23. The Self-Doubt Trap: How To Break Free and Unleash Your Full Potential
Have you ever thought about what your life would look like if you never doubted yourself, if you stopped worrying about what other people thought of you, obsessing over your appearance, or second-guessing every decision? In today's episode, we dive deep into the topic of self-doubt - what it is, what it's costing you, and most importantly, how to overcome it so you can feel more ease and confidence in your life.
From people-pleasing to imposter syndrome to constantly seeking validation from others, self-doubt shows up in many ways. It keeps us stuck in indecision, rumination, and emotional pain. But the truth is, self-doubt is part of being human. Our brains are hardwired for it. The key is learning how to manage it so it doesn't hold us back from living the big, bold lives we desire.
Join us as we unpack the root causes of self-doubt, share personal stories of how it's shown up in our own lives, and give you practical tools to start trusting yourself more. When you learn to let go of self-doubt, a whole new world of opportunities opens up.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why self-doubt is a normal part of the human experience (and nothing has gone wrong if you feel it).
The most common ways self-doubt is secretly sabotaging your success, happiness and relationships.
How to discern between the facts and the stories your brain makes up that feed self-doubt.
The life-changing power of allowing people to be wrong about you.
How to start deeply trusting yourself, even when it feels uncomfortable.
Why self-kindness and self-acceptance are essential to overcoming self-doubt.
The incredible possibilities that open up when you stop doubting and start believing in yourself.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
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Full Episode Transcript:
Nina: Have you ever thought about what it would look like if you never doubted yourself?
Kelle: Yeah, if you stopped worrying about what other people thought of you or stopped obsessing about your weight or other physical parts of you, or made decisions efficiently and with more confidence.
Nina: Join us today as we talk about all things self-doubt. What is self-doubt? What’s it costing you? The two main reasons why we doubt ourselves and how to stop so that you can feel more ease and confidence and actually enjoy the life you worked so hard to create.
Kelle: This is going to be a good one. Let’s jump in. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I’m Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina.
Kelle: Nina, how was your weekend?
Nina: Hot. It’s really freaking hot here in Utah right now. July is kind of brutal. I don’t know Kel, wait, were you guys at the soccer tournament?
Kelle: Oh yeah, soccer all day, all day every day.
Nina: It’s not the same as rosé all day.
Kelle: No, it is not.
Nina: Oh wow. Yeah, we actually had a pretty mellow weekend since my boys aren’t doing soccer anymore, it’s kind of fun.
Kelle: I know you got on your bikes.
Nina: Yeah, we got on our bikes. 30,000 people came to town for that tournament.
Kelle: Traffic in Park City over the weekend was bananas, it was like ski traffic.
Nina: Anyway, here we are back at work. Okay, let’s talk self-doubt. I really like starting with a definition to get clarity on exactly what we’re talking about. So, self-doubt is defined as lack of confidence in one’s self and one’s abilities.
Kelle: Yeah, that lack of confidence. When we think of being ambitious-ish, we tend to see quite a bit of confidence, at least in some areas of our lives, in some areas of our clients’ lives, in our listeners’ lives.
Nina: When we really start thinking about self-doubt, it can look a lot of different ways. Let’s bring in some of the ways it shows up and as you listen, see what resonates. So, for example, you’re overly concerned with your own appearance, your weight or other physical parts of you. If you’re pretty enough or look young enough, you kind of seek validation and let other people decide what enough is, what young enough is or skinny enough is. Instead of defining this for yourself, liking the way you look and feeling safe and comfortable in your own skin.
Kelle: Yeah. Self-doubt can also show up when you doubt your own capabilities. Whether you’re really capable or have the capacity to perform or to go bigger, it’s that imposter syndrome, do I actually belong in this room? Being smart enough or good enough at what you do or being good enough as a mom or a partner or a friend.
Nina: Or you find yourself second guessing your own value or worth, or any little or big decision you make, even decisions you made earlier today, last week or even decades ago, which is the worst because it’s in the past and you can’t change what you did in the past, right?
Kelle: Totally, yeah. Another way self-doubt shows up is if you seek opinions or the advice of everyone else on what you should do, on decisions you need to make. You analyze over and over, you crowdsource for answers from everyone else not believing you can trust yourself to make the right decision. So, then you ask other people what you should do, what you should order at a restaurant, or what you should do in a situation with your annoying coworker or where you should go on vacation because if we get buy-in from others there is less risk.
We don’t have to take all the blame or ownership if we make the ‘wrong decision’. And listen, that doesn’t mean that you don’t check in with the experts when it calls for that. It’s just not checking in on every little decision you need to make.
Nina: Yeah. And by the way, we don’t really believe in right or wrong decisions, because the truth is, you’ll always have self-doubt if you make decisions based on what’s right or wrong. It’s too much pressure. There is no way to know unless you can see the future in your crystal ball, what the impact of a decision is going to be down the road of life. If there’s uncertainty, there’s going to be self-doubt, but what we want to show you is, self-doubt doesn’t have to be a problem. It doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. It’s part of the process of decision making. It’s not an indicator of right or wrong.
Kelle: Okay, another way self-doubt shows up is, you worry about what other people think about you and even try to control the narrative in general on what other people think of you. If you’re cool enough or funny enough, or if you have it together enough. I don’t even know what that means, but even questioning your own self-worth and the value that you bring.
