Doubt Kills More Dreams Than Failure Ever Will

Maybe the reason that today's Tuesday Motivation resonates with you is because there has been someone in your life - personally or professionally, that has encouraged you to reach beyond what you thought was possible. It has likely been a coach, teacher, manager, or mentor that pushed you to accomplish more than you ever felt possible. Pushed you to the place that "can be" which is way past fear, uncertainty, and doubt. So here's the question, when did that stop? Why?

The further you get in your professional career, the lonelier it gets. You are generally moving into greater responsibility and find yourself in significant individual contributor roles or leading large organizations. Strange as it sounds, the loneliest role I was ever in was as a President of a company of 1,500 people. It's very lonely at the top and boy, heavy is the head that wears the crown. If you aren't careful, you can become very inward focused and lose sight of that stretch goal. You become focused on hitting a number and can forget what can be and why you were pushed and pulled into the role in the first place.

So today why not reach out to someone in your life that will stretch your frame, pushing you beyond what you thought possible? The short article and links below are my experiences and observations on overcoming doubt and stretching our personal frames just like Marine George Hood did for me .........

Doubt and Courage in Your Career:

In terms of your career, you are often faced with opportunities that can have significant risk attached to them. That risk is your ocean and your current situation is the safety of that shore. The doubts start to surface. We can become paralyzed. We can retreat. We can accept the risk and move forward. One thing is for sure ........ Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will and is likely your greatest weakness. Doubt can be created by experience, by adversity to risk, or simply by the frames we create. Here's my take on overcoming doubt ......

The gift of having a rich career filled with many different roles in a number of industries is perspective and vision with a lot of data points. Couple that with robust coaching and mentoring experiences and you see A LOT of best practices and conversely, some significant opportunities for improvement. There can be a number of career limiting demons lurking in the background.

•  For the 30 year old millennial media entrepreneur, the enemy is almost always: time, resources, grit, and doubt, specifically the belief that they can reach their goals living and working from their parent's basement.
• For the mid level corporate manager, it's: experience, network, frame (primarily the job description) and expectations. The fresh memory of a brutal recession always in the back of their mind.

First, some call it the 'devil's advocate' or even 'critical thinking' but there is no way to sugar coat it. It is DOUBT, the doubting little voice in the back of your head that can become paralytic. Doubt may be the most destructive and biggest waste of your time and killer of raw talent you encounter in your career. Why? Doubt usually rears it's ugly head only after we have started a project or initiative or plan. We have already made an investment and commitment of our precious resources and it is doubt that begins to sabotage our success. It's self fulfilling and reinforces 'play it safe' behavior.

Next, once you've allowed doubt to dictate the outcome, we begin to set LOW EXPECTATIONS because of a need to be certain or successful. These lower expectations and the need to be certain results in our boundaries, or our frame. We tend to live within our frames and they define our effort and outcome. To change our frame we need to be exposed and most importantly, open to new data points to stretch. The best illustration of this was my personal wake up call thanks to former Marine, George Hood. 

See an earlier post on how my frame changed and immediately resulted in greater performance and outcome: Do You Need A New Frame?

To summarize, it is your DOUBT that begins a cyclical and performance limiting process. Doubt, and the lack of faith and belief, leads to failure or lower performance. The result can be a set of lower expectations and a new tighter frame. 

 Overcoming Doubt:

How can you overcome debilitating doubt? I've found two simple concepts to help clients and mentees successfully quell the little voice inside.

1.  Work Backwards. Start with your vision output and work backwards to where you find yourself today. Being able to see the incremental steps, sometimes very small steps, helps break down what can seem to be a monumental task or goal.
2. Adopt Continuous Improvement As A Lifestyle. Once you embrace failure as an opportunity to improve, your outlook and belief system can completely change. Adopting a forward looking posture that rewards incremental progress can be very liberating!

Finally, there is no better illustration of frames and setting expectations than this insightful post and video from a {LIFE}BUZZ staffer Sheyla. Take a moment to watch this powerful video and post..... 

 Check out this terrific post from {LIFE}BUZZ:

 "Strangers Wrote Their Biggest Regrets....They All Used the Same Three-Letter Word"

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