Ep 182: Doubt

Today, I’m talking about doubt: the sneaky, shape-shifting, very convincing part of us that has probably cost us more than any failure we’ve actually experienced.

Many of us were taught to fear failure, so our protective parts learned to keep us safe by hesitating, overthinking, and second-guessing. But failure is not your enemy—it helps you learn and decide what to do next. Doubt is what keeps you from trying at all.

The parts of you that doubt are trying to protect you, and you can have compassion for them while still choosing to move forward. In this episode, I’ll walk you through four common flavors of doubt, why they feel so convincing, and how to work with the protective parts behind them so you can take imperfect action anyway. 

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Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey there, beautiful humans. Welcome back to Your Favorite You. 

I'm Melissa Parsons, and of course, I'm so glad that you're here again with me today. I want to start by telling you about something that happened to me in yoga class recently, because I think it's going to land for you in a similar way that it landed for me. 

So to set the scene, we're near the end of class, pretty deep into it. I am dripping with sweat because I have recently started taking some hot yoga classes. If you know me, I do not glisten. I do not perspire. 

I sweat. So drip, drip, drip onto my mat. My body is about done and we move into Warrior 3. If you've never done Warrior 3, picture this. You're balancing on one leg. Your whole body is kind of extended forward like an airplane. 

Arms can either be reaching out in front of you or reaching out in back. And everything, and I do mean everything, is shaking for me. We go into it on the left side first. My yoga teacher is moving around the room, offering adjustments. 

And as he walks past me, I lose my drishti or my focal point. And I lose my balance completely. I fall out of the pose, not even a wobble, just full fallout, not at all graceful. And that's not a problem. 

Of course, you know, here's where it gets good. So we switch to the right side. We're now on my right ankle and my upper body is pretty steady, but my right ankle is fighting for its life. And then my whole body starts shaking. 

And a part of me, a very loud part, is making an extremely convincing case for stepping out of the pose. And I am going back and forth, kind of genuinely considering it. And then my teacher says, and I want to be clear that he is a pretty inspiring human. 

This is not a criticism of him at all, but as he's moving about the room, he calmly quotes a poet, her name is Susie Kessim, and says, doubt has killed more dreams than failure ever will. Beautiful humans, I stayed in that pose. 

My ankle was shaking, my breathing was ragged, but I stayed because something about those words cut right through the noise of that loud part telling me to quit. And when I came out of the pose at the end, on my own terms, when the teacher cued it, I just stood there for a second thinking, hmm, I wonder how many times I've listened to that voice. 

And of course, not just in yoga, in my life, in my work, in the decisions I've been circling for months without landing anywhere. And that's what I want to talk about today, doubt. The sneaky, shape-shifting, very convincing part of us that has probably cost us more than any failure that we've actually experienced. 

So before we go any further, I want to name something that gets really mixed up for a lot of us, especially us high-achieving women. We've been taught, conditioned in a thousand, maybe more different ways that failure is the enemy, that we need to be prepared, that we need to be careful, that we shouldn't put ourselves out there until we're sure we're safe, that we shouldn't start something that we can't finish, that we shouldn't make a move until we're ready. And that makes sense that we've learned that. A lot of us grew up in environments where failure had real consequences, be them social, professional, familial. 

So our protective parts got very, very good at keeping us away from failure. Here's what I want you to hear today. Failure is survivable. It's concrete. It's real. You can look at it. You can sit with it. 

You can learn from it and decide what you want to do next. Failure has a beginning. Failure has an end. Doubt is more like a ghost. You can't pin it down. You can't outlogic it because it doesn't live in the logical part of your brain. 

It whispers. It specializes in that 3 a.m. visit when your defenses are down and you're way too tired to fight back. And unlike failure, doubt doesn't have a natural endpoint. It just keeps going and it can keep us frozen. 

It keeps us sitting in the waiting room of our own damn lives, holding a number that may never get called. So let's get specific because doubt has some very particular flavors. And I'm going to bet that at least one of these is going to sound very familiar to you. 

So the first flavor, I'm going to talk about four. So prepare yourself for four. The first one is, am I enough doubt? This is the greatest hit. This one has been on rotation since we were approximately 12 years old. 

So am I smart enough? Am I experienced enough, qualified enough, ready enough? It shows up when you want to go for something bigger. So it might be the promotion, a new business, a really big pivot. And a part of you starts building the case for why you're not quite there yet. 

