self-doubt. That were ultimately creating the anxiety that I was able to really tease out. Again, the difference between what was a worry and what was a self-doubt.

So, you might be thinking, I don’t know if I struggle with self-doubt. I don’t think that’s something I struggle with. But here’s how we know that we do struggle with self-doubt is when we have that inner critic. Right? You know the one. The one that’s in our heads that after we’ve done something or we’re going to do something. The self-doubt is there, it’s questioning us. The inner critic that’s like, “oh, I don’t know if you should do that, or I told you so.” Right? I knew we shouldn’t have done that.

So, that little voice inside our heads that says, “you know, you really shouldn’t do that. You know, if you’re going to do that, this is going to happen or they’re not going to like it.” Right? We all do that.

And so, what I want to do first is I want to go to the dictionary and tell you how the dictionary defines self-doubt. So, in the dictionary, it defines self-doubt as a lack of confidence in oneself and in one ability. And I love that definition because it’s so true, right?

When we experienced self-doubt, it’s either because we’re unsure of do I have the confidence to do this? Or are people going to find out that I don’t know what I’m doing? Right? So, am I actually able to do this? And so again, the self-doubt that we feel just means that we’re not 100% confident in either the decision that we’re making or our capability of what we’re supposed to be doing.

And here’s what’s really interesting is that being a woman who grew up in the seventies and eighties, we were taught to doubt ourselves. Almost every woman I know in midlife has this experience where we’re just not sure, am I making the right decision? Are they going to find out that I’m a total fraud that we doubt ourselves and that we’re not sure? Like, am I supposed to be doing this? Is that okay?

I was just talking to one of my clients yesterday. She’s 61 years old and she is a top lawyer in her field. And she’s been doing this for years, and years, and years. She’s at a director level and she’s like, “I have imposter syndrome every single day.” She has been doing her job for 30 years and she still feels like an imposter.

It’s so freaking common, it’s something that so many of us experience. Not wanting to be bigger than we actually are, not wanting to appear overconfident, as if that’s the worst thing in the world. As if being confident, means that we are better them. And being confident, does not mean that. I mean, what’s wrong with being confident in our ability?

I think that if you were to see a friend of yours who could totally do something, and she was having lots of self-doubt. You’d be like, “oh, come on, you can do this in your sleep.” And how many of us do things like that?

Unfortunately, what keeps us in self-doubt is self-doubts sidekick, which is our inner critic. The self-criticism that comes after the fact when things didn’t pan out, like we had hoped they did.

Now, there’s a really fantastic book called the untethered. And in this book, the author talks about the inner critic as being a really terrible roommate. And I love this analogy because it’s essentially what your inner critic is. Your inner critic is just someone who sits around, doesn’t have any skin in the game, and just criticizes us.

Sometimes our inner critic can take the voice of a parent, a sibling, or a friend. And so, we don’t want to allow that inner critic to change, to determine what it is that we’re doing. Our inner critic is just a terrible roommate that sits on the couch and criticizes us and doesn’t have any skin in the game. And the inner critic just sits there and complains and is completely un-useful.

In this episode, I’m going to teach you how to get rid of that inner critic. Move on and get rid of self-doubt to a point. Now, folks who observe me think that I don’t have any self-doubt. They’ll say, it seems like you’re very confident. And I like to think that I am confident to a point.

But one of the reasons why I’m able to generate confidence is because I’ve done a ton of work on my self-doubt. But that doesn’t mean that self-doubt doesn’t come up for me. Because self-doubt is a feeling that, I’ve actually experienced for much of my life. It still comes up and I get to decide whether I want to pay attention towards it or not.

It’s one of the misconceptions that people have about anyone who seems confident. And I think that the idea is that once someone is confident, then they are all done with insecurity, and they’re done with self-doubt.

We look at people, even famous people, and we think that they are doing so well in their lives that they can’t possibly be plagued with the kind of worry and self-doubt that I have. And I don’t think that that’s actually true.

In fact, when we’re changing, whenever we want something different than what we’ve done before. Whenever you decide that you want to go to the next level of your life, when you want to expand out of your comfort zone, self-doubt is going to be part of the package. It’s just going to come along with that, and I think that’s part of the deal. I think that’s why a lot of people don’t really pursue growth.

Once we move into that discomfort, we retreat back into what’s comfortable. We want to keep growing, we see the potential, but we don’t want to experience the discomfort of putting ourselves out there. We don’t want to have to deal with the discomfort that comes along with the self-doubt. We don’t want to experience that self-doubt.

