414: When You’re Paralyzed by Doubt
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Have you ever experienced self doubt? It can come from many areas; lack of information, conflicting information, or internal conflicts of beliefs and values. As a business owner, we’re required to do hard things in our business, which means we’re likely to encounter doubt and insecurity more often. We break down the relationship between fear and doubt and how to keep moving forward. Doubt doesn’t have to mean the end of anything. It should act as a trigger to do something different or seek out help.
Main topics
Why we doubt
Difference between fear and doubt
Overcoming doubt
Committing to something
Main takeaway: Doubt is natural, but it's crucial not to let it paralyze you. Instead, use it as motivation to prepare, plan, and persevere. And always remember: Everyone has faced setbacks and doubts themselves from time to time; what sets them apart is how they respond.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
doubt, hire, pet, business, hiring, knowledge, life, fear, self doubt, abilities, prevent, hiring process, people, feedback, overcame, insecurity, trust, move, creeping, starts
SPEAKERS
Collin, Meghan
Meghan 00:00
Oh, hello, welcome to pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members for supporting today's show. If you don't know what a Patreon member is, they help us with a few dollars of their hard earned dog walking and pet sitting money every month. And do they contribute to the podcast because they have found value in it. And if you have enjoyed listening to any of the episodes and would like to support us, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support. In business, we have to do big things, we have to do hard things. And we have to try a lot of things in order to know what is going to work. And so we've been thinking about sometimes you just pour everything you can into something, and sometimes it just doesn't work out. Starting your business is hard. putting together your marketing is hard. Building a website is hard hiring is hard. tackling a complicated visit is hard. These hard things are necessary and vital to running a business. Sometimes they're hard because they're too complicated. And they're gonna take a lot of time and effort. Sometimes it's because they're out of our lane and not really in our strength in our wheelhouse.
Collin 01:08
For example, when we started looking for an office space, that was hard, we had never done anything like that before. We didn't know the market, we didn't know the questions to ask, we had no idea what kind of price point we should expect or anything about the leasing process and what should or shouldn't be included in that. And that's just one aspect. See, we're passionate about our business. We you you believe that what you do is important and necessary. So of course, you don't do anything lightly or casually. This means like you said, Megan, that we're pouring everything into what we want to do, especially the hard things because we know that they're worth it. And yet, in the back of our brains, sometimes there's this little voice that says, but what if, what if you do everything you possibly can, and it still doesn't work out?
Meghan 01:59
That self doubt comes creeping in, you start wondering if you're gonna waste all of that time and money and effort and maybe even your reputation if it doesn't pan out? What if it fails? How do we handle that in our businesses. So this voice, it keeps us from moving forward a lot. And it often occurs when we've already invested in something, say we've bought a banner and a bunch of tennis balls and some games and dog bowls and all this stuff for an event. And we get there and there's two people that show up the entire time. Well, it feels in our minds like we have failed at something it keeps us from moving forward, it keeps us from saying yes to those events, again,
Collin 02:40
whatever it is, whether it's the you pour money into training, or that big marketing push for that new hire whatever it is, if it starts to not turn out, we think that maybe we didn't do something right. And honestly, for us, the past few months have been like that with our hiring. We're so passionate about making our business model work. And we've poured so much time and money into making it work. But it doesn't seem to quite be quite panning out the way we expected. We keep running into these little things that make us feel like something's going on. And that little voice is creeping into the back of our brains going. What if
Meghan 03:15
Irene and staff retention has been very hard for us? And so I actually put a question in our center confessionals Facebook group that said, What is your percent turnover for the last 12 months? And what if you're not happy with that? What are you doing to change it? And we had a lot of responses that said basically, that hiring is not not super great. Right now, one person had a hire that has been working for her for 12 years, which is phenomenal. And then there are others like us who just feel like we're just keep spinning the wheel. And so it can really feel frustrating that doubt what if we made bad assumptions? What if we're not cut out for this? What if what if what if that doubt creeps in? Again, it stops us from moving forward. On previous
Collin 03:58
episodes, we have talked about how fear can freeze us in our business and how to overcome that. And that's different than what we're talking about here with doubt and self doubt. So I do want to take a moment and talk about the difference between these because they are closely intertwined, and they do have a close relationship. So there are two things here. So fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat. It's ancient, it's hard wired, and it's to prepare your body to either fight, flight or freeze. Doubt on the other hand, is a cognitive state where one is uncertain or you lack conviction. It arise from like a lack of information, conflicting information, internal conflicts of beliefs, or even values. Interestingly, fear can lead to doubt. If you're already afraid of failing you might doubt your abilities to do something even if you're actually pretty well prepared. On the other hand, doubt can lead to fear. If you example here if you doubt a bridges sturdiness, it might make you afraid to cross it All this can impact your decision making because when fear and doubt coexist, they can paralyze your ability to make sound choices. If you fear the outcome of a particular choice of a particular hire or a particular marketing push, and you simultaneously doubt your ability to even make that decision, you might avoid making it all together.
