Turning Self-Doubt into Your Superpower

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. George Wright III here. I am your host. Thanks for joining us here on The Daily Mastermind, where we try to give you a little bit of extra inspiration, motivation, and education each day of the week. Today, I want to talk to you about turning your self-doubt into superpower, a superpower that can help you to create your best life. So let's start with the quote of the day. The quote of the day is the only lack or limitation is in your mind. The only lack or limitation is in your mind. Listen, we all deal with self-doubt and we all question our abilities at time and ultimately our potential to make things happen. We say things like, I'm not good enough. Did I make the right decision? What if I can't handle this? Things that make us question ourselves. And most of the time we have doubts about ourselves and our capabilities when we're lacking one of two things, confidence or competence, confidence or competence. So, you know, your past experience and comparing yourself with others, that's something that definitely leads to your self-doubt. And we experience this self-doubt when we do something new, maybe we're challenged or something out of our comfort zone. These are all ways that we sort of bump up against this self-doubt. But when it comes to something that we never have done before, having doubts is kind of a normal thing. It's really important for you to understand that to some extent, self-doubt is actually a useful thing because it helps you to see what skills you need to acquire or improve on to perform certain things better in order to take you to your best life. Understand that self-doubt is going to come because if you're operating outside of your comfort zone, those are things you've never experienced before. So learn to accept that. It's when self-doubt becomes the norm that it's time for you to change that. That kind of brings me to a really good quote that I heard a while back. And it's a quote that says, when you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt. Listen to that one more time, because it's one thing to have self-doubt. But when you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt. So let's talk about recognizing the signs of self-doubt and what we can do about that. Because being stuck with self-doubt can prevent you from living your best life, the life that you really want to live, the life that you deserve to live. Self-doubt prevents you from starting the business that you'd want to start or pursuing the passion that you want or not applying for that job promotion or asking for the promotion. You kind of get the idea. So self-doubt basically helps you to back off, but it's a bad thing because it holds you back in your life and ultimately from success. It leads to procrastination. It keeps you from taking action towards your goals and ultimately achieving them. So when you have doubts you got to recognize that you not seizing the opportunities that might be present in front of you in your life And so self can definitely be a negative thing and can really affect your trajectory of success So let talk about how you can deal with self and move forward past it because the key is identifying and then overcoming that self-doubt. So first start by recognizing the effects that self-doubt have on your mindset, you know, because most people listening to this podcast are a pretty growth mindset focus. You know, excessive self-doubt, for example, can lead to negative thinking patterns, and it can limit your ability to achieve your success because you're in that scarcity mindset. It can also lead to anxiety and depression, and, you know, it can even interfere with your interpersonal relationships and communication, which we're going to be talking about tomorrow. But self-doubt overall can impact your work performance, your productivity, your relationships and your quality of life the truth is self-doubt doesn't just go away you do need to learn how to deal with it and if you don't learn how to deal with it it's going to continue to rear its ugly head so learn to embrace your self-doubt that's one thing i'm going to say right off the bat it may sound weird but the first step to dealing with self-doubt is to embrace it in other words when you have self-doubt simply acknowledge that it's there don't beat yourself up or go down that rabbit hole. Having self-doubt is normal. We all have it, especially when you're outside your comfort zone. It makes us feel real and it makes us feel human. So accept that you have self-doubt as maybe a sign that you are operating outside your comfort zone. And that's a good thing. So instead of being reactive and trying to run away from it and distancing yourself from it or distracting yourself from it, embrace it. And by doing this, you're not going to waste your time or energy or motivation trying to avoid it, when you embrace it, you can refocus your energy and concentrate on your goals instead of being distracted by that self-doubt. Now, another key is to stop comparing yourself to others. This might be a real reason for your self-doubt. A great quote is, the only person you should try to be better than is who you were yesterday. I always think about that because as long as you're progressing past who you were yesterday, you're growing. And if you're growing, it doesn't matter if you bump up against self-doubt in areas that you haven't done before because you're growing into those areas. Now I understand it's easier to compare yourself to others but doing this is one of the reasons why we struggle with insecurities. Comparing yourself to others leads to self-doubt. It really causes it. So an effective way to deal with self-doubt is to compare yourself only to yourself. Listen to me say that again. An effective way to deal of self-doubt is to only compare yourself to yourself yesterday. In other words, compare yourself to who you were yesterday to see how far you've come. For example, suppose you started a business four months ago. Instead of comparing your success to other people in your industry who are further ahead or you're trying to model or be mentored by, compare yourself to when you first started. You know look at all the progress you made There a great book by Dan Sullivan called Gap Versus Gain I think that the title but you get the point In other words are you measuring the gains that you made based on yourself or are you measuring the gap between where you think you should