But we have to experience that self-doubt with each new level of self-growth. We try to hide it and when I say “we,” of course, I’m talking about me. There are so many examples of this in my own life where I really tried to take an escape route away from having to deal with my own self-doubt and with my own frustrations with myself. I just didn’t want to do it. And I think that the procrastination that I used to experience was plagued with self-doubt.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt like an imposter, and I thought that everyone would find out and point their fingers at me and laugh. And that’s just one of the quintessential self-doubt examples. And so, what happened was that I kept myself small for so long. I didn’t put myself out there.

I wouldn’t sell my services, even though I knew that I could help. But I didn’t want to confront the fact that what I was feeling felt terrible. But then, that led to all sorts of other problems with my inner critic going from you shouldn’t do that to the other shit.

That’s on the other side of that, that the inner critic poles, which is criticism judgment for not doing anything. Right?

The self-critic that’s like, “you’re not doing anything with your life, you’re a loser.” And so, once I learned that our brains lie to us and that self-doubt is one of the ways that our brains light us, right?

That realization made, not the self-doubt go away, but it allowed me to quiet that voice. And I think that this is an idea that if we’re on the right path, if we’re doing something that lights us up, if we’re following our purpose. If we’re doing something that we love and that we’re in alignment with, if we’re following our desires and we’re honing our true wants and our truth, that self-doubt will never creep in.

But self-doubt will creep in. That when we are destined to do, what we are put on this planet to do that the self-doubt will go away. And as much as having a purpose will help to silence that voice.

I’m just here to tell you that I really feel like I am living that life and very rarely does it feel like anything, but a lot of effort to overcome that negativity within me. And I don’t necessarily think that that’s a bad thing.

I think that it’s really important to remember that self-doubt is a choice. That being said, I think it’s important that many women, our age feel a ton of self-doubt, self-criticism, and self-judgment. It’s as if our brains are trying to beat us to the punch.

Becoming our own worst critic, believing that others can’t hurt us because they can’t say anything to us that we haven’t said to ourselves. But those thoughts aren’t helpful because when we think them, we feel terrible.

I heard this saying, “doubt your doubt.” And I love that. I love that, if I’m so good at doubting, maybe I should just turn my doubt on myself. Right? And doubt my own doubt. Doubt myself doubt, and it feels very real when we’re having it, and it feels like something that’s come over us. But really, it’s something that we are creating in our own minds. It’s our lower brain that’s doing that for us.

I experienced self-doubt when I set a goal. And sometimes also, when I’m trying to make a decision. Have you ever noticed that you set those goals or decide to do something, and then all of a sudden, your mind goes a little crazy coming up with reasons, why it’s a terrible idea? You can’t do that. Who do you think you are? What do you think is going to happen? You’re not capable of that.

Your brain wants to keep you safe. Even if that safety is creating negative results in your life. Like, losing weight. Because we know that we’re going to have to change our behavior, right? The brain wants things to stay the same in our life because staying the same is predictable and it’s safe.

When we start pushing ourselves, that’s when the brain kicks in and says, “Hey, wait a minute!” That’s risky. What are the other people going to think? You know what? It’s going to fail and everyone’s going to notice. It’s never going to work. It’s never going to happen. Just notice that’s what’s going to come up.

It’s like a natural reaction to grow. It’s what self-doubt is. It’s basically thoughts that don’t support us in what we ultimately want. And our ability to grow is only limited by how much we listen to our self-doubt. Our ability to grow is really our ability to move beyond our own comfort zone and to move beyond our self-doubt. I really want to make sure you just heard that.

Our ability to grow is our ability to move beyond our own comfort zone and to move beyond our self-doubt. And it’s really important because if you ever want to grow into the next best version of yourself, whatever that looks like for you, maybe it’s losing weight, or having better relationships, or having more confidence, whatever it is.

So, whenever you look into the future of yourself, who has these accomplishments, what is she doing? Is she able to face those doubts? Is she able to overcome them? And I’m really committed to this and believing to this, most people set goals for themselves or don’t even think about setting goals for themselves. And they let the self-doubt kick their butts.

This is especially true in the world of weight loss, becoming fitter or healthier. Self-doubt kicks in, when they get to an obstacle, and they completely run the other way because they defeat themselves by their own self-doubt.

What this might look like is not liking the number on the scale and the inner critic saying things like, this is too hard. Or being at a party, where you planned on only drinking two glasses of wine. And the inner critic pipes up and says, “you know, people are going to notice if you stop drinking, you should have more.”

What are you capable of? What is possible for you? Think about that for a second. How would you answer that question? How would you know, what you’re capable of? I would say that it’s the things that we are repeatedly going to try until we’re successful. And this happens all the time in weight loss.

