Practical Exercises To Destroy Your Self-Doubt

Self doubt can be absolutely crippling. And it doesn't matter whether that doubt is already in your head because of things in your past or if it's coming from the outside world today in the form of comments and negative feedback from other people. As soon as it gets in there and starts doing that awful spin cycle, it can be very, very tough to get out. And what's worse is that oftentimes we know this self doubt is not serving us. We know that we shouldn't focus on the negative. We know that we shouldn't think. I can't do that. But we don't feel it. So in this video, what I want to help you to do is not only know how to get rid of self doubt, but how to feel it as well. And these are five things that are actual exercises because I know that all the motivational speeches in the entire world have not solved this problem. So these are five things that I do that you can do to actually eliminate self doubt in your own life. And I want to start with the simplest and then work our way to the really, really sticky things that can be tough to get rid of. But this is what I go to first. And anytime, any negative feeling I have, particularly self doubt, the first thing that you want to go to, that I go to is my body. And that means that I need to change my physical state. So when there's been a bother in my life, the first thing I'm going to try to do is move. It is incredible what exercise a 20 minute run will do for your state of mind. It can get rid of all those little things that are bothering you. This is why people do yoga. This is why people get addicted to the gym because it does relieve that stress in a very visceral way. So I have to say this. First thing first, move exercise. If you're in the office, stretch, open up, go to the bathroom, splash water on your face. It seems simple, it seems like it's ripped out of a movie. But that affects our subconscious and therefore our feelings far more than telling yourself it's going to be okay, don't worry about it. Because guess what? The subconscious does not speak English in the same way that we do. So step one, exercise, move your body, change your state. Second thing, for those things that linger a little bit more. And these are the ones that tend to be rituals. Like every time you go up to this person, you get a little bit anxious or somebody who is consistently criticizing you for the same thing over and over again. What do you do there? And the Lesson here is to find the lesson. What I mean by that is that when we tend to get these same feedback loops, we can treat them as something to shrink away from, to avoid. But if instead you engage and you go, you know what? There's something to be learned here. So every time that I'm about to give a speech for work, I find myself getting really, really nervous. I what if the lesson was that I need to start going to Toastmasters? That would completely reframe and all of a sudden your brain would be able to let go of the things that were bothering it. In my own life, right, I have this YouTube channel. I get tons and tons of comments, and they're all over the spectrum. I absolutely appreciate them. But between the ones that are completely wonderful and telling me everything is great, and the ones that say this channel is shit, there's some in the middle that have feedback that is a little bit harsh but actually helps me. And when I can go in and I can find the lesson. For instance, the last video that I shot, I was all over the place, right? I'd filmed it twice. The first one deleted, I was pissed. I was trying to get out. So I stood here and I was, okay, get the video out, get the video out. And by the time that I filmed it, I was like this. I was going like this, boom, bang, boom, out the door. And then, rightly so, a lot of you were like, dude, you are all over the place in this video. So hopefully what I've done in this one and will try to do in the future ones is slow it down, take the lesson, breathe deeper, and do a better job of communicating clearly. So when you find the lesson, all of a sudden, your brain can release. That's step two. The third thing, and again, I experienced this, is once you've taken the lesson, you might have to filter the negative comments out. You might have to filter or change your environment if you have a negative friend. So I see this all the time in myself. Once I'd gotten the lesson, I said, okay, man, slow it down a bit. Speak slower, communicate more clearly. Don't have your hands going all over the place. Once I'd gotten that lesson, I found that I was continuing to read the comments and still getting frustrated about the same thing, even though I'd taken the lesson. So what I had to do was filter that. I had to stop reading comments for a day. Then I could come back to it with a fresh state of mind. The truth is, I don't care who you are. I don't care how rock solid your confidence is, your self esteem is. If you are being barraged by negativity, whether it's from your friends, your family, the news, social media, whatever it is. If you are in an environment that is oppressive and weighing you down, it's like having an anchor. So I don't care how happy you are, it can be very, very difficult to rid yourself of that self doubt. Instead, craft your environment. Yes, let feedback in. Yes, take the lessons where they're available. But if there is non actionable negative feedback that you can do nothing about in the form of a friend or a Facebook news feed, cut it out. It's got no use to your life. This is so tremendously helpful. And honestly, where I would start is social media. In most cases you might want to get rid of your Facebook wall. You might want to stop going Instagram if those are places where you can get a little bit self conscious and create self doubt. So that's the third thing. Control your environment filter. Now we're moving into the big guns. And these are things that I am very sure or likely sure that you've not experienced before. Because I had to search for far and wide to kind of find these tips to get rid of things that were bothering me over and over and over again. And the fourth one is embodiment. So before I get into it, I gotta kinda tell you how it works. The subconscious and the conscious mind speak different languages. I alluded to this earlier. The conscious mind is verbal, right? We talk to our friends, our family. We can even talk to ourselves in a way that is, it's English in our head, but the way that we feel things, right, that you can talk to yourself all day, but it's very, very difficult to talk yourself into feeling a certain way. What you need to do is have an experience, even if that experience is imagined. So the subconscious mind speaks in experiences, while the conscious mind kind of speaks more in language that we use every single day. So in getting to how do we experience something, we want to embody the release of that self doubt. So one of the most helpful ways that I've ever encountered, and I do all the time, is when I have a negative feeling, particularly self doubt. I will free write. What that means is I'll pull up a Word document. You can go to 750Pages.com, check it out. There's another French one That is easy, three pages.fr and it gives you a thing. 