How To Believe In Your Business When You Don’t Always Believe In Yourself

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and a life that you love. And this is Q&A Tuesday. That means Q’s and A’s and today’s question comes from Malia and she writes:

“Hi Marie, how do you deal with the daily battles of fear and self doubt in business? How do you ultimately channel that energy into selling yourself, your product, or your service even though you may not fully be confident in yourself? Thanks so much, Malia.”

Malia, great question. I especially love that you didn’t ask, “How do I become constantly confident?” You asked something way better, which is how to work through that lack of confidence and continue to move your business ahead? You know, one of the biggest myths out there is that you have to be confident to be successful. That is so not true. Every creator who consistently takes risks and shares their ideas and produces work feels fear and self doubt. I feel fear and self doubt on a daily basis. And a little reality check here, those daily battles do not go away with time, experience, or even massive fame. You know, Grammy award winning artist Adele has talked publicly about projectile vomiting on someone in Brussels. And then another time in Amsterdam she got so scared she escaped out the fire exit.

If you’re an artist or an entrepreneur, fear and self doubt are gonna be your lifelong companions. So the question remains, how do you move ahead? Well, here’s one trick that has always worked for me. I want you to think about your attention, your mental and emotional and spiritual energy as a flashlight, and that flashlight can only shine in one direction. So in any given moment, that flashlight is shining in on you and how scared and insecure and fearful you are, or it’s shining out on your customer or the work that you’re producing. When you shine that flashlight on you, all of your focus goes to your thoughts, which probably sound something like this:

“Oh, my God. I suck so bad. Everybody’s gonna hate it, I’m gonna look like an idiot, I am not good enough yet. Who do I think I am? And this flashlight is really unflattering.”

Now, when it’s shining out, all your attention is on your customer, what your customer feels and needs and wants and, most importantly, how you can help them. Now, here’s the cool part, when your flashlight is 100% focused on them, you’ve got zero light on you and your fears and your self doubt, which means they recede gently into the darkness.

Obviously this isn’t a one time event. It’s a practice and something that you have to come back to every day and often on a moment to moment basis. If you’re ever feeling so much fear and self doubt that you too might projectile vomit, you’ve gotta ask yourself: in this moment, where am I shining the light? Because it’s either on you or the customer, you or the work, you or making a difference.

Me. Them. Me. Them. Me. Them. Who just vomited?

Keep it as simple as that. And if you want a little reminder to make this a habit, use this tweetable.

“Your attention’s like a flashlight. Shine it out on others and you lose sight of your own fear.”

That was my A to your Q, Malia, give this a try and let us know how it goes. So now I would love to hear from you. When do fear and self doubt tend to pop up for you? And what do you do specifically to keep believing in your business or your work, especially during those times when you’re not believing in yourself?

As always, the best conversations happen after the episode over at MarieForleo.com, so get on over there and leave a comment now.

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Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time on MarieTV.

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