Nina: Or you ruminate or send yourself into a tailspin of regret over what you said, or what you did, or how you acted.
Kelle: Yeah, I have a friend who is beyond social. She shows up for all the things in town. She knows everyone. She has a wide range of friend groups, and she’s invited to all the things. She’s so fun, and she has so much energy, people absolutely love her. And she’s one of those people that you would love to hate because she’s just so gorgeous and outgoing and super successful.
Nina: Are you talking about me? Just kidding.
Kelle: Right, Nina. Yes, I am as a matter of fact. And then with this person, you can’t find anything wrong with her because she really is just this very kind, generous, fun person. I am talking about you, Nina. One of the things that I would love to work with her on, but of course we don’t coach our friends unless they actually want to be coached, is exactly what we’re talking about today.
Self-doubt because she’ll go to a dinner party and on the outside she looks like she’s having this amazing time, engaging and working a room. And on the inside, she’s constantly filtering herself, making sure she’s looking a certain way and saying the right things. And then after the event, she spends days going over scenarios in her head and out loud, how she wishes she wouldn’t have said something. She’s regretting or worrying someone might have thoughts about her, thoughts that might be not nice or not very kind.
Nina: I mean, who hasn’t done this? And really, all of these ways, we doubt ourselves at some point. And if you’re thinking, yes, this is me. Listen, you absolutely cannot beat yourself up or berate yourself here. What we want to do is bring some awareness to what self-doubt looks like, you might not even realize that you’re doing it.
Kelle: Yeah. And I’m looking at our notes here and before moving on, I think it’s important to talk about what this self-doubt might be costing you, what it might be costing us. So of course it’s costing us time. When we have a lot of mind drama going on, when we’re ruminating and circling the drain, when our inner world is in chaos. We cause ourselves not only a lot of unnecessary time, but a lot of energy going over and over scenarios in our head, going over situations in our head. Time that could be spent so much better, so much more productively.
Nina: Yeah, and energy, it’s super draining to have mind drama, to worry and ruminate and self-criticize over and over. It’s also costing us presence in our lives when we’re thinking about things we wish we could change, things we would have done differently. When we’re thinking about what may happen in the future and worrying and obsessing about that, we’re not living our lives in the present moment, present with our people and our work and the things that are most important to us. We’re missing out on the actual real life happening right in front of us.
Kelle: Yeah so good. Yeah, it’s also costing us emotionally. When we let our mind go into self-doubt it feels terrible. We are causing unnecessary pain for ourselves. We’re suffering emotionally, criticizing ourselves. We feel shame. We feel regret. We feel insecure and not enough.
Nina: Yeah. When we’re doubting ourselves, it’s costing us the positive emotions like joy and happiness and wonder and love. Remember that negativity bias, we need to actually look for the more positive emotions, and it’s hard to do that when we’re focused on the negative ones.
Kelle: Alright, what else is self-doubt costing us? It’s costing us opportunities. When we’re doubting ourselves, we don’t see our own brilliance. We don’t see our own incredible-ness and our own power. We don’t go after what we really want because we doubt our ability to make it happen for ourselves. We don’t take risks because we’re too afraid we’ll fail and what that might mean about us.
Nina: Yeah. And last but absolutely not least, we miss out on money. We leave money on the table. We don’t ask for the raise or go for the promotion or start that business we’ve been dreaming of. And this pains us as your coaches and as women, because only good happens when more women make more money.
Kelle: Oh, come on, amen to that. Nina knows this. I love talking about money. I love talking about how, when you believe in yourself, when you have that self-belief, you’re more likely to ask for what you want, to believe in the value that you bring. And ask to be compensated appropriately for the value that you’re bringing. So good. Okay, let’s talk about why we have self-doubt.
Nina: As we like to say, it’s not you, it’s your brain. We humans are herd animals. We want to be part of the tribe. We’re hardwired to want to fit in, to belong and to be liked. Self-doubt has a lot to do with people pleasing.
Kelle: Yeah, we just talked about this in episode 19, it’s called High Achievers, Stop People Pleasing. How people pleasing is a survival instinct, often a trauma response. It’s something we learned a long time ago, typically when we were young, to keep ourselves safe.
Nina: And a big part of keeping ourselves safe by doing whatever we can to make sure people like us, if we can just keep others happy with us. Approval from others means survival. And we unwittingly do that by not standing out and being our authentic original selves, but by blending in, by being like them, by being agreeable and easy, by acting the right way and dressing the right way, for example.
Kelle: Yeah, women have been historically taught to focus on everyone else but ourselves, to source our self-worth from how much we serve others. It teaches us to people please, to put ourselves last and doubt our own capacity to live big. That’s just what we are talking about. It teaches us to never rock the boat, to never inconvenience others or speak our minds, we should be quiet and nice and polite.
Nina: That’s all baked into the decades behind us, the self-doubt, questioning and second guessing ourselves. We’re constantly asking ourselves, what if I can’t? And in coaching we instead ask, “What if you can, rock star?” Because on default, our brains want to stay safe, where we are, even if we’re unhappy. Our brains weren’t built to help us create a life we’re obsessed with. Our brains don’t want to think big or go big, to put us out on a limb, vulnerable to failure and rejection from the tribe.
That’s why when we start to question it all, why we feel so miserable all the time or where that kickass self-confidence we knew so well once upon a time disappeared to and start to make decisions based on our own truths. It doesn’t feel easy or amazing or even good.
