Indie Author Weekly

174: Self trust thought exercise when you experience self doubt as a creative

• Sagan Morrow • Episode 175

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In this episode, I talk about the balance between trusting yourself AND not believing that negative voice in your head which might be filled with self doubt.

As long-time listeners of the podcast will already know, I’m a Personal Fulfillment Coach when I’m not writing novels! And many of my clients first come to me because they’re struggling internally: there’s an internal battle going on, where they have a mean voice in their head that sends them into negative thought spirals.

I feel like we can ALL relate to this. Most of us have at the very least experienced this from time to time. And when it comes to ANYTHING in life — including our creative endeavours — we need to be able to differentiate between those parts within us.

TUNE IN to this episode for a 3-question thought exercise to help you navigate self doubt and improve your self trust.

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Hello and welcome to the indie author weekly podcast where I take you on the behind the scenes journey of my adventures as an indie author. I'm your host Sagan Morrow, and I'm an eighth time polyamorous romcom. Author plus I've also written several business books for solopreneurs. Let's dive into this episode. Today I want to talk about the balance between trusting yourself and not believing the negative voice in your head which might be filled with self doubt.
As longtime listeners of the podcast will already know, I am a personal fulfillment coach when I am not writing novels, and many of my clients first come to me because they are struggling internally, there's an internal battle going on where they have a mean voice in their head that sends them into negative thought spirals. I feel like we can all relate to this. Most of us have have at the very least experienced this from time to time and when it comes to anything in life, including our creative endeavors, we need to be able to differentiate between those parts within us. Both of these things can be true. Number one, you need to learn how to trust yourself so you can stay true to yourself, to trust that you are good enough to share your creativity with the world to trust in your creative process to trust in the path that you want to take in life.
And also, number two, you need to be able to overcome the voice inside your head that whispers that you are not good enough that tries to lead you astray. That tells you that your creative process isn't the right way to do it.
There is a balance between trusting yourself without believing the self doubt voice in your head.
How do you know which is which? How do you know which part of yourself to trust and to believe in?
This problem is why it's really important to not only focus on building self trust as an ongoing practice, but also to cultivate self honesty. And this is something that I don't see people talking enough about. But it is so important to learn how to be honest with yourself about which voice inside you is the true voice the core of yourself and again, this is an ongoing practice. It's not something where you snap your fingers and suddenly you're never consumed with self doubt ever again. But when you work on this, you can feel immediate effects. And it does get easier and it does happen faster and more smoothly. Over time as you continue to practice it.
So if you are in this situation that I have here today, three questions to get you started with us when self doubt arises and gets in the way of your creative process or holds you back from sharing your creativity with the world.
Number one is there any basis in fact to this spot? So checking with what is factual can help the logical side of you to recognize what is true and what is not true.
This can really help you to differentiate between them to really look at okay, here is the thought that I'm thinking which might be I am absolutely terrible at this particular type of art or creativity. And then we want to explore that further to then go okay, where's their actual fact in that? How do I know that I am terrible at this? And in that case, we need to define what do we mean by terrible? How do we know that well, the concept of being terrible at something especially when it comes to art and creativity? That is entirely subjective there is there is no fact based in that. So being able to really parcel those things out and to be able to look at it logically can be a really good first step. Here.
However, just because you logically know something does not mean that you know it in your bones that you feel it deep within you. And this is of course a really big thing that happens with my clients where they might know something, but because they don't really believe in it, it creates that that next issue. So this brings us to our second question. Question number two. What would be fun to create in this moment? If I were not sharing this with anyone else? What would I create?
So here you're really looking at what does it look like if you do it? If you do this creative activity, whatever it may be, what would it look like to do it just for you? And what if it's okay for this to be exactly what it currently is? What if that was okay?
So here you are giving yourself permission to enjoy the creative process and to create for the sheer pleasure of it, the love of it, the passion for it, doing it for the act of being creative, doing it for the creative process itself.
And this is a really good thing going back to a couple of episodes ago what we were talking about in terms of improving your relationship with the creative process. That's a really good thing to connect back with here.
