The Disease Of Doubt ... In Business

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie Chenell, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories, it's about the grit it takes to get there.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. Today I want to talk about Doubt and its place in the business owner's journey. And this is actually coming from a personal experience that I had, not in business, but in my health. And I wanna sort of unpack what happened to me, and then I want to transition this over to business. For those of you who don't know, I struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder, specifically when it comes to health anxiety. And I wrote about it last week or the other week on Facebook, and I got bit by a feral cat, and I proceeded to have an OCD spiral around if I had rabies or not. You might have read it. It was, you know, hopefully an interesting read. But if you don't struggle with anxiety or you aren't prone to health fears, you might have, you might have read it and thought, well, that's tough, you know, but then you just sort of moved on with your day. And I actually think that this story and sort of the lesson that I learned matters for all of us because OCD is the disease of doubt. And we all have doubts, especially in business. And whether you're a Type A personality or Type B, doubt is something we all deal with. And doubt may be hindering your business goals in ways that you don't quite realize yet. Here is the hypothesis that I have. I think most business owners don't get stuck because they doubt too much. I think business owners get stuck when they treat doubt as a thought that is important, that must be answered or must be resolved. Again, if you are someone who is not prone to anxiety, you know, let's just say you're a Type B personality, You don't typically doubt very much. You may get doubts or fears infrequently enough that when you do get them, you just listen to them, resolve them, and move along, and you never have to really contend with a disease of doubt, if you will. But if you are a personality that tends to overthink, worry, get paralyzed, procrastinate, you might be getting hit with doubts every day. You might be getting hits of doubt every, you know, multiple times a day. You may have so many doubts in fact, that answering them is a full-time job that keeps you from doing anything else. And that is where OCD sort of gets its pathology is that it gets so intense that people with it can't do anything else when they are busy fighting off all of these doubts and intrusive thoughts. Ironically, category 1, which is like the Type B personality, you actually are more at risk of being misled Because you don't doubt very often, you assume that when a doubt shows up, it must be a valid signal worth listening to, but it could just be your brain firing. You just don't know. But ultimately, this isn't really about whether you're Type A or Type B or anything. It's about this question: does doubt require a response 100% of the time? And in business and in life, the answer is no. Doubt does not require a resolution. Whether you doubt once a month or once every 5 minutes, I believe that doubt in thoughts must earn its right to attention. I'm going to use the rabies example first, and then I'm going to bring it into business. When I thought that I had rabies from a feral cat bite, every single time I tried to relax, because I had done a lot of research, I called the Department of Health, I called my doctor, The thought would come in, but what if you're wrong? What if you missed it? What if you are the small possibility of people who does have it? And if you don't get this vaccine, you're going to die, right? These are thoughts of doubt. Now the brain is firing off signals to my body because of these doubts, right? My brain wants a resolution. It wants an answer before it lowers the threat. So if my brain could talk to me, it would have said something like, hey, Julie, just answer this question and I will turn off the fight or flight and we'll go back to resting. What was the question? What if you're wrong? And it wanted me to say, I'm not wrong, I'm 100% certain. And I was doing my best to answer it, to resolve it, right? Google, ask my husband, call the doctor, look for an answer to respond back to my brain that said, yep, I double, triple checked, we're all good, we're 100% safe, you can stand down. And what happens is When I can successfully do that, the loop closes and the brain relaxes and everything's well. But that's a little bit misleading because what has happened is inadvertently I have just taught my brain that the doubt that came in deserved a response. I gave it what it was looking for, and this subtly reinforced, "Yes, that was a good doubt." The brain is saying, "I needed to check." Good thing it kept me safe. Now, folks with OCD like me, they get stuck because the brain will just keep firing off more and more doubts because it learned that that was important. And even though I resolved it with the reassurance that I needed, I actually accidentally reinforced this loop. Okay, let's bring this into business now. Let's say you've decided you're going to do a weekly live webinar to a course, and you've done your due diligence, right? You've, you've hired a good coach, you've worked hard on the offer, you built webinar presentation, you're getting ready to set up the ads, you're clearly nervous, but you're powering through. And then you go to a conference, okay? And one of the speakers gets up on stage and she is focused on low-ticket offers. And she talks about how webinars are dead and low-ticket is the only way to sell. What happens is a doubt comes in and the doubt sounds like this: What if I am doing the wrong tactic for 2026? Now, a couple of things might happen in the next 5 to 10 seconds after that doubt creeps in. Now, number 1, you might reassure yourself and you say, no, I'm doing the right thing. I did this. I hired a coach. I worked on the offer. You