Kelle: Yeah. We had a call with a client the other day, she said I could share this story. So, she’s this complete rock star, insurance business owner. Her business is, in fact, so stellar she was awarded a Book of Business by the parent company that she works for. A fellow business owner was retiring, and she was going to take over his accounts.
Nina: And Kel, we just have to say really quickly, this client, like you said, rock star, and of course we don’t have favorites. We don’t have favorite clients. But this particular client is so fun to coach. She comes to session every week so curious and with so many things to unpack and spread out. And it is just such an honor to work with her right now before we get into her story. She’s right there and Kelle and I are just sitting there coaching them. And we’re just like, “Oh my God, it’s really, really cool work when we get to work with kickass women like this.” So, I just wanted to say that. You know who you are.
Kelle: Yeah. Alright, yeah. I love it. With that, with taking over his accounts, the retiree’s accounts, she had the ability to hire one of the retiree’s best employees. So that potential employee could step into her business with very little training. She was essentially already doing the job and could help her continue to build her business. But the prospective employee wanted too much money, more than our client was paying any of her other employees. Her gut, it was telling her no, don’t hire this retiree’s employee, don’t hire this person.
Nina: Yeah, our client was proud of herself for going with her gut, for listening to herself. She sent the prospective employee an email letting her know very nicely and professionally that she was not going to extend an offer to her and she never heard back. In her words, she was ghosted. She said, “I knew with 100% certainty what I needed to do. And it bothered me because I thought if I’m kind, if I affirm you as a person, if I’m polite to you, I kind of expect you to respond kindly too.” And because she didn’t, she started questioning herself.
Kelle: Yeah, she didn’t get a response, and so she thought that meant something about her. So, she reread the email she had sent the prospective employee 10 times just to make sure there was no language in there that could be seen as offensive or not nice or not respectful. Our client said she believed if I work hard enough, if I’m good enough I can manipulate or control the way people view me. So, with that information, here’s how we coached her.
So first we looked at the actual facts. Our client had the thought that she was ghosted, but really, the prospective employee, she just didn’t reply. She just didn’t respond. There was no ghosting. Ghosting is a very dramatic version of a non-response. We’ve said this before, the brain loves drama, her brain was making up a story, connecting the dots with the little bit of information that she had that she had sent an email and what the lack of response meant, and bringing all the drama. Maybe that meant that the prospective employee didn’t like her or didn’t respect her or thought she was a terrible business owner and didn’t want to work with her. Who knows?
Nina: Who knows? Without going back and asking her why she didn’t respond, we don’t actually know. So instead of allowing our brains to make up stories, we need to check in by answering the following. What are the facts? What are the actual facts? I want to say AF. What are the actual facts, AF? Again, in this example, she just didn’t get a reply. What are you making the facts mean? This is where we went with the client. She thought the lack of response meant maybe she said something in her email that wasn’t kind or respectful and in the process she was questioning herself, second guessing herself.
She read and reread her email, in effect, spending her own precious time, energy and brain space worrying what that lack of response meant. And so, with that information, we asked her, “Do you believe the story your brain is making up?” When she checked in, when she reviewed it all, she was able to see that the story her brain was making up, there was nothing there. It wasn’t actually true that she wasn’t kind or respectful.
Kelle: Yeah, totally. And then one more question. How is the opposite of what your brain is making up, actually true? When she looked back at how she handled things, she felt empowered. She trusted herself and she honored herself. She could see that she had been reasonable. She could see that she was an intelligent person. She could see that she made a really good decision and she makes really good decisions in her business and she can trust in her gut what the right decisions are for her.
Her brain was just lobbying her thoughts and stories and she had a choice on whether to believe them and feel disrespected, or not believe them and build her own self-trust.
Nina: This is a choice, I just want to underline that and our brains are always going to go to self-doubt. They’re always going to go there. And we can believe them or not. So, this is the choice. And once we got to the place where the client felt empowered, felt self-trust and confidence in herself and her self-concept as a killer business owner, which she is. We offered her a concept that is really hard to grasp when you’re deep into people pleasing, when you want everyone to like you. This is huge. She had to let people be wrong about her.
Kelle: Oh, my goodness. Yes, this is so good, mic drop right here. Yes, she had to let people be wrong about her because they’re people, they’re going to think what they’re going to think. We cannot control other people. We can’t control anyone around us except for us. So, we show up in the way that we want to show up, the way that feels true and authentic to ourselves. And then the people are going to have thoughts about us, they’re going to judge us. They may even make up untruths about us and tell them to other people. Who knows? But that’s their brain making up stories, connecting the dots for them.
Nina: Yeah. As long as we like who we’re being, how we’re acting, we can be ourselves, trust ourselves, have our own backs, and know that they must just be wrong.
Kelle: Yeah, letting people be wrong about us, it’s not what we’re taught, right?
Nina: No. And this isn’t too bad, you don’t like me, that’s your problem. It’s, I know who I am, and as long as I trust myself, show up the way I want to show up and like my reasons why I make the decisions I make, I’ve got me.
Kelle: Yeah, this reminds me of that book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I think it’s the third agreement, don’t take anything personally. Where he talks about how other people’s opinions actually have nothing to do with you. It’s just about them. It’s all about them.
