Ep.16 Purpose & Self Doubt

And I really, really wanted to understand it Clearly. I wanted to have it so I could, you know, have it as that sentence. I knew what my purpose was. And so that was a little bit of a struggle for me. And, you know, I learned through that training the counseling training within psycho synthesis. Some really important things around purpose.

And one thing that really stayed with me that Assagiloi who was the founder of Psychosynthesis, an Italian, he was an Italian psychiatrist in the early 19 hundreds, it was so interesting to me cuz he talked about when you are working with clients and so that for me, at that time, that would’ve been thinking about working as a counselor in a counseling role.

Yes. You are looking at what’s not working for them. You are looking at the issues and the blocks and the challenges, the pathology that’s showing. But his viewpoint was, and the way we were taught was to focus also on the client’s purpose or their emerging purpose, because the idea around that is that if you are connected with your purpose,

If you have that drive inside you, you know that, that feeling, that knowing that I am doing this, I am meant to do this, this is part of my life’s journey, my soul’s work, that when you become connected with that, you become less focused on. , your pathology on your blocks, on what’s hard, on what’s really difficult on your suffering.

And so then because the focus shifts away from trying to fix what’s broken in me and my focus moves more into, okay, so as this very much a human being and that we are never going to be a hundred percent perfect, that’s. unachievable. It’s really not relevant to aim towards that because it’s not possible and it’s not part of being human.

So if you shift your focus onto showing up with my purpose, whatever that is, and I’ll talk about that in a minute because I know that’s a sticking point for many people, then it’s gonna shift me away from focusing on what doesn’t work for me. What I’m suffering with, what my blocks are, what I think is wrong with me.

So this was a very important piece of our counseling training in terms of the framework, in terms of the foundational structure. , but it’s just also bloody good advice for life, isn’t it? I really think it is, because I know I went through that stage of really trying to fix myself when I had Crohn’s disease.

If I could just sort the trauma out, if I could change my beliefs and change my thoughts as well as change my physical body, then I know I would heal. You know? That was the wish and the dream. Well, the thing is, Did heal physically and I did somewhat heal a lot of the trauma and a lot of the psychological stuff that was really, really difficult for me way back then, but I never a hundred percent healed it.

Of course, we know this as adults, as people that are, you know, lived a life that we don’t get to that place of perfection, and so really, evolutionary track for us as humans is to accept that that is so, and that is the case. And then when we let go of that, when we let go of trying to be perfect, trying to fix all of my blocks and my issues and my pain and what’s wrong with me and my inherited trauma, and we focus on how can I help, how can I help others?

How can I serve? Then what happens with all of that stuff is it, it just goes into the background. It becomes more of a background issue and actually it gets put in its rightful place. I have found this really helpful in my life, and I have found this really helpful in my business because very often when we launch into.

our business showing up with our purpose. Even if we’re not a hundred percent on what our purpose is, but we are showing up anyway. We want to help people, we want to serve, then what is the next thing that shows up for us, it’s self-doubt, it’s imposter syndrome. It’s fear of being visible. And then we may try and go and try and fix the self-doubt.

Get rid of the imposter syndrome. But the reframe that I wanna offer in this podcast is that actually lean more into your purpose. Lean more into why you are so passionate about this little piece that you are adding to our collective. Whatever your purpose is, this piece that if you see it out in the world, That it breaks your heart and you know that you have the skills or you are gaining the skills.

You have the experience, you have the education to help people to overcome this for themselves, and very likely you’ve gone through the same thing. So rather than leaning into, try and fix the self-doubt, the way to fix the self doubt, Ironically is to kind of carry it along with you as you go. Lean into your purpose, lean into, remind yourself why you are so passionate about whatever it is that you do or you want to do, or you want to bring into the world.

Really lean into that. and find a way to bring that into the world. Start taking action with it. And yes, the self-doubt will be there, but what the the reframe does is it really helps us understand that that’s actually okay. And that’s a normal part of bringing our thing. Whatever our thing, our purpose is into the world of helping others, is that self-doubt is there.

And even if it comes along for the. You can turn the volume down on it by leaning into what you are so passionate about and what you want to help people with. And then what happens is a year down the track and you look back on what you were outputting, how you were talking about your work, how you were showing up with your work, how you were helping people, and you realize how much you’ve grown.

And then you can hold that mirror up to self-doubt and you can show it and you can say to self-doubt, hey. This is where I was a year ago. This is where I am now. I know. Yes, I know. I’ve still got a long way to grow and a long way to evolve, and that’s okay because I’m helping and you are helping the people that are at the exact right place and their journey for what it is that you offer, and those are the people you should be focused.

not on the people that you can’t help. Not on the self-doubt that arises because it sure to arise when we evolve and we grow. Don’t focus on that. Focus on the people that you want to help, that are showing up, that are saying, Hey, I need some help with this. And inside your heart, inside your skillset, you know that you can help them with it.

That is a big reframe that we can take to put self-doubt. Into the background

and the other side benefit of this is that because you are not looking to fix the self-doubt, because you’re not letting it get in the way like you are, you are instructing it to get in the background, you’re pushing it into the background and you are taking action anyway. Imperfect action is a million times better than no action at all.

And that’s where self-confidence comes from, right? Self-confidence comes when we take action. When we learn we can do this stuff imperfectly, we can show up scared, we can show up not as. Concise, not as, for me, it’s like I don’t quite have the right words that I, I want to use. Maybe I don’t show up as with as much directness and presence as I want to when I first started teaching, but I show up anyway and the way to get.

From zero to a hundred is to walk through each step of the way and not give up on yourself. And so rather than trying to grow self-confidence and wait for self-confidence to emerge before you show up, say it’s on social media, you want to be on social media expressing what your service is and how you can help people, but you just don’t feel confident enough.

