Are You Letting Doubt Hold You Back?

It was Monday morning before I realised that I'd not written an issue last week. The weekend was that busy that I totally forgot.

With work and school holidays, life is busy at the moment. I could just give up and say I don't have time to write right now. But I remembered a a little trick author Matthew Dicks talks about on how to fit writing into your life.

You can hear him talking about it here on Ali Abdaal's podcast in the chapter "10 minutes is precious".

I've been focused on using spare time to work on this week's issue. I hope you enjoy it.

Picture this:

You're standing on the edge of uncertainty.

You're about to do something you've never done before.

You've been planning and preparing for this for days, weeks, months.

Maybe even years.

But then it hits you.

That familiar, gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach.

That small voice in your head that slowly gets louder.

Doubt.

It starts with that one question that creates more questions.

"what if this doesn't work out?"

Like the first domino being knocked down. It sets off a chain reaction of more and more questions. And before you know it, you're full of doubt.

This question can become a way to set you up for failure.

You see, your brain responds to prompts the same way ChatGPT does. So when you ask yourself this question, it starts doing it's job. It starts looking for ways that it won't work out.

You start to think of reasons for why you'll fail.

Eventually doubt overwhelms you and you give up. Or you carry on struggling to fight the doubt. And when you do fail, you justify it by saying it was because of so and so that I messed up.

What you need to do is flip the question.

Instead ask "What if this does work?"

Give your brain the right prompt and it will look for reasons to explain why it will work.

Reasons to give you hope and confidence.

Crushing doubt.

So whenever you're setting a new goal or starting something new, take 5 minutes and answer this week's prompt.

You'll be surprised to see how powerful it is.

Thank you for being part of The Kaizen Club.

We share 1 journal prompt each week to help you grow step-by-step, unlock your potential and shape the life you want.

Until next week.

Stay Thriving,

Shoaib

PS: The Kaizen Club is now on reddit!

You can join at r/TheKaizenClub

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