be? Because when you measure the gain, you keep yourself in that abundant mentality. You keep yourself in that success mindset, that positive mindset. So really focus on comparing yourself only to yourself in the past. And then another thing is you've got to learn to build your self-confidence in order to overcome doubt. So to build your self-confidence or build your confidence, you need to remember it's important to be accepting of your mistakes and failures because they're part of the learning process. Try practicing self-talk or daily affirmations. You know, those kind of things can help you as well with confidence. And you can make a lot of simple choices to build your self-confidence. Just as there are many ways to strengthen your body, You know, there's ways you can increase your resolve by setting small goals, you know, healthy choices, nurturing your spirit, your mind, body, spirit, finding support. There's a lot of ways to build your confidence. In fact, I listed out a couple of ways that I do, and these are ways that you can apply as well. Break free from that self-sabotaging thought and behavior. Notice yourself when you're critical of yourself. Also expand your knowledge and your skills and your experience. The more knowledgeable you are, the more confident you're going to be. Also focus on your mind, body, and spirit. When you do that, you will have internal confidence. Internal confidence is better than trying to get external validation. And another way to do that is to surround yourself with the right people. Look, most of our doubts, our lack of confidence, and even this thing we call imposter syndrome come from negative thinking and thought patterns that we've established over time. so work on identifying negative thinking patterns which cause this self-doubt so for example learn to identify thought distortions our minds have a clever way of convincing us of something that isn't true you know these faulty thoughts that reinforce negative thinking like this always happens or oh my gosh this is going to be a terrible situation and and also counter the negative thoughts with positive affirmations you know when you're starting to feel negative Punch out those positive affirmations. I can do it. I'm a winner. I'm successful. And avoid external negativity at all costs. Take steps to avoid things or people in your life that hurt the way you think and feel about yourself. Barrier those things. Block those out. Another thing I want to suggest is that you take a break. One way to separate yourself from negativity and self-doubt is to allow yourself a period. You know, no more than a few minutes, but a period with that negative thought so you can get rid of it. You can experience it and get rid of it. And other suggestions or tips I would have for getting rid of negativity is practice gratitude. Look, there's nothing better. Research has shown that practicing gratitude has a positive influence on your happiness, your mindset, your confidence, and everything else. And I feel like when you focus on your strengths, that's another way to get rid of negativity. Because when you in your zone when you in your unique talent when you in your focus of strength less negative is going to come up less doubt is going to come up And I think that those are suggestions and tips that you can really do to kind of take it to the next level. And there's another quote, I've got a few of these today on the subject, but believe in yourself, your abilities and your own potential. Never let self-doubt hold you captive. You're worthy of all that you dream of and hope for. The bottom line is I believe that by pushing yourself to take action despite your self-doubt is really that ultimate key to overcome self-doubt. You know, when you hear that little voice inside you that kind of says, oh, hold back, don't go, that's when you need to take action. That's the indicator. That's the green flag to go when maybe your mind is telling you not to go. So learn to take action. Learn to take action despite your self-doubt. and the more often you take action, it's that principle of neuroplasticity. By taking action, you reclaim your power, you overcome the self-doubt, you increase your confidence because if you don't take action, you're gonna feel anxious and overwhelmed and then you're gonna be upset at yourself and critical of yourself. So instead, learn to focus on the present moment, embrace your doubts and ask yourself, what little action, what thing can I do today to move myself forward and then do it? because when you do that, you're not engaged in negative self-talk. You're actually doing something and those steps are going to help you feel more confident, empowered, motivated, and happy. Does that make sense? So finally, I think the last thing I want to kind of mention to you before I let you go is that it's important to sharpen your skills and mastery of your trade because your lack of clarity or competence in a field is going to bring on self-doubt and lack of confidence. and so master your skill. If you need to acquire new skills to achieve your goal, be willing to learn those skills. You can read books, you can watch YouTubes, listen to podcasts, audio books, get a mentor. Bottom line is there's so many ways that you can build your mastery and when you build your mastery, confidence comes along for the ride and self-doubt goes the other direction. Look, the bottom line is this, we all doubt ourselves and that's okay. It's what we do about it when we doubt ourselves that makes the difference. so I hope these tips and ideas and thoughts on getting rid of self-doubt and turning it around in order to be your superpower is something that will help you in your life and when you understand that self-doubt is just a negative thought pattern that you can change you all of a sudden become totally empowered so I hope those thoughts have helped you do me a favor you know it would mean the world to me if you'd share this episode share it with somebody someone that you feel can make a difference it can make a difference for and then hit me up on the daily mastermind let me know what it is that i can help you with i'm always here i can i can pull different resources and things together for you and hit topics that you feel might help you in your journey to success but remember it's never too late to start living the life that you're meant to live but you got to take action today that's my message and i hope you have an amazing day we'll talk with you tomorrow Thank you.