How To Overcome Self-Doubt

3 steps to get out of your own way

Author

Roslyn McLarty
October 01, 2024

Hi there,

It’s an honor to be back in your inbox! 

I’ve been so excited about each and every person that’s signed up to receive this newsletter - so many incredible entrepreneurs and leaders in the house! I couldn’t be more thrilled about the community we’re building here. 

Today we’re talking about:

  • Three steps for overcoming self-doubt

  • Journal prompts and resources for working with limiting beliefs and taking aligned action

  • Strategies for self-doubt from today’s expander

By the way I chose this deep dive topic since self-doubt was the No. 1 pain point cited in the onboarding survey. Fill it out here if you haven’t yet.

As usual if you’re on the go, this voice note contains all the info in the deep dive below.

🌊 Where we go deep on a topic at the intersection of entrepreneurship and personal development.

How to Overcome Self-Doubt

Self-doubt is something I’ve struggled with for a while, and that became especially present for me as an entrepreneur. 

I think that’s because there’s so much uncertainty and so many things you’re figuring out for the first time — from getting a product to market, to selling your vision to investors, to marketing and sales, to hiring and managing a team.

All of these situations have you questioning:

“Am I qualified to do any of this?” 

“Is my company good enough?”

“Can everyone see I have no idea what I’m doing? That I’m not as capable as they think?”

“What if I fail? And everyone sees that I’m a fraud...”

For me, thoughts like these often kept me from showing up as the leader I wanted to be. They kept me from taking opportunities and risks. They stopped me from being in my worth in day-to-day work and conversations. They stopped me from admitting that I needed help. 

My self-doubt eventually spiraled into shame and contributed to my ultimate burnout in a not-insignificant way.

And since then, I’ve been committed to overcoming my self-doubt, bit by bit. And that’s because I have a vision for Within and I refuse to get in my own way this time.

Here are my three steps for overcoming self-doubt:

  1. Start with the end in mind

  2. Dissolve your limiting beliefs

  3. Take aligned action

1. Start With The End in Mind

The first step is to get really clear on your vision for yourself, your company and your life.

We do this as the first step to give us the motivation to do the hard work of overcoming self-doubt. To show ourselves that the fear we’re going to face and the hard work we’ll need to do, WILL be worth it in the end.

So, take a moment to get clear. What’s the big, inspiring, end state that you’re working towards? 

If everything went your way, what would the outcome be?

In setting your inspiring vision I’d encourage you to ensure that it’s aligned with your authentic self’s desires and values. For many of us, our own definition of success is tangled up with that of our western culture’s — usually involving wealth, power, status, or fame. 

If any of those are yours I’d invite you to get clear on what’s underneath? Is your desire for wealth really about financial freedom? Or an ability to give back to the world? Is your desire for fame really about being seen and appreciated for your true self? 

Reflect on your personal values and authentic desires, and make sure that your big vision is genuinely aligned to your them. Because overcoming self-doubt feels so much more worthwhile when it’s your true north star on the other side.

Now, take some time to reflect on how you would feel if you attained this vision. 

What emotions would be present? How would you feel in your body? 

Identifying and accessing these feeling states in the present can help us attract what we most desire from this more magnetic and worthy state of being, where we’re confident we’ll get what we want, and that we have what it takes to get there. 

Is there anything you can do in the present to access those feeling states now?

2. Dissolve Your Limiting Beliefs

2A. IDENTIFY YOUR LIMITING BELIEF

Once you have your vision, let’s examine what’s stopping you from getting there. This is the moment to be really honest with yourself, and ask:

How am I standing in my own way? 

What am I not doing because I’m scared? Because I don’t fully believe in myself? 

And what is the underlying belief that’s keeping me stuck in place?

Maybe it’s some variation of:

  • “I’m not [x] enough”. (I’m not smart enough, I’m not a good enough leader, my company isn’t growing fast enough)

  • “I’m not good at [x]” or “I don’t know how” (I don’t know how to launch a company, I suck at giving constructive feedback, I’m not a good enough public speaker, I’m bad at sales or pitching or negotiating or financial modeling or…)

  • “If I do [x], [y] will happen” (If I bomb this pitch, we’re financially doomed. If I mess up this speaking opportunity, I’ll ruin our company’s reputation and humiliate myself. If I give constructive feedback, this person will leave the company).

2B QUESTION YOUR LIMITING BELIEF

Now, pick the most painful thought that you’d like to work with today, the thing that’s keeping you stuck in place. 

For illustration purposes we’ll go with “Investors think I’m incompetent”. 

And recognize that that’s purely what it is - a thought. It’s actually not reality. 

Often, we keep ourselves stuck in place because we think a thought in our head is reality, when there are actually so many other realistic possibilities!

We’re going to take the painful statement you’re working with and run it through the following four questions, which comprise The Work of Byron Katie.

1. Is the thought true? 

  • If no, skip to #3

2. Can you be absolutely certain that it’s true?

3. Who are you when you believe this thought? 

  • How do you feel? 

  • How do you treat others?

  • How do you treat yourself?

4. Who would you be without the thought? 

  • How would you feel? 

  • How would you treat others?

  • How would you treat yourself?

2C. EXPLORE OTHER POSSIBILITIES

Now, look for ways to turn around the thought. There are many ways to turn around a thought, illustrated below.

If your thought was “Investors think I’m incompetent”, the turnarounds could be:

  1. “Investors don’t think I’m incompetent” (the opposite)

  2. “I think investors are incompetent” (switching the subject and direct object)

  3. “I think I’m incompetent” (turning it around on self)

Now, you’re going to find three examples that each turnaround could be as true or truer than the original thought.