Nina: Yeah. And this isn’t just about negative feedback or other people’s negative opinions about you. It’s also a positive opinion. This is where we learn to decide for ourselves what’s true or untrue about ourselves. Instead of outsourcing that validation, we start to self-validate.
Kelle: When we get used to doubting ourselves, we start to compromise ourselves. We kind of get lost. We unwittingly abandon ourselves. We unwittingly betray ourselves and we don’t mean to.
Nina: No, when we believe them, when we give more value to their opinions and neglect or abandon our own, we get really lost. This tendency is intense with the women we work with and we get it. This is what happened to me in my marriage. I compromised myself and my truths and completely lost myself. I believed him when he told me I wasn’t this enough or that enough, that I never told him he was handsome enough. I believed him when he said, “She’s just a friend. She’s just a coworker, that I was making a big deal out of nothing.” And I believed him when he said he’d stop.
I believed him that maybe something was wrong with me. Maybe I deserved this. I tried to understand, but really just felt ashamed, even though my gut was screaming at me to run and get the eff out of this marriage. My head told me to stay, that I’d made promises and vows, that I could figure this out and fix it, that maybe he was right about me. Besides, I can be a total pain in the ass, I am far from perfect.
Kelle: Stop.
Nina: Well, society too tells us that marriage is till death do we part. Partnership is hard, but try to stay for the kids. Try to stay. Don’t give up. And if you guys know me, you know I’m not a quitter. And I think we get the behavior we allow. And I started questioning what I was allowing, what I was enabling. What was I saying yes to and what was I saying no to and why? I learned first-hand that when we doubt ourselves, we tolerate crumbs. The chronic lying and infidelity kept happening. And when it happened again, I finally said enough was enough.
I’ve never felt more sick to my stomach when I made that call that day. It was like someone actually punched me in the solar plexus. And I wondered if maybe I was making a mistake, it felt that bad. Was this my body telling me I was doing something wrong? I still questioned myself. I still doubted myself despite all of the evidence in front of me. Would I regret this? Was I taking things too far? Is there room in my heart to give this another chance? Is this really what’s best for my boys?
This was actually my nervous system doing its job, screaming at me to stop talking, to stay quiet, to be a good girl, to suck it up again, like I had for so many years, to stay in the marriage where I was miserable and ‘safe’. Our nervous systems don’t want us to stand up for ourselves when we’ve been compromising ourselves for so long. The safety I unwittingly created for myself and my marriage felt terrible, and so did setting myself free. Courage feels terrible, everyone, it is not comfy. Our brains don’t want us to live a life we’re obsessed with.
Our brains want us to stay exactly where we are. Overriding that feeling felt excruciating, but it was excruciating in the direction of freedom and truth and self-respect, not self-abandonment, self-doubt, more pretending, cheating and lies. To this day, I have to let a lot of people be wrong about me. Unfortunately, they don’t know the facts. I had to make a really big decision to divorce my ex, and that was very inconvenient for the people around me, especially my amazing boys.
I had to stop doubting and start trusting and stop pretending. A lot of people aren’t happy about that and I’m wobbly. I’m not sturdy yet. But listen, my future is so much fucking brighter than my past, truly. Self-trust is my invitation right now personally, self-trust and forgiveness if I’m being real. I wouldn’t be where I am today without this powerful work we do in coaching, to manage my mind around the default self-doubting thoughts and fearful mindset that had me stuck for years. My personal coach, the amazing Melissa Parsons, is a savant and rock star and my friends, man, you guys are amazing too.
Kelle: Nina, I just feel you so much and you have so much courage, and you’re just such an incredible person. And I just can’t say enough amazing things about you. So, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So how are you doing now?
Nina: I’m getting over a lot of disappointment, really in myself. I was really disappointed in myself for allowing this to be in my life for as long as it was. I’m really hard on myself and that didn’t really allow any healing to happen. And once I could process that and accept myself and really appreciate and love the parts of myself that were so unsure and doubtful and scared and afraid, I could kind of start to heal and forgive.
Kelle: Okay, so if you could share with the listeners here, where do we begin? How do we start to trust ourselves?
Nina: Now, I am totally in progress here. So, here’s my MO. We learn to deeply trust ourselves by first giving ourselves a break and accepting the fact that we’ve been doing things the best way we knew how. We practice self-kindness, that means turning some of that mama bear energy you have for your kids or loved ones, towards yourself, rock stars. We’re doing the best we can. I was doing the best I could with what I had.
We learn to like ourselves more, when you accept and appreciate that you’re perfectly imperfect, drop your ego and stop being so hard on yourself, you kind of stop taking action from a place of control and force. And you instead show up from a place of care, knowing that you’re whole and worthy and capable just as you are. You’re doing the best you can. And you start to think differently about yourself. You create different beliefs about yourself and slowly, over time you change your self-concept and you grow.
Kelle: I mean, I’m just looking at the time, but there’s so much there I want to dig into. I think we’re going to have to do a whole another episode on that.
Nina: Will do, stay tuned.
Kelle: Amazing. Thank you. Yeah. Alright, let’s close this out with one final question. How different would your life look if you stopped doubting yourself, if you stopped questioning yourself and instead started really trusting yourself? I mean, it would free up so much time and energy because there’s so much less mind drama. When you stop pretending and start telling the truth, you feel so much more hope, so much more ease in your life and your work even when things go wrong. Even when you make mistakes and mess up, you know you’ll figure it out.
