Procrastination and self-doubt are two of the biggest obstacles almost every entrepreneur faces. Business strategies are designed and agreed upon, and everything looks to be progressing smoothly until the time for real action arrives. This is when the possibility of failure starts to eat away at your confidence, and you experience fear that is triggered by self-doubt.
This fear stops you from aligning action with the strategy you have worked so hard to develop and becomes a force of its own. You try to combat your fear and block it out by focusing on non-urgent actions to delay true actions, resulting in failure, rejection, or forcing you to move in a new direction. You create a false reality: you fool yourself that you are getting things done.
The less you do, the more self-doubt grows, until eventually, you lose all of the initial confidence that made you believe you were capable of growing a successful business. To accelerate your start-up faster, you need first to combat self-doubt and stop procrastination. When you use all of your time for actions that deliver results, you gather momentum and create substantial outcomes.
What Causes Self Doubt?
Do you think of a great idea, yet after researching how to or even after taking steps to implement it, you end up finding reasons to doubt your decision-making process? Feelings of self-doubt come from your subconscious mind, and simply changing them in the present will not work. These self-defeating thoughts cause past feelings to become our current reality. We act on this fear in the present by putting off any tasks that could result in disappointment, lack of success, or the loss of future possibilities.
Best Selling Author and Life & Business Coach Mia Hewett explains,
“Self-doubt is a result of your own ego, trying to protect you from danger, a threat you anticipate, which triggers self-doubt to prevent you from taking a risk! When you learn how to identify if the danger is real or if the self-doubt you are feeling is a result of a perceived threat, you can change your perspective.”
One technique to find out why you are struggling is to consider where your feelings originate. Think about one thing that you have put off and write it down. Explore the emotions you are feeling and write them down. It may help to choose words from the list below.
- Dread
- Panic
- Terror
- Regret
- Disappointment
- Shame
- Frustration
- Dismay.
What is Consciousness Intention?
You can address the real issue when you know the feelings behind your self-doubt. This is your inner self that you need to align with what you want to achieve.
Thoughts or ideas are like the icing on a cake. If the cake is too hot, the icing will melt and ruin the cake! The cake is your inner self. It may help to picture your self-doubt as the heat that needs to escape. When you allow self-doubt to lead your actions, it’s a bit like putting on the icing before the cake is cool. You achieve nothing and compound your self-doubt when the icing doesn’t look like it should. Your mind then finds another way of delaying (procrastinating).
To banish feelings of self-doubt and end actions that take you nowhere closer to your goal, you need to accept that your inner self, emotions, and thoughts must align. This is how you can access your consciousness’ intention to direct your actions. When you are no longer controlled by feelings that trigger self-doubt and procrastination, you will naturally move away from behavior that does not bring the desired results.
The Difference between Business Coaches and Mentors
Frequently, after launching a successful business, it is self-doubt and fear of failure that leads to procrastination, keeping you stuck in a self-sabotaging loop that prevents business growth. The moment you learn how to align action with your thoughts, you will eliminate your self-doubt and stop turning to procrastination to hide from your inner self. One way to ensure your new intentions become aligned actions is to find a business and life coach.
Mentors are also a valuable and often untapped resource, but they play a completely different role to a coach. A business mentor is a sounding board for business strategy and ideas. They can motivate you and even link you with opportunities and business connections. Almost all successful entrepreneurs will have made multiple connections with mentors and work with life and business coaches. Both are often needed, but a mentor will not address emotions and show you how to access your inner self to consistently follow through on your goals and get results.
You need a different perspective that goes deeper than the standard guidelines applied by generic business coaches focusing purely on external business goals. This is why it is essential to find a life and business coach, to show you how to use this internal guiding force and take up the consistent actions that will fundamentally change the way you operate permanently. If you are ready to find out more about Mia’s Aligned Intelligence Method®, and take back control in business and life, join the next 5-day challenge. You will learn how to change your limiting thoughts and gently rub away any traces of self-doubt to take back control in business and life.
If you’re not quite ready to join the challenge but want to know more, it’s all explained in Mia’s best-selling book, Meant for More. This is not your average personal development book filled with “positivity and gratitude”. This is a book for entrepreneurs who want to awaken to their potential to achieve exponential business and personal growth and live the life they know they are meant for.
Infographic created by Rightsize Facility – a leading provider of new office furniture