192: The Silver Lining of Self-Doubt with Olivia D'Silva

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hey all you cool cats and kittens. Haha. I kid, I kid. Ignore me if you haven't seen Tiger King. What a crazy series. I'm really excited to bring you this conversation with Olivia Da Silva, who is a Pivot insider and longtime friend through the Internet. We haven't met in person, but I really love what she's up to. Her first book, that's when she first reached out to me, is called you'd Whole life Recognize your true value and improve your quality of Life. And she's recently inspired by Insider, launched her own community called the Doubters and it reflects her mantra that doubt is not necessarily a bad thing. Her next book, that will be coming out soon, we don't Know when, is called the Purpose of Self Doubt and is in fact a work in progress. As she says on her website, self doubt gets a bad press. There's a ton of coaching programs designed to crush it, conquer it, overcome it. I believe any coaching program that requires us to deny a part of ourselves is not sustainable. You can see why we get along. Olivia believes that if we embrace self doubt rather than deny it, we can use it as a positive, empowering force in our lives. She also quotes Bertrand Russell, who says the problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves and wise people are so full of doubts. I hope you enjoy this conversation. The mic tables are turned so she's interviewing me and I will say my mic is a little hot, as in it's a little, it's just not perfect. You all know I've been dropping perfectionism and that's my active daily practice and certainly with every podcast episode. But you'll see the audio quality may bother Some of you, if not. The reason that I launched to this on the podcast anyway is because I think the messages in it are good, especially if you're somebody that struggles with self doubt. And I will also say that with so many podcasts and community recordings happening on Zoom, as a podcaster it is a little challenging to see the audio levels. So this is something I'm still learning and figuring out with the mic that I have. And Zoom itself is so overtaxed right now with everything going on that sometimes Internet quality drops. So you're just going to hear that that's going to be part of not every episode I hope, but certainly the ones that are done over an Internet conn with another person. With all those caveats said. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Thank you so much everybody for being here and thanks again Olivia for having me in the Doubters.

Welcome back to the Doubters everybody. It is Thursday 2nd April and I'm beyond excited today to be welcoming our first guest in the community, which is Jenny Blake, who's joining us from New York. Say hi Jenny. Her mission is about supporting people in career development through leveraging what you already do. Well Jenny, you have been an example to me who's somebody who really operates your business from a place of real heart based integrity. Somebody who I feel really you're connected with your intuition and you allow it to guide you. And this is something I've really aimed to do as a coach ever since I qualified as a coach. I've really just. There's so much stuff out there that I don't want to do. And so for me, connecting my intuition and allowing that to guide me has been part of my journey and that's really challenging. It's a challenging journey. It's, you know, and this is why we're here to talk about the self doubt connection with that today. But you have been like a guiding like so there's so many things. I've been listening to your podcast for a while and like there's a moment it seems to be on every podcast which I listen to, I go yes. And I feel validated but by watching you operate in a way that I want to watch. Yeah. So that's why I brought you here today. And I'm so looking so excited. I'm a bit over excited about this conversation.

I'm so happy. Well, I'm honored. It's really means so much to know that the podcast has been helpful and that makes my day to hear. Yeah, I feel that way when I pick up A book and I read something or listen to a podcast, if I just get one nugget of information or one aha or resource or next step, that's enough. That's enough. So if I'm able to give that to you, that's wonderful. I love what you do, Olivia. I love what you stand for. I love the vulnerability you bring to your community. The fact that this is even called the doubters. Doubters should be celebrated. I think it's the. You know, there's Dunning Kruger syndrome, where people who are more intelligent rank themselves as less intelligent because they have a beginner's mindset, they know how much they don't know. And then people who are actually less intelligent tend to rate themselves higher on intelligence scale. But it's a little bit of puffery, if you ask me. So I feel like, especially now, with everything going on around the world, if anyone acts like they know what's going on and they know exactly what to do and how things are going to turn out, they're crazy. So now is the time for doubters, because we're all living in a state of in between, in a state of doubt, uncertainty, anxiety, not having any clue what's next from one day to the next. So I think you're ahead of the curve, Olivia, and everybody who's here.

