Is self-doubt climbing your leg?

If self-doubt was an animal it would be a badly behaved cat. One minute it’s lounging next to you on the sofa looking all placid and adorable. The next minute it’s got it’s claws deep in the leg of your jeans, climbing up you to get to the tuna sandwich you were innocently thinking of having for your lunch.

And here’s the issue: sometimes, we start doing things differently to avoid the anxiety and or pain of the cat attack. We might decide to only eat tuna sandwiches standing up so that cat can’t get to it, risking the pain of a leg climbing incident but at least enjoying a bit of the tuna. Or we might put off the tuna sandwich. We’d rather eat everything in the kitchen than risk opening the tuna for fear of provoking a painful attack by the cat: “I didn’t really want tuna today anyway – or ever again for that matter!”. Or, if we’re getting creative we might try something more extreme like putting on ski pants so that the cat has a harder time climbing our leg and we protect ourselves from the claws.

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? We’re going to all these extreme lengths to have a tiny bit of the thing we really want but we’ve caused ourselves all sorts of stress and bother in the process. And all the while our inner monologue is judging us harshly with thoughts like “what are you doing, it’s just a cat, sit the hell down”.

What has all this got to do with self-doubt? Well, in my experience I’ve found myself using some of the same sort of evasive actions to avoid the pain, stress and bother of going after the things that I want in real life too. I’ve gone about things by circuitous routes rather than confront the situation head on; I’ve procrastinated, I’ve over consumed other things, typically self-help books and videos; I’ve persuaded myself that I didn’t even want the difficult thing anyway so I just don’t try.

The good news is that self-doubt is totally normal and it shows up all over the place but you don’t need to let it take over. You can tame the metaphorical cat.

Here’s how:

1.????Notice what is happening.

Most of us know if we’re prone to procrastination, perfectionism, people pleasing or whatever your go-to self-doubt habits are. I know I’ve had them all at some point. For example, in my earlier days as a line manager I let some undesirable behaviour in my team go unchallenged. Nothing terrible—they were a great team and I love them all—but there were things that I should have picked up on and given feedback about. I would imagine that conversations were going to end in arguments or hurt feelings, so I’d swallow my own discomfort rather than upset anyone. I’d procrastinate over the conversation so long that the feedback eventually became redundant and I’d just fix the problems myself or cover the mistakes.

Now I know that this is a pattern for me, I can notice when I have feedback to deliver and think “ah yes, this is likely to come accompanied by a desire to procrastinate and protect the other person’s feelings”. I can even thank the self-doubt for trying to keep me safe because that’s the role of self-doubt. Your subconscious notices fear and then the self-doubt starts questioning you to keep you from getting too close to the thing you fear. “Are you sure you want to do that?” “Is that a good idea?” “What if something bad happens?” “Is this really your place to do or say?”

So let’s start by noticing and being grateful for these protective mechanisms that have kept humans like us safe for thousands of years.

2.???Be the detective of your own life and see what the procrastination or other patterns are trying to tell you about what you fear

Many self-help gurus will try to help you at the resistance phase with YouTube video titles like “Stop letting perfectionism hold you back”. I think it’s more helpful to think of these patterns of resistance (procrastination, perfectionism, over-consumption, excessive need for external validation, brain fog and people pleasing) like clues.

When I notice myself procrastinating or saying yes to things I really don’t want to do, I now know that fear is involved so I can stop and ask myself: “what am I afraid of?”. In the example above it was a nasty cocktail of fears including fear of conflict, of judgement, of the other person’s emotional reaction, and of not being liked or respected as a manager.

3.????See if you can identify what you really want.

Fear and the resultant self-doubt are like a smoke screen for your dreams and desires. They block you from enjoying the bubbly excited energy of your dreams and aspirations and keep you in inaction. So if you’re slowing down or stopped you need to figure out what you really want.

Fear usually kicks in when the level of desire rises and your perception of the risk you might encounter rises too. That’s why you don’t typically feel fear about things that are mundane tasks or un-risky things that you’re happy to do. You can just get on and do them. But for more exciting or worrying actions there is more fear, self-doubt and resistance.

For me, in the line management example, I dearly wanted a trusting team who I could rely on to produce great results. I also wanted to be trusted by my team members, to be a good line manager and to be trusted by my peers as someone who was able to get things done in the right way. So that told me that all this procrastinating and avoiding conflict wasn’t what I wanted. If you think about it, it was actually pretty manipulative: covering people’s mistakes and not letting them learn from the feedback. The fear and my self-doubt habits were keeping me from what I really wanted and stopped me from taking the right actions.

4.???Gain perspective on how risky it is to take the action which will move you towards what you truly desire.

Often when our brain has decided that a dream or aspiration is too scary we blow the risk level way out of proportion. But as you begin to get more familiar with your patterns and illuminate the fears that are holding you back, you might be able to bring the risk level down. I’ve found that this can be done in lots of ways. In my example, I found a trusted friend who helped me to roleplay the first few feedback conversations. This helped it to feel less risky because I felt like I knew what I wanted to say and practiced responding to their hurt feelings. I also put structures and checklists in place for myself so that any time I had feedback to give I knew I was doing it in the best possible way.?

5.??Get into action early.

You can put simple habits in place to help you get going. You can use things like the 5 second rule by Mel Robbins, or the Pomodoro Technique to help you get started. It can also really help to identify the “sliding door moment” when you are likely to go off course.

I now have a 2 day rule for giving feedback. If I’m seeing the person in the next 2 days I deliver the feedback and if I’m not scheduled to see them I ask them for a call, letting them know that I have some feedback for us to work through together. For the feedback to be effective it needs to be delivered as close to the event as possible.

By taking this approach I know that I am moving closer to my desired outcome of a trusting team because we’re learning together and we’ll do better next time. I no longer struggle with self-doubt around giving good quality feedback and perhaps more importantly I trust myself to do the right thing in a timely manner.

Is that the end of my story with self-doubt? No, of course not. Each time I want to do something new self-doubt will pay me a visit. The difference is that now I can anticipate it coming. I know when it's likely to arrive and I know what it's likely to do and so I can take the steps that I need to help my self-doubt move over and let me get on with my life.

So if I could leave you with anything it would be this: the antithesis of self-doubt isn’t the cat defying contortion of pain avoidance. It is the grounded calm of self-trust. Acknowledge your cat, thank it for it’s companionship, then give it a share of your tuna if you want to and close the door on it while you enjoy your sandwich in peace.

If you want more help to put your fears into perspective and pull your dreams into focus, let’s talk. I support higher education professionals to be more brave: in building trust, in managing teams and in developing their approach to work so they can make progress in a way that feels good. If that sounds like you, book a call with me. I’d love to help.