The Main Reason You're Doubting Yourself As An Entrepreneur and What to Do About It
Dr. Benjamin Ritter
Guiding Values-Driven Leaders to be the Leader of Their Own Career and Create a Career They Love | Executive and Career Coach for Leaders | Award Winning Author - Becoming Fearless
Doubt doesn’t care if you’re just starting out as an entrepreneur or running a multi-million dollar start-up. It is a powerful emotion that is focused on stopping you from taking action.
If you're an entrepreneur it is almost a guarantee that you will suffer from doubt at some point, but it's your choice to learn how to deal with it or to give in to doubt and eventually give up.
Too often strategies that are meant to manage doubt focus on fighting through it, building confidence, or accepting the possibility of failure. These are great exercises but they don't focus on the main reason that doubt exists. They are only symptoms, and if you only treat symptoms you never will actually be cured.
Over the years of coaching clients through their doubt and researching the areas of personal and professional development I’ve developed the belief that the main reason you doubt yourself is that there’s a gap between the vision you have and the place you are. It may be conceptual or reality, but what matters is that what you want isn’t what you have. You have unmet expectations.
Imagine standing at the edge of a cliff and in front of you is a deep canyon which leads to a mountain that looms above you. The gap and the distance you need to travel is your doubt, it’s what you need to overcome in order to reach the top of the mountain (your goals).
Anything that brings attention to how far you need to travel or causes the journey to seem more difficult will increase doubt. For example, doubt can become stronger if something affects your ability to make the journey (an injury or professional set-back), if you can’t seem to figure out how to actually get to the mountaintop (a lack of clarity), seeing others fall into the gap and fail or even seeing people at the top of the mountain (negative comparison).
Entrepreneurs that struggle with doubt are constantly looking up at the mountain top and down into the gap, focused on where they want to be and how far left they have to travel. They have a hard time accepting their present position and the journey that’s ahead of them.
Overall doubt is caused by unmet expectations and becomes stronger if you seem further away from achieving your goals. Doubt can increase for the following reasons:
- A lack of clarity, personally and professionally. Clarity includes your reasons for having your goals, and the actual processes toward how to achieve them (what, how, when).
- Comparison to others that have failed or succeeded through a negative lens.
- Disbelief in your own worth and abilities (lack of confidence or fear of failure).
- Other perceived personal and professional set-backs (injury, prioritization, lack of resources).
Dealing with doubt requires a change in focus. If the source of doubt is unmet expectations the cure for doubt would be to redefine how you perceive your expectations. It is that straight-forward. An entrepreneur can reduce doubt the following ways:
- Take your focus off of the gap or mountain top. Focus instead on where you are now.
- Make the journey ahead of you seem manageable. Break your goals down into simple to follow tasks. Set milestones (summits) that you can take a break and enjoy the view.
- Celebrate how far you’ve come. The journey didn’t start where you are now. Look back in awe and gratitude.
- Prepare yourself for the journey ahead. Learn skills, purchase tools, create relationships that will make the process easier.
- Stop comparing your journey to others. Their failure or success does not relate to your own journey.
- Remember that the journey is long, yours alone, and at times never ending. Your mountain top isn’t fixed. Your expectations tend to increase as you achieve more.
- Keep your WHY front and center. There’s a reason that you have set these goals, and it’s not just to achieve them, it’s the value you earn from them.
Growth requires that you have goals and work toward them but it does not require unmet expectations. Feeling like you need to be somewhere other than where you are guarantees that you will not appreciate the present. And as we’ve discussed, all that will create is doubt, which only holds you back. Exactly the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.
As an entrepreneur if you are constantly comparing yourself to where you want to be, you will always doubt where you are. Next time you are struggling with doubt imagine that you are standing at the edge of a cliff with a great mountain in the distance. You have a choice, to allow doubt to hold you back or instead take out your map, plot a course, grab some snacks, bring some friends, and enjoy the journey.
Loan officer, Executive Assistant, Account Manager, Spanish Translator, Business Coach
4 年Thank you for the article. Very helpful at this time.
FITPRO | Ex-Corporate Affairs | IRONMAN ??We Help BUSY Professionals SIMPLIFY health to achieve BIG goals ?? #StrongerTogether
4 年"Believe nothing you hear, half of what you read and always in yourself."?
Transformational Healthcare Leader | MBA, BSN
4 年Great advice!
Health And Wellness Coach at SelfOptimyze
4 年Really love this article. Thank you!
Manufacturing & Distribution Advisory at Ashling Partners | Digital Transformation Leader ?? | Leadership Advisor | Military Veteran <1> | Hybrid Athlete
4 年Where there is no vision, the people perish.? -Proverbs 29:18