Something that I've noticed, I think, sort of peculiar to these times is that people are being really challenged. Like, so some of this is what's happening with me and my clients, really, is that some of our biggest challenges are coming to the fore right now because we don't have our normal strategies for escaping and dealing with stuff, you know, so it's like. It feels like being in a bit of a pressure cooker. I got a bit upset earlier this week, actually. I got a bit annoyed, a bit angry. I've noticed a lot of anger, actually, but that's something that's coming out. But I got a bit angry earlier this week because I was noticing how people were talking about being good and being fine. And, you know, and I just thought, no, we're not. None of us are. You know, we're all frightened. If we're not frightened, then we're in denial. We're not fine right now. None of us knows what's going on, and it's okay. It's really okay. Do that. It's really okay to not be fine. And I know there's that kind of meme that goes around about, oh, it's okay to not be okay. And I think, yeah, on A logical level. We kind of talked about this at the end of the session last week, actually about being in that moment, like, yes. Saying it's okay to not be okay, but actually being in that moment of not being okay, like when you're really down and you're really challenged and things feel really overwhelming. Being okay with that moment. I think that is really the biggest challenge around this work, actually, is that we invite that uncertainty, we invite that anxiety in, and that's what. That's kind of the place I really love to work because there's just so much rich information and beauty there that comes out. But it's being in that moment and being with those overwhelming feelings, which is so hard. Yeah, that's really why I wanted to create this community, because I thought I really want people to be able to go there and recognize that the strength of going there, you know.

Absolutely. And the strength of vulnerability, like you said. There's a couple things that have come up recently in articles I've seen in conversations around feeling our feelings, comparative sadness and ambiguous grief. So comparative sadness. I was on the verge of tears before coming here five minutes prior. And so comparative sadness is not. Is allowing ourselves to feel what we're feeling without saying, oh, but at least I'm healthy. And the kind of immediately discounting it. Yes, there's a place for gratitude. And we still need to process whatever's going on in our own life and family and home and daily roller coaster, not to mention the roller coaster of ambiguity and uncertainty that alone turns up the volume dial on our coping, basically. So it's like, even if nothing has happened today, sometimes I wake up, I'm just deeply sad, and there's a collective sadness or angry, just angry about the jobs that I've lost. I mean, I know that, like, other people are losing their jobs too, and it just doesn't change. So it's a big stew. And then ambiguous grief is something therapist Lori Gottlieb wrote about in the New York Times, that ambiguous grief is like all the things that we've lost. I just found another article today said it's okay to grieve the life you had, you know, or it's okay to be sad to miss your old life. And as much as we want to put on a good face and be optimistic, and I'm as optimistic as it comes, really. And I'm trying to stay positive and look for opportunities, but there's still all these moments of reckoning and change and just boom. You know, I've used the analogy of a Roller coaster, like the roller coaster just lurches and sometimes roller coaster is going so fast or the drop is so steep and then sometimes it's exciting and sometimes there's anticipation. And that's how I feel right now. We're all strapped in, we're all getting a black belt and pivoting. And I also feel that whatever intentions each of us set for 2020 in this new decade with such hope and optimism, I have a suspicion that our intentions are actually still intact. What we set out to do, how we set to evolve as souls and people and society, is somehow still happening, just with a 180 degree shift on how we thought it was going to happen.

How do you think working with our intuition might help us through this time? Or being connected to our intuition can help us through this time?