Self-doubt creeps in, when we have thoughts like, “this isn’t working, this is going to be impossible. There’s no way we’re going to be able to do this.” But success comes from not being willing to give up. Whether it’s in business, financial management, health, or even something as simple as learning Spanish, or trying to plan a get together with your girlfriends. Have you ever tried to coordinate six women’s schedules? Think that’s almost impossible. Right?

The things we’re willing to repeatedly try until we succeed. How many times did it take you to learn something new? Think about it, like cooking a new recipe. When we’re beginner cooks, it doesn’t come out very well. But the more we try, the more we learn, the more we understand technique, the easier it gets, the more proficient we get. And when we start out, we’re terrible at it.

Then as we get older, we think it, whatever it is should only take one try. And if I do it in one try and it doesn’t work, then forget it. I’m not going to try it again because I don’t like being bad at things. If I try to run five times and I can’t get through the mile without stopping, I guess I’m just not destined to run. That’s self-doubt. If I’m not good at the sport within the first few times of trying, I’m just going to give up. Notice, how you’re doubting your ability to learn and get better?

But I’d like you to think about this for a second. If there’s another person in this world that can do what you’re trying to do and have what you want, then your doubt is self-doubt. You are doubting yourself because it’s already been done before. And so, we can use other people as examples of, what is possible for ourselves?

Our opinions of the obstacles between us and our desired result is what determines how much self-doubt we have. When we think about our goal and we think about what we want to achieve, what our opinion of the obstacle is, is between us and success. Right?

So, if we want to lose, let’s say 40 pounds, what are the obstacles to losing 40 pounds? Overeating, going out to eat, celebrations with friends, going to fast food restaurants, preparing your own food, eating when you’re bored. What are your obstacles?

Self-doubt is pretty common as a reaction to most of us. Self-doubt, however, is just a thought that we’re having about ourselves. The opposite of self-doubt is confidence. And the way we become more confident is by choosing to believe thoughts, where our opinions of what we can do are stronger and more determined than our self-doubt.

There’s a process that I want you to consider when it comes to self-doubt. First, you have to recognize how self-doubt shows up in yourself. You have to recognize self-doubt thinking. And it’s not easy because self-doubt will trick you into thinking that it’s true. And that’s reality and you’re just being realistic. Right?

When we have self-doubt, it’s like, you can’t do that because other people are going to think this. But we don’t know what those other people are going to think. We are projecting on them. A way to recognize it right now is to think about something that you really want. Think about a goal that you desire, a skill or ability that you want to develop. And maybe you want to go on around the world vacation or hike the ELPs. Maybe you want to move to Mexico or quit your job. Whatever it is, I want you to really think about it.

Now, immediately, once you start daydreaming about it and thinking about having it, your brain will come up with reasons why it’s a terrible idea. Why can’t you have it? Why it’s irresponsible? Who you’re going to disappoint? And who’s going to judge you for it? These thoughts are going to come up. Do not be confused. These are just thoughts.

And what I want you to do is I want you to write these thoughts down, write all of your objections down. What are the thoughts that come up? Every single thing, every single objection, write them down and you will be so amazed.

When my husband and I decided to move to Mexico, there was a ton of self-doubt. We didn’t know anyone here. We didn’t know anyone who had done it. We didn’t know Spanish. We didn’t have a contingency plan. We sold our house, we sold all of our stuff.

And when we sold our house, we were immediately unable to buy it back. We had a beautiful house that we loved, and everyone thought we were absolutely crazy to give it up. We weren’t sure whether we were going to like it or where we were moving to? Would we find friends? Would we fit in there?

And there are a ton of reasons that our brains gave us that were like, this won’t work, and this is going to be hard. And what if you don’t like it? And if you move back to the states, you’re going to be seen as a failure. All of this stuff comes up and all of my self-doubt came flooding to the surface.

Recognize it for what it is, it’s self-doubt thinking. Then, notice what you feel and do when you feel this way. When you think these thoughts, when you believe these thoughts, when you buy into them, what emotion pops up, how does your body feel? Then, what do you do when you feel that way?

Really pay attention to it because if I have an idea, If I wanted to move to Mexico. And then, I have all these thoughts like, that’ll never work, it’s too challenging. That seems like a lot of work like selling all of the stuff that’s in this house. I’ll never be able to make a living. I’m too old to learn Spanish. It seems too hard; I’ll just do something else. I don’t know. Right?

