This week’s blog is soooooo important. This one is for all the people who are leaders in their business or in their own life. It is for the big, bodacious dreamers who want it all, are not afraid to work for it but perhaps struggle with some massive self doubt, imposter syndrome, fear of the what ifs and rejections, and have an inner critic who just – won’t – shut – up. I know from spending time hearing about your pain points and top priorities that a lot of you might be thinking, “oh yea, that is me for sure!” Holy cow leaders, it is totally me too! I deal with this same relentless voice in my head that tries to tell me I can’t. But the thing is, I am the one who put the obstacles up and I am the only one to take them down….including that damn voice in my head. In fact, as humans, I think we all have the same journey with self doubt surfacing throughout. That is why talking about self doubt is so important and realizing that it’s something that needs to be worked on every single day. I know that we tend to look at other successful leaders or entrepreneurs and think that this doesn’t happen to them or they are so strong and know what to do if that voice pipes up. But we know better. We know that is not really true. We know they have their own story, just like we do.
We all have our own story, our own voice that creeps into our heads at the worst time, and we have our own way of dealing with that voice of self-doubt. The problem is sometimes we listen to it. That is where we tend to falter. If you’ve ever struggled with any of the things I mentioned, the imposter syndrome, not believing in yourself, feeling like you’re doubting yourself at every corner, just know that you’ll walk away from today’s blog with a new perspective and a new fire to keep going even when it gets tough.
I want to start with your story. So many times we forget to celebrate our own stories and what happens behind the scenes of our journey. We all have the good, the bad, and the really messy stories. We tend to tell only the good ones. It is the messy ones that are full of obstacles that we tend to leave out. You know the stories in all of our lives that don’t make the highlight reel. The ones that aren’t glamorous, that include the work, the sweat, and the heartache. Those stories are what will help us all with our own voices that tell us we are not enough. Those stories are the ones that we can relate to and realize that that person also had to struggle and work endless hours and never started with a team. Those are the stories that will help the imposter syndrome! Why? Because then maybe we will realize that this is all part of the process and that those obstacles are there for everyone. The thing is, we all are our own worst enemy. We think that the obstacles were put there by someone else to make us fail but we put them there in the first place and we are the only ones who can take them down.
Since we are on the topic of sharing our stories, I happen to have a few of my own. When I was a little girl, I felt that nudge to lead. I felt it as I watched women hockey players lead Team Canada in the Olympics. I felt it when I watched Oprah Winfrey be so confident when she spoke in her talk show to her guests. Don’t even get me started on the power I felt when I listened to an Alanis Morissette song! I knew that one day I was going to grow up and make a difference in the world. As I worked my way through my sports career, that damn voice got me down when I needed to rise above it. It happened again when I made my way through my dance career. Every time I went on stage, I felt it creep into my head once again and it messed with me. In my teaching, I was confident but….that voice tried to take down my confidence and made me second guess a lot. As I got older, I was more experienced and I felt I was getting stronger at suppressing the self doubt. I also learned that everyone had self-doubt, not just me. I learned how to tune it out at times. When I decided to lead a school, I was ready. I felt the strength of work that I had done to suppress that voice, the people I had surrounded myself with and I went for it. It happened! I became an administrator!
As an administrator, I went through a ton of rejection. For example, I had a great idea that had been living in my gut for years. It was a vision that my gut would not let go. I knew it would work. I knew it wasn’t perfect but I knew it was worth every rejection or feedback that I received trying to implement it. I had a system that would engage teachers to take action and get results. I called it the Leadership Edit system. Now, I was lucky, my leadership team was supportive but I literally had to work my tail off to develop clarity in the system and pitch my reasons for implementing it and sticking with it. At first, they questioned me and had some reservations. They weren’t sure of my ideas and challenged me in a good way. I felt myself sinking lower and lower and doubting my idea more and more. The thing is, they believed in me enough to let me work through it and give me feedback to make it stronger. At first, I took it as an insult and I wilted. However, once I got real quiet and listened to my inner knowing, I realized that they were setting me up not setting me back. I went back in full force and implemented it with the teachers only to find what I thought was rejection once again. That voice in my head screamed, “you’ve got it all wrong” or “I told you you weren’t enough!” I wanted to quit and I had massive amounts of tearful nights. I got quiet again. I developed a plan to get feedback from the teachers, implement some of their ideas and tell them my story as well. It worked and they became a huge part of the success with this system. They became a part of making this system even better. It took years for this system to take hold until I finally figured out a process that worked in spite of all of the objections, challenges, and rejections. Our school has implemented it and is having major success with it. It is also helping other schools around the world to get teachers more engaged, renewed and taking action that gets results without all of the years of struggle and obstacles that I had to go through to develop it. I had to go through the setbacks to set it up so I could share it with others. I went through it so I could make it better and so I could really respond to the people who were experiencing this system. Without their feedback and nudging, I would not have the system that is in place today. In fact, it has now become a part of my own business where I sell digital courses that teach leaders around the world how to implement this system. The self doubt, rejection, and struggle were part of it’s success and it was all worth it.
The thing is, the self doubt is still here for all of us. Every time you go through a season of setback, when you are in the middle of the work that you feel is not going well, that is when the imposter syndrome rears it’s ugly head. I’m sitting here in my leadership job that I know I was born for and that voice still says to me that I am not enough. I went through big seasons of self-doubt where I think that maybe I am in too deep. Perhaps this work is all over my head? I even went through a season, thinking, “Oh, is my career over? Am I going to just quit? How am I ever going to do it all? Who am I to know how to lead people and a school? Maybe I am not a leader?” I still go through those hard seasons. However, not as much as I used to and the self-doubt voice is quieter. It is because I trusted myself. I was intentional with knowing that obstacles and rejection were a part of the process. I got quiet and listened to my gut. Lastly, I didn’t quit and neither will you. That is why you are reading this right now. You are strong and you know that you will figure it out. And you always do. However, that voice of self doubt works hard to show up every single day. But you work harder. The thing is, you know now, that it isn’t your story, but it is there for a reason.
