If you’re an entrepreneur, you will likely experience several challenges while creating your vision. The challenge with these setbacks is the way we react to them. It’s a real blow after years of work to find that the first draft of your novel has a huge plot hole in it, discovering your business partner has let you down, or you’ve lost that big client.
This kind of difficulty or rejection can make it easy to fall into negative, doubtful thinking. This can mean a loss of focus or direction for your dreams. If you’re are in this situation right now, this article can help you to take your power back, stop doubt in its tracks. You can shift from feeling lost to thinking ‘what now?’
“Don’t confuse doubting yourself with accepting failure”
That’s the advice of Navy SEAL, Sean Haggerty. While we may not all be navy seals, anyone who is driven to create something or make a difference in this world will also come up against doubts.
Setbacks are the worst doubt inducers. The important thing to remember is that you have a choice at this point in the road. Either to notice the doubts and carry on or to quit. Choosing to quit means you’ll never have doubts again, you’ll have regrets instead. It’s up to you whether to sit in the darkness of doubt or step out and face your fears.
If you choose this path over quitting, you might still have doubts and experience some form of failure, but you’ll never doubt your ability to work things out. Accepting doubts will become easier if they don’t have any say in whether you succeed or not. Once you’ve decided you will never quit, you can give them less air time in your mind so that you can get on with the main event. Whatever it is you are trying to achieve.
The doubts of others will hold you back if you let them
Don’t listen to anyone telling you that you can’t do something. Just like your own doubts, these will only hold you back if you take them seriously. Self-belief essentially comes from within us. That is the first step. After that, having people around who are positive role models, who encourage and support us remind us of our true capabilities.
The more you surround yourself with these kinds of people, the better. If you can go to a seminar, or meet with a potential mentor, this will help dispel your doubts and change your focus to what you can achieve.
You are going to want to quit
Movies about successful entrepreneurs often give the image of them never wanting to quit when they face hardship. They keep going, no questions asked. But here’s the thing, we all want to quit something at one point or another. Even if deep down you know something is your life work, at some point or other you might think that you would just rather be watching Netflix than working on it.
The point is, you don’t need to worry about the desire to quit. You only need be concerned if you actually quit something that you know in your heart you’re meant to do. If it seems hopeless, but you still have a grain of hope that there is a way then keep at it. The desire to quit is not the problem in this case. The problem would be quitting when you know the right thing to do is carry on.
Failure is inevitable. But fortunately, failing often leads to other opportunities and ideas we would never come across if we hadn’t taken that detour. Those who are driven give doubt little of their time because they know that underneath that doubt, their resolve is to win.
This knowledge will empower you to be your best self and to push the boundaries of what you thought you could do. So you not only surprise those around you, you surprise yourself. And success is one sure fire way to kick doubt out the door.
