Tina Tower reflects on experiencing self-doubt in business, arguing that the brain is wired for safety rather than success. She explains self-doubt can be triggered by past trauma or by pushing beyond one’s comfort zone (e.g., going live, stepping onstage), and that the brain produces self-doubting thoughts to keep us ‘safe’ when we face vulnerability or unknown performance situations.
Chapters
What got it done. And so self doubt can show up for all number of reasons. Sometimes, you know, we're in different situations that will remind us of big traumatic things that we've gone through in the past. That's not like logically connected, but the feeling can be the same. So what I think is our brains are wired for safety, it's not wired for success. So our brains are constantly trying to keep us safe, which is great, that's what we're wired to do. But as we keep growing, as we try and do something that's out of our comfort zone, as we try and push past the edge of kind of what we've been capable of so far, that will kick in even more. Because your brain's trying to keep you safe. It doesn't want you to go into the land where you're being vulnerable, where you're in a situation where you don't know how you're gonna perform. I mean, I think like, you know, take going live for the first time or stepping onto a big stage, it's the same sort of thing that your brain is going, warning, warning, like you're not safe here. And so that is when it's going to give you all of these thoughts of self doubt so that you can keep yourself right safe where you are.