Meghan 05:19
But at the end of the day, they really do both protect us, you know, fear keeps us away from the real, immediate dangers the lion chasing us, while doubt makes us question and we reevaluate things of should I do that, again? Was that the right choice? They both really help prevent hasty or ill informed decisions. And they allow you to take a step back and say, Whoa, should I do this, again, is this proper is this wise for my business and aligns with and aligns with what I want to do? It can be easy then to retreat and say, Well, I don't want to deal with this at all. But don't discount the fact that they are here to protect us. Doubt is designed to make you take a second look at something, seek out that advice that you need from a mentor or a third party.
Collin 06:02
The problem arises when we feel like there's nothing else to do and we've already double checked, and we've already sought sought that advice, and it starts to turn inward on ourselves and it halts our progress. However helpful. These are in a modern context, sitting where we are today, excessive or misplaced fear and doubt can be hindering rather than protective, it can prevent you from pursuing opportunities, taking risks that might lead to potential growth, or even trusting others to do something in your business.
Meghan 06:31
Something you can always trust is pet sitters associates, well over 20 years, they have provided 1000s of members quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at Pet set llc.com. You can get a discount when joining if you click membership Pet Sitter confessional and you use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at Pet said llc.com. We've talked about fear and doubt how they can paralyze us. But how do we overcome that and stop being paralyzed so that we can move forward, we can do the next thing on our list. It starts with working on our self awareness and our introspection. And getting that confidence back saying yes, I do make wise choices. I can do this. When you understand the source of it, you can address that doubt and insecurity. It's crucial to know where that comes from. Because when you know, when you ask yourself hard questions, you're able to dig down and say, Okay, this comes from this, maybe it's a childhood thing or a past experience. Or maybe society says that you should do this thing or your personal beliefs
07:43
well, and even running into a bad experience with a client or with a particular pet where all of a sudden, maybe you thought you understood what that dog was telling you. But it bit you anyway. So now you start to question and doubt your abilities to understand dog body language. So you're more hesitant, you're more reserved, you're less likely to try and take on those cases, or put yourself in those situations, when you have all the ability, knowledge and background to fully take that on. Because there was that one mess up. Now that voice starts to say things like you don't actually understand dogs, you don't know what you're doing and you stop moving forward and working with those kinds of pets or even those owners.
Meghan 08:18
Journaling can be really helpful for this. It allows you to track patterns over time and stay on task with what you need to get done. When you are able to read back over what you've ever written and maybe look back over weeks and months prior, you can challenge those negative beliefs. And then once you identify those your sources of doubt and insecurity, you can challenge them say, Well, why is this? Why does this exist? Is this a legitimate thing? Do I need to just move do I need to move past this. And that will allow me to move on in my life, you need to ask yourself if these are based in reality, or if they're kind of just made up in your head not not saying that we're crazy. But maybe they don't stem from something that is altogether truthful.
09:03
Maybe it's something again, this past experience or an outdated belief or a misunderstanding or misconception that you've brought forward from your childhood or from a class that you took or a seminar that you sat in on and you didn't get the right information or you didn't fully comprehend what they were trying to tell you. And now you're pulling that forward in your own life. And these these transform into negative beliefs when we start to believe bad things about ourselves that prevent us from doing what we want to
Meghan 09:30
sticking out education and deepening your knowledge and skills is also going to help you overcome that doubt and move forward. Sometimes that doubt stems from a lack of knowledge or feeling unprepared. Pet first aid and CPR certification is a great example of this. You don't know what you're walking into on the other side of the door. So having that that background that knowledge that that that course to guide you will help lower your blood pressure each time you walk up to that door.
Collin 09:56
The problem comes in there though is if you start to Can courses just to take courses because you think the course of solution is another course, what you have to do is then implement the things that you learn from the course in your life and in your business and the example of pet first aid and CPR, you have to trust that what you're learning is adequate to prepare you not that we should become complacent, but that the knowledge was good for you. Because then what you have to do is you can't just sit on this information, this knowledge have to do something with it either implemented in your business, or you have to engage in deliberate practice, mega like you said, if you're doubting your abilities with a CPR training, maybe you've already taken it, and you still don't feel comfortable. Well, go take part in an in person, pet, first aid and CPR class, maybe even volunteer to help assist or train others or go take a course to get trained to be a trainer to be a certified professional to educate other people. I know, Ardmore has a course for instructors to help them get to that point. But what this does is you're deliberately practicing these skills, you're putting them into practice, and you're teaching others it's a great way to deepen those skills, deepen your knowledge, if you don't feel comfortable, in your knowledge, try and teach it to somebody else, because you have to know and be secure in your information in order to do that. And it will point out weak points in your knowledge and gaps in your skills. But that's okay, because that's why you're doing that.