When I write all of those things down and tune into how I feel, when I read those thoughts, it’s just discouraging. Like, I feel doubtful, right? I’m filled with self-doubt and then I take no action. And then, I react to the other things that happen. Right? I react in a way that brings out more self-doubt for me.

Then, at that point, that’s when I can decide if I want to continue, and buy into, and believe those thoughts, or if I want to change them. Because the one thing that will help us overcome self-doubt is being more passionate about the thing that we want. Being more passionate about our purpose.

So, first, I have to recognize that these things are thoughts and then next, I get to decide whether I want to continue entertaining them. Think about this. Do you want to believe that you cannot be successful losing weight? Do you want to believe that? Because you are believing it and you’re choosing to believe that you’re not choosing to believe something different.

I know it doesn’t feel like a choice, it feels like it’s just true, but it’s not. Let’s really think about that for a moment. Let’s say, that we’re getting consistent with our health habits. We’re eating more vegetables, we’re drinking more water, we’re limiting our treats, and we’ve been really good at establishing a consistent exercise routine.

The self-doubt is part of our brain that pipes up and says, this is never going to work. This is too simple. You need to do something drastic. It’s the self-doubt thought that you’re buying into and believing that you have a lot of evidence to back up the belief that what you want isn’t available to you.

The real question is, is it a thought that you want to keep thinking? Do you want to believe that you can’t be successful? Do you want to believe that this is just your struggle? Do you want to believe that you’re not capable of achieving, what it is that you want to achieve? Do you want to believe that? It’s a choice and you have to decide if you want to attach to it and believe those thoughts.

Now, please don’t skip this step. Don’t think it’s obvious. Of course, I don’t want to believe that. You have to decide that you are unwilling to entertain those thoughts. Now, here’s the thing, paying attention to your brain. Making conscious decisions on what you want to believe and what you want to think requires effort and it’s difficult.

Thinking is hard, actively changing how we think is difficult because it requires us to go off of autopilot and actually pay attention. And our brains don’t want to do that, autopilot is easy. Paying attention takes way more energy.

The way that we evolve is by changing the way that we think about ourselves. And how we do that is through consistent effort. You can’t move into that next version of yourself, who is able to lose weight and keep it off by not doing anything.

We need to change how we think about ourselves and the world around us. And if you’re not willing to make those changes, you’re just going to be replaying the same scenarios in your brain and they’re not going to be in your favor. If you’re not willing to make the effort and to pay attention and notice the patterns, you are not going to change into the person that you want to be.

Do you want to continuously think and grow? For many of us, this is a question that we lose after college. See, when we’re kids, we think about the future all the time. Like, when we’re in kindergarten, we get excited to be in first grade. Right?

We’re like, I want to be with the big kids. And then, when we’re in first grade, we think about second grade. When we’re in second grade, we think about the big kids, the fifth graders. When we’re in fifth graders, think of middle school. When we’re in middle school, we think of high school, like what it’s going to be. And when we’re in high school, we think about college. And as we’re growing up, we’re constantly thinking about the future.

But then at some point, we stop ourselves in thinking and dreaming about the future and we start looking at the past. We start using our past experiences as evidence of whether we can or can’t do something in the future. We use our past against us. We use our past as evidence of why we aren’t going to be successful in the future.

But if we’ve never done something before, of course, we can do it in the future. We have tons of evidence of that, right? There was a time that we couldn’t walk and then we walked. There was a time that we couldn’t ride a bike and then, we rode a bike. There was a time when you didn’t know how to do the skill that you did, and then you did it.

Of course, we can always grow and evolve, and we can be successful. For everyone that has lost weight, they have had a string of failed attempts that could have acted as evidence for them of, why they shouldn’t be successful?

But then, there was that one time when they were successful, they have been successful. And we were just talking about this in the Feel Good Sisterhood the other day. That self-doubt goes along with it, that self-doubt never goes away. But we can electively quiet the self-doubting voice.

And when we do that, when we can talk to ourselves more than we listen to the doubt, we can generate confidence. And confidence, when we generate that feeling for ourselves, with our thinking, we can inspire ourselves to take action. Action to do what we want to create in life.

For me, my purpose in life is to help you avoid the pain and suffering that my mom went through with her breast cancer. If I can help just one person changed the trajectory of her life, so that you don’t have to go through that. I will have served my purpose.

However, over the years I can’t be done with just one person. I have thousands of women who I want to inspire to change the way that they view their bodies and take care of themselves so that we get rid of cancer. And when we look at life purpose, it doesn’t leave any room for self-doubt.

When I started my business, I was filled with self-doubt because I needed to put myself out there on social media. The self-doubt in my head was so strong. Who did I think I was? Who was going to listen to me? What did I know? Why wouldn’t they just go listen to the people who I was following, who were saying the same thing but saying it better?