like rehearse what you've already done for planning the webinar. So you reassure yourself and then you feel better. Or you might just change gears and might be like, you know what? She's right. I didn't like this stupid webinar anyway. And then you change gears. Now, when you think about those two options, again, you might think, well, the first option was good, reassure yourself and keep moving. And the second option is bad, right? You immediately changed gears and pivot. Problem is both options, whether you reassure yourself or you pivot, both options gave the brain important information about the thought, which was Good thing you gave me that doubt to keep me safe. I resolved it so you can rest now. So in, in that case, the reassurance and the pivoting both told the brain that doubt was important. You've reinforced that the doubt you had was necessary. Now, again, if you are not prone to doubt, this never actually becomes pathological, right? Because it doesn't happen often enough. That it's not impeding day-to-day functioning. But if you're looking at yourself and you're like, man, I overthink, I procrastinate, I hop from object to object, I can't finish what I start, I'm paralyzed by ideas, I'm worrying, I'm a fear-based decision maker, you might be stuck in these doubt loops that aren't ending, which is why you're not getting ahead. The third option, and the option that I'm learning as someone who has OCD but I think was really valuable and why I'm sharing this today, is this option called acknowledge acknowledge and non-response. So when a doubt comes in, right? So let's say this business owner is sitting in the conference and says, "What if I'm doing the wrong thing for 2026?" The response is not reassurance, and the response is not pivoting. The response is acknowledge and non-response. And this is what you do: you say it out loud. Number 1, "I acknowledge that is a doubt." Number 2, "I don't need 100% certainty to keep moving." Number 3, I can stick to my plan even not knowing the outcome. Number 4, I'm not going to respond to that doubt. Saying it out loud is best. If you can't say it out loud, you can say it in your head. But basically what you're doing is you're acknowledging that there is a thought, because when we ignore thoughts, they just get louder. So we acknowledge it, we pause, and we say, yes, I see, I see you there, doubtful thought. Then you remind yourself and your brain that you can keep moving even when you don't have certainty. Okay? And then you're going to tell it, I'm not responding. What's going to happen is your body's probably going to light up your nervous system. It's gonna maybe kick in fight or flight. Depends on how sensitive you are. That is why you have to immediately ground yourself in the present by playing the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 game. And this game, There's a bunch of different ways, but basically it grounds you in the present moment. I've heard people say you play the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 game by 5 things you see, 5 things you hear, 5 things you feel, 4 things you see, 4 things you hear, 4 things you feel, and so on and so forth. Other people play it where it's 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you taste, 2 things you feel, 1 thing you touch, you know, like that kind of thing. Either way, however you play the game, and the rules aren't super important, what you're doing is you're redirecting your brain to focus on things in the present. So I would do something like, okay, I see my glass of half, you know, half-drunken Diet Coke. I see my glasses, which are really fuzzy and they need to be cleaned. I feel the leather chair on my butt. I feel my phone in my pocket. I, you know, I hear the wind outside. And you do things and It's not really important what you're focused on. It's that your brain is now temporarily distracted so that it doesn't loop. I had to do this when I was afraid that I had rabies, and I had a thought every 10 minutes, every 10 to 15 minutes that first day, and I had to do this, and I was completely and utterly exhausted. The second day, it was like every 20 minutes or every 30 minutes. The third day, it was like maybe once an hour or once every 2 hours. And the 4th day it happened once. The 5th day it never happened. And I watched as my brain, like, rewired in real time, or I experienced it, right? And neurologically, you're teaching the brain that doubts can come in, they can go out, they don't need a response, and they certainly don't need 100% certainty. And over time, your brain will interpret your non-response as huh, this must not be critical, and the doubts will slow down. And I know what you're thinking because I think the same thing, like, how do you know when it's a doubt you should ignore versus a doubt you should pay attention to? And the example that I used about rabies, you might be like, well, that was ridiculous, Julie, of course you should ignore it. But it sounds ridiculous to you, but it wasn't ridiculous to me. And if you're the business owner example sitting in the conference hearing that you know, webinars are dead, how do you know if that's a doubt that is coming in that's like, oh, I'm going to ignore that, or I'm going to pay attention? This is the question of the hour, right? And there is an answer, and the answer is not trust your gut, because for people who are worriers, your gut is often the same, has the same kind of response as fear. And the reframe that I'm learning is that uncertainty is not a problem to solve. It is a condition to move inside of. Okay, you're not going to get more clear because you thought harder. Most of the time you get clear because you actually take action, and then you observe and adjust. Okay, trust your gut fails so many people because they think if a thought is urgent or protective, it must be important. So here's what you need to do instead. A doubt deserves a response only if there is new information, not just a new feeling. Now you