Why you should eliminate anxiety and nagging self-doubt?

Everyone grapples with self-doubt once in a while, even successful business owners. A little self-doubt is not only normal, it's healthy. It prevents a leader from crossing the fine line between self-confidence and hubris.

Self-doubt is a special kind of hell. A small failure makes you question yourself and your abilities and, next thing you know, you feel like you aren’t good enough or smart enough to do anything. And that’s about the time you stop trying.

If you have developed a pattern of self-talk that is intrinsically negative, you are not alone. Far too many of us can be our own worst enemy when it comes to self-confidence. Rationally, it makes no sense to be mean to ourselves and yet we do it far too much.

The negativity we use when we think about ourselves ends up extending to all areas of our lives. We assume we are ‘no good’, ‘not good enough’, ‘not good-looking enough’, ‘too old/fat/thin’ etc. We end up expecting the worst and being cynical about the world in general.

If you suffer from depression and poor moods then there is a very good chance that part of the problem if not, the complete underlying cause is anxiety. What is anxiety? Anxiety summed up just means “false fear.” It’s when your body reacts irrationally to a situation that is completely harmless

But when you’re stuck in a rut and your confidence is shot what do you do? 

Take action rather than trying to convince yourself to change!

When you spend too much time picturing what a project is going to be like, too much time thinking about how awesome it will be… and too little time actually making the thing, you make no progress.

With respect to goals, projects, and other to-do items, it’s easy to get stuck too long in the thinking and planning phase.

The main principle: the mind wants comfort and is afraid of discomfort and change. The mind is used to its comfort cocoon, and anytime we try to push beyond that comfort zone very far or for very long, the mind tries desperately to get back into the cocoon. At any cost, including our long-term health and happiness.

Focus on past successes

Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on
around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures.

There are many times in life when you'll have a hard time staying motivated, like a tough job search. Keep from feeling discouraged by reminding yourself of times in the past when you were able to step up to a challenge and move forward.

The problem with the focus on failure is that failure is a weak process when put up directly against its counterpart: success. Consider the differences between failure and success in the toughest, longest running, most innovative, and rapidly changing system of exchange we know of — the process of biological evolution itself.

Biology has been successfully solving problems in a wholly unpredictable world for billions of years. It's not that failure isn't important here; it is, in fact, essential to all growth processes. If old cells don't die, we don't get new ones. If old bodies don't die, we would be buried in life. If dinosaurs didn't ultimately fail, we probably wouldn't be here at all.

To maximize learning in an organization you need abundant information or experiences that are rich in content and are available to learn from in a timely manner. So, to fairly compare the wisdom of failure to the wisdom of success, we should ask some comparative questions about how learning from success of failure captures and processes information. 

First, we have to ask how abundant or common are useful failures compared to useful successes? If opportunities for learning are rare, it's hard to make a practice out of them. Unfortunately, truly useful failures that change our thinking (as opposed to merely stupid failures that just confirm what we already should have known) are relatively rare. For every one of these fabulous clever stories of learning from failure, there are orders of magnitude more common, everyday, "stupid" failures that we really can't learn all that much from.

Set yourself some goals

Having goals to work towards will help you to feel more optimistic and positive. Every step you take towards achieving your goal will help you feel more confident. Say to yourself you’re getting there. Feel the achievement! Reward yourself for every small step you take. You’re amazing!

Life is designed in such a way that we look long-term and live short-term. We dream for the future and live in the present. Unfortunately, the present can produce many difficult obstacles. But setting goals provides long-term vision in our lives. We all need powerful, long-range goals to help us get past those short-term obstacles. Fortunately, the more powerful our goals are, the more we’ll be able to act on and guarantee that they will actually come to pass.

Define your dreams and goals

One of the amazing things we have been given as humans is the unquenchable desire to have dreams of a better life and the ability to establish and set goals to live out those dreams. We can look deep within our hearts and dream of a better situation for ourselves and our families. We can dream of better financial, emotional, spiritual or physical lives. We have also been given the ability to not only dream but pursue those dreams—and not just pursue them, but the cognitive ability to lay out a plan and strategies to achieve those dreams. Powerful!

Take time to be quiet: This is something that we don’t do enough of in this busy world of ours. We rush, rush, rush, and we’re constantly listening to noise all around us. The human heart was meant for times of quiet—to peer deep within. It is when we do this that our hearts are set free to soar and take flight on the wings of our own dreams. Schedule some quiet “dream time” this week. No other people. No cellphone. No computer. Just you, a pad, a pen and your thoughts.