For me, it's the only way. It is the only way because and Penny said this so well, this can't be solved with our left brain logic. A linear rational plan, any plan is irrelevant within an hour, if not 24 hours at least that's my experience in New York and as a solopreneur running my own mean, maybe I'm just happen to be in at the intersection of super front row seat. But planning just isn't going to work and planning isn't going to give us the answers. I really believe that intuition is about being shown, surrendering, having faith that you will figure this out. Whether it's faith in yourself, faith in your past self and seeing how you've navigated and adapted to change, and blessings in disguise, and faith in some higher intelligence as well. With surrender, with faith, then our intuition, we can say, show me one next step. That's all you ever have to know. Just show me one next step. Today, what can I do today? Or what do I need to hear today? I love playing a game. I call it serendipity signage, which is going to be tricky with so many people sort of sheltering at home. Serendipity signage is you have an inquiry on your mind or on your heart and you go outside and you just see what you notice. What signage do you see on a bus, in an advertisement? Maybe you're listening to podcasts, what word jumps out? Listening to music, you can ask for signs to be shown and if you're receptive and you're open to it. I also teach in momentum and in my community asking for a nonlinear breakthrough. So for me right now it feels like all my income, everything, it feels like the sky is falling and I could hold onto that narrative and say, wow, there's no work here. This is, I'm screwed. I probably won't get hired for anything for the rest of the year, but I'm choosing not to go there. So I'm going to ask for a nonlinear breakthrough. I look forward to being surprised at what new opportunities, the perfect opportunities at the perfect time from the people who really need me and what I do that I'm holding faith and I'm lighting a candle like that can still happen. And my job is to stay open, stay receptive, and stay creative. So intuition allows me to do that because I tap into what do I.

Uniquely need to do, how can I uniquely serve? And also what am I hearing, what am I noticing? Olivia mentioned I've been podcasting daily. I didn't read somewhere. Oh, that's the best practice. There's no manual that says when a pandemic hits, it's a good idea to step up your programming. If anything, people are overwhelmed. There's so much going online. There's so many podcasts and zoom meetings and friend connections. And I can't explain it. I just feel the energy. I feel an urge to speak up and be a voice during this time. But I know other people that the pressure to be productive is itself oppressive. So I would never say to someone, yes, you too, make sure you quadruple double down on whatever you're doing. That's not going to be the answer. Some people, I think it'd be a big mistake to also scramble and be overactive during this time. Explore and leave space for if money weren't an issue. What do I feel called to do right now?

A couple of things I just really want to pick up on. And one is about the sort of the creative way that you navigate that uncertainty by connecting with your intuition. And you talk about being open, receptive and creative and going from the energy, following the energy. You know, for me, this is how I recognize this is how I work. My intuition is following the energy. You know, sometimes that takes me in really odd directions, you know, really strange directions. And I think, you know, people who are looking at me think she doesn't know what she's doing. She really doesn't know what the hell she's doing. You know, and then the other thing you said there, just about holding back from filling time, because that's the, that is the natural instinct. And this is what I, this is what I really encourage with the self doubt work is like, so self doubt is hesitating, right? The etymology of the word doubt is to Hesitate. And it's about being in that hesitation, allowing yourself to be in that hesitation without filling it with, you know, I've got to do stuff, I've got to do stuff because it's so. I feel that, you know, can be so confusing to feel like you have to do that. So allowing ourselves to just step back, be in hesitation. I really love the thought of just knowing when you're not ready and allowing yourself to not be ready, you know, and that's not a popular thing. You know, I sometimes say to people I'm just not ready. And people don't seem to like it when I say that, like, no, I'm not ready and I'm okay with that, you know, but that's kind of, it's kind of a difficult space to be in, isn't it? So there feels to me to be quite a strong link between self doubt and intuition. You know, are they the same thing or are they not? How are they related? What would you say about that?

I am such an advocate for, for self doubt and this is why I love your work, Olivia. And I'm so happy to be having this conversation. I don't see anything wrong with self doubt at all. I used to blog twice a week before I had a podcast and I wrote an article called Self love Formulas are Bullshit. The point of that article was I was so sick of hearing the advice, you have to love yourself fully before you can love anyone else. Bs Like I just call BS on these. If this then that formulas like only when you yourself fully and completely and wholly, then you can attract the right partner for you. I completely disagree. Now you can't hate yourself like that's probably not going to attract the person that you're looking for. But I know without a doubt that it's the relationships that I've had with others, some terrible with sociopaths and some very loving. Now with my husband, where I learned to love myself. It was a skill. It was an ongoing practice. It wasn't overnight. I did a lot of work on my own. I love Byron Katie, I love Tosha Silver, I love John Wellwood, I love Gary Zuck off spiritual partnership. I did a ton of work on my own. And.

