
Overcoming Self-doubt
When we consider making big changes or chasing bright dreams, we look at the people we admire – the ones
We three have rocked a few boats throughout our lives.
From leaving marriages to departing successful businesses, and even pausing highly-anticipated creative projects. We’ve lost count of the number of decisions that have created waves.
When did you last make a decision that felt right and true for you but rocked the boat for others?
What happened? How did the situation play out?
In a society that teaches women it’s our job to do all we can to avoid creating ripples for others, it takes courage to make decisions and take actions that could be unpopular.
From a young age, we’re sold the story that life is a popularity contest, and in order to win at it, we need to keep other people pleased with us. This leads us to view much of our decision making through a lens that’s focused on ensuring that other people will be happy, often overlooking our own happiness and heart’s desires in the process.
Now, don’t get us wrong, we three have certainly been there, done a bit of that. We’ve all made decisions to keep the peace with others. But when we’ve prioritized the preservation of others’ peace, we’ve usually ended up feeling downright resentful. Time and again, we’ve seen how this makes waves in us that ripple outwards to affect others anyway.
So, we’ve been testing the waters with a new approach. In doing so, we’ve gathered evidence that’s helped us to be even braver when making bold decisions that – first and foremost – feel right and true for us.
And what we’ve noticed is this. Each time we’ve made heart, gut and soul-aligned calls, our so-called boat-rocking decisions have ultimately caused purposeful course-corrections for others too. Despite suffering some initial sea sickness, we can see how others have learned new skills and strengths, gained new jobs, gone to the doctor and discovered life-saving information, or found new lovers far better suited to them.
We’ve also discovered that our decisions themselves don’t necessarily cause the turbulence. It’s our over-thinking about other people’s opinions that does.
As we’ve coached each other – and thousands of powerful women around the world – through the process of making boat-rocking, course-correcting decisions, we’ve found some pearls of wisdom that can be helpful:
1- Learn to question your thinking: We all make assumptions about what others think of us. Too often we allow these untested thoughts or judgments to hold us back from taking steps forward that feel right for us. Author Byron Katie poses four simple questions that can help you reverse any stressful thoughts you may have about how others may view you. Here’s how it works:
1. Identify the thought or belief (i.e. “that Kathy will think I’m selfish…”)
2. Then, ask yourself the following:
Following these questions, try to turn around your initial thought into a positive statement, opposite to the one you started with. What do you see now about your thinking that you couldn’t before?
2- Trust your gut: In our busy lives, sometimes the silence and stillness of sleep is the space we need to digest a decision. If you find yourself unable to think through your mental clutter, try putting pen to paper at night just before switching off. Write down the question you’re sitting with about your decision. Go to sleep with the intention that clarity will surface as you rise in the morning. Often you’ll find it in the space between sleep and waking, first thing in the morning. Sometimes it trickles out in the shower. Either way, we’ve found that sitting with a question, or in this case, sleeping on it, instead of trying so hard to find the answer with your reasoning mind, is a great way to receive a clear signal from your in-built decision making system: your intuition.
3- Use your body compass: World-renowned coach and author Martha Beck encourages us to refer to the wisdom of our body to guide decision making that feels right and aligned for us. This moves us beyond tried and tested methods like weighing up pros and cons that often get us tangled in our heads. To begin, bring to mind a decision you’ve made in the past that felt good. Tune in to your bodily response when considering this decision. Make a note of your body’s language about it. Then consider a decision that felt yuck and not right for you. How could you tell it was not aligned? What did your body say about that one? Then, once you’ve calibrated your body compass, if your decision involves a choice between several options, try asking whether each option feels more like: Peace or mania? Love or fear? Joy or drudgery? Freedom or entrapment? What feels right to you? Martha suggests this can help you discern if you are on track in your decision making.
And here’s three questions to help you dive deeper in search of your own decision-making truth:
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We acknowledge the First Nations people are the traditional owners on the land we work and live on and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and future.