The Real Reason You Dwell on Your What-Ifs
September 3, 2008
When you are thinking of taking a step out into your next career move, or leaving a current relationship situation for one that is more right, you may dwell on “but what if ” “What ifs” keep you held back in your comfort zone. You probably experience this as feeling fear, but I think what stops you is not so much fear per se, but what is ‘underneath’ the fear.
Fear is a natural, evolutionary based response to new situations, but “what ifs” come from your lack of confidence and lack of self trust. “What ifs” come from your lack of confidence and lack of self trust. If you don’t trust yourself to be able to learn and course correct from any mistakes, if you don’t have a secure feeling that ‘no matter what happens, I will make a good situation out of it”, and if you don’t have a strong and accurate appreciation of your own value, then you will feel a need to maintain tight control over and pre-forecast the outcomes of any new step. Your worrying serves this purpose. When you have a concern about whether you are ‘enough’ or ‘have what it takes’, it will cause you to put a lot of pressure on any next step, i.e., you will give the decision an extra charge because it ‘has to’ succeed in order for you to prove yourself, redeem yourself, or finally find success and security, etc.
The most successful people, to use the cliché, “feel the fear and do it anyway”, because they have core confidence underneath their fear.
What wish do you have for a next step - but keep your wheels spinning by generating lots of “what ifs”?
Use these 5 powerful tips to move past your “what ifs” and start having a career with more passion or a relationship with more happiness
Here is how successful people who are not getting in their own way do it. Each of these effective approaches stem from their core confidence in their own competence and value:
- They don’t tie their self worth to the up and down results that ensue from their decision each day. Rather, they are ‘objective’ not ’subjective’ about the results that happen, and see each misstep as an opportunity to improve.
- They too put their attention on ‘what other people think” - but on a different aspect. Their focus is on articulating other’s challenges and finding improved solutions to them, not on what other people will think about them in terms of their personal worthiness, value, or competence. Their focus is not self absorbed on ‘how others will think about me so I can feel ok in myself,’ instead their motivation is intrinsic and their focus is on how can I make my best contribution in their world and feel proud of myself for that.
- They follow the motto: “Ready, fire, aim!” Its better to put out a first iteration and constantly improve it with feedback from the marketplace then to not leave the gate at all.
- They have a big picture and a longer term perspective. While appreciative of the small wins along the way, they don’t necessarily need to have the big hit results within the first few days or months - they have self trust and faith in their long term ability to succeed and a sense of deserving success.
- They use their obsessing about “what ifs” to put any helpful contingency plans into place, not to stop them in their tracks.
If you are holding yourself back from a career with more passion or a relationship with more happiness, you could have the core confidence necessary to ‘go for it’ in 8 weeks from now.
“Her approach vacuumed my brain of a lot of cobwebs and I left full of new perspectives and tools for the life I never thought I could have… My kind of stuck was that I knew I had great talents that I could be using better, but I didn’t know how to do it. I was standing at the edge of the pool, thinking “what is my talent, how do I do it, should I” But now I’M IN! I’ve left my job and I’m Unleashed! I now have an utter confidence that I can pull anything off!”
Lynette Benton
Join other New York area professionals who have had unimagined life improvements in my From Comfort Zone to Confidence Zone program. Seating is limited for personalized attention. Register and learn more here.
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