All those confident, successful people you’ve met never have any doubts, right? When it’s time for a decision, they make it quick and know exactly what to do. It might look that way, but nothing’s further from the truth.removing-self-doubt-from-decisions

Everyone comes to a halt because of indecision. The difference is that those who have developed a successful mindset know how to put self-doubt in its place. They know that self-doubt has the power to destroy confidence – but only when it’s allowed to go unchecked. Here are ways to push self-doubt out of the way, and get at those decisions.

Everybody Doubts

There’s no room in a successful mindset for isolationism. No one has a constant state of confidence. You’ll set yourself on a path of sabotage when you fall into the trap of believing you’re the only one who has moments of self-doubt.

Tell yourself this: “Everybody feels this way sometimes. I’m not alone.”

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

Which will get you closer to a goal?

  • Managing what others think of your plan.
  • Taking the next step of your plan.

Beware of the inadequacy loop you create when you start to compare yourself and your situation to others – especial those who’ve been successful. It does nothing but suck up your time and energy.

Tell yourself this: “Every minute I spend worrying about what somebody else thinks is a minute I can use a better way.”

Practice Being Positive

Self-doubt is nothing but a habit. It’s a comfortable default way of thinking. How do you rid yourself of an unwanted habit? Replace it with another one.

Habits must be nurtured. Removing self-doubt from your positive mindset requires some easy reprogramming:

  • Set immediate goals. Not the big one at the end. The small, incremental one you can accomplish tomorrow. Or, even today. The space between now and accomplishing a big goal is the perfect breeding ground for self-doubt. There’s no room for it to grow when you achieve smaller goals along the way.
  • Remind yourself of personal wins. We’re used to thinking about the negative consequences of a decision. But that’s only because we allowed it to be our default way of thinking. Replace What if I’m making a mistake?” with a reminder of what went right the last time you acted on a decision
  • Practice forgiveness. The waiter shows up with a wrong order. You shrug it off and tell her not to worry. Everybody makes mistakes. Then you spend the rest of the lunch hour beating yourself up over something you did. Why is it okay to forgive a perfect stranger, but not yourself? Stop for a moment and think about this. Even up the forgiveness factor, and give yourself as much permission to make mistakes as you do for others.

You Are Not Success Personified

There’s the real you, and then there’s the idealistic version of you that you’ve created in your mind. It’s often based on comparisons to other successful people we don’t even know.

You’re building false idols. Here’s one thing you must know about everyone. They made mistakes along the way. They were not instantly successful. You won’t be, either.

We’ve been there. We’ve helped customers for over 30 years, and during that time we’ve had to make some big decisions. The most important thing we’ve learned both about the right and wrong decisions is that nothing happens until you make the decision. Self-doubt stops all progress.

As we said in the 2nd article of this series, it’s better to prepare for bumps in the road than not take the road at all.

Self-doubt is an obstacle to any kind of progress. That obstacle is only in your mind. For a limited time, we’re offering a free eBook called The Successful Mindset Guidebook. It’s packed full of actionable advice on how you can develop and re-program your mind for success. Download it today, while it’s still available!