What kind of message does that send? If we say, oh, only when we are like so completely fixed, then, you know, and, and complete, then all the good things can happen. I just BS So I've always felt that we should embrace our insecurity, embrace our self doubt, embrace uncertainty, embrace anxiety. It is why I wrote Pivot, because. Because I Always have all those things. I mean, now I'm much less nervous and anxious and worried than I was in my 20s. I'm 36 now, most of my 20s, I just was in a constant state of worry and anxiety, people pleasing imperfectionism. And I just learned to live with it. I just learned to. And really the shift is in accepting that it goes away basically because you're not making it a problem. So I have self doubt. You know, not at a macro level enough to stop me from podcasting, but every single time I hang up the proverbial podcast phone, I feel that I was awkward. I know exactly what I did or didn't do. Well, I see where I stumbled. You know, I'm very sort of self analytical in that way. I hit publish anyway. I just recorded a podcast yesterday. Some news came out today. It's already out of date. Eh, it's gonna, I'm gonna leave it like unless I get the surge of energy to go fix it, it's just gonna be what it is. So my feeling on self doubt is great. Welcome to the club. You wouldn't be doing big things without it. It's really not a problem. The problem is if you take that as the only message and then don't, don't do the things you care about. The metaphor I use is domesticating dragons. So I don't like to be violent to all our beloved animals in our life, even if they're imaginary. So instead of slaying the self doubt dragon, domesticate it. It's like it can become as gentle as a golden retriever laying at your feet. You know, these dragons of self doubt and insecurity and worry are so normal. They're just trying to protect you from doing new things or trying to being vulnerable. Like you said, Olivia, it's such a direct connection to vulnerability and risk taking. So if you just welcome it, talk to your fears, keep moving, to me, there's just no problem. I've never, it has never worked for me to make my fears go away.

The dragon is a powerful creature. Right. You know, and I see self doubt as a really powerful force. It has the ability to really stop us in our tracks, overwhelm us, keep us down. So for me, it's about tapping into that power and I feel that there's wisdom. So I feel there's a lot of wisdom in self doubt. And this is, this is what the work is about really. It's about tapping into that wisdom. And I guess this is where, you know, the, perhaps the relationship with intuition is and I guess so. I think how it's worked for me. Even you talked about relationships. And I know in the past, for me.

I've had an intuitive feeling about a particular thing, usually a guy. Yeah. Let's be, let's be honest about it. Okay. And I've gone ahead like, you know, into the relationship and I'm like, I knew. Why didn't I listen to myself? Why did I not listen to myself? I knew. And you know, so it's like overriding that kind of intuitive feeling and going ahead with something that, well, why did I do that? So I had to kind of learn the hard way, I say.

To allow myself to allow my intuition. And I think it's been a journey of.

Enforcing that connection all the time. And I think where the self doubt comes in, it's about.

Trusting my intuition. So my intuition comes up and I doubt it, I don't listen to it. But then my self doubt is part of my intuition talking to me as well. You know, that kind of doubt is my intuition talking to me sometimes. So it's about knowing and checking in with that wisdom. But the other thing I would say about tuning in with intuition, for me it's been like taking the red pill. Right. The stronger you make that connection and the more you work with that, I'm sure you're going to agree with this, Jenny. I'd love to hear your thoughts. But the more I've made that connection, the more difficult it is not to not to go with my intuition now. So it's like taking, like you said, be careful folks in this journey because once you tune into it, you're not going to be able to ignore it and it will take you into weird directions.

