Written by: Dr Jo Cresswell, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
How are you at achieving your ambitions or goals? How often do you come up with brilliant new ideas, only to let them drift? How many abandoned projects do you have in your past? How many times have you let an opportunity slip away because you talked yourself out of it?
If you’re anything like I used to be, you’re probably wishing I’d stop asking awkward questions! However don’t worry – if you’ve answered yes to anything here, then relax, you’re human! And you’ll probably be pretty familiar with this scenario:
Imagine you are living happily in your Comfort Zone, when suddenly inspiration strikes. You connect with a dream or a wish. You come up with an idea. You create a powerful vision. All of which create a powerful state of excitement in you. You’re fired up and ready to change the world. You start to see ways you can achieve your dream. It feels as though anything is possible.
To your subconscious mind, this fantastic new idea and course of action that you’ve come up with is new, unknown – and therefore dangerous!
Your subconscious and your ego will kick in to protect you from this threat, activating all your old beliefs, thoughts, and behaviours. You’ll start to doubt your idea, to criticise it. You’ll tell yourself that you’re not good enough, that other people won’t like what you’re doing. You’ll come up with all sorts of powerful and very believable reasons why what you’re doing isn’t necessary, or even possible. And if your goal is really big, you’ll start to feel overwhelmed and out of control at the sheer impossibility of it.
Without knowing it, you have entered a DOUBTING Mindset
D – difficult, dangerous, and damaging
O – overwhelm, outrageous, what will other people think?
U – uncomfortable, uncertain, and unthinkable
B – but… belief, it’s too big
T – too much, terror, trepidation, and threat
I – impossible, insecurity, and identity
N – not allowed, not needed, nervous, and negative
G – not good enough, guarded, grumpy
The DOUBTING Mindset can feel irresistible, unstoppable, simply because it acts below the level of your thinking brain. It’s also sneaky, because the arguments it comes up with seem entirely logical and reasonable, and it’s hard to have any defence. It tempts you with delay – saying that you can take action later, tomorrow, next week, next month. It then distracts you with other things, allowing a blanket of denial to form over the idea, until you forget that you’ve ever had it in the first place.
The difficulty is that the more often this happens, the more you start to encode a belief that you never take action, you never achieve your dreams. That there’s something about you which means you can’t. You might put yourself down or believe that you’re not good enough. All of which are designed to prevent you trying in the future.
The great thing is that because all of this comes from within you, YOU have the ability to change it!! This is why I created a powerful staged process to help guide you to uncover those old fears and beliefs, to let go of the past, and to step forwards to your incredible future.
Step 1 – Awareness
Take time to simply become aware of that is going on for you in your mind and body. All you’re doing at this stage is noticing, rather than trying to change anything. Take a time out to pause so that you can gain awareness of what is going on for you physically – what do you feel in your body and where. This could be tension, cold or warmth, feeling sick, a desire to move away or hide under the duvet.
Also become aware of what is going on in your mind. What thoughts are circulating? How are you speaking to yourself? What language are you using? And how is all that making you feel?
Step 2 – Holding space
Once you’ve got a sense of at least what is going on in your mind and body, simply allow it to be. This can be the most challenging step of all as we have been primed by evolution and habit to avoid feelings of fear or distress. Just hold space as you either sit quietly or go about your day – no need to try to fix or change anything. Just allow in a sense of safety as you gently hold those thoughts and feelings.
Step 3 – Listening
Now that you have a handle on what is going on for you, start to listen, to explore those physical sensations a little more. Where are you experiencing them? What emotions do you associate with them?
Check in with what you’re saying to yourself – with the aim of hearing what you’re saying, then digging underneath to understand what might be behind that. In that way you can start to unearth those fears and doubts and allow them to come to the surface while you keep holding space.
Step 4 – Gentle challenge
You can now start to dig even deeper into those thoughts and feelings. To understand what those doubts and fears truly are and where they come from. And then very gently, you can start to challenge them. Not in a critical way, but in a way which allows you to seek evidence as to whether they are actually true. So for instance think about the doom scenarios that it’s all gone wrong, that you have grossly offended somebody, that you have no idea what to do, that your idea is no good, that you’re bound to fail and that failure will be a disaster… you get the picture.
Perhaps speak to yourself as you would to a child. Question those scenarios – is there any evidence? Do you really have no power? What if it all goes wonderfully right?
Step 5 – Letting go with love
As you start to burst the bubble of those fears and doubts, you can start to let them go with love, knowing that they are not true, and that they were conjured up by your subconscious mind to keep you safe. You can thank your subconscious and reassure it that everything is going to be ok, that this new idea is exciting, and that you have everything in hand, even if you’re not exactly sure what your next step will be.
The more you can practice these steps, the easier it will become to notice and then let go of your DOUBTING Mindset, and step forwards with confidence in whatever you do. And if you need more help, just check out my previous article on the DARING Mindset, which is the antidote to DOUBTING!
So take a moment and breathe. Know that you have got this. That you can let go of everything holding you back from being your most incredible and powerful self. Then step forward with confidence, because right now the world needs you!
This is how I work with my coaching clients both 1:1 and in my powerful and immersive DARING Mindset programme. I empower incredible leaders and entrepreneurs to let go of all that is holding them back, create their own DARING Mindset, and unleash their incredible potential to create the success and abundance that they truly deserve.
To apply to work with me 1:1, or to join the incredible DARING Mindset group coaching programme, please contact me at jocresswell.coaching@gmail.com
Alternatively subscribe to my weekly email newsletter and receive a free download of my DARING Mindset ebook.
Dr Jo Cresswell, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr Jo Cresswell – The Human BEING Coach is a powerful, high-performance leader, coach, and entrepreneur with a highly successful career spanning more than 20 years. In 2019, Dr Jo chose to pivot her career, following her passion and purpose in setting up her business, Dr Joanne Cresswell Coaching. Based on her career experience, and her own 5 year deep mindset journey, Dr Jo works with high-level leaders at a deep human level to support them to uplevel personal, professional, and organisational performance through connection and understanding of themselves, peers, employees, customers and stakeholders. This helps them to lead successful, purposeful, impactful and inclusive organisations in a new and powerful way.
Dr Jo also coaches innovative, passionate, and dynamic leaders, entrepreneurs and those with an innovative mindset via her signature DARING Mindset (TM) framework and suite of 1:1 and group coaching programmes and courses. By combining aspirational coaching with deep mindset work, she inspires passionate and innovative people to create their own powerful DARING Mindset, so that they can unlock their potential and create the life, career, business, and relationship success that they truly deserve. Dr Jo has a passion for adapting psychotherapy, psychology, and neuroscience tools into her coaching programmes to support truly transformational change for her clients.
