How to Create Certainty and Stop Second-Guessing Yourself

Welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. George Wright III here with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Let's get back to the topics that we want to talk about today. As you know, we're covering an eight key steps to creating massive results in your life series. and you know this week so far we've talked about creating a vision, gaining clarity, clarity on what you want, where you want, your identity, your path and then yesterday we talked about decisions and today I want to talk to you about something that I think a lot of people forget, don't understand, don't do and it's really, really a secret ingredient in order to create results in your life and as we get going into that let me give you the quote of the day and This quote is by Julia Cameron. And I love this quote, and you'll know why here in a minute. But what I want you to do is I want you to use quotes on a daily basis in order to just get your process and your mind going. Don't think of quotes as something like you're doing in your news feed where you're scrolling through and seeing pictures. I want you to take the quote of the day each day, and I want you to just try to put a little thought into it. The reason we choose these quotes is because we want to find different ways to inspire and motivate you in the areas of your life that you're in. So there's a quote I have here today, and it's by Julia Cameron, and it says, Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves. The part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough that we should try again. I really, really love that because it really pushes into the topic today we have about certainty. See, a lot of us, and I don't care if you don't have your own business, maybe you're just an employee, maybe you're a professional, a leader, whatever it is, but this thing about perfectionism is so counterproductive to what we do that I think it's important to bring that topic up. See, we think that perfectionism is a quest to become the best version or create the best thing, but it really brings out the worst in ourselves because it brings out this idea that we second guess ourselves that nothing will be good enough because the the question behind the thought of perfectionism is this supposition that what we do is not good enough there's a better version and that's the kind of thing that we have to ask ourselves are we constantly looking for a better version because we want to improve or are we constant looking for a better version because we don't think what we're doing is good enough. That's so, so, so important. Now, today I want to talk to you about certainty because the number one problem that most people have is not that they don make decisions although I do think that that a struggle that we all have trouble with The number one problem we all have is that we continue to second our decisions I mean, I do this myself. We waffle, we waver, we go back and forth, and it's such a, oh my gosh, it's such a bad thing. I don't even know kind of where to go down, and I don't want go down a rabbit hole of talking about how bad it is for you, but I think it's sometimes important for you to identify the fact that it's not that you can't make a decision. Because I think in our hearts, our minds, in our skill sets, we know what the decision is that needs to be made. The problem is that we second-guess ourselves. We second-guess our decisions. So let's talk about that for a second. Why do we second-guess ourselves? Why is it that maybe you have something in your life, whether it's a relationship, communication, a project at work, a business, a side hustle, whatever it is, why is it that you continue to second guess whether it's good enough, whether you should do it? Because I think in our minds, sometimes we've made up our minds to do something, but we just second guess it so much that we never take action, which is going to be coming up in our next steps. So why do we second guess? Well, I think it's important to understand that a lot of times this is due to the people that are around us, the people that are around us that may not support you, or your environment. I think your environment can very much cause you to second-guess your decisions and destroy and tear away at your certainty. You know, the naysayers that we have in our lives, the fact that we're afraid of what people will think. But what you have to understand is that people, in general, are generally scarcity thinkers. They generally are jealous of your success. They're in this focus of lack of what they don't have. And it's really more of an issue that they have with themselves than something they may be saying about what you're doing. Remember, most of the time criticism is not actually criticism about something you're doing. It's actually something someone's internally struggling with. And I know it's hard to believe, but if you can convince yourself of that, you'll understand that most comments and naysayers and people around you, they're the ones struggling and you can't allow their influence to make you second guess your decisions. So these are reasons we second guess people, the naysayers, the environment. And then the other reason we second guess is the fear, the fear that we have from past experience. We say to ourselves, man, you know, I've done this before and it didn't work out too well. I'm not too excited about doing it again. Or we say things like, I tried that before it didn't work. See, that's fear talking. That's fear of failing or not getting a result that you want. And this is not usually something that you're aware of. You just have these little fear factors coming back Also maybe you lack confidence which you can also lack self and those are two completely different things that tie together But these are all reasons that we second-guess ourselves. But