It's so true. And again, as, as I said, for me it's the only way. I actually cannot go back to whatever I was doing before. I see it as it is consistently the way forward. Penny really clarified this for me in her book Frequency. And she also has a book called the Intuitive Way. One level of intuition is our gut instinct and that's really instinct. So if you're in danger, somebody's really not good for you, they're toxic. Those red flags, as someone put it to me, yellow flags that all turn red in hindsight. Like there's all these little yellow flag markers along the road and then something happens and they all turn red and you go, oh, I see what I was missing. That's one layer. And then what I think we're also talking about here, Olivia, is how do you harness the Subtler messages of intuition about what's next and what to do today. And as Penny would say, the moment you ask a question, the answer appears in the same energetic moment. The answer is available to you as soon as the question appears. And also whatever you're noticing, whoever you're attracted to, whatever content, whatever, jealousies, like jealousy is another one I just don't think is the worst, most toxic thing in the world. I mean, yeah, we get why envy and jealousy are quote, bad, but really what it's doing is trying to point out to you something you feel called towards, something you want. And you can try to decide, do I have an attachment to this? What's the, what's the reasoning behind that? And I, of course I'm an advocate of dropping as many attachments as possible and just letting life surprise us. And that attaching to having, being or doing any one specific thing, but who are you noticing and who you're resonating with is going to indicate what you already have within you, what wants to be seen and spoken and given more credit. So in a way, our self doubts also point us toward, toward meaning. For me most often comes when I am doing big things that my intuition has said yes, write this book or do this podcast or be vulnerable in this way. And then there's doubt. That's the gut instinct that's saying stop, stop, pause and maybe pivot. Like sometimes the doubt is actually important because I also believe one of my mottos is let it be easy, let it be fun. Something we're doing stops being fun and it stops feeling easy. We can shift it in some way that might not mean stopping the project altogether, but it might be pivoting it in some way, like just shifting our approach to create more ease and joy. Because I also believe that how we work on projects and how we the process, we do anything, build our business, that energy will be infused at the end result, whether you're writing a book, building a business, creating a course, whatever you're doing. So there is just absolutely no point and it's detrimental to the end result to be miserable in the process.

You know, you said can it be easy and can it be fun? And I think particularly related to my business, that's the energy that I look for. And if I'm not getting that energy, that's where my self doubt, the doubt comes in situational doubt of myself. And then that's a message to me, particularly around the direction of my business. And I'm experiencing this big time around my book at the moment because it's not flowing. It's not flowing. Your podcast with your husband Michael, he said on it, he said there's no such thing as procrastination. Didn't he?

Yes, he did. I love that, too.

Oh, he's. Because he's a real creative, isn't he? An artist and, you know, so he's really in that creative zone. And I. I felt validated by that because I thought, yes. And I kind of. So for me, it's about trusting that space of hesitation and doubt. And, yeah, I want my book finished and published and all that stuff, but something's not there. The energy is not there for that at the moment. So it's progressing, but that, you know, so that's okay. So it's being okay with that space. So I just wanted to say that because I felt that's what you were talking into.

I have never forgotten that statement either. And that's how he lives. I mean, if he is not moved to do something, nothing happens. It doesn't matter if it's walking the dog, doing dishes, painting and painting, until he is moved in the moment, 100%, nothing happens. And he's such an interesting example. And I loved his take on procrastination. It's been so helpful for me, too. And even something as simple as all my speaking gigs were canceled, but I hadn't yet canceled my flights. There was just so much going on. I hadn't gotten around to it. And I kept kind of beating myself up, like, oh, I keep procrastinating. I just either need to delegate this, assign it to someone on my team, or I need to do it. But I had about six flights. There seemed to be some complications. I knew the wait times would be long. The day I was going to go cancel them, I got a message from the airline that said, we have proactively waived all cancellation fees from. From this point. Meaning there'd be so much less friction when we went to cancel, because previously we would have had to negotiate each one and say, please don't charge us to change fee because all of this is going on. And then I just. I procrastinated to a point at which it was so much more easily solved.

Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. So it's trusting that procrastination. Trusting that in between space. I know you and Penny have talked about that a lot. Something else I just want to ask you to talk about is the sexy shoulds. Tell me about the sexy shoulds.

