← Ready For Love with Hilary Silver
Ready For Love with Hilary Silver
#118: Give Me 12 Minutes and I'll End Your Self-Doubt Forever
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Give me 12 minutes, that's all I need. Because that voice in your head that runs a constant loop of should I do this? Did I say the wrong thing? You're not good enough. You don't belong. Who do you think you are? That voice is running your life and you don't even realize it. And the worst part, this is something you are doing to yourself. So today that stops. Because by the end of this video, I'm going to show you exactly why and give you four steps. The exact same steps I've used with thousands of women and in my own life to end the self doubt spiral for good. Not just manage it or cope with it, but actually end it. Hi, it's Hilary. Welcome to the Ready for Love podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. And I would love your five star reviews. It really helps get us circulating so more women can find us. And also subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can share your thoughts and your comments and your questions with me. I want you to think about what's actually happening inside your head on any given day. Observe your thoughts. Should I send that email or wait, did I come across wrong in that meeting? Should I say something or just let it go? What if I make the wrong choice? What if I do nothing and I regret it? What if I speak up? What will they think? All the replaying, reliving, analyzing, overanalyzing your every move, second guessing yourself, questioning yourself, looking over your shoulder. It's exhausting, it's relentless. And it's enough to drive anyone completely crazy. They call it analysis paralysis for a reason, right? But here's what I want you to really hear. Not just nod along with me, but really listen to me right now. This is not a confidence issue. And it's not just anxiety or overthinking. And it's not just a quirk of your personality. This is how you treat yourself every single day. Think about that for a second. If you had a friend or someone that you loved and every time you made a decision, she leaned over and whispered to you, are you sure? What if you're wrong? Did you really think this through? What will people think? What if it all goes sideways? You would not call that friendship. You would call it abuse, because that's what it is. When this communication comes from someone else, it can be considered something called negative control, where the person says this to you so that they can get you to do what they want you to do. They get you to question yourself and they get you to stay small and perhaps listen to them. It's abusive and it's manipulation and yet this is how you are communicating with yourself every single day. Let that sink in for a minute. This is how you talk to yourself, how you relate to yourself and how you treat yourself every single day. It's pretty revealing, isn't it? This is the relationship that that you have with yourself. This is who you are right now and who you have been for a very long time. Most women don't even know they're doing it. It is so automatic and so constant that it's completely woven into the fabric of your inner world. It just feels like thinking, it just feels normal. But it's not normal and it's not okay. Your self talk is so very damaging and diminutive. It is a dysfunctional relationship that you have with yourself. Not kind, not loving, not accepting and not self trusting. In fact, it's a self trust emergency and a self abandonment crisis. Every time you second guess yourself, you forget who you are. You turn your back on yourself. Every time you outsource a decision that you can make yourself, you are abandoning yourself. And every time you play a conversation at 2am Will wondering if you said the wrong thing, you are leaving yourself behind over and over again. You've literally disconnected from yourself. Literally not giving yourself credit for who you are. And all you are just forgetting it. It's a lack of connection with yourself. And the longer you do this, the more you learn that you can't trust your own judgment. And the more you question yourself, the worse it gets. It becomes a subconscious pattern that's deeply embedded and so automatic. You have, without meaning to, built a very convincing case against yourself. And here's what makes this so hard to break. You have been a woman who second guesses herself for so long that it really is just the way you are now. This is who you are. In fact, you likely learned to speak to yourself this way. So it goes way back to how you were spoken to when you were little or all the messages that you received from those around you when you were a little girl. I heard it all. All the time. Are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure? Questioning me and my thoughts or my opinions or my choices all the time. It was debilitating. And I learned I cannot trust myself. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what's best for me is what I'm thinking or doing right. Someone else must know better than me. Someone else's way Is probably better. Can you relate? It took me years to. To unravel that for myself. So I know how hard this feels. It is hard to be you. It was hard to be me. It's hard to be someone who does this to themselves. Because all the self doubt and the spinning and the looking over your shoulder, it's not just a habit. It's a self concept. And your brain will fight hard, harder than you know, to stay consistent with who it believes you are, Even when who it believes you are is making you miserable. So neuroscience has a name for this. It's called psychological homeostasis. Your brain's drive to keep everything familiar and the same to keep you you even when you isn't working anymore. Your nervous system is not interested in your growth. It's interested in your survival. And familiar feels safe, even painful. Familiar is