silence doubt

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”

​- Suzy Kassem

As you become more comfortable trusting your intuition, following the signs from the Universe, and moving closer to your authentic life, doubt will naturally creep up, especially if the path of your authentic life is different from the path you are currently on.

At first, it might be hard to tune out the stories that doubt will tell you.

I’ve found a few ways to overcome doubt through my life experiences.

The first, and maybe the easiest, is reps. The more you trust your intuition and the signs from the Universe, the easier it becomes to follow them—eventually, you default to following those, and doubt doesn’t have a chance to show up. You can start with small things-- your intuition and the Universe are always guiding you to build your confidence and trust. When it comes time to trust in them with a significant decision or change, you’ll have plenty of positive experiences and outcomes to keep doubt away.

The second, closely related to the first, is a strong connection with your Self. The more connected you are with your Self, the stronger your intuition and awareness of the Universe’s communication will be. There’s no “right” way to strengthen your connection with your Self, and I can only share what has worked for me: finding an alignment of my spirit, mind, and body.

Meditation, journaling, my Daily Notes, creating, yoga, lifting weights, and eating clean are all important components of maintaining (or realigning) that alignment. A strong connection with your Self will increase your confidence in trusting your intuition and the Universe’s signs because they will be so strong—your alignment is like tuning the radio. If your tuner is slightly off, you can still catch the song being played, but it’s unclear. But, once you find the right frequency, the song becomes crystal clear.

The final way to keep doubt’s stories away is confidence in your Self. When I was recruited to play basketball in college, I assumed I was among the school’s top recruits. When I got to school in the fall and began going to workouts, meeting the other guys in my class, hearing their career accolades, and picking up on the energy of the coaches, I realized that maybe I wasn’t one of the top recruits. No one ever told me this, but I believe I was expected to be a JV player when the coaches were recruiting me.

They may have believed that, but I didn’t.

My peers in my class mostly came from smaller schools. They averaged 20+ points a game. One won a state championship in class A. Many of them were 1,000-point-plus scorers in high school.

Meanwhile, I didn’t play varsity basketball until my junior year (technically, I dressed for varsity games my sophomore year but didn’t play meaningful minutes). I only averaged around 14 points a game and didn’t sniff 1,000 points in my high school career. On paper, I wasn’t as good as my teammates from the smaller schools. What didn’t show up on paper was that I played my entire high school career in Marion County, which meant pretty much every game I played against Division 1 athletes, future professional players, and a few NBA names you’d recognize. Not that the talent and competition at the small schools weren’t good, but it was nowhere near the talent I was playing against—so my numbers didn’t reflect it, but I was being forced to compete at a higher level than many of my teammates.

I didn’t care what vibe I was receiving around the team I’d be playing on; I knew I was good enough to play varsity as a freshman, and I expected that to be the case.

I could have let doubt creep in and tell me a story that maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, that I didn’t deserve to be on the varsity team, or whatever other lie it wanted to tell me. But I didn’t. I had confidence in my Self and knew I was supposed to be on the varsity team.

Fast-forward to the start of the season…I was one of two freshmen on the varsity team, and I became a starter in the season's second game—an outcome I would have never experienced had I let doubt tell me its stories. It’s worth noting that I had no awareness of #1 and #2 back then—maybe it was inside of me, and I just didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t intentionally tap into those to help earn a varsity spot.

I’ve managed to carry the ability to keep doubt away, which has helped me along my Pursuit. I do think it’s important to mention that doubt isn’t necessarily bad. I still feel it at times, and I think doubt can help us confirm our beliefs—if you can notice the doubt, hear its story, but then move forward, I think that is a healthy way to handle it and to make sure you are moving forward in the right way.

As Suzy Kassem reminds us, doubt causes more harm than failure in the Pursuit of living our authentic lives. Thankfully, we have the ability to ignore/silence/quiet doubt and trust in our intuition and the Universe.

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC

🦅 A few ways I might be able to help you live your authentic life:

📝 LifeDesign+ LifeDesign+ is rooted in the Kinder Institute of Life Planning’s EVOKE process, which is a five-step process to help discover what your authentic life looks like and begin to design a plan to bring that life to reality. It continues to incorporate the alignment of your spirit, mind, body, and money to ensure you evolve with your authentic life, as the authentic life is not a destination, it’s an evolution.

📈 LifeDesign+ for financial advisors LifeDesign+ for financial advisors mirrors the LifeDesign+ relationship, including the focus on the alignment of spirit, mind, and body, with an important distinction—once the plan for your authentic life has been designed, we shift our focus to integrating your new plan with your practice.

🤝 Outsourced life planning As your outsourced life planner, you bring me in to take your client through the Kinder Institute of Life Planning’s EVOKE process to help them better understand who they are, what they want their life to look like, and create a vision of this life for you to execute on the financial plan. Since you are their financial advisor, you will be a part of each of the meetings, so you understand the “why” behind your client’s new plan.