You got it. Yeah. I call it sailing on the sea of shiny shoulds. Shoulds are so shiny sometimes. What you should do, what everyone else is doing, what the person that you do admire or look up to, what they're doing. It's so easy. We all know about the shoulds that we've already rejected. You know, whatever path you've chosen in life or in your career, there are some shoulds, maybe even from your family, generations past society, that you've already bucked the trend. But then there's the sea of shiny shoulds. The ones that are sexy, they're appealing, they're like, are you sure? Are you sure you don't want to just do xyz? And I think those are the hardest ones to recognize what they are and let it go. So I'll give you an example. I mean, it's not even shiny for me. Social media. I'm not on it, can't stand it, don't want to be on it. But you would think as an author podcaster, I would greatly benefit from being on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn. I write a book about career change. Like, it should be my go to. So right now, a shiny should. I'm hearing a lot of author friends say, LinkedIn Live. It's where you got to be. I'm even going to be a guest on someone. My friend Dory. Dory's LinkedIn Live.

Yeah.

So that's this week coming right up. Can't wait. So glad she invited me. Do I want to initiate a LinkedIn Live? Do I want to build a newsletter and try to get my follower count up on LinkedIn? Couldn't care less. I have 0% interest in putting my energy there. Even if, as people say, what's so shiny about it? You can get in early, you could really get momentum. You could accelerate your traction. So I can watch myself missing a boat. And I don't care. I don't care. I just trust that I'm going to be doing other things with that time and energy and brain space. Even if it's just the podcast and my weekly pivotless newsletter and my momentum community. I just.

I say the podcast and the newsletter because those are the two that are sort of recurring and free. I call it public original thinking. That's. Those are the two places that I put my thoughts out, and I just don't have more energy than that. I'm sorry. Call me lazy. You could call me stupid. You could call me whatever you want of how I run my business, but I'm in it for the long term and I can't Stand the death by a thousand cuts of trying to participate in everything that is a should. That would be a good idea. So that's my rant. There's my soapbox on one of my shiny shits, which is any new form of social media that doesn't spark joy.

I love it. And that's. That's been a big example to me because I struggle with social media and that's why I'm doing this the way I'm doing it. And this was. If this was influenced by your community, your pivot insider community that I'm a member of and that was influenced by this, I thought, yeah, how do I want to do this? Because I don't want to be. I don't mind social media to keep in touch with my friends and to look at cat things and that kind of stuff, but I don't want to be attacked. I don't want to feel like a slave to it. I really don't. It makes me feel quite ill. And so, yeah, brilliant. So that's been. Yeah. But any of the sexy should just to say other things that you feel like, yeah, would be good. But actually, no, I'm feeling that I don't want to do it, you know. So, yeah, it's navigating that. Thank you, Jenny. What I'm going to do is I'm going to open up, ask if anybody wants to come on. So I do this in two ways. So now I'll just tell you about this. I do invite people to lurk if they want to because I'm not one who likes to really announce myself in communities.

I love lurkers. And it's amazing, Olivia, because you have not been an insider. You're so prominent and present and delightful and you ask questions. But I always say to people like, I'm a lurker. I'm lurker in chief on every group I join. So I love lurkers. If you're here lurking, we love you just as much.

Absolutely. I like you because I did mostly outside I look. So the fact that I don't want the insider is, you know, that's because of that community and your invitation.

It looks like we have one question in the chat. Why do doubters second guess themselves which leads to holding us back and moving forward? Oh, and then Kat has.

Kat has come on.

Hi, welcome.

So self doubt is a big thing that's coming up for me at the moment. I'm one of the people that Olivia is talking about. Who is the deepest things inside. You are coming up now because it's such a pressure cooker for everybody. My question is how have you discerned between what is self doubt and used it for good and what is beating yourself up for something and potentially seeing more in something than it actually is?

