Self-Doubt: What to do when it settles in?

Six Steps to Help You Shift from Self-doubt to Self-confidence

Let’s say you are launching your business: you wrote the business plan, you told your friends and family about it, you attended networking events and distributed business cards, you shared it on social media, and you placed ads on Craigslist, other sites, newspapers, and the phone isn’t ringing. Nobody is calling you for that one time free offer or discount you have to invite them to sign up for your program, buy your products or services, by a certain date. Actually the offer deadline has come and gone.

It’s natural to start questioning yourself, your talents and gifts. You may think that because it isn’t happening as your business plan projected, or as you envisioned it, it is not meant to be. You tried. You put yourself out there. Nobody has shown interest. The self-doubt settles in and you start asking yourself: ‘What’s the point? Why bother? Why would people hire me/buy from me? So and so has been doing it for a long time, why don’t they go directly to them? It makes sense that nobody is contacting me, they have other choices.’ Does this inner dialogue sound familiar? I’ve heard this from many clients, and I experienced it myself. Instead of staying stuck, you can take the following steps to shift from self-doubt to self-confidence:

1-      Write down your successes. If you are selling your services, when was the last time you volunteered, bartered, or helped someone with those same issues? Take some time to write their experience in detail and how you took them from point A to point B successfully. If you are selling products, write down the solution it creates for your clients, remind yourself of the feedback you received during the testing phase, acknowledge that you created something of quality that will make a difference. The shift starts happening as soon as you truly relive your successes. I read my list of successes every time I sense self-doubt coming in, it works.

2-      Go inward. Ask yourself: what might be stopping me from attracting clients? It may be a feeling you are avoiding or a fear of: failure, success, overwhelm, change, exposure, danger, money or lack of it, not being good enough. It could be all of them and others, a combination of some of them, or just one. Once you get clearer of the energy within that might be holding you back, you can allow yourself to feel it, and you can take action towards moving through it or releasing it.

3-      Commit. Once you are clearer about what is stopping you, you can commit to meditating every day, to releasing what’s blocking you, to feeling what comes up for you, and to visualizing the successful business you are creating. In addition, commit to taking 3 actions each and every day towards promoting your products and services.

4-      Join a mastermind group. The group can help you brainstorm other marketing strategies you have not tried, or different language to include in your marketing materials, and can also remind you of how wonderful you are and of all that you have to offer.

5-      Ask a friend to be your accountability partner. It is very easy to get discouraged and to go on a downward spiral when you are doing it all alone. Set goals each week, review your goals with your accountability partner and touch base once a week to make sure you are both on track. I have one and we certainly keep each other moving!

6-      Hire a coach. If you are not able to identify what’s stopping you, or if you have identified it but you are unable to get passed it, consider hiring a coach who can help you go deeper within to uncover what’s truly behind your self-doubt.

Have you experienced self-doubt? If yes, what are the strategies you’ve used to get passed it?