You’re more resilient and less rocked by the situations and people in your life. There’s less conflict and resentment in relationships because you’ve learned to understand instead of judge. When you feel more confident and empowered, more capable and hopeful, your whole vibration shifts.
Nina: Self-trust is foundational when we are ambitious-ish, it’s something we develop through practice.
Kelle: Yeah, okay, so put these concepts into practice. Sort through what’s true versus what stories your brain is telling you. Really check in there and see what happens when you let people be wrong about you. Just start with one person today, easy does it, one day at a time. Remember, practice makes practice. Okay, until next time.
Nina: Yeah, see you next time. Thanks all.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to kelleandnina.com. That’s K E L L E and nina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
Kelle: Yeah, if you stopped worrying about what other people thought of you or stopped obsessing about your weight or other physical parts of you, or made decisions efficiently and with more confidence.
Nina: Join us today as we talk about all things self-doubt. What is self-doubt? What’s it costing you? The two main reasons why we doubt ourselves and how to stop so that you can feel more ease and confidence and actually enjoy the life you worked so hard to create.
Kelle: This is going to be a good one. Let’s jump in. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I’m Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina.
Kelle: Nina, how was your weekend?
Nina: Hot. It’s really freaking hot here in Utah right now. July is kind of brutal. I don’t know Kel, wait, were you guys at the soccer tournament?
Kelle: Oh yeah, soccer all day, all day every day.
Nina: It’s not the same as rosé all day.
Kelle: No, it is not.
Nina: Oh wow. Yeah, we actually had a pretty mellow weekend since my boys aren’t doing soccer anymore, it’s kind of fun.
Kelle: I know you got on your bikes.
Nina: Yeah, we got on our bikes. 30,000 people came to town for that tournament.
Kelle: Traffic in Park City over the weekend was bananas, it was like ski traffic.
Nina: Anyway, here we are back at work. Okay, let’s talk self-doubt. I really like starting with a definition to get clarity on exactly what we’re talking about. So, self-doubt is defined as lack of confidence in one’s self and one’s abilities.
Kelle: Yeah, that lack of confidence. When we think of being ambitious-ish, we tend to see quite a bit of confidence, at least in some areas of our lives, in some areas of our clients’ lives, in our listeners’ lives.
Nina: When we really start thinking about self-doubt, it can look a lot of different ways. Let’s bring in some of the ways it shows up and as you listen, see what resonates. So, for example, you’re overly concerned with your own appearance, your weight or other physical parts of you. If you’re pretty enough or look young enough, you kind of seek validation and let other people decide what enough is, what young enough is or skinny enough is. Instead of defining this for yourself, liking the way you look and feeling safe and comfortable in your own skin.
Kelle: Yeah. Self-doubt can also show up when you doubt your own capabilities. Whether you’re really capable or have the capacity to perform or to go bigger, it’s that imposter syndrome, do I actually belong in this room? Being smart enough or good enough at what you do or being good enough as a mom or a partner or a friend.
Nina: Or you find yourself second guessing your own value or worth, or any little or big decision you make, even decisions you made earlier today, last week or even decades ago, which is the worst because it’s in the past and you can’t change what you did in the past, right?
Kelle: Totally, yeah. Another way self-doubt shows up is if you seek opinions or the advice of everyone else on what you should do, on decisions you need to make. You analyze over and over, you crowdsource for answers from everyone else not believing you can trust yourself to make the right decision. So, then you ask other people what you should do, what you should order at a restaurant, or what you should do in a situation with your annoying coworker or where you should go on vacation because if we get buy-in from others there is less risk.
We don’t have to take all the blame or ownership if we make the ‘wrong decision’. And listen, that doesn’t mean that you don’t check in with the experts when it calls for that. It’s just not checking in on every little decision you need to make.
Nina: Yeah. And by the way, we don’t really believe in right or wrong decisions, because the truth is, you’ll always have self-doubt if you make decisions based on what’s right or wrong. It’s too much pressure. There is no way to know unless you can see the future in your crystal ball, what the impact of a decision is going to be down the road of life. If there’s uncertainty, there’s going to be self-doubt, but what we want to show you is, self-doubt doesn’t have to be a problem. It doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. It’s part of the process of decision making. It’s not an indicator of right or wrong.
Kelle: Okay, another way self-doubt shows up is, you worry about what other people think about you and even try to control the narrative in general on what other people think of you. If you’re cool enough or funny enough, or if you have it together enough. I don’t even know what that means, but even questioning your own self-worth and the value that you bring.
Nina: Or you ruminate or send yourself into a tailspin of regret over what you said, or what you did, or how you acted.
Kelle: Yeah, I have a friend who is beyond social. She shows up for all the things in town. She knows everyone. She has a wide range of friend groups, and she’s invited to all the things. She’s so fun, and she has so much energy, people absolutely love her. And she’s one of those people that you would love to hate because she’s just so gorgeous and outgoing and super successful.
Nina: Are you talking about me? Just kidding.
Kelle: Right, Nina. Yes, I am as a matter of fact. And then with this person, you can’t find anything wrong with her because she really is just this very kind, generous, fun person. I am talking about you, Nina. One of the things that I would love to work with her on, but of course we don’t coach our friends unless they actually want to be coached, is exactly what we’re talking about today.