But eventually, I just kept showing up more and the self-doubt started quieting itself. Because I was starting to see evidence of how I was being successful. But self-doubt still rears its ugly head.

In fact, just recently in the last launch of the Feel Good Sisterhood, I posted a picture of myself. I posted a few pictures of myself, and they were comparison body shots that I use to gauge my progress. And then, I also had some past pictures of myself, of one when I was rather heavy. And then another, when I had developed an eating disorder.

And so, I posted the pictures on Instagram and Facebook because I wanted to show women, “YOU” of what is possible. And when I say that it’s because since I’ve moved to Mexico, I don’t use scales, I don’t log my food, and I have been able to regularly maintain my weight, if not lose weight. Using the tools that I teach; I have been able to manage my weight without any external tools like the scale.

But one thing I do is I do take pictures and I take pictures every month in order to see my progress. And so, I posted these pictures online just to be an example to other women that you don’t have to use the scale in order to manage your weight. You don’t have to use a food logging tool in order to do that. You can monitor yourself and have self-trust.

And so, almost immediately, after I posted these pictures, I was flooded with just a wave of self-doubt and shame.

But here’s the value in coaching and doing this work is that doing something like this previously. When I started my business, may have taken an entire week to get through the shame and self-doubt. But doing this work, I was able to process all of it and call BS on my brain in just a few hours.

See, we can’t get rid of self-doubt. But we can decide how much priority we want to give that voice. We can be at choice with what we make the self-doubt mean. We can decide. Because like I mentioned earlier, self-doubt does not mean that something has gone wrong. And in fact, self-doubt usually means that you’re stretching yourself, that you’re asking more of yourself.

We typically don’t experience self-doubt when we’ve done something a thousand times or when we’re staying inside our comfort zone. It’s usually when we’re trying something new. We’re like, “I’m not sure I can do this.” Right?

At that moment, you’re going to say, “so what? I’m not even going to try.” When you’ve tried it three times and it hasn’t worked, are you going to say them, “okay, it didn’t work, I’m not going to do it.”

Know that self-doubt will always invite you to quit. It will always invite you to have a low opinion of yourself. Know that self-doubt means that you’re growing. And so, that can actually be really helpful. When you feel self-doubt in the future, just be aware, this is a growing opportunity.

It’s going to feel terrible and that’s okay. We can do hard things. When we feel self-doubt and it means that we’re growing, it’s coming up because that’s what we get to overcome on our way to getting what it is that we want. It means that you’re evolving and growing and asking something of yourself. And challenging yourself and bringing up all of this self-doubt, all of the stuff that’s holding you back.

The bigger your goals, the bigger that self-doubt is going to come at you. And it’s going to feel awful, but you can own it and you can change it. Because on the other side of every accomplishment, you have so much more confidence. And that feeling of confidence can be used to perpetuate and be used as evidence of what you can do in the future.

If you fully believed that you could do something, you would already have done it. And what I mean by that is if we had the skill or the mindset to be confident in maintaining our weight. We would already have done it.

The only thing between what we want and what we have now is the belief that we can’t have it. It’s the belief that we can’t do it. Right? The only thing preventing us from that belief is self-doubt. It’s always going to be the obstacle out in front of us. And so, the only question is are we going to get better at overcoming it so that we can do even bigger things in our life?

We’re either going to get better at giving into the self-doubt or moving beyond it, there’s no alternative. You’re either going to get better at giving into self-doubt and taking no action or you’re going to get better at overcoming it.

And I want to invite you to know that self-doubt is something that is just part of self-growth. It’s part of the process. Anything that we want in life, we’re going to get it with a side of self-doubt. It’s part of the process and we have the opportunity to get good at overcoming it.

So, I have a few questions for you. First, who do you think you are? What are you capable of? Do you even know what you’re capable of? Do you know what’s possible for you? When you think about yourself, can you imagine your future self without any self-doubt? Or rather with self-doubt, but your future self does it anyway.

I want you to think about how freaking amazing you are. How capable you are. And if you can’t get there, that you’re really working on overcoming that self-doubt that prevents you from having the confidence that you deserve.

And I really hope that you listened to this podcast episode as many times as you need to. To truly understand that self-doubt does not mean something has gone wrong.

It’s just an indicator of the discomfort of growth. And it means that you are in the process of overcoming and becoming the person that you are truly meant to be. Self-doubt does not mean stop and give up. It means that you’re on the right path.

Have an amazing week, everyone. I’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

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