One piece of evidence for each turnaround could be:

  1. “These investors took this meeting with me in the first place, so they must have some confidence in my competence to get the company this far. Otherwise they wouldn’t waste their time.”.

  2. Switching the subject with the other: “I can see these investors actually don’t have much knowledge about my industry… so these questions they’re asking are actually related to their own ignorance, not because they think I’m incompetent.”

  3. Turnaround to self: “I’m actually criticizing myself so much I’m only seeing where I’m falling short instead of what I’m doing well. It’s not the investors judging me for being incompetent — it’s me judging myself”.

The point of this exercise is to start to loosen up this limiting belief by generating other possibilities, and showing ourselves, through evidence, that these other possibilities could be true.

What we’re trying to do here is weaken the neural pathway that’s become your mind’s go-to.

3. Take Aligned Action

Now that you’ve start to question your limiting belief and explore alternate possibilities, it’s time to take action. 

What would you do if you didn’t have the self-doubt?

If you didn’t believe that you weren’t capable or good enough or deserving? Or that the bad thing wouldn’t for sure happen? 

Could you launch your business? Start showing up authentically online? Book the sales call?

And now, do that thing. The thing you’re scared of doing. That’s standing between you and your vision. 

Alright, I know it’s not always so simple to just do it, so here are some strategies to support you in actually doing the thing.

#1 Regulate your nervous system. If an action feels really activating for us, it can feel almost impossible to carry it out. Using nervous system regulation practices in the moment (and regularly in your daily life) can help your body get to a place where it feels more safe to take the action.

#2 Preparation. Increase your chances of success by preparing as much as you can. Whether it’s a tough performance conversation with an employee, a high stakes sales call or an investor pitch, you can prepare an outline, a script, answers to potential questions and ideas for how to handle things if they go off course.

#3 Visualization. Take a moment to visualize this thing going well. Play out the ideal case scenario in your head. Science shows that your brain is getting trained for the actual performance during the visualization of it.

#4 Break it down into small, achievable steps. When tasks feel doable, we’re much more likely to move into action. Evidence suggests we persist in things we take in smaller steps. So the smaller the steps, the more likely we are to achieve our goals.

#5 Find support in community. Surrounding yourself with people who are facing and overcoming similar challenges to you can provide support, expansion and accountability.

#6 Work with a coach. They can help you with all of the above steps — from defining your vision to identifying and working through limiting beliefs, to making a plan and following through.

#7 Document the evidence. When you take a step to overcome your self-doubt, bring awareness to it! Create a list of times you’ve faced your fears and succeeded (or even just survived), to show yourself that you have done it in the past and can do it again. 

As you grow, there will continue to be things that scare you. (This just means you’re on your growth edge!). But showing yourself that you can take actions that align to your vision and values, in the face of those fears, builds self-trust and self-confidence. 

I know you can do this! 

Please reply and tell me what you’ve achieved in facing your self-doubts.

🪞 Your turn to reflect. Take these prompts to your morning journal or talk it over with a friend or coach.

  • What’s the thing I want the most for myself, my company or my life? 

  • How would I feel if I got this thing?

  • How am I standing in my own way of getting it? 

  • What actions would I take if I didn’t have this self-doubt? 

  • How can I break this action into smaller, more achievable steps?

  • What resources and support do I have at my disposal to help me take this action?

🤿 If you want to go deeper than the deep dive, I curated these resources especially for you. <3

ON WORKING WITH LIMITING BELIEFS

ON TAKING ALIGNED ACTION

💥 We’re not really about Forbes 30u30 over here. We’re shining a light on the founders and coaches building from the heart and keeping it real.

This week’s expander, Jasmine Garnsworthy, the talented and purpose-led founder of Female Founder World, generously offered to answer a couple of questions about self-doubt for the Within community.

Tell us a little bit about your relationship with self-doubt as an entrepreneur.

Self doubt is a regular emotion for most of the business owners in the Female Founder World community. You'd have to be built pretty differently to be able to show up as a founder without doubting yourself occasionally. 

In some ways, the more my own business grows the more self doubt causes me to pause—the stakes are much higher now than when I was getting started. Knowing when to see through a long-term plan or vision and when to pivot, when to make a big financial investment, how to make decisions about paying myself as a founder vs reinvesting profits—these are things I wrestle with.

What strategies do you use for overcoming self-doubt? 

I've found that pausing to consider what's triggering the self doubt has been helpful. Is it a quick, reactionary, negative emotion triggered by a piece of news or single conversation, or is it a deeper and lingering emotion that may be my own intuition warning against a course of action? 

When it comes to self doubt about my own capabilities, sometimes I need to set those emotions aside, bulldoze through, and just get the task done. But I do also use tools like To Be Magnetic's guided meditation practices to help strengthen that intuitive muscle and really decipher between self doubt based on cultural and social programming, vs a deeper knowing that I'm not ready or resourced for a certain thing.

Female Founder World provides the access to the people, tools and advice founders need. Check out their podcast, events and community.

  • 1:1 Coaching: If you want to feel more aligned and less burnt out, you can book a 30-minute consultation to explore working with me.

  • Let’s be friends: Connect with me on LinkedIn and Instagram to receive my ideas and advice on the daily and weigh in on upcoming content.

This newsletter is brand new so all feedback is welcome and very much encouraged! Topics? Format? Length? I wanna know what you think! 🙏

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Thanks so much for being here.

Appreciate you,
Roslyn 💚

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