#523 – Why does your Ego want you to doubt yourself?

"Better safe than sorry" is the Ego's best descriptor. Whenever success, growth, and self-realization require taking a risk, your Ego will try to convince you not to. It'll tell you that you'd rather stay put, because, in its cold dead eyes, failure equals permanent and total ruin.

And when everything else proves ineffective, when after confronting all the ghosts summoned by your Ego you're still willing to take the risk, it sends in the ultimate paralyzing weapon: self-doubt.

On a group call last week, Barbara Huson helped me realize I was 100% caught in that state. Then, my son made me see how my Ego was stealing my vision for the future from me, and I understood how it was also stealing my self-belief.

Believing that I have no business envisioning a beautiful future made me believe that I wouldn't be able to create anything beautiful. So I shrank.

I lost touch with who I am. I started to apply for jobs that required less of me, that were more generic and paid less. Because I forgot what makes me, me, and what I'm capable of when I'm my truest Self.

Barbara helped me remember my life purpose, which I'd discovered during my coach training in 2019: "to be the energy that helps people expand what's possible"––through writing, training, and/or coaching.

When that energy became noticeable in my sternum as I meditated later that day, I realized that the physical sensation felt a bit like fear does: some pressure, a stronger heartbeat, aliveness. This version, though, seemed to enlarge my lungs rather than compress them. Breathing more consciously, I realized, would help me keep my chest expanded. So I did.

This morning, before my first serious job interview in a while, I was certain that I was the exact right person for the role. My self-belief was back. They may or may not hire me, but now I know that, if they don't, it won't be because I'm not "good enough."

Where is self-doubt making you stay put in too small a place?

Love,

Carolina