ultimately, what you've got to do to be able to break this cycle, ultimately, you've got to just recognize that there are reasons, there are influencing reasons that make you second-guess what you're doing, and that second-guessing is why you're not getting your results. It's an awareness process you need to have. But you've got to continue to remind yourself that you can have these reasons or you can have results, but you can't have both. You've got to choose results and so you've got to choose to be more aware. So I want to talk to you for just a minute about how you can stop second guessing, on how you can create more certainty. How do you sort of work on yourself and convince yourself that your decision is good so that you can, without any question, continue to execute and create the results and steps you need. Well, the number one way that I've found, the number one way that you will stop second-guessing is to have laser-like focus. Laser-like focus. See, a lot of the challenges we have with second-guessing is that we have shiny objects. There's other things out there. There's lots of other stuff to do. And when you're not laser-like focused, you're listening to the people around you. You're scrolling through your social media feed. You've got time on your hands. See, busy people, people that are laser-focused that are busy, they don't have time to second-guess themselves. They don't have time to listen to other people that are giving them negative feedback, period. So I think the number one way for you to stay confident, certain, and get your decisions locked in is to stay laser-like focused. Now, there's a lot of other suggestions I would give you. Let me give you a few. You can work on growing your confidence because your confidence is going to help you be more certain. So you build your confidence. There's ways to do that through reading and association and trial and error and practice and repetition. If you're afraid of failing and you've got a big talk to give, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, because the more practice you have, the more confident you're going to be. Also, like I mentioned before, become aware of your thoughts. Question your thoughts. Find time to question your thoughts. When something pops up like, oh man, I don't think they're going to like that. Wait a minute. Why am I thinking that? Is that my fear? Or is it that I have a legitimate reason? Or is it because of a past experience? Start to get in this process of when you hear or feel a negative thought coming on or hesitation, question that thought. Name that thought. Is it fear? Is it doubt? Is it outside influences? And begin to flood yourself with positive affirmations. It's another way to gain certainty. Affirmations. I am this. I will this. These are things that are happening, right? Surround yourself with positive people That one I can overemphasize enough When you around positive supportive people you will have more certainty in your life Your decisions will become more locked in and you will create more results. So surround yourself with positive people. Another thing is to focus and remind yourself constantly through visual affirmations, through your phone screen, through notes to yourself. Remind yourself about your vision. because remember the only time that you start to get in fear and doubt is when you're thinking in the past or you're trying to you're getting distracted by what may happen could have what should have happened but when you're crystal clear and you're focused laser-like focused on your vision of what you're trying to accomplish it's really tough to get distracted it's really tough to get distracted so stay focused and stay busy as i mentioned before the other thing i want you to do is i want you to just remind yourself of something super important here the most successful people I know have a different perspective on failure because what they realize and what I want you to do is I want you to remind yourself that it's never it's never about the end result that's the focus right it's always about the path it's always about the process you know Thomas Edison found you know a million ways not to create a light bulb and he was obsessed with the path of that. I mean, could you imagine how frustrated he'd be if all he was about, all he was obsessed was creating the light bulb? No, he became obsessed with the path of how many ways he could disprove it so he could get there. And when you wrap yourself up with the path and the process and you enjoy it and you're fulfilled by it and you're following your unique talent and you've got that passion and purpose and it's not all about the end result, you will be more certain and you will be more focused and you will be happier along the way. And lastly, in order to create certainty in your life, you just got to have a little faith. Have a little faith in yourself. Maybe you don't necessarily have the confidence or the belief that you can do something, but you can make a decision to have faith. Faith that you'll figure it out. Faith that if it doesn't work out, you'll do what it takes to overcome that and learn your lesson. Faith that you will be able to continue to fall and fail forward, that you're going to fail forward. Have a little faith. So that's my message for you today. Creating certainty is a major, major, major thing for you to do if you want to create results, because you can have all the vision and clarity and make all the decisions you want, but if you don't create certainty, you're going to get distracted. So that's what I recommend for you to kind of think about a little bit today. Tomorrow we're going to talk about, once you've got your vision and clarity and make a decision and just flood yourself with certainty. It's all about taking action. It's all about taking massive action. So I look forward to talking with you some more tomorrow. Have an amazing day. We'll talk soon.