Self-doubt because she’ll go to a dinner party and on the outside she looks like she’s having this amazing time, engaging and working a room. And on the inside, she’s constantly filtering herself, making sure she’s looking a certain way and saying the right things. And then after the event, she spends days going over scenarios in her head and out loud, how she wishes she wouldn’t have said something. She’s regretting or worrying someone might have thoughts about her, thoughts that might be not nice or not very kind.
Nina: I mean, who hasn’t done this? And really, all of these ways, we doubt ourselves at some point. And if you’re thinking, yes, this is me. Listen, you absolutely cannot beat yourself up or berate yourself here. What we want to do is bring some awareness to what self-doubt looks like, you might not even realize that you’re doing it.
Kelle: Yeah. And I’m looking at our notes here and before moving on, I think it’s important to talk about what this self-doubt might be costing you, what it might be costing us. So of course it’s costing us time. When we have a lot of mind drama going on, when we’re ruminating and circling the drain, when our inner world is in chaos. We cause ourselves not only a lot of unnecessary time, but a lot of energy going over and over scenarios in our head, going over situations in our head. Time that could be spent so much better, so much more productively.
Nina: Yeah, and energy, it’s super draining to have mind drama, to worry and ruminate and self-criticize over and over. It’s also costing us presence in our lives when we’re thinking about things we wish we could change, things we would have done differently. When we’re thinking about what may happen in the future and worrying and obsessing about that, we’re not living our lives in the present moment, present with our people and our work and the things that are most important to us. We’re missing out on the actual real life happening right in front of us.
Kelle: Yeah so good. Yeah, it’s also costing us emotionally. When we let our mind go into self-doubt it feels terrible. We are causing unnecessary pain for ourselves. We’re suffering emotionally, criticizing ourselves. We feel shame. We feel regret. We feel insecure and not enough.
Nina: Yeah. When we’re doubting ourselves, it’s costing us the positive emotions like joy and happiness and wonder and love. Remember that negativity bias, we need to actually look for the more positive emotions, and it’s hard to do that when we’re focused on the negative ones.
Kelle: Alright, what else is self-doubt costing us? It’s costing us opportunities. When we’re doubting ourselves, we don’t see our own brilliance. We don’t see our own incredible-ness and our own power. We don’t go after what we really want because we doubt our ability to make it happen for ourselves. We don’t take risks because we’re too afraid we’ll fail and what that might mean about us.
Nina: Yeah. And last but absolutely not least, we miss out on money. We leave money on the table. We don’t ask for the raise or go for the promotion or start that business we’ve been dreaming of. And this pains us as your coaches and as women, because only good happens when more women make more money.
Kelle: Oh, come on, amen to that. Nina knows this. I love talking about money. I love talking about how, when you believe in yourself, when you have that self-belief, you’re more likely to ask for what you want, to believe in the value that you bring. And ask to be compensated appropriately for the value that you’re bringing. So good. Okay, let’s talk about why we have self-doubt.
Nina: As we like to say, it’s not you, it’s your brain. We humans are herd animals. We want to be part of the tribe. We’re hardwired to want to fit in, to belong and to be liked. Self-doubt has a lot to do with people pleasing.
Kelle: Yeah, we just talked about this in episode 19, it’s called High Achievers, Stop People Pleasing. How people pleasing is a survival instinct, often a trauma response. It’s something we learned a long time ago, typically when we were young, to keep ourselves safe.
Nina: And a big part of keeping ourselves safe by doing whatever we can to make sure people like us, if we can just keep others happy with us. Approval from others means survival. And we unwittingly do that by not standing out and being our authentic original selves, but by blending in, by being like them, by being agreeable and easy, by acting the right way and dressing the right way, for example.
Kelle: Yeah, women have been historically taught to focus on everyone else but ourselves, to source our self-worth from how much we serve others. It teaches us to people please, to put ourselves last and doubt our own capacity to live big. That’s just what we are talking about. It teaches us to never rock the boat, to never inconvenience others or speak our minds, we should be quiet and nice and polite.
Nina: That’s all baked into the decades behind us, the self-doubt, questioning and second guessing ourselves. We’re constantly asking ourselves, what if I can’t? And in coaching we instead ask, “What if you can, rock star?” Because on default, our brains want to stay safe, where we are, even if we’re unhappy. Our brains weren’t built to help us create a life we’re obsessed with. Our brains don’t want to think big or go big, to put us out on a limb, vulnerable to failure and rejection from the tribe.
That’s why when we start to question it all, why we feel so miserable all the time or where that kickass self-confidence we knew so well once upon a time disappeared to and start to make decisions based on our own truths. It doesn’t feel easy or amazing or even good.
Kelle: Yeah. We had a call with a client the other day, she said I could share this story. So, she’s this complete rock star, insurance business owner. Her business is, in fact, so stellar she was awarded a Book of Business by the parent company that she works for. A fellow business owner was retiring, and she was going to take over his accounts.
Nina: And Kel, we just have to say really quickly, this client, like you said, rock star, and of course we don’t have favorites. We don’t have favorite clients. But this particular client is so fun to coach. She comes to session every week so curious and with so many things to unpack and spread out. And it is just such an honor to work with her right now before we get into her story. She’s right there and Kelle and I are just sitting there coaching them. And we’re just like, “Oh my God, it’s really, really cool work when we get to work with kickass women like this.” So, I just wanted to say that. You know who you are.
