Lights, Camera, Self-Doubt Drama
If you've seen me on social media lately, you've likely watched me in a reel or two.
These reels are video snippets from my life—me digging up Dahlia tubers, writing in my journal, making a smoothie, dancing around to a song in my head—while I share how I can help coaches struggling with self-doubt and lack of confidence.
I'm committed to filming these videos daily.
Not because I love them.
Absolutely not.
Whenever I think about making a new video, my body flushes with insecurity, fear, and worry.
I feel awful.
My brain tries desperately to talk me out of it, to paint a picture of the worst possible things happening (which usually include me being left alone, abandoned by everyone I love, while all the strangers laugh at me.)
And I record a short video every day anyway.
Despite my brain's protests and my body's wildly uncomfortable emotions, I set up the tripod and hit record.
Why, you might wonder.
I wonder, too, sometimes. Believe me.
Why am I putting myself through this?
Because I, too, am a person with self-doubt.
I struggle with exactly the same thing my clients grapple with.
And I don't want to stay stuck in the struggle. The stuckness actually feels worse.
It's days and days of actually doing nothing to serve others, just spending all that time in my brain anticipating everything that could go wrong.
The worst!
What It Means to Meet Your Self-Doubt Head-On
Meeting your self-doubt head-on doesn't mean waiting until you feel confident. It means taking one small action while the doubt is still there, instead of using it as a permission slip to stay paralyzed in fear of what could go wrong.
That order matters. We're taught to wait for confidence and then act. But it works the other way around. Self-efficacy research, our belief in our ability to handle things- is built largely through experience: you do the hard thing, you survive it, and your brain updates. Confidence is the by-product of action, not the prerequisite for it.
I talked about this exact thing with Ria Zervos on The Fit Pro Journey, in an episode we called "The Dirty Little Secret in Fitness: Self-Doubt and Showing Up Online." Her world is fitness and mine is coaching, and it turns out the secret is the same in both: the confident-looking people online aren't the ones without self-doubt. They're the ones who learned to take the next small action while the self-doubt is still sitting right there with them.
What Happened When I Started Anyway
When I first started 30 days ago, nothing about this was easy.
The truth is that I wanted to quit before I even started.
But now I am so grateful that I didn't.
The insecurity, fear, and worry are still there, although now they're less intense.
I'm also experiencing playfulness, embarrassment, and joy. Unexpected and wonderful by-products from doing something hard.
Yeah, I just said that embarrassment is a wonderful by-product, and I mean it.
There is something so liberating about being willing to feel embarrassed to deliver a message that might help one person.
I didn't expect that. (If you want the story of a time my self-doubt was much louder, it's here: "When My Confidence Hit Rock Bottom.")
I'm very aware that daily reels will not take my self-doubt away.
Self-doubt will continue presenting itself in my life for the rest of my life. I will not outrun it.
Instead, I've decided to meet it head-on, one video at a time. (This is the same muscle I had to build when I stopped believing I wasn't "the entrepreneurial type" — that story is "How I Built a Soulful Business.") And it takes the kind of presence I only found once I slowed down enough to feel it, which I wrote about in "The Bravest Thing You'll Do Is Slow Down."
How to Know If Self-Doubt Is Running the Show
If you're not sure how much self-doubt is quietly steering your choices, sit with these:
Is there something you want to put out into the world that you keep postponing until you feel "ready"?
Do you talk yourself out of visibility by imagining the worst-case reaction?
Do you spend more time bracing against what could go wrong than actually doing the thing?
Do you tell yourself you'll start once the fear goes away? (It won't — that's the trap.)
When you imagine doing it imperfectly, does your whole body say no?
If you recognized yourself, you're not broken, and you're not behind. You're a person with self-doubt, like me, deciding whether to let it drive. (Noticing the pattern at all is its own quiet power — more on that in "Unveiling the Transformative Power of Awareness.")
What could you do this week to be with your self-doubt in a new way?
How could you meet it head-on so that it is no longer something that stops you?
What could be possible 30 days from now with this new approach?
When You're Ready to Show Up Anyway
If you'd love a steady, compassionate space to practice showing up while the self-doubt is still there, that's exactly the work I do as a life coach for women. If you want a gentle first step, answering these six questions will help you see what's been holding you back, and you can always book a free call so we can take the first small step together.
With immense appreciation & gratitude. Always.
