Doubt – What the Coaches Aren’t Telling You
Part II (Recognize)
How many times in your life have you heard the feel good bromide, “Just believe in yourself?”
A well-intentioned coach, parent or friend believes in you but you’re full of paralyzing doubt screaming like a loud speaker “You’re not enough” or you cannot breathe from some suffocating moment from a prior setback like an injury or cruel coach hurling derogatory labels or you are confused how to move away from feeling like a hostage to your own mind because you compare yourself to someone else? While tenuously clinging to your wobbly branch that juts out of the side of cliff you just fell off, heart beating like the bunny chased by a coyote, wondering if you may crash unless you find relief, you understand what the words are – just believe in yourself – but you are definitely not clear on where to apply them, or how to see beyond the doubt to implement the concept while simultaneously silencing the chatter that screams, “I hear you…but WTF?”
That nettlesome voice of doubt that we all hear is chattering in rapid fire phrases and fragments like paper cuts. I’ll expound on the concept of chatter in later essays. For now in Part II of this series of essays on doubt, I share the first of the techniques that I learned from my coach Sophie from the Awaken Company[1] on how RECOGNIZE doubt and what I encourage you to consider as the primary tool for restoring your soul to move forward gracefully as you let go of the branch.
If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my first essay (here) on how I struggled to find my value and worth to see beyond my label as a Volleyball Mom to become a spiritual life coach who helps former athletes with their position change and new role post-sport. I never wanted to be or considered I would be a spiritual life coach. Never.
Yes. This is true.
Vehemently resisting the title “life coach” almost until a month before I graduated from my certification course, my own internal dialog, my intuition, reminded me to take it step by step until I RECOGNIZED what caused the block. In hindsight, it was my intuition that said, “take the course…you’ll figure it out later.”
I did not set out to be a spiritual life coach, but when I look back now, I see quite clearly, that I have always been a healer, in the role of championing others, cheering them on to believe in themselves, believed in God, and am witness the beauty in humans. However, doubt lived inside me parallel to the positives infusing me with a daily dichotomy. I had not completed something just for me since 2015 when I published my first novel. That was eight years ago.
Doubt thrived inside my mind relentlessly battling with my joyful moxie, grit, and effervescence. Those two facets of my ego were like two prize heavy weight boxers going ten-rounds with each other every day.
Ding…ding…ding…and the winner is!
With grace, I was taught how to ‘RECOGNIZE’ my feelings of doubt (…and more). I had an epiphany, an ‘aha’ moment, as a result of this invaluable recognition. My entire spiritual life coach certification journey was a series of enormous hurdles, tears, and constant resistance that I released as a result of me letting go of my own branch that I had been clinging to on the side of the cliff I thought I was tumbling down.
Perhaps you are asking yourself, “Did you move past the doubt? The resistance? The fear? How?”
In his book, “The Lighthouse Effect” Steve Pemberton writes, “We’ve all had them or faced them – doubts about our value and our place in the world, worries that we are not enough or haven’t done enough.” The theme of the book is to highlight people who not only change others’ lives but change the world – most of whom you’ve never heard of before.
I distinctly remember speaking to my husband, Matt, about an issue that had been a decades-long problem that I thought I had resolved, yet had arisen again, and I desperately wanted to resolve. Emotions I had stuffed down, down, down bubbled up just as if the inflammatory event itself was happening in real time, although years had passed. It is interesting to me now to write about this moment because it is hard for me to remember that in that moment speaking to Matt, I was also speaking to God. God listened to my plea for guidance. I didn’t fully comprehend how God listens and answers us and our prayers; for me, I just ignored Him a lot of the time fumbling around not paying attention. I had doubt and didn’t trust in Him. It was that simple. I said I believed in God. I said I was spiritual. But much like the “Just believe in yourself” platitude doesn’t always mean anything when you don’t know how to believe in yourself, I didn’t comprehend the magic of trusting God.
Problems are a spiritual disguise, Sophie, my coach, taught me. They are in disguise to take you to a greater space. Problems are just a symbol that call you to become more than you currently have been.
When our daughter moved away to college and then eventually decided to stop playing volleyball, I had some questions I had to ask myself:
Who am I
Who will I be
Who do I need to be
Ummm….I don’t know.
This was a problem.