Well, the way to get confident enough is to make those small steps. One foot in front of the other, do the work, show up. Show up imperfectly, but show up. And that is how confidence grows. Self-doubts in the background. Confidence is growing because you’ve made a decision to not let self-doubt, lack of confidence, stop you from taking action.

and yes, it burns. When people offer unsolicited advice, feedback, criticism, it doesn’t feel good. And especially if you’re a heart-centered, intuitive person. You’re feeling all the feelings. You’re feeling the good feelings, you’re feeling the bad feelings, the uncomfortable feelings. I’m thinking back to times when it’s really burned for me.

What happens when you go through that is that you come out the other side stronger. You come out the other side, more resilient, and when it does burn, you know, say if unsolicited feedback or feedback solicited or not, it burns, it hurts. You will grow through that and you will look from the other side if you, you know, let yourself feel the feelings.

Don’t abandon yourself. Stay with it. . Notice if you slip into people pleasing and bring yourself back from that, you will look back on that and and be like, oh, I survived it. Yeah, it hurt, but I survived it. And if that were to happen again, I would survive it again. Of course it hurts. We are human. We wanna stay connected.

Our brain longs for praise, for good thoughts and good responses from people because that’s part of its survival mechanism. So when we get the opposite, it’s very threatening for our brain and our, and our survival mechanism. It gets really triggered, but again, we put it in its place and you look back on it in a few weeks or months and go, oh yeah, that, that hurt.

But I grew from. and I’m a stronger person for it, and I’m not gonna let it stop me from moving forward.

So rather than trying to figure your purpose out, and we use purpose as a way to describe this impetus to be out in the world helping people in a very particular way, and you know, we figured that out along the way. , but rather than having to really define my purpose, you know, I am this, or I do that, or I’m here to do this, lean into what lights you up, how you want to help people, how you can help people with your skills, your education, your experience, and go and do that thing.

You might not be able to put your purpose into words. I don’t even know if I can. I don’t even know if I can put my purpose into words right now, but I know that I am living my purpose with each client that I speak to, and I coach and I support with it. Each human being that I communicate with, that I share my experience with, that I support on their journey.

I’m living my purpose. So moving away from trying to seek a label for my purpose is and moving into actually living your purpose. What is it that is happening in this world that I can see needs changing, needs fixing is broken that I can do something about? Cuz we can’t do something about everything. We can only do something about maybe one thing

in our community, in our world, what is that one thing that I have the passion for, that I have the heart for, that I have got the skillset for, or I can develop the skillset for, and then go and do that. And as you are doing that, And whether that’s through your business, through volunteer work, through your family, through another business, as an employee, you show up in your purpose through the connection and through the support and through the inspiration.

that you offer other people. And when you do that, when you step into that, so don’t wait. Let your interest lead you. When you do that, then your self doubt becomes less important. Even if I think about myself now, maybe I still have self-doubt. I do. Every time I grow into a next level with my business, with my offerings.

Self-doubt arises time and time again. But what has changed so dramatically is that I no longer let it hold me back, and so it doesn’t feed my procrastination anymore. I don’t get caught in inertia and procrastination. I just go forward and do it scared. Do it anyway. And as we said, step by step, your confidence grows as a result of that.

So one last piece around self-doubt. Take those two words. Hyphenated, not hyphenated. Self and doubt, right? So doubt is in our head , it’s part of our mind and doubt is very closely related to fear, which is less of a thought and more of a feeling. Fear is more of a feeling, maybe our heart, our nervous system.

So doubt and fear are closely related, but they occur probably at different levels of our. and self doubt. If we shift the focus from self to other, then doubt goes into the background. The reason we have self-doubt so strongly is because we are focusing on ourselves, our lacks, where we think that we don’t meet some criteria. When we shift our focus away from ourself and onto other, then doubt becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and into the background. . So that’s really key. If you are showing up to do a talk and you are really nervous, very often your focus will be on yourself.

What do they think of me? Am I gonna F up? Am I gonna forget what I need to say? Are they not gonna like me? All of those things that go through our brain very naturally when we go into public speaking, because we are focused on ourself, and that’s a really helpful trick. When we are speaking in front of a group is to focus on the group.

Oh, I see that person there. I’m speaking to that person. I’m speaking to this person. I’m sharing some wisdom, some knowledge, some humor, and they’re there cuz they wanna hear you. They need what you are offering. , same for your business. Shift the focus off yourself and onto how you can help someone else, and you will find that your self-doubt will move into the background, will shrink down, and very, very importantly, will no longer hold you back from showing up.

And then my friend, what you are doing is you are living your purpose. It doesn’t matter if we never, ever name our purpose in words. If we can’t describe it in a succinct sentence, if we are living it, if it’s growing with us, we’re so on track.

Get out in the world, try some things. If you don’t know what you’re passionate about, then try some more things. . Yeah. All right, my friends. I hope that’s inspired you to get out in the world. Do your thing, serve people around you? If it’s through the written word, through science, through art, through service, through coaching, through products that people love.

There are a million ways people can connect to the divinity of life. You’ve just gotta connect to your passion. Bring that out into the world and you are living your purpose. Doesn’t matter what it’s called. You are living it. It’s you and you are it. Okay? Have an amazing week. Keep walking forward. So much love to you and I’ll talk to you real soon.

Hey, thanks for joining me on the podcast. If you liked what you heard, tell your friends, share the episode. It all helps to get this information into the hands of other people that can use it to really unwind people pleasing, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, cuz we can do without that anymore, right?

We need to step up, step into being the leaders we were born to be.