familiar. Even exhausting familiar is familiar. And this is why you can learn every tool, every reframe every technique, and still find yourself right back in the spir. It may feel like you're incapable of changing, or you may tell yourself that you're broken, but none of that is true. It's just another lie that you're feeding yourself. It's all just BS Underneath all of it. You still see yourself as a woman who doesn't trust herself. And your brain is just doing its job. So let's be very clear about something. The real work here is not just changing what you do. It's changing who you believe you are and. And how you talk to yourself and your self concept. The brain is not fixed. Neuroplasticity is one of our human superpowers. The brain's ability to form new pathways, to literally rewire itself based on new repeated behaviors so you're not stuck with this identity that you've been carrying. The old version of you. The one who learned somewhere along the way that her instincts couldn't be trusted, that she needed to check and double check just to feel safe. That she needed to look outside of herself for the answers and ask everyone else what they think to gain approval. She did what she had to do. She adapted for a very long time. Maybe it even served her. But she is not who you are anymore. Or at least she doesn't have to be. So let's talk about what you actually do about it, Because I'm not interested in leaving you with a great diagnosis and no plan. So I don't want to call these things that I'm about to share with you steps, because that would imply a sequence. And really, these Four things really happen together simultaneously. So as I share them, you'll see what I mean, and then I'll explain more fully at the end. So the first thing is, don't take the bait. The noise in your head is not the truth. It is old programming, a pattern that your brain learned a long time ago and it has been running on autopilot ever since. So whether or not it's still useful, whether or not it still applies, it's still on repeat. And when the spiral starts, when the second guessing kicks in and the voice gets loud, recognize it for what it is. It's not a warning, and it's not wisdom. And it's not your intuition speaking. It's a glitch. It's an old code running in a system that is already upgraded. So it's just old programming. The old you believes you can't trust yourself. The old you needed to check with everyone before she could feel safe. You've outgrown her. You don't have to take that bait anymore. There's a moment of recognition. It's the pause between the thought that you're having and the reaction. That is where you have power to change how this all plays out. So observe the thinking, hear the thoughts, hear what you're saying to yourself. Notice it, and don't take the bait. Second, understand that self trust is a decision, and then you will find the evidence. Self trust is not something that happens to you. It is something that you decide you do not. Wait until you feel confident to trust yourself. I know that sounds weird. You decide to trust yourself first and then you build the case. So look back. Not to ruminate, but to find evidence. Because it is there, whether you've been seeing it or not. There are times definitely in your life where things didn't go the way you wanted them to. Decisions that didn't pan out, words that landed wrong, that happens to all of us. I'm not asking you to pretend that those things didn't happen. But that's not the whole story. That isn't. There were also lots of moments where you were making the right choice. You had good instincts, hard things happened, and you walked through them and came out the other side. So you have a real track record of being someone who figures it out. You do. You will find evidence to support whatever you believe. That is not self help. Fluffy. That is how cognition works. Confirmation bias runs in both directions. If you believe, you will always get it wrong. Your brain will collect examples and evidence of that and it ignores everything else. If you decide you Are someone who can trust yourself. Then your brain starts finding evidence for that. So give it something to work with. Look backwards and see where you got it right, Because I promise you, it's there. And it's there a lot. When I was 22, I packed a bag and traveled alone to some of the most remote places in the world. No guided tour, no group of girlfriends, just a bunch of countries where I didn't speak the language or couldn't even read the language. And where I didn't know a soul. Every day I had to make decisions with each incomplete information in unfamiliar places and with no one to ask, should I take this bus? Is this person trustworthy? Do I stay or go? And every single time I figured it out. There were definitely missteps and things definitely went sideways. I had things stolen and. And I got on the wrong train and ended up in the wrong place. Things happened, but even then I figured it out. I got myself there and I got myself home. And somewhere in between I built something I didn't even have a word for yet. A track record with myself at 22. I didn't call this at the time, but what I was doing was identity work. My intention was to put myself in all kinds of new situations and see what I was capable of. To give myself lots of opportunities. To grow and witness myself handle things and to get by and to manage. To test myself and to see what I'm capable of. To become a new version of me. And when I came home, I was exhausted and tapped out. It was eight months long this trip, but I got what I went looking for, which is a belief in myself. A rock solid, unshakable belief that I can do anything. That leads me to number three, change. The underlying belief, the self doubt, the constant spinning, the second guessing, those are symptoms. The root is a belief. Usually something like, I don't make good decisions. I always mess things up. Other people know better. And that