I was 50+ and did not know. More questions arose. And I didn’t have the answers. I enrolled in an herbalism course so I could heal people with herbs. I didn’t finish. Failure – or what I perceived as failure – was slimy, putrid gunk I threw at myself when no one was looking. Perfection, that elusive whatever, pinched me and poked me. Oftentimes I joke and say, “I’m not Mary Poppins, Practically Perfect In Every Way…” but I falsely believed I was supposed to be Mary Poppins.
The emotions that I had stuffed had turned into problems and I tired of not having the answers. The weeds that contaminated the soil of my mind that I thought I had so carefully plucked once, twice, three time before, had not been fully eradicated, were taking root, and again poking up between my flowers. I had had enough.
Certain facets of my life remained unrequited resulting in resentment, anger, frustration, and judgement. I didn’t like those emotions. Sure enough, God showed up (hint: He is always there). He presented a lighthouse to me while I sloshed around unmoored, semi-rudderless in the roiling sea trying to find the safe harbor in between the waves of doubt. I once heard Zach Bush comment that you are either someone who believes in miracles or you aren’t. I believe in miracles. The lighthouse was a miracle.
Recognizing that there was something I was being called to do – even if I didn’t know then what it was I being called to do – allowed me to start to surrender and trust. The contours of the calling had always been there: I am a healer. And the one lighthouse pointed me in the direction of another lighthouse and then another. Learning to step beyond the threshold of what others wanted of me, that I have a pattern, print, and sound like no one else, and to move beyond what the world sees as success and anchor in the truth: “true success” is invisible because it is internal. Outward success, perfection, is a façade.
Perfection is a façade.
Dropping perfection became my practice every day. I didn’t have to be perfect to restore my soul. I had to be willing to heal myself and trust that I could restore my soul. Every time I came up against resistance – blocks that we all have, that I deal with – I choose to create space and keep going, even if I wasn’t sure why I resisted. Just recognizing the resistance became useful. Remember, I didn’t like the term ‘life coach’ pretty much the entire time I was enrolled in a life coach program. I questioned this. I’d never had a life coach and the people I knew who were life coaches had never done anything to me. But I felt “blech” when I said the term.
Bitterness keeps us stuck. We focus on that which doesn’t feel good. However, sometimes, we stuff down the prime reason why we don’t feel good and don’t remember. We meet someone who has a name that grates on us and we don’t know why. There’s a block. Only to remember, if we can, that when we were in elementary school someone we thought was our friend who went by that name had called us ugly or stupid then ran off with other children to play.
For me, I have to nurture a place of stillness in which to remember what ego would have me forget. It is not easy. I had to teach myself to recognize that when I was stuck or feeling in this state of bitterness, to remember God – “God, I invite you into my heart.” Thus, questions lead me to new answers; these answers helped me to find new action, and this called me into a more profound experience where I grew.
As you are asking yourself those questions I asked myself:
Who am I
Who will I be
Who do I need to be
…please do not fret if you answer, “I don’t know.” This only brings shame and that is one of the emotions that holds us back from feeling good, peaceful, and joyous. In the coming weeks, I will share more on shame; however, for today, I invite you to pay attention to one blockage, past issue, illness or dysfunction that you would like to restore. It could be anything.
Here’s the key.
This is what coaches aren’t telling you. Or didn’t tell you. Understanding the opposite of believe: doubt…question...hesitate...skepticize…distrust...reject.
Now you’re going to stand still and see the power within you.
When you feel doubt or hesitate or reject or distrust, you stand still and RECOGNIZE that feeling and ask God right then and there to provide you with the opposite: confidence…trust…assurance…conviction…aplomb…FAITH. And you do this over and over and over again to shift your focus away from, “I am only a volleyball player” or “the only thing I am good at is making baskets” or “I only know how to manage my life with a coach telling me what to do.”
I invite you to go through the door of “I am many things...”
No matter how discouraged you are or confused the decision to go through that door or fall into a hole is yours. God/ Source/Creator loves you either way. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” Are you going to create a personal brand – shift your focus away from your SSI (Sport-Specific-Identity), your “I am only…” mindset that keeps you in a shame blame victim cycle – to create an identity that will help you shift in access to choice to further a working career as an entrepreneur or intrapreneur? Are you willing to work to adopt a new perspective on believing in yourself?
Steve Pemberton urges us to “turn our doubts into destinations.” The first step in the journey to your destination is to:
Recognize.
Let’s go. Let’s shine!
The game is not over…there IS a 5th Quarter.
[1] Awaken Collective, West Palm Beach, Florida