And here's where I want to speak directly to my fellow physician clients for a second, because I see this constantly and it just about breaks my heart. You guys are women who've already done the thing. 

Medical degree, residency, fellowship in a lot of cases, years of clinical experience. They are, we are, by any objective measure, overqualified for the rooms that we're sitting in. And yet there is always another paper to write, another certificate to earn, another training to complete, another grant to get before we feel ready to step into something new. 

We question ourselves at the level that our male colleagues in the same positions with the same credentials simply do not do it to themselves. They are already in the room. We women are outside of it updating our CVs. 

This part that keeps moving the goalposts, it's not your logic. It's not wisdom. It is doubt wearing a very convincing costume of preparation. And understanding that doesn't make you less of a professional. 

It makes you human. And it means you get to decide whether that part of you is running the show or whether you are. And although I was specifically speaking to my physician colleagues there, really any high achieving woman, I'm sure that you're like, you don't have to be a physician, Melissa, to have this, am I enough doubt? 

And this thinking that I need to, you know, cross the next goal line in order to be worthy. Okay, the second flavor is what if I choose wrong doubt? So decision doubt. And this is one that is really exhausting to live with. 

It's the part that makes you gather one more opinion when you already have plenty. It's the part that has you running the scenario one more time or asking one more person or reading one more article. 

This is the part that keeps you in a job, a relationship, a situation, not because it's right for you, but because the act of deciding feels more dangerous than the misery of staying. I had a client who genuinely could not decide what sandwich to order off a menu. 

And I don't say that to be unkind. I say it because she knew it and she knew what it meant. Because when it came time to end a relationship that had never been right for her, a man who was, let's just say, a walking collection of red flags, she agonized over that decision for months, months. 

She knew, her body knew, everyone who loved her knew, but doubt kept her there, running the same loop, unable to land the plane. The moment she made the decision to choose herself, she said she felt a thousand pounds lighter immediately before anything had ever changed externally. 

The rightness of the decision was instant and unmistakable. I have another client who wanted to ask her boss if she could move to a four-day work week. She spent an enormous amount of time working up to the ask, convincing herself it was unreasonable, that she'd be seen differently, that she'd be risking something that she couldn't afford to lose. 

Her boss said yes before she barely finished the sentence. Not only that, her boss was so committed to keeping her at the company that she was offered fewer hours and a pay increase. The thing she had been dreading, that conversation she'd been putting off, took about four minutes. 

The doubt that kept her from having it took months. Here's the truth about decision doubt that I want you to sit with. Not deciding is a decision. Staying put is a choice. Waiting it out is a choice. 

And it's often the costliest one. It just doesn't feel that way because you never have to take ownership of it. Doubt lets you off the hook while it quietly keeps you stuck. That is doubt's particular genius. 

Flavor three. It's too late for me, doubt. This one has midlife written all over it, and I want to lovingly but directly call it out. It sounds like I should have started this 10 years ago. If it was going to happen for me, it would have happened by now. 

Who reinvents themselves at this point in their life? I changed the entire direction of my professional life. I walked away from medicine after 22 years and built something completely new. And I can tell you, the women doing the most interesting, most alive, most genuinely joyful work I have ever witnessed are women who started something new in their 40s and 50s, not despite their age, because of it, because they finally know themselves well enough to stop doing the wrong things. That is wisdom, my friends. Timing doubt doesn't protect you from making a late start, my friends. It just guarantees one. 

The fourth flavor is she's so much further ahead doubt. So comparison doubt. And social media has made this one absolutely vicious. You see someone else building the thing you want to build, living what looks like the life you're reaching toward. 

And instead of feeling inspired, you feel behind, like there's only so much room and she's already claimed your spot. Biologically, this is understandable. Comparison is wired into us as a survival mechanism, but it was never designed to be applied to someone's carefully curated highlight reel. 

What she's doing has nothing to do with what's possible for you. Nothing at all. Unless it's inspiring you, her lane is hers. Your lane is waiting for you. Okay, doubt has killed more dreams than failure ever will. 

I keep coming back to this sentence because I think we've had our relationship with failure and doubt completely backwards. We've been so focused on avoiding failure that we've handed the keys to doubt without even noticing. 

We let doubt build its case over months and years, adding evidence, whispering alternatives, making the status quo feel safer and safer, while our actual dreams sit in the waiting room, again, still holding their number. 