might, you might think to yourself, well, this lady gave me new information. She told me webinars are dead. Now, did she give you actual evidence or did she just tell her story? Not actually your story. And did you— are you sure? Because didn't you have probably information from that coach that told you that webinars work and gave you evidence, right? Because you did your due diligence, right? So there wasn't really new information. It was actually just a new feeling. And the second thing is a doubt deserves a response if the concern is specific and testable. Or if the thought remains even after your body comes back to normal. So like after the cortisol dies out, after the adrenaline goes down, or if there is a very simple, clear action that would resolve it. A doubt does not deserve a response if it appears after hearing someone else's certainty. So many people, the doubt only happens because of some external, like, conclusion that they've heard on a podcast or a YouTube or whatever. A doubt does not deserve a response if it says, "What if this is wrong?" and doesn't have any data to back it up. A doubt does not deserve a response if it escalates when you engage it or if it demands guarantees about the future. So if you think about that webinar example, there was no new data outside of the person's story, and honestly, that person probably had an agenda. There was no failed test of your webinar to prove that it was a failure, and there was a high emotional charge when you heard that. So this particular doubt did not warrant a response. Okay. You might notice that doubt will creep in right as you're about to relax, right as you're about to take action and sit down and work on your presentation or feel hopeful. Like, those are the moments where your brain will be like, like, and it will, it will get vigilant and it'll fire off a ton of doubts to keep you on alert. And, you know, I'm not suggesting that you never pivot, but I often say this to my customers who come to me because I see so much more premature, like fear-driven, doubt-leading pivots than not. You know, someone will come to me and they'll be like, "Okay, I don't think that this is the right move." And I'll say to them, "Were you dumb 3 months ago when you made that plan?" Because when they made that plan 3 months ago, they were doing their due diligence, they were thinking clearly, They weren't dumb 3 months ago, so what changed, right? Usually it's a high emotional charge or some— someone that came and sowed doubts. Okay, here's another example that might drive home the point. I have a client, she's been sort of in an identity crisis for a long time. She's not sure whether to pivot or not, what exactly to pivot to. She's been paralyzed for like 6 months now. Every time her brain fires off this question, If I don't do this business I have here that I've had for the last few years, what could I possibly sell if not what I did for the last 10 years, right? So she's like, well, what am I worth, right? What is worth it? So every time her brain gives her that thought, she attempts to answer it, right? She wants certainty. So she'll talk to ChatGPT, she'll journal, she'll pray, she'll talk to me, she'll talk to her friends, right? And then usually in all of that, she'll get some sort of glimpse of like an idea, possibly this. She'll start to feel better. She'll be like, okay, cool. And then she tries to move on that insight. Okay? But the next doubt is right in its wake. Why? Because she taught her brain that those doubts were important. So the next doubt comes in, and then she's back where she started, and she's back in my box, or she's like, oh, I'm so sorry, like, you know, XYZ, blah blah blah, or I heard this on this podcast, right? And she's stuck. She's stuck in a doubt loop. Her brain doesn't feel safe to move in a direction until she's 100% certain of her next move. And so she keeps— her brain keeps firing off doubts because she's looking for certainty, and the certainty never comes. So her work is actually to not respond to the doubts, okay? It's to move in action on a plan and then acknowledge and non-respond every time her brain says, "What if no one buys? What if no one cares? What if this isn't the right path?" And as I'm sitting here talking about it, it's easy to say, it's easy to write about, it's incredibly difficult to do. It will feel like letting something like itch on your body that you can't scratch. It will feel urgent. It will feel desperate. You might even have an adrenaline response. Your body will light up when you stop responding to it. And it'll take time. Like I said, in my rabies example, it was like every 10 minutes and then every 20 and then every 30. It's incredibly difficult to do. If you have OCD, you know that this is the only way out. If you don't have OCD, you might be like, I don't want to practice this. It's uncomfortable. But for all of these clients who come to me, this is actually the work. It's acknowledge and non-respond because a lot of this is doubt, fear-based doubt. It's not actually like legit information that you can pivot on. So I just want to be very clear as I end this. I am not suggesting that you never pivot, and I'm not suggesting that every single doubt that comes into your head is bad. I'm also not suggesting you should just push through fear blindly, okay? Most people though, they really don't need better ideas, right? Ideas are in ample supply. They need to keep going even when things are Uncertain. Okay. And the, the goal here is to stop letting doubt run the decision-making process. Okay. And confidence actually doesn't come by choosing the right thing. It's confidence comes as you take action, even when you don't quite know the answer. And this is one of the most stabilizing skills that you can develop as a business owner. It's not intuitive. It's not easy, but for the right people, for the people who are really paralyzed, It could be absolutely life-changing.

And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.