What Is Perception vs. What Is True Self Doubt?What is perception? To me, it is how you think about yourself and how you view the world. When you feel good about yourself, the world is your oyster. Conversely, when you are negative, then you perceive the world as negative.On a near daily basis, I am challenged with overcoming self doubt. A favorite thing for me to say to myself is, "I don't know how to do it, therefore, I can't do it." What is perception here? That not knowing how means that I literally can't do it. I talk to myself this way every time I want to expand my life into new arenas. For example, I was eating lunch with a friend and I told her how I have been spending a lot of time reading and writing on a particular subject and how it would make a great book. She asked, "So, are you going to write this book, then? Get it published and go on Oprah?" My pitiful reply was, "Wouldn't that be nice? But, you know I have never written a book before. I have no idea how to get a publisher. Maybe I will just do a series of articles on my blog and go from there." There was an uncomfortable silence at that point, because we both knew that I would never take it beyond blogging and that I was being a coward. She knew as well as I did the awful truth that my fear of not knowing how to write a book would stop me from going after my dream. We both knew that I was using that explanation as justification for not trying. I was squashing any possibility of my dreams coming true. I felt very tiny in that moment. I felt small and helpless because I believed the thought, "I don't know how to do it, therefore, I can't do it." When I talked to myself like that, I took it seriously. At the thought's root was fear. Deep down, I was telling myself that I was a person who was helpless and crippled by the fear of "not knowing how".
I looked for examples to justify my fear that if I did something, without already knowing how to do it, then I was bound to fail. Like the time when I didn't know how to ride a snowboard. I fell down getting off the lift, which hit me in the back of the head and caused lots of bleeding. Going down the snowy slope, I fell and suffered a concussion. So, what is perception? Is it reality? No. In reality, what I was doing was lying to myself. I told myself that not having the knowledge on how to do something meant that I was incapable of doing it. I linked the "knowing how" with "being able to do". One night, I was coaching a colleague, and I said, "Just because you don't know how to forecast a new product portfolio, it doesn't mean that you can't. You have an MBA and many years of Finance work experience. Obviously, you are capable of learning how." In that moment, I felt as though I was lecturing myself instead of her. I realized that, "I don't know how to do it, therefore, I can't do it" is just plain bad logic. When I went home that night, I turned the coaching onto myself. I listed out all the times in my life when I started out with no knowledge, learned on the fly, and succeeded. There was a common factor in every one of my successes: I sought out relevant, actionable information in order to achieve my goals. And, what is perception now? My perception now is that I am good at overcoming self doubt. I saw that my true self was very capable of finding useful, good infomation and then utilizing it to get what I wanted! In actuality, I was extremely capable of handling unknown situations. The real thought should have been, "If I don't know how to do it, then I will learn how." This is a thought of hope and speaks to the capacity that we all have to be courageous. I don't believe that some people are born with more courage than others. I don't believe that only some people are capable of learning new skills in order to achieve their goals. Each success I have had, others can have, too. Our wins are evidence that all we need is already inside of us; we lack nothing. We all have the ability to handle whatever comes our way and to courageously go after our dreams. What is perception to you?
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