belief, wherever it came from, however long you've been carrying it, is a lie. Plain and simple. Just a big fat lie. A very well practiced, deeply installed lie. Replace it not with toxic positivity. Not pretending that you're perfect and not. Not just like flat affirmations that don't mean anything, but with something true and grounded. I'm a woman who makes decisions and some of them work out and some of them don't. And either way, I can handle it. I trust myself. Not because I'm always right, but because I know I can handle whatever happens when I'm not right. You have to start saying this over and over until it stops feeling foreign and it feels like you. We treat our beliefs like they are facts, but they are not. In fact, they are just statements and sentences and stories that we've been telling ourselves for so long that we've come to believe them as true. So the most liberating thing is when you realize you've been lying to yourself all along. And it's up to you to change a belief because you can, that you can write a new story and create a new identity. It's a choice. The realization and decision can happen in an instant. And then making it your new way of moving in the world, allowing it to really take root and become anchored, just requires a little bit of time and a lot of repetition. But your brain is listening. It's listening to itself and it's looking for evidence. And repetition over time creates mastery. So that leads me to the final thing. And this is the one that makes everything else real. Take inspired action, because action is what actually installs all of this. You can understand self trust intellectually. You can decide to believe in yourself. You can rewrite the story and all that matters a lot, but none of it actually lands until you act on it. Action is what tells your nervous system we mean it this time. Every time that you make a decision and let it stand without going back to agonize over it. Every time you catch the spiral starting and choose to stop it and not follow it. And every time you do the thing you would have talked yourself out of. You give yourself and your amazing brain new evidence. And before you know it, you've interrupted the old pattern. You have actively chosen a new one. And over time, the new belief is fully installed. You just now operate as this new version of you, the one who fully trust herself. There's no looking back, no questioning yourself anymore. It is such a relief. It is like total freedom. So, as I said, these aren't really steps to take in any order. They all kind of happen at the same time. You will just become aware of them when you're doing them and work on each piece of it when you. When you have an opportunity to do so. Meaning you can decide to trust yourself and then just leap into making a decision. Then because you made the decision, you created evidence right off the bat that you can do it. And then that reinforces the belief you want to have. And as you repeat that belief to yourself, it makes it easier to turn off the bullshit noise in your head. See what I mean? This is how to actively change who you are how you relate to yourself. Identity work is what this is. You can stop being a woman who doubts herself and has a bitchy inner critic and mean self talk. You can stop all your naysaying and analysis paralysis. It is a choice. You get to decide that it is no longer how you operate. It doesn't serve you anymore. And you have plenty of reason and evidence to know you can do anything. So before I wrap this up, I want to come back to something because I said self trust is the answer and I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. I'm not talking about blind optimism or toxic positivity. I'm not telling you to walk around thinking everything will always work out. Because the truth is, it doesn't always work out. Sometimes you make a call and it goes sideways. Sometimes you take a risk and it doesn't pay off. Self trust is not the belief that everything will work out. It's knowing that even when it doesn't work out, you will be okay. So here's the practice I promised you at the beginning of this conversation. Whatever decision that you're currently spiraling on, follow the worst case scenario all the way to the end. What is the actual worst thing that could happen? Say it out loud. What is the absolute worst thing that could happen? Could you handle that? Not could you prevent it and not would it suck or not suck. Because it very well could suck. It could even be devastating for a while. But could you handle it if it did? 9 times out of 10, the answer is yes. You have handled hard before and you are still here. And you have a track record of surviving things that you were sure you couldn't survive. And your brain is conveniently leaving that part out. That's the practice. Not everything will be fine, but I will be fine. So remember the voice in your head that's been questioning you and second guessing you and doubting you. It is not telling you the truth about who you are or what you are capable of. It's lying to you. It is the old you running old programming, living on an identity that you have outgrown that you outgrew a long time ago. And the answer is not to silence it or argue with it or wait until it finally goes away, because it won't. The answer is to decide firmly and then again every single day until it sticks, that you are no longer that woman. That you are a woman who trusts herself. That you make good decisions and when you make the wrong decision, you're fine. And you make these decisions and you let them stand and you learn that what there is to learn from it. And you keep going. You've handled everything life has to throw at you so far. You will handle whatever comes next. You will. So start trusting that if this resonated, go watch. Or listen back to the episode titled How I Changed my brain in 90 days. I think you'll really enjoy it. Thanks for being here and I'll see you next time. Sam.