Kelle: Yeah. Alright, yeah. I love it. With that, with taking over his accounts, the retiree’s accounts, she had the ability to hire one of the retiree’s best employees. So that potential employee could step into her business with very little training. She was essentially already doing the job and could help her continue to build her business. But the prospective employee wanted too much money, more than our client was paying any of her other employees. Her gut, it was telling her no, don’t hire this retiree’s employee, don’t hire this person.
Nina: Yeah, our client was proud of herself for going with her gut, for listening to herself. She sent the prospective employee an email letting her know very nicely and professionally that she was not going to extend an offer to her and she never heard back. In her words, she was ghosted. She said, “I knew with 100% certainty what I needed to do. And it bothered me because I thought if I’m kind, if I affirm you as a person, if I’m polite to you, I kind of expect you to respond kindly too.” And because she didn’t, she started questioning herself.
Kelle: Yeah, she didn’t get a response, and so she thought that meant something about her. So, she reread the email she had sent the prospective employee 10 times just to make sure there was no language in there that could be seen as offensive or not nice or not respectful. Our client said she believed if I work hard enough, if I’m good enough I can manipulate or control the way people view me. So, with that information, here’s how we coached her.
So first we looked at the actual facts. Our client had the thought that she was ghosted, but really, the prospective employee, she just didn’t reply. She just didn’t respond. There was no ghosting. Ghosting is a very dramatic version of a non-response. We’ve said this before, the brain loves drama, her brain was making up a story, connecting the dots with the little bit of information that she had that she had sent an email and what the lack of response meant, and bringing all the drama. Maybe that meant that the prospective employee didn’t like her or didn’t respect her or thought she was a terrible business owner and didn’t want to work with her. Who knows?
Nina: Who knows? Without going back and asking her why she didn’t respond, we don’t actually know. So instead of allowing our brains to make up stories, we need to check in by answering the following. What are the facts? What are the actual facts? I want to say AF. What are the actual facts, AF? Again, in this example, she just didn’t get a reply. What are you making the facts mean? This is where we went with the client. She thought the lack of response meant maybe she said something in her email that wasn’t kind or respectful and in the process she was questioning herself, second guessing herself.
She read and reread her email, in effect, spending her own precious time, energy and brain space worrying what that lack of response meant. And so, with that information, we asked her, “Do you believe the story your brain is making up?” When she checked in, when she reviewed it all, she was able to see that the story her brain was making up, there was nothing there. It wasn’t actually true that she wasn’t kind or respectful.
Kelle: Yeah, totally. And then one more question. How is the opposite of what your brain is making up, actually true? When she looked back at how she handled things, she felt empowered. She trusted herself and she honored herself. She could see that she had been reasonable. She could see that she was an intelligent person. She could see that she made a really good decision and she makes really good decisions in her business and she can trust in her gut what the right decisions are for her.
Her brain was just lobbying her thoughts and stories and she had a choice on whether to believe them and feel disrespected, or not believe them and build her own self-trust.
Nina: This is a choice, I just want to underline that and our brains are always going to go to self-doubt. They’re always going to go there. And we can believe them or not. So, this is the choice. And once we got to the place where the client felt empowered, felt self-trust and confidence in herself and her self-concept as a killer business owner, which she is. We offered her a concept that is really hard to grasp when you’re deep into people pleasing, when you want everyone to like you. This is huge. She had to let people be wrong about her.
Kelle: Oh, my goodness. Yes, this is so good, mic drop right here. Yes, she had to let people be wrong about her because they’re people, they’re going to think what they’re going to think. We cannot control other people. We can’t control anyone around us except for us. So, we show up in the way that we want to show up, the way that feels true and authentic to ourselves. And then the people are going to have thoughts about us, they’re going to judge us. They may even make up untruths about us and tell them to other people. Who knows? But that’s their brain making up stories, connecting the dots for them.
Nina: Yeah. As long as we like who we’re being, how we’re acting, we can be ourselves, trust ourselves, have our own backs, and know that they must just be wrong.
Kelle: Yeah, letting people be wrong about us, it’s not what we’re taught, right?
Nina: No. And this isn’t too bad, you don’t like me, that’s your problem. It’s, I know who I am, and as long as I trust myself, show up the way I want to show up and like my reasons why I make the decisions I make, I’ve got me.
Kelle: Yeah, this reminds me of that book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I think it’s the third agreement, don’t take anything personally. Where he talks about how other people’s opinions actually have nothing to do with you. It’s just about them. It’s all about them.
Nina: Yeah. And this isn’t just about negative feedback or other people’s negative opinions about you. It’s also a positive opinion. This is where we learn to decide for ourselves what’s true or untrue about ourselves. Instead of outsourcing that validation, we start to self-validate.
Kelle: When we get used to doubting ourselves, we start to compromise ourselves. We kind of get lost. We unwittingly abandon ourselves. We unwittingly betray ourselves and we don’t mean to.
Nina: No, when we believe them, when we give more value to their opinions and neglect or abandon our own, we get really lost. This tendency is intense with the women we work with and we get it. This is what happened to me in my marriage. I compromised myself and my truths and completely lost myself. I believed him when he told me I wasn’t this enough or that enough, that I never told him he was handsome enough. I believed him when he said, “She’s just a friend. She’s just a coworker, that I was making a big deal out of nothing.” And I believed him when he said he’d stop.