750 words is about three pages and it's enough time to just type, right? And it'll count your words for you. Type everything that's bothering you. I feel this way because this said that and now I'm going back and forth in my head. Dump it all, actually feel it being poured onto the page. If you want to free write it. Some people enjoy this better with hand. That can give you that feeling of just catharsis of getting it out. And this is important, this is not just a metaphor. Because once you've gotten it out onto that page on that website, you shut down the browser, close the computer, turn it off, and there is this feeling of closure. If you have a Word document, you drag it to the trash, you empty the trash and it's gone. Or if there's a piece of paper, you light it on fire. And it's so weird because why would this help you? But the subconscious mind speaks an experience. And what that experience was, I dumped all my feelings here and and then I lit it on fire and it's gone. It is incredible how effective that is if you want to put it on steroids again. You can kind of trick your subconscious mind if there's someone that's bothering you. What you can do is after you've done everything, you've gotten it all out there, you go back and you write a letter to yourself from that person apologizing for whatever they did or explaining why they did what they did. Clearly it's your own voice, clearly this isn't coming from them. But guess what? Your subconscious does not care. And that feeling of closure is palpable. So now you know that you should feel good and you actually feel good. And again you light that on fire and it's gone. It feels so much better. That is embodiment, there's tons of different ways, but that is the simplest and most effective that I have found to clear out self doubt. So if there's something you got right now, start here. If it's recurring in your life, write it out, delete it, burn it, get rid of it. But make sure first you have that feeling of pouring it outside of yourself so it doesn't feel stuck. The fifth thing is this. When it comes down to it, this is a Tony Robbins thing. If you have a strong enough why anything is possible. And the truth is when we have self doubt, that is serving us in some way. When I'm doubting the way that I'm gesticulating right, something in my brain is saying I want to be better. You know, I need to be more certain that I'm going to do a great job on these videos. So there's something that's triggering it in there. If you want to combat that, what you have to do is create sometimes a stronger feeling, a stronger why than the one that is keeping that self doubt you in you. There's a lot of different ways to do this and I don't have time because everybody is a little bit different. But a very, very common pattern that is strong is to get self righteously pissed at the fact that you have outsourced the way that you feel about yourself to somebody else or to some ridiculous thought pattern. So actually I will go in and think about the reasons why I am. How I am letting a couple of people on the Internet who are, I don't know who I'm trying to make effective videos for affecting the way that I feel. And I'll sit there and I won't get mad at them and I won't throw their feedback out. I'll get pissed at myself. Not to punish myself, but to go, never ever do that again. Never let anyone that you don't know on the Internet who could be trolling, who might be serious, who gives a shit, never let that happen to the point where it affects how you feel about yourself. Right? So whether it's coming from inside your own head, do not let those ridiculous thoughts control you. It's coming from outside. In terms of comments, get self righteously pissed again. You can write that out if you want. If it helps you to type, I'm a typer, that helps me. But getting this stronger why can go so much farther than all of these combined. And when you put it together with the embodiment. There are things that I've had in my life that have been stuck, these patterns that I go over and over again that I've been able to start to eliminate just by doing that a handful of times. So I hope that you guys have found this helpful. Before I wrap this, I want to let you know what I'm doing next week because it was kind of a surprise to me. I going to be doing a video on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and the way they're running their campaigns. And the reason is because I am. I didn't think I would ever do this. I'm not voting for Donald Trump, but I literally just bet US$1,000 that Donald Trump would be the next president. And it's not because I want that to be the case, it's because I think it will be the case. In fact, based on what I'm seeing, I'm confident that it will be so if you're curious what I'm seeing and you want to check that video out, I think on Monday, go ahead and subscribe to the channel. If you want to see all the charisma breakdowns, anything like this, Q and A talking head, make sure to subscribe. Just makes it much easier to see it on your homepage. So that'll be there. If you guys have any comments, things that you want to see more of. You have an issue with my hands, you have some feedback to give me that you think would actually be helpful, write it in the comments. Hell, if you want to troll, write it in the comments. I welcome all takers. So go ahead and do that. And of course, if you guys are interested, I mentioned embodiment before. We have another video that covers parts of embodiment and this is an embodiment thing that I use to give me confidence before these videos, before I speak, sometimes before I just go out and talk to someone who might make me nervous. And it's something that I do, probably anywhere between 10 and 60 seconds that really gives a strong feeling of confidence. So if you're curious what that exercise is, I'll set up a link here that you can click to go ahead, check that video out. You'll just submit your email and it'll take you right to that confidence building video. In any event, I hope that you guys have enjoyed this. I hope, God, I sped up there at the end. I hope that I slowed down my hand gestures and I'm looking forward to seeing you again in the next video.