According to Jamie Kern Lima, the author of, Believe IT: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable, setbacks are really setups for either things we’re supposed to do or strength that we need to gain to be able to carry things in the future that are part of our own calling. She talks about setbacks actually turning into setups. And for me, that’s what it was. It was a big setback that turned into a setup. I didn’t make the Olympics but it set me up with grit and leadership skills to coach people and kids in a really powerful way. It was a hard setback for me but sometimes knowing when to give up on a dream is as important as knowing when to go after one. It is about knowing when to go after that voice of self doubt and figure out what it is really trying to say in order to see the opportunity in it. And it is really, really hard, but oh so worth it, when you stop listening to self-doubt and start listening to your gut. That is the theme of this blog, learning how to trust your gut, believe in yourself, see your story for what it really is, and take down self doubt.
When you do trust your gut and suppress the self doubt there are a few things you need to know. It will not instantly move to all green lights and all signs pointing to yes!!! Nope, probably not. In fact, you may have glaring, flashing lights that say warning, do not proceed. But your gut tells you to stick with it and go forward anyway. Know that this will happen, and embrace it. Change and momentum happen amongst warnings, setbacks, and risks. In this noise, learn to settle to stillness, go back to your nudge in your gut. That is your touch tree and inner knowing that will lead you through to the other side, not turn you back.
The thing you also need to be intentional about knowing, is that when you’re in a situation where you check in with your gut and your gut tells you you’re supposed to be doing this, but then you hear the voices of everyone else around you second guessing you or succeeding around you, your self doubt will try to discourage you. You compare and you pull back …. there is that damn voice again! Jamie goes on to say in her book, that when we go through these seasons of having this inner knowing that we’re supposed to do something but then literally everything else is telling us our gut is wrong—whether it’s other people’s opinions, whether it’s lack of success or proof if our idea’s any good, whether it’s the experts saying, “No, you’re not the right fit,” all those things – I think that it is so easy for us to literally not even be able to hear our own gut anymore. We feel like we can’t trust our own instincts because our self doubt voice is so loud. You second guess your gut, and what happens is we end up turning up the volume on our self doubt voice. We literally talk ourselves out of our real story that our gut is trying to tell us. We end up shutting down what is best for us completely because our voice of self doubt is comparing us to other people’s highlight reels or opinions. Remember, that is not their real story. At the end of the day, the worst thing that happens is so many people never actually end up becoming the person they’re born to be, because they literally talk themselves out of it. Ugh….we can’t let this happen! We all have something big to share with our corner of the world and be damned if we are going to let self-doubt take it away from us.
When we are told or we tell ourselves we’re not enough or we don’t belong or we’re not the right fit or we feel excluded, we hide it because it’s embarrassing and we don’t share it. The problem with that, is then we feel alone in what we’re going through we tend to look on social media or we go to our facebook groups or we look at mentors and we don’t see the struggle. That makes us feel worse! But remember those are actually not the true stories, those are the highlight reels. They have struggles but may not feel comfortable sharing them. We need to step into ourselves, trust ourselves more, get real quiet and listen to your nudge and know that this is actually a set up for something amazing. It is about you sharing your piece with the world and stepping into all of who you are and who you know you are. It is about trusting yourself enough and knowing that it is going to be hard and realizing that everyone around you has their own story of struggle and self-doubt.
For anyone out there right now who’s in the spot of ‘you know you’re on the right track, but you’re not seeing how it is all going to work out,’ stick with it, get quiet, and when it all works out, share your experience. Let people know that the success came with the heartache and the hard. Let them know that it will feel far away at times and that it was hard to imagine anything working out for you, but it did. Let them know that it took time and that you went through years of it feeling so hard and far away but you trusted your gut and you kept going through all of the ‘nos’ and the ‘that won’t works.’ This story is what will help change the self doubt from feeling like a setback to a setup. It will help you and so many others.
We have got one shot in life, so you do you. Trust yourself, especially when everything is on the line. When you are a leader, these ‘noes’ or ‘yeah buts’ can feel personal, and the voice inside of us wants to get upset or get resentful or quit. But….here is some real talk…when you’re a leader, one of the most important things is you have to absolutely figure out how to not take rejection personally, how to not get emotional about it, and how to really take a big step back and trust in the journey. Sure, you can have your personal and human moments but the biggest thing is to trust yourself and to not take someone else’s opinion of you personally. They don’t know your story. Only you do.
There will be all forms of rejection in life. When we get good at hearing our own knowing and our own truth, I think that is what gives us the strength to know if we’re going in the right direction. I do believe that everyone has self doubt. I don’t think it will ever go away completely. But knowing you are not alone and preparing for the journey helps. Everyone has the same journey of trying to become the person they were meant to be even though they doubt themselves every step of the way. The strength is breaking through that and going for it anyway.
The secret to self doubt? Get still, listen to your gut, suppress the voice that compares or tells you no, know that rejection is part of it and don’t take it personally. Keep moving, keep taking action and know your truth. The thing is you were made for that nudge in your gut. The sad part is never actually learning to hear who you’re called to be, who you’re created to be, and the truth of who you are on your own journey to stepping into all of it. At the end of the day, if your gut just can’t let it go, then that is your truth. Tell your story. The power of story is what will help to suppress the self doubt. It will help to elevate each of us and connect us.
Want more?
Check out my website and join our private facebook group called Principals and Leadership. We will see you there!
Kern Lima, J. (2021). Believe It: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable. N.p.: Gallery Books.
Even If You Miss..... 