I believed him that maybe something was wrong with me. Maybe I deserved this. I tried to understand, but really just felt ashamed, even though my gut was screaming at me to run and get the eff out of this marriage. My head told me to stay, that I’d made promises and vows, that I could figure this out and fix it, that maybe he was right about me. Besides, I can be a total pain in the ass, I am far from perfect.
Kelle: Stop.
Nina: Well, society too tells us that marriage is till death do we part. Partnership is hard, but try to stay for the kids. Try to stay. Don’t give up. And if you guys know me, you know I’m not a quitter. And I think we get the behavior we allow. And I started questioning what I was allowing, what I was enabling. What was I saying yes to and what was I saying no to and why? I learned first-hand that when we doubt ourselves, we tolerate crumbs. The chronic lying and infidelity kept happening. And when it happened again, I finally said enough was enough.
I’ve never felt more sick to my stomach when I made that call that day. It was like someone actually punched me in the solar plexus. And I wondered if maybe I was making a mistake, it felt that bad. Was this my body telling me I was doing something wrong? I still questioned myself. I still doubted myself despite all of the evidence in front of me. Would I regret this? Was I taking things too far? Is there room in my heart to give this another chance? Is this really what’s best for my boys?
This was actually my nervous system doing its job, screaming at me to stop talking, to stay quiet, to be a good girl, to suck it up again, like I had for so many years, to stay in the marriage where I was miserable and ‘safe’. Our nervous systems don’t want us to stand up for ourselves when we’ve been compromising ourselves for so long. The safety I unwittingly created for myself and my marriage felt terrible, and so did setting myself free. Courage feels terrible, everyone, it is not comfy. Our brains don’t want us to live a life we’re obsessed with.
Our brains want us to stay exactly where we are. Overriding that feeling felt excruciating, but it was excruciating in the direction of freedom and truth and self-respect, not self-abandonment, self-doubt, more pretending, cheating and lies. To this day, I have to let a lot of people be wrong about me. Unfortunately, they don’t know the facts. I had to make a really big decision to divorce my ex, and that was very inconvenient for the people around me, especially my amazing boys.
I had to stop doubting and start trusting and stop pretending. A lot of people aren’t happy about that and I’m wobbly. I’m not sturdy yet. But listen, my future is so much fucking brighter than my past, truly. Self-trust is my invitation right now personally, self-trust and forgiveness if I’m being real. I wouldn’t be where I am today without this powerful work we do in coaching, to manage my mind around the default self-doubting thoughts and fearful mindset that had me stuck for years. My personal coach, the amazing Melissa Parsons, is a savant and rock star and my friends, man, you guys are amazing too.
Kelle: Nina, I just feel you so much and you have so much courage, and you’re just such an incredible person. And I just can’t say enough amazing things about you. So, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So how are you doing now?
Nina: I’m getting over a lot of disappointment, really in myself. I was really disappointed in myself for allowing this to be in my life for as long as it was. I’m really hard on myself and that didn’t really allow any healing to happen. And once I could process that and accept myself and really appreciate and love the parts of myself that were so unsure and doubtful and scared and afraid, I could kind of start to heal and forgive.
Kelle: Okay, so if you could share with the listeners here, where do we begin? How do we start to trust ourselves?
Nina: Now, I am totally in progress here. So, here’s my MO. We learn to deeply trust ourselves by first giving ourselves a break and accepting the fact that we’ve been doing things the best way we knew how. We practice self-kindness, that means turning some of that mama bear energy you have for your kids or loved ones, towards yourself, rock stars. We’re doing the best we can. I was doing the best I could with what I had.
We learn to like ourselves more, when you accept and appreciate that you’re perfectly imperfect, drop your ego and stop being so hard on yourself, you kind of stop taking action from a place of control and force. And you instead show up from a place of care, knowing that you’re whole and worthy and capable just as you are. You’re doing the best you can. And you start to think differently about yourself. You create different beliefs about yourself and slowly, over time you change your self-concept and you grow.
Kelle: I mean, I’m just looking at the time, but there’s so much there I want to dig into. I think we’re going to have to do a whole another episode on that.
Nina: Will do, stay tuned.
Kelle: Amazing. Thank you. Yeah. Alright, let’s close this out with one final question. How different would your life look if you stopped doubting yourself, if you stopped questioning yourself and instead started really trusting yourself? I mean, it would free up so much time and energy because there’s so much less mind drama. When you stop pretending and start telling the truth, you feel so much more hope, so much more ease in your life and your work even when things go wrong. Even when you make mistakes and mess up, you know you’ll figure it out.
You’re more resilient and less rocked by the situations and people in your life. There’s less conflict and resentment in relationships because you’ve learned to understand instead of judge. When you feel more confident and empowered, more capable and hopeful, your whole vibration shifts.
Nina: Self-trust is foundational when we are ambitious-ish, it’s something we develop through practice.
Kelle: Yeah, okay, so put these concepts into practice. Sort through what’s true versus what stories your brain is telling you. Really check in there and see what happens when you let people be wrong about you. Just start with one person today, easy does it, one day at a time. Remember, practice makes practice. Okay, until next time.
Nina: Yeah, see you next time. Thanks all.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to kelleandnina.com. That’s K E L L E and nina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
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