That's such a great question, Byron. Katie's work has helped me a lot on this front and she, she has a statement that I read her book first in 2008 and then again in 2015. I really dove into it because it took 10 years practically for it to really land that any stressful thought is an alarm clock waking you up to essentially its opposite. So that was life changing and it didn't sink in the first time I heard it. What I do now is there is certain self doubt that is stressful because it feels heavy to me and it feels almost toxic. It is stopping me. It is mean. It's like there's kind of a mean quality to certain thoughts and any stressful thought is an alarm clock waking you up to a new reality. So her work in Turnarounds, it's@thework.com there's free worksheets that you can do. She takes you through essentially four to five step process so you can question the thought. Is that true? Can you absolutely know that it's true? It's like I'm a terrible writer. Is that true? Yes, I am a terrible writer. Okay. Can you absolutely know that it's true? Well, I guess who am I to say? How do you feel when you think that thought? I feel bad, down, dejected, discouraged, procrastination. Who would you be without that thought? I would be free, creative, joyful writing for fun. So then she has you turn it around so you flip the sentence in all the ways that you can. So I am a good writer. My thoughts are a terrible writer. You can see how that's true. Yeah, my thoughts about writing are just incorrect. They're not writing good sentences. So you just brainstorm all the different thoughts and eventually one of those. You can then ask which thought feels most true in the beginning. This is very awkward and it's almost like you have to do it 20 times a day because there are just so many thoughts in there. But then you start building a muscle and then over time you just catch the thoughts right away like oh, there goes one or oh, I can turn that around and everything starts getting flipped and reversed. She describes it like looking in a mirror or a photo negative. Your brain actually has the photo negative. It's just lift. It's just completely actually 180 degrees reversed of what the actual thought is. So that's been really helpful to notice the thoughts that create stress versus sometimes I have doubt. And I like how, Olivia, you described it as almost process related, doubt or project related. I forget how you said it versus who you are as a person around worth. The thoughts I try to turn around have to do with my worth, you know, but sometimes I'll hang up from a podcast or an interview and I'll think, oh, that was so awkward and that's the doubt that I might have doubt or oh, that was so vulnerable. Like when I shared, oh, I cried before coming to this call. Already there's a little narrative in my head going, huh, should I release that on the podcast? Should I just cut that out? Should I edit that out later? I don't know if I want to really put that, you know, there it goes, there it's off to the races. And just only from practice of putting things out consistently, I know. You know, that doubt often lets me know when I'm actually onto something juicy and truthful. And in fact, people like you, Olivia, it's like those are the ones that you'll say, oh, was so helpful. And like it blows my mind that the ones I want to censor because my doubt and insecurity and vulnerability are the ones that are the most helpful. And that's happened so many times over the last 10, 15 years that now I just get used to it. So I don't know, Kat, if that's helpful or not.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is. Do you feel like you have one overriding thought or is it just the whole symphony of it's just different at any given time?

Yeah.

I've been reading Michael Singer a lot lately and he's really, he really resonates with me at the moment. And basically it's lovely because I didn't realize that everyone has their voice in their head like he does. And I have all my life as well. And I didn't realize it's only over the last few years I've realized that that voice is being really mean. And I bullied myself all the time. And so when I get into pressure cooker situations like this, then it means that that is what comes out. And I suppose I find it hard to discern between what is self doubt, what is my mind telling me mean things or me telling myself mean things. And also what's intuition and discerning what what's what.

I'd love to just contribute something on that. And it also speaks into Jalal's Question here, which he says about why do doubters second guess themselves? Which leads to holding us back and moving forward. So what I would say about this is, and this is what I do in the coaching is I look for where the conversation takes us around self doubt. So self doubt is our window into the experience. Right? We explore your experience with self doubt and I look where the conversation takes us and the conversation will take us into second guessing, negative self talk, punishing ourselves sometimes and that kind of stuff. And so for me, the beauty of the coaching space is that we get to observe that as it comes up. We get to work with that. So as. Whereas when you're going about in day to day life, you don't always notice this stuff because it's with you all the time. I talk about a lot about the fish that doesn't know it's wet. So it's like becoming aware of the water, becoming aware of that talk and where it takes us. So for me it's about almost like going with that.

And doubting that talk as well. So when the talk is punishing and negative, it's okay, can I doubt the talk is this right? So it's really what the work that Jenny was talking about there. It's like, you know, but you know, this is why I really like love self doubt because it gives us the opportunity to get to that deeper layer which often goes unseen and is driving us. Right.