Meghan 11:23
And while you're going to others for guidance, you can seek that feedback from them. It's been maybe a mentor that has experienced similar challenges and can help guide you through exactly what you're going through sharing their strategies, and how they overcame doubts. Maybe they tried this particular thing multiple times. And it finally on the fifth time it worked. Or they could potentially offer a more objective perspective, you know, that third party is always helpful, that extra set of eyes to look on what you have done to say is this, okay?
11:54
And sometimes all you need to hear as a person is somebody else saying, You're doing a great job, or even you're doing everything you can that at least that little validation, that recognition that you're trying that you're putting in that effort. As a solo business owner, we don't have that we don't have these interactions with other people who see all of the hard work that we're doing. So sometimes we can feel welcome. Nobody sees it. Nobody knows what's going on. Am I even on the right track with this. So seeking out that kind of advice is really important. And this can even extend to encouraging your trusted friends, acquaintances, or other business owners that you are connected with to give you honest feedback. This can invalidate areas of genuine expertise, where you feel like I've trained really hard, I know what I'm doing. But maybe I don't, I You're still doubting your abilities. So somebody would come along and say, Yeah, you're actually really good at that. That's very beneficial, especially when, when we as business owners don't have access to that all the time. It can also shed light on areas where you do need improvement, where there are areas that you truly are lacking. And it's important to go to people that you you know, that you trust, you have a relationship, because when you're doubting yourself, it's hard to take feedback from of any variety from anybody, we can become very sensitive about any sort of feedback. So having it come from somebody that you know, loves you, and wants to see you succeed, that helps you accept that feedback and information they're giving you
Meghan 13:17
if you think you are a very introspective person, and you don't need to work on deepening your skills or knowledge. And you don't need feedback, either. You may take time for mindfulness and meditation, because that is what trains your mind to focus on the present moment, right here right now. If nothing else matters, it can really prevent you from spiraling into self doubt, and past mistakes or future challenges. You're not looking at the past. Now look into the future you're looking at right here. And right now you can accept your feelings of doubt and insecurity. Without any judgment, it makes that a lot easier. And over time, when you continue to accept it will reduce the power these feelings hold over you, you will be able to identify easier of the feelings that come into your mind that you say, Okay, I accept these, I know what these are. And now I can push them out and focus on other things.
Collin 14:07
And part of that mindfulness and meditation is taking back control over your thoughts so so that you can catch yourself when you start going down those negative routes and that self doubt. And what you do is you take that and you turn it into positive affirmations and actually a visualization process. Because you're able to now regularly remind yourself of those past successes, those strengths that you have those positive attributes, and over time, this is rewiring your negative thought patterns. So instead of trudging down the well trodden roads of negativity in your life and self doubt, you are rewiring and intentionally steering yourself back to those positive things. So that when you do get that positive feedback from a client, maybe from a mentor or from a business friend from a family member, have them write that down, put that in the calendar, put it on a sticky note somewhere, because there will come times where I Everybody doubts, our abilities to do things. And having those physically in front of you, or on your phone or in a photo or on a recording that somebody sends to you of going, Hey, remember that time where you overcame that, that really tough struggle to hire or to do stuff, remember that you did that that was something that you were able to accomplish. And part of this controlling your thoughts is actually something that's done by athletes and other high achievers, they actually visualize their performance in excruciating detail before the event actually takes place. It can be applied to all aspects of our life, because by visualizing a successful outcome, you're fostering your confidence, you're reducing feelings of doubt. And they've actually done studies that show that the person performs better if you focus on the positives, rather than if they focused on all the negative aspects of that. So this could be maybe you're going in to do an interview or take on a new client visualize a successful outcome of that to put you in a positive mindset. And a positive perspective,
Meghan 16:04
when you've doubted something that you have done. In the end, you can choose one of three endpoints, the first one is committing to repeating it again, you can try it again, there's nothing wrong with that, just because you go to one event, and there were only two people that showed up doesn't mean you can't keep going to events, and maybe you'll be able to network with other people, or you'll have different goals next time. It's okay to persist in your efforts without change, you do need to give your efforts and processes time to flush out and sometimes that means all it takes is just waiting a little bit longer. The second option is committing to quit. If it doesn't work out, quitting is okay. There's there's a stigma with it. But there's nothing wrong with it really, our goals change our needs change. And often we have to be in the mindset of move fast and break things. And if it doesn't work out the first time, throw it all out and start again, maybe you
16:53
decide to go in and try doing YouTube videos for your business as a way of of elevating and educating people and you dive headfirst into that. And you know, I'm going to give this my all and see where it goes. But after a while you the views don't go up and you don't get any feedback from it, you find it's really hard and taxing on your time. So instead of trying to stick it out, or iterate or do something else, you decide, You know what, right now video is not for me, I need to refocus my time and efforts elsewhere. And so you quit doing video without trying it again. And that is okay, you recognize I'm going to put give my all to this. And I didn't work out and I can walk away from it without feeling like I did something wrong.
