“You make a better door than a window.”
Standard sarcasm, growing up, at someone standing in front of something you want to see.
It’s a phrase that pops back into my mind, directed at myself, every time I look up and realise I’m the one standing in my own way. Where I’m going, what I’m looking for – all obscured by a big, nagging, gnawing ball of self-doubt, insecurity and fear of failure and not being good enough.
Over the years I’ve built up some ways to get past the self-doubt. Ways to not just find the window, but to get up and just walk around the side of the whole structure. They take some willpower, and the willingness to potentially screw up, but they’ve worked for me, so I’m offering my main ones to you.
1) Rule One – Your Self Doubt lies
Simple to say, difficult to believe. The first thing you need to stop doing is listening to and engaging with that nagging voice in your head that tells you you’re not good enough. When it speaks, remember this: your self-doubt is a liar. It can come from fear, things in your past, depression, [insert your own reasons here]– but it lies. This is one time when you’re allowed to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you are wrong. Learning to ignore it, counteract it, cover it over, and generally get past it takes time, but always, always remember: it lies. From Huxley’s “Brave New World”: Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth.
So repeat this until it becomes second nature, repeat it even if you don’t believe it because the lies are too good, repeat it until the doubt is drowned out.
Brave New World – make your truth the right one.
2) Be Accountable
Being accountable to somebody who isn’t either yourself, or the people expecting something of you, is quite freeing. Find a friend or two that you trust. I’ll use my close friends (who will do it even when they’re only half understanding what I’m doing), I’ll use twitter friends, I’ll use fellow writers also trying to get things finished and have a mutual accountability. It doesn’t matter who, there are always people. Find them, then tell them what it is you need to do, that you’re struggling to do it. Set goals if needed, ask for phone calls, texts, emails, tweets, writing sprints, or just leave them with the knowledge that by a certain point in time you need to be able to tell them that you’ve done it.
Find the combo that works for you – it varies with me by project, and I’ll often use twitter for incremental goals and friends for the big picture. Then comes the willpower. You don’t want to tell you friend you didn’t manage to get it done. They’ll understand, and it’ll be fine, but you want them to know you did it, and that they helped.
Willpower and accountability – two of your most powerful tools.
3) Somebody Else Has Confidence In You
Believe it or not, there are other people who know you can do whatever you’re trying to do, and do it well. They’re probably people you think are amazing and can do anything. People you love, trust and have respect for. Find them, swallow your pride, and tell them you’re doubting your abilities. Then, and this is the hardest part, listen to their response. Listen to them tell you that they believe in you, that you can do it. Use your trust in them to take their words over your own – because you know your self-doubt lies, and you now that they don’t. If it helps, keep a running list of all the nice things that are said, and read it as necessary.
Selective hearing – covering your doubt with the confidence of people whose opinions you trust.
4) Not Succeeding Is OK
Hard one, this – but note the lack of the word “failing”. It’s on purpose.
Know this well: if you have tried your best, you have not failed, you have learned.
Take the mantra and repeat until you know it to be true. Everything you do is a learning experience. Everything you do teaches you something. Every time you try, you try with all those previous times and they add up into something better. If you let the doubt get in the way, you’ll never know how good you can be – and that is unacceptable. Ask somebody else to repeat this at you if necessary. Life isn’t a test or a graded paper, it’s a bundle of experiences, each of which – good and bad – teach you how to be better, provided you can get out from under the weight you put on yourself and use it.
Potentially looking daft or not succeeding at something is scary, sure. In the end, though, I’m more afraid of not getting to do what I love, of ending this life with regret at not telling as many stories as I can, at not trying all the new things offered to me, of not being the best I could be.
Lifelong learning –you are always improving, even when you think you’re screwing up.
5) Be Stubborn
This one is difficult. It’s a bit like trying to ask that door to become a window, but without it none of the above are possible. All of us, every single one of us, possesses the ability to be stubborn, contrary, and superhero powerful. Learning to tap into that and use it to bypass the doubting voices is hard, takes years, and is absolutely worth it. Being stubborn enough to do it even when you think you’ll be awful. Learning how to acknowledge your skills, even when your self-doubt is scoffing and shouting that you don’t you have them. Finding ways to talk yourself into something instead of out of it.
Stubbornness – seeing your doubt and doing it anyway.
Getting out of my own way long enough to do the things I don’t think I can do is a miracle of compartmentalisation, stubbornness, and talking through the doubt. Add in the above tools, and few (until now, because I just wrote this for anyone to read) are aware of the scope of my self-doubt.
I manage to do the things I’m certain I can’t do because I have very good friends who believe in me and will make me accountable, stubbornness in ridiculous quantities, and have taught myself how to get past my own self-sabotaging convictions of never being good enough.
Also, I love the things I get to do. Doubting myself out of doing them strikes me as remarkably silly.
Building the willpower to get past the doubt in your own head isn’t easy, and will be played out repeatedly, but it’s definitely better to try and learn than to let your own doubt make you never try at all.