Now, just because you give yourself permission to create something solely for yourself, doesn't mean that you are then going to feel so comfortable with sharing it with the world. So just because you have created something that you are really excited about it makes you feel really good doesn't mean that you are suddenly just going to be super confident with showing it and sharing it with other people. That brings us to our third question here. Question number three.
If just one person appreciated this or enjoyed this or got something from this, wouldn't that be worth sharing it with the world?
So here you're really looking at, it's not fair to keep it within you to hold it back when other people could enjoy it and benefit from it. It's not fair to them.
By sharing it with the world you are giving this gift to someone who really wants and needs it.
And we're also bringing it back to if we can change one person's life or taking that down even further. If we can change one moment in time for one person and help them with with looking at the world in a different way or, or even simply having that escape from the world and immersing themselves in some creative piece that you are giving them. That is amazing. That is so powerful.
One person one moment in time can mean everything.
And this is also really good if you find that you are the type of person who gets dejected by you, you feel like you are just sharing things and you're talking to a void you're not getting much feedback. You're not really seeing much results, people interacting with your work, really focusing on that one person and thinking about how much they are benefiting from it. That is really going to reconnect you with your mission, your values, the importance of the work that you are doing.
One person at a time, one person and one moment for that person. That is what matters.
Now I want to make a note here of really, really important to note here with all of this is that your internal voice and the self doubts that you might experiencing or the trust issues that you have may be entirely different to what someone else is going through. So just because you might have a negative thoughts viral or a voice that is filled with self doubt, just because you might have that and you know other people who also have it doesn't mean that the same strategies or questions or line of thought are going to work well for both of you.
It's really, really important here to always customize all of this. This practice of building self trust and self honesty is going to work best when it is customized to you and not just customized to you as an individual. But also customized to the particular situation that you are experiencing. Because if you are having self doubt with a particular creative projects that you are working on, or again anything in your life doesn't need to be creative based, but anything that you are experiencing just because you are having some self doubts right now, it doesn't mean that the self doubt has the same route to it as you might have experienced in the past.
And so this then means if you've been able to work through particular self doubts or or mean voice in your head in the past for a different creative project or anything else in your life, just because you've been able to work through that. If you then apply the exact same line of questions or you know, self coaching essentially is what you're doing here. If you apply that exact same process to the new situation, it's not necessarily going to work the exact same way, because there could be different reasons for your self doubt in this particular circumstance. So that's why again, you always need to be personalizing these and customizing these different types of things for yourself, and for the particular context of the situation that you're going through right now. And that is what I do with my coaching clients. If you want help with this with learning to trust yourself and to be honest with yourself opening up to yourself, building that relationship that you have with yourself and or with the creative process. Then let's chat. Visit Sagan morrow.com/coaching To book your coaching sessions. Link is in the show notes. Everything that we do is always customized completely to you as an individual as well as to specific contexts and circumstances and situations that you were in at this particular moment in time.
Now, we're talking about this today because I've been thinking a lot about this about self trust versus self doubt. While I've been doing reviews and rewrites of my latest work in progress, and I promise you that doing this type of work makes a huge difference to allowing your creativity to flow and for you to more fully enjoy the entire process that you are going through.
So regardless of the type of creative work that you do, and we are all creatives in our own way, work on cultivating your self trust and your self honesty.
Do you have any questions about anything that we've been talking about today? Submit your questions and your podcast topic ideas at Sagan morrow.com/question so that I can keep them in mind for future episodes. Here in the indie author weekly podcast. That my friend is a wrap for today's episode, access the shownotes at Sagan morrow.com/podcast, and share your thoughts about this episode on Twitter or Instagram. My handle is best saving lives. Please take two minutes to rate and review indie author weekly on Apple podcasts. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you next time for another episode of indie author weekly

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