Stop Doubting: Win The Day

As I write this, it’s early morning and I am sitting in a small coffee shop in Frisco, Texas called Summer Moon.  They sell coffee made from wood fired coffee beans.  The café is full with customers and even on this overcast chilly morning all the seats outside are also taken.  Many conversations are going on, from job interviews to friends discussing their next great inventions and everything in between.  While listening to the many conversations, it occurred to me that no one was talking about negative things.  I heard no excuses, no reasons why something couldn’t be done or wouldn’t happen.  What I did hear was fresh, encouraging, and spirited conversations of life.  I realized that I was witnessing life in action.  No negative talk, no negative TV blaring and no negative talk radio booming from oversized speakers.  Just life happening.

Don’t live with the notion you can’t or that your life is a lost cause.  Change your thinking.  So much of what is possible remains dormant, never becoming reality.  Wayne Dyer stated it so clearly when he said, “An infinity of forests lie dormant inside the dreams of one acorn.”  Anyone can count the number of seeds in an apple but, I don’t know anyone who can tell me the number of apples there are in one single apple seed.  My point is this, our minds are gold mines full of seeds that go unplanted, ideas that never happen.  All because we let doubt rule the day by letting the seeds of great ideas go unplanted throughout most of our life.

Fear is the reason we let our ideas go.  Fear drives doubt.  Shift your fear by changing your thinking.  When you shift your thinking or the way you view the things that cause you fear, those things change.  When I decided to climb Mt. Elbert, the second highest mountain summit in the lower forty-eight states, at first I was excited.  As I got closer to actually climbing to the top of the 14,433 foot summit, I began to question myself.  “Could I handle the elevation and altitude change?”  “Will my knees hold out or give out?” There were so many excuses I could have used, it would have been easy to just not make the climb.  Instead, I changed my thinking.  I shifted my doubt to curiosity.  I started thinking about what it would be like to stand on the summit. I daydreamed about what it would be like to concur the mountain’s summit.  I told myself my knees would be fine.  I also realized that if I listened to the crowd of naysayers I would be just like them.  It would be easy to be like them, think like them and eventually become one of them.  I said NO!  I was making it to the top.

Don’t live life doubting yourself.  Don’t live with the notion that all your life you have doubted what you can achieve, your true potential.  When considering science, doubt is a good thing.  But when considering your life, doubt can and will keep you from achieving your full potential. 

Doubt comes from fear.  Your fear of failing, not being good enough, not capable of accomplishing whatever it is you want.  Fear triggers your doubt.  Change your fear to curiosity. To remove doubt, become curious in what you are afraid of.  When you change the way you look at or think about things, those things change many times without you even realizing it.  When you become curious about your fear, your doubt changes course.  Doubt drives your negative thinking.  Our negative thinking is the most debilitating thing we can do to ourselves but have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.  In other words, your negative thinking gives power to your doubt.  Remove your negative thinking, and you remove your doubt.

For many, doubt is difficult to deal with.  It tricks the mind into believing you are better off taking the safer option.  Thanks to doubt, you may believe the safe option is your only option but, that’s not true reality.  Have you ever had an idea that you were totally and completely inspired by?  Then, doubt kicks in and your awesome inspiring idea that you were so excited about becomes a fleeting thought.  Doubt talked you right out of it.  Think differently about doubt.  Stop it in its tracks with these 5 doubt crushers:

1. Awareness – Make a choice to pay more attention to when your doubts show up. When you are more aware you are more able to deal with it.
2. Stop the Doubting – The next time you catch yourself doubting yourself interrupt those thoughts by acknowledging the doubt.  The next time you catch yourself in doubt ask yourself, “Is this a doubtful thought?”  “Why am I thinking this way?”
3. Question the Validity of the Thought – Ask yourself is what you are thinking a fact or just a doubt filled thought?
4. Are you Seeking Safety? – Take a moment to consider are the thoughts you are having leading you down a safe pathway out rather than leading you to trying something new?
5. Take Control – Remind yourself that it’s your choice to listen to your doubt filled thoughts or not.

Regardless of how mentally strong we believe we are, at some point we all experience moments of self doubt.  What we do with that doubt and how we handle it makes all the difference in who we are and what we can accomplish.  Over the course of my life’s journey, I have learned that doubt is a choice we make that when left unchecked can skew our reality. Doubt, being a choice, means we can change it by thinking differently.  Don’t sell yourself short, stop letting doubt get in your way of achieving success and a lifetime full of accomplishments.