But failure, when it actually happens, when we fall out of the pose, to bring us back to where we started, we survived it. I've worked with women who've had businesses go under, relationships end, career moves that didn't pan out the way they hoped. 

And almost without exception, when they look back, what they say is, I'm so glad I tried. I learned so much from the trying. I know myself better for it. I know more clearly now what I actually want. 

The failure hurts. Of course it does. And we should let it hurt. It's not a problem. The failure doesn't diminish you, though. If anything, it helps you clarify what you want. I've worked with women who let doubt run the show for years, for decades sometimes, and the language around that is completely different. 

It's heavier. It carries a kind of grief, the what-ifs that don't fully go away, the sense of a life lived slightly smaller than it could have been. That's the cost of doubt that we never talk about because it's invisible. 

No one sees the thing that you never did. In IFS or internal family systems, we understand that the parts driving doubt, the ones that keep us stuck, are not bad parts. They're protective parts. They've developed because at some point playing small kept us safe. 

Staying quiet kept us safe. Not trying meant not failing and not failing meant not getting hurt. We can have compassion for those parts. We really can. And this is the both and I want you to hold. We can have compassion for those parts and still choose to lead from our wisest, most capital S self-led place. 

We can say, I see you. I can understand why you're scared. I know why you're trying to protect me. And I'm going to make this decision anyway. So back to yoga class, back to that Warrior 3, sweating, shaking ankle and all. 

I fell out on the left side. That was my failure. On the right side, when doubt was the loudest, I had a choice, let the protective part win or stay in the pose. I stayed, not because I wasn't scared of falling again, because I knew that falling would teach me something. 

Stepping back would teach me nothing except that doubt was still in charge. Failure is data. Doubt is kind of a dead end or a roundabout that keeps you going around and around in circles until you choose differently. 

Okay, so what do we want to actually do with this? Because I never want to leave you with just the problem named and nothing to work with. That is not how we do things here at Melissa Parsons Coaching. 

So the first step is to name the part. When you notice doubt showing up, get curious about it rather than immediately arguing with it or collapsing into it. Which flavor is it? Or maybe there's a different flavor that I didn't name that you have, and you can please feel free to reach out to me and let me know what flavor you have. 

So what flavor is it? Can you feel where it lives in your body? Can you give it a name or ask it its name? Naming parts, we don't ever have to wonder what a part wants to be named. We can just ask it and believe it or not, it will answer you. 

And by naming it or asking its name, it can move from something that is you to something that's a part of you. And that shift matters way more than it sounds. The second step is to ask what it's costing you. 

We're very practiced at asking what could go wrong if I try this? I want you to flip it. What is it actually costing you to stay here? What version of you, what experiences, what possibilities are you passing on while this part keeps you in the waiting room? 

The cost of doubt is real. It's just invisible. Let's make it visible so you can see it. The third step, do things poorly. This is one of my favorites. If doubt's keeping you stuck because you can't do it perfectly yet, deliberately lower the bar. 

Write the terrible first draft. Have the clunky first conversation. Take the imperfect first step. Fall out of the pose. That's not the end of the story. It's info. It's how we learn. Staying out of the pose entirely teaches us nothing. 

The fourth step, borrow courage from your past self. You've already done some hard things. You've already pushed through doubt and survived what came next, even if it doesn't feel that way right now. 

Get specific about it. What is one time you went ahead anyway? And was it worth it? Keep that story close. It's evidence and your nervous system will respond if you give it the evidence. Okay, so here's what I want to leave you with today. 

Failure is not your enemy. Doubt is. Failure is what happens when you're brave enough to try. It's always, always teaching you something. Doubt is what keeps you from trying at all. And it quietly, invisibly costs you a lot. 

The parts of you that doubt are not trying to ruin your life. They're trying to protect you. And you can have compassion for them and still choose to move forward. You can hold both. That's not weakness. 

That is what self-leadership looks like. The next time one of these parts show up, the not enough part, the what if I choose wrong part, the it's too late part, the comparison part, notice it, name it, thank it for trying to keep you safe. 

And then ask yourself from your wisest, most grounded today place, is this part actually protecting me or is it just keeping me small? And maybe, just maybe stay in the pose, even as your dripping sweat and your ankle is fighting for its life. 

Thanks so much for being here with me today. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a woman in your life who might need to hear it. And if you're ready to do that deeper work of becoming your favorite you, I hope you know where to find me by now. 

Okay, I'll see you next week.

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