"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will"
"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will"
It can be created by experience, by adversity to risk, or simply by the frames we create. There can be a number of career limiting demons lurking in the background.
DOUBT, the little voice in the back of your head might be the most destructive and biggest waste of your time and killer of raw talent you encounter in your career. Why? It's self fulfilling and reinforces 'play it safe' behavior.
For the early and mid-career multimedia on-camera professional, the enemy is almost always: time, resources, grit, and doubt, specifically the belief that they can't reach their goals before they 'time out'. One of my most memorable, and alarming mentoring session, came from a conversation with a 27 year who feared that she was already behind and doubted she was going to reach her career goal. WHAT?
Once you've allowed doubt to dictate the outcome, we begin to set LOW EXPECTATIONS because of a need to be certain or successful. These lower expectations and the need to be certain results in our boundaries, or our frame. We tend to live within our frames and they define our effort and outcome. To change our frame we need to be exposed and most importantly, open to new data points to stretch.
Overcoming Doubt:
How can you overcome debilitating doubt? I've found two simple concepts to help clients and mentees successfully quell the little voice inside.
1. Work Backwards. Start with your vision output and work backwards to where you find yourself today. Being able to see the incremental steps, sometimes very small steps, helps break down what can seem to be a monumental task or goal.
2. Strangely, You Should Embrace Failure. You need to adopt continuous improvement as a Lifestyle. Once you embrace failure as an opportunity to improve, your outlook and belief system can completely change. Adopting a forward looking posture that rewards incremental progress can be very liberating!
Too many look at feedback as a negative, as a statement of their ability or professional status and stature. Feedback should be looked at as a gift that someone took the time to give you! It shouldn't feed the doubt demons, it should be inspirational. Feedback can be the headlights in your career and unlock opportunity.
You can't let doubt make you paralytic. When people are asked what their great regrets in life are, they usually all start with a single three letter word, "NOT".
It's time to replace NOT with CAN, WILL, and DID!
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Quote cred: Robert Orben, Photo cred: TalentBlvd