“You’re so uncool. You’re boring. You’re stupid. You’re so not attractive.”

All things I’ve previously told myself.

“Why do you think you could do that? Those people are better than me. I should be more like them. I’m just not good enough.”

All things I’ve previously told myself.

“I’ve failed before so therefore it proves I can’t do this. See I told you so. You don’t deserve success anyway.”

Again, all things I’ve previously told myself.

What I have learnt is that when you tell yourself these sorts of things often enough, you begin to believe them.

And when you believe them, that’s when it can feel hard to move forward. That’s when your goals and dreams feel like they are impossible, and you start to question whether you could or should even go after them. That’s when you start to doubt whether you could ever be the person you wish you could be and have the life you dream of.

That is one hell of a 💩 place to be.

I’ve been there felt that 🙋‍♀️.

I believed the stories I told myself so I didn’t take particular courses at university. I listened to that inner critic and as a result I didn’t achieve my challenge of climbing 40 volcanoes by the age of 40. The reason it took me three years to finally pursue my dream of walking the 3,000km (1,864 mile) Te Araroa Trail down the length of New Zealand was all because I honestly thought I wasn’t good enough.

But here’s the thing…

As I found out, beating yourself up, putting yourself down and feeling crappy about yourself doesn’t have to be a “thing” you live with for the rest of your life.

It doesn’t have to stop you from going after your goals and dreams, from having the life you want, from being the person you want to be, from actually feeling good about yourself.

It turns out you can still do hard stuff, you can still overcome obstacles and you can still succeed – even if you feel that way. And in the process you realise something about yourself – that you are more powerful and capable than you ever thought.

Through my years of dealing with my own self-doubt, I’ve learnt it can be mastered.

I’ve also learnt you can achieve more than you thought was possible and that you can ultimately feel good about yourself.

How?

Start with awareness.

Start by taking note of all the things you tell yourself, all the stories you’re believing about yourself, everything your inner critic tells you.

The more aware you become, the earlier you’ll pick up when you’re talking to yourself in this way so you can turn down the volume and remind yourself how awesome you really are.

Because ultimately, you can’t change what you’re not aware of.

If you want to explore this further or next steps in mastering self-doubt and achieving your goals, I’m always happy to have a chat.

#ownyourawesome

Here’s a video noting some ways we can address the inner critic. (Meanwhile, check out a 53min video where I discuss the inner critic, three myths that stop us taking action and three strategies we can apply right now to start taming our inner critic)

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If any of this resonates and you’d like to dive deeper into this, get support, a cheerleader, an accountability buddy and work towards achieving your dream and feeling better about yourself, then here’s how you can work with me one-to-one.