Change the Hand You’re Dealt

Have you ever paid attention to your thoughts? More to the point, do you have things you tell yourself like:

“You’re not equipped for this”

“Is this really what you want to do?”

“You’re not ready”?

I have.

I’m starting to pay attention to when these thoughts come to mind and I’ve noticed that they usually occur when I’m about to embark on something that’s out of my element. You see, I don’t embrace change well. Even when it’s change that I have initiated, you know? So I’m always second guessing myself or trying to manage my emotions along the way.

I even have moments where I almost (almost) talk myself out of a new adventure. For example, I applied for a team lead position recently but the entire time I was going through the online application process I thought to myself “do you really want to do this?”. Then when I hit the “submit” button my next thought is “my God, what are you going to do if they call you for an interview?” Now all of this anxiety really centered around the fear that I don’t do well thinking on my feet and interviews are more often than not about thinking on your feet.

Tell me about a time when you had to give a speech about something you knew nothing about.

(W.T.F.???).

You understand what I mean?

Rather than give into my fight or flight impulse, I decided what I needed to do was to reframe my thoughts. So instead of thinking negatively about this experience (oh, I did get called for an interview in case you’re wondering), I prepped for it as best as I could and figured that it would give me an opportunity to work on developing this skill.

How do you deal with your own self-doubt? Please let us all know in the comments.

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