One coaching exercise I love, I call it the boardroom in your brain. And what I find is there's a whole cast of characters up there and they're all, imagine they're sitting around a conference room table or some more creative setting than that. And there's so many characters. So I have a lot of fun with my clients. Like, okay, I have an inner drill sergeant. I have a like stiletto wearing corporate perfectionist woman. Okay, I have a yogi that's like off meditating in a windowsill in the back room. I have a little kid that's hiding under the table. So these are like all these characters in my brain and in my head and they all have a different fear, a primary fear, and they all have a difference motivation for keeping me safe somehow. It's like the drill sergeant or the fitness trainer is like, don't be fat. Like whatever you do, just like don't get fat. Like this is like, who knows where this comes from? Society growing up, it's like so not helpful, you know, like that's just, I mean, thank goodness for all the. All bodies are beautiful messaging that we have now in 2020. But I didn't grow up there thinking that way, and I just had to notice. Okay, so I have this, like, personal trainer living in my brain that has this certain philosophy. Well, I don't get that. Oh, you won't be lovable. Is that true? Okay, I'll turn that one around. So what I have my clients do is just understand who's sitting at the table. You can almost have fun with it and personify each of these voices. And you just start to see, oh, yeah, this one's just, like, an uptight corporate whatever. This one's just, like, doesn't want to work at all. She's, like, doing handstands in the grass. And then for me, it's like, I can have some fun with it. And then I also have my clients give a pep talk. So I say, you're the CEO, and one of my clients created, like, a chief wholeness officer, a chief innovation officer. She just assigned a new C level suite of executives to her brain. But you can give them all a pep talk, like, okay, here's what I need you all to do. And you just put yourself back in the driver's seat and just say, okay, quiet down, everybody. Listen, we're writing a book, okay? And you go one by one, like, I know you're scared about this. I know you're scared about this. I know you're thinking this. Here's the plan. Okay, I'm gonna keep moving. I know you're not gonna like it. Or, here's the whatever, and on and on. And that's been very fun and very freeing because also, in any given moment, you can notice who's talking. Oh, there it is again. There's that part of my brain. And that, for me, doesn't create an enemy. So I had a coach during coach training, this what Olivia said. A fish doesn't know they're wet. They said to me, wow, you have a really fierce inner critic. And in a way, it was a relief, because just like you, Kat, I realized, okay, oh, that's not me. That's not the truth with a capital T. It's my inner critic. Now, I had a name for it, but the other thing it did was it set up an almost an enemy for the next 10 years. So I had a war inside of myself now. Oh, I have this bad inner critic. I have this fierce inner critic. What a problem to solve. And there go another hundred solves health books that I read. And when I stopped making that inner critic wrong or bad or making fear or doubt, wrong or bad, then I don't have a conflict in me. And I'm also not being violent toward myself. So I'll say the last book that really helped was nonviolent Communication. There's a chapter on how we talk to ourselves that blew my mind. And I've read a lot of these self help books and I've heard great things about the audio version too. So finally, that book taught me to comfort myself like I would a friend or a child. And I know we hear that a lot, talk to yourself like your best friend. But that book really taught me in the moment of heightened stress and being triggered to say it's okay. I can see that you're stressed. I can imagine you're really worried right now. I never used to have that kind of inner narrative, so that was really helpful. And sorry for the dog barking. He's just seconding everything, I guess. And for Jalal, why do doubter second guess themselves? I just wouldn't make the second guessing wrong. Like if it's part of your process to procrastinate or second guess, maybe it's a good thing. Like, what if that was your superpower? What if you second guess so that you do things differently? Olivia, you said at the beginning, I love when people laugh at me or think I'm crazy. Now I just sort of celebrate it. I don't care if you think I'm stupid or crazy or whatever. Like those are the things that end up working out for me. So just used to it by now.

Thank you so much Jenny.

Be on mute. And it shouldn't interfere at all. I don't tend to notice when people come in and out. So just to say as we go through the call, we're going to hit record in a minute. But as we go through, you can use the chat box. Anybody can contribute through the chat box and I'll check that every now and again. So I shall hit record, I think, and we'll get going on this thing. Perfect.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside's corner scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first. Then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.

Sam?