Three Thought Habits That Keep You Stuck in Self-Doubt

Crippling self-doubt.

You’ve probably been there at some point in your life. It seems to be one of those emotions that rears its head as you get a little older, stopping you dead in your tracks, just when you dare to try something new.

In his latest book, Stop Doing That Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back, Gary Bishop highlights how self-sabotaging behavior cycles keep us hostage. He outlines how we can interrupt the old thoughts or versions of the truth we have created and pivot toward more productive actions that get us closer to our goals.

The book starts by encouraging self-reflection on the truths about your life. A key tenet is that there are three saboteurs that define those truths and keep you from reaching your goals in life.

The first saboteur: What you’ve concluded about yourself- Your personal conclusion about yourself is all-consuming. It’s constantly running in the background of your thoughts. It’s quite personal. It keeps you pegged and holds you in place. It feels safe because it’s familiar.

Your conclusion about yourself always will begin with “I’m”. Things like, “I’m not capable”, or “I’m not smart enough”, or “I’m different”.

This is what you say to yourself when there’s no one else around, and no amount of external praise will release you from this conclusion. It’s your go-to response, just when you dare to dream.

When you’re “triggered”, this is why. If you’re convinced you’re not smart enough, and then you find out that your coworker gets a promotion, you’ve been validated. Regardless of the facts or reasons, you’re convinced that you were overlooked because you’re not smart enough.

Everything in life is in place, just as you imagined it to be. It’s written in the stars for you.

That’s your conclusion about yourself.

The second saboteur: What you’ve concluded about others- You’re sharing your life with family, friends, and people in your circle. You always have a backdrop of others, no matter how much you keep to yourself.

Your conclusion or baseline opinion of others is defined by what you’ve been through. You’re stuck on the conclusions about others, just as you are on the ones about you.

Your conclusions about others might be things like, “people can’t be trusted”, or “people will use you.” This is the thought that crops up the moment an external event happens that involves others.

It’s the soundtrack for how you move ahead, and it impacts everyone you meet, as you seek the evidence you need to effectively write them off.

If you believe people can’t be trusted, and then your friend has to cancel a dinner with you, it all tracks against your perfectly cemented idea that people can’t be trusted.

Conclusions run deep. Those about yourself and those about others. The moment you meet someone, those conclusions filter their behavior. Are they just like everyone else? You barely need to ask, you already know the answer.

That’s your conclusion about others.

The third saboteur: What you’ve concluded about life in general-This can be the heaviest of all of the saboteurs. What you think about life will likely impact your every behavior and burden you with the consequences.

You may have come to the conclusion that “life is hard”, or “life is unfair”. This idea is the foundation for what you expect every single day. Therefore, when something happens, like when you feel like you need to struggle to make ends meet and save money, while all your friends seem to be crushing their goals, you’ll pull on that thread, and become a victim. Perpetuating the struggle you have concluded. Life is unfair.

This is why staying motivated can be so difficult. When you’re certain that your life is a struggle or unfair, it clouds what is possible for you because you’re saturated with that burdensome conculsion.

Look at the things you want in your life and ask yourself what your dream home is like, your ideal financial status, your perfect body, health, or your idyllic personal day-in-the-life.

If you pay attention, when you ask yourself these questions, you’ll answer within the limits that you have set for yourself based on your past. You begin from the place that things can only be so good. You can’t go beyond that, because this is how things are for you. Enter your belief about yourself, others, and your life.

That becomes the starting point of how you hear, see, do, and experience everything in your life. It has shaped a solid bias in you and created a pattern of self-doubt and restraint that keep you within the boundaries that the conclusions have created.

Bishop contends that all of our conclusions are inherently criticisms. “I’m not good enough”, “you can’t trust anyone”, “life isn’t fair.”

Those beliefs are soaked up by you like a “magic, little, sponge”, as he calls it. They are your established truths about your past, rooted into your subconscious, and they are why you live the way you do.

They are why it’s difficult to break out of the cycle of self-sabotage and because your sponge is more than willing to soak it all in. Especially in your weakest moments.

When self-doubt consumes you, there are a few simple actions you can take to get you back on track and thinking positively.

Take care of yourself

Putting yourself on the front burner and focusing on your personal goals keeps you looking forward, rather than stuck in the past.

When you don’t have time to reflect on your own dreams or even care for yourself, the old thoughts and beliefs can easily take root in the available space.

Make yourself a priority every day.

Take care of others

Sometimes the simple act of doing good things for others will distract you from what may have become your default self-doubt style of thinking. Waking up every day with the same mantra in your head makes that your playbook.

Doing things that focus on helping others or taking care of those around you in a loving way can inject a little warmth and positivity into your life and stop the swirl of negativity you may be feeling.

The act of doing for others can help you rewrite your personal goals about the kind of person you want to be.

Acknowledge the good

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Think of how far you’ve come in the last year, or even five years. You’ve undoubtedly been through some hard things and you’ve persevered.

Maybe you think others have done or accomplished more than you, but they didn’t have your circumstances. You’ve done a lot of good things, and you shouldn’t be so quick to push them aside as if they are nothing.

A little pat on the back now and then is good medicine.

Release the past

The holy grail of getting on with it. Things happened in your life that have made you rethink or overthink everything or even become paralyzed in your own limiting thoughts. Those things from the past have seeped into your life today, and have been the framework for everything you think or do.

It’s not healthy to allow that, and definitely not very productive. It limits your ability to dream big, or sometimes even dream at all.

Start fresh from today, as if nothing before today could impact your decisions, and work from that point as much as you can. Some things may have had a permanent lasting impact and have likely changed you as a person, but they don’t need to be your reason for staying in one place.

It happened. Now move on.

Staying mired in old sabotaging thoughts, patterns of self-doubt, or regret can have a lasting impact and diminish your creativity with each passing year of your life.

It’s no way to live.

Rewrite your future by getting clear on your three saboteurs and telling yourself a new story about the life you want, starting from where you are right now.

You’ll be glad you did.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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