Meghan 17:34
Yeah, because our needs change as a business or personal needs change. Maybe I don't have time to sit there and edit an hour and a half a video anymore because I messed up 18 times and I need to get it exactly where it is. Sometimes you we just we say no thank you and we ended. Another option is to iterate and change what you can probably the part of the process that we all tend to Lord, at least Colin and I, we make small changes one at a time and see what happens, see how it can be better the next time. And that's definitely true for our hiring process. We've, we've we've made small changes over time to try to figure out exactly what we want in a hire and how we can best serve them. But we have doubted we have significantly doubted recently, our hiring processes. So how have we use this? What have we been working on? We've had to remind ourselves that yes, hiring is a massive process. So the key for us has been breaking it out into individual pieces to identify exactly where the doubt comes in. We've worked through our questions, our job at our stages of hiring, where we're posting it, who we are interviewing everything about it. And a lot of it comes down to trusting your gut, the aspect of hiring that is so critical. And I think that we've come down to the conclusion that we aren't really trusting our gut. So we've had to drill down on that even more. And why are we doing that? We've had people that we thought were gonna be with us for a long time, and they ended up only being with us for three months or less, a lot less, sometimes a lot less, we've had to take a step back and look at the facts. Are there. Are there any red flags for this person? Did they miss a step along the way, and not completely follow our directions? Is there any reason to not hire this person? If we've answered none or no to those, then the person is hired. But we've tried to get very objective about the entire process and not say, Oh, I really liked this part. I really liked this question of going, is this question necessary? Does this still benefit with the way that we want to hire and is this getting us where we need to be with our potential hires?
19:38
It's getting back to that at one of the aspects that we talked about is understanding Where's this coming from the self doubt of okay, we're doubting our gut. Well, a lot of that is coming from some things that are subjective, right, because maybe we thought we made a bad hire, but actually there was nothing we could have done about that person. Anyway. So objectively, our hiring process was sound we made it Good decision with that person, their life just
Meghan 20:02
changed. We've had a lot of life changes lately, we have
Collin 20:06
and it is hard to not take those personally, it is hard to look at those and go, there's nothing I could have done to screen that person out to understand what was going to happen. And yet it was still making us doubt ourselves in our abilities to make a good hire. But instead, we were able to one of the big things that we also did with this is look at all of the amazing hires that we currently have. And go, yes, our hiring process brought these people into our company, they are still here after a year or more, they are doing amazing work. Everybody, all of our clients adore them. We praise them all the time. They are good critical components of our team, our hiring, our hiring process did that we able to reflect on our past successes. As far as that those amazing hires and understand, look, sometimes you can feel like you do everything right, and it still goes wrong. And so you start to doubt yourself. But looking and reflecting and understanding where and why that's happening is critical so that you don't become frozen, you don't become paralyzed with doubt, and prevent you from moving forward.
Meghan 21:08
Well, and at the end of the day, it all comes down to looking at it as a glass half full perspective and a positive perspective. While I mean, I personally am very pessimistic, and everything is doom and gloom to me. But you're right. It's all about perspective, we have some amazing people on our team, let's find more of those people.
Collin 21:28
And realizing that we can only do so much and that we have to be okay with that out of it at the individual level.
Meghan 21:35
Yeah, because everyone's journey is different with doubt and insecurity. And it's really a personal thing. And while these strategies can help, they may not be effective for everyone in the exact same way. And so it's okay to seek professional guidance, like therapy, and to delve deeper into your personal sources of doubt and find coping mechanisms that are specific to you. Because doubt is natural. We all doubt ourselves in some capacity, whether it's in your personal life or in your business life, but it's crucial to not let it paralyze you. Instead, use it as a positive use it as a motivation to prepare and plan and persevere through what you're doing. Always remembering that everyone has faced setbacks and doubts themselves from time to time, while you feel siloed in your specific problem, you are not there are other people that have blazed the trail before you in this there are other people that can help you. And that is what sets them apart is how they respond. Because it's not necessarily the problems that come at you and the issues that you face. It's what you do in response to them that is going to make or break your business. Like I just said everyone has dealt with doubt and insecurity. And if you would like to share how you overcame those in your life. You can email us at feedback at a pet sitter confessional.com or join our sitter confessionals Facebook group to share with others thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for supporting today's show and we will talk with you next time. Bye
