How to Overcome Self-Doubt | Warrior Notes

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that help The US military veteran community to show up as the wisest, strongest, most capable versions of themselves in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about will most certainly apply to you as well. This podcast is made possible with the help of F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats that you can carry around anywhere with you in little portable packets.

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Really great company. If you wanna get 20% off your first order of f bombs, head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and use the code Warrior Soul at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you with the help of Save the Brave. Savethebrave.org is a five zero one c three charity for veterans. They run camaraderie events that include fishing, golfing.

They also do a lot of work with gold star families. And unlike a lot of other organizations, their board doesn't take a salary. Really great organization that is doing amazing work. So go and check them out at savethebrave.org. With that, thank you guys so much.

Let's get into today's programming.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

You know, this past week, I had the pleasure of interviewing a man named Gary John Bishop. And if you're not familiar with Gary John Bishop, he's the author of two very great books. The first one is Unfuck Yourself. The second one is Stop Doing That Shit. Great titles.

Right? But he brought something up during the conversation that I think we need to address here and that is that if you don't fix your problems, you don't fix the shit that's going on inside of your head, it doesn't matter how much money you make, how much success you obtain, how much fame you get. You are going to put yourself into a situation where you're going to start sabotaging yourself. Where you are going to constantly throw a grenade on anything that you've accomplished. And you see that all the time in Hollywood.

You see all these people with all the money in the world, with all the fame in the world who are constantly wrecking their lives. And we do it too, we just do it on lower levels. The media doesn't care when I throw a grenade on myself. They don't care when I'm sabotaging anything because I'm not famous. Same thing with you.

But we do it over and over and over again and this is something that tends to hold us back. And it emanates from a lot of the stories we tell ourselves about us, about the world and about life. It emanates from our feelings about those three things. And that's what you'll get if you read those books by Gary John Bishop. What I want to talk about today is a question that comes up quite often.

And it's a question that I think is very important for us to address, but the answer is not necessarily going to contain what you think it's going to contain. And that's this: How do you overcome self doubt? How do you overcome self doubt? And it's a big question, right? Because everybody experiences it.

I don't care who you are, I don't care what you've done with your life, everybody has a period of time where they go and they do something that they don't think they're going to get through or they don't think that they're going to be good enough to accomplish. And if you haven't been in a situation like that, then you probably haven't tested yourself before and you probably need to set some higher standards for yourself. But here's the deal. What I think a lot of people think is that there's some sort of trick or some sort of thing that you can do that is immediately going to take away the self doubt. And what I want to tell you is this, and I'm nobody big, but but I experience self doubt every single day.

I have self doubt centered around this podcast. Right? I can't tell you the number of times that I've sat here, tried to record a show, thought that I sounded completely stupid, erased the whole thing, and then rerecord it. Right? I've wasted hours here doing that.

I can tell you that upfront. I can't tell you the amount of times as an entrepreneur. I have worked on a product, thought that it wasn't gonna sell and that nobody was gonna like it. And then tanked the whole thing, put it on hold for six months and then came back to it, put it out there and then guess what? It sold.

Right? I can't tell you the amount of ideas that I've sat on and waited on for years. This podcast is another example of that. Again, you know, I waited years to start a podcast because I didn't think that I had the right tools or I didn't have the right resources or that it wasn't the right time. All of these are examples of self doubt and every single one of us goes through them.

But how do you overcome it? How does anybody do anything if everybody has self doubt? And this is the biggest thing that you need to understand. Self doubt comes about because we keep it in our heads. We keep it in our heads.

Rather than going out and actually acting, we sit there and we think about what we're supposed to do. We think about the thing ahead of us. I'll give you another example of this. Whenever I am going to go to jiu-jitsu practice, I will sit here, it'll be toward the end of my day of work, and my jiu-jitsu practice starts at 07:15 p. M.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And so I'll sit here and then it'll be around 06:30 and I'll start thinking to myself, oh man, really want to go? You know what, I'm probably going to be tired, I'm probably going to be sore, I'm not going to be able to sleep at night because my heart rate is going to go so fast, know, and then I still gotta cook dinner and and maybe I just wanna stay home and and spend some time with Shauna. And then, you know, 06:45 will come and I'll I'll I'll keep telling myself that story and then 7PM will come and I'll be like, you know what? Let me just go do it.

Let me just get out the door, go to the car, put on the gi, head to practice. And then I'll drive all the way to the jiu-jitsu school. I'll sit outside for a couple of minutes, I'll be like, well, maybe they're not in there. Maybe coach cancelled practice and I didn't know it. So I'll go and I'll look at my schedule and be like, nope, nope, didn't cancel practice, so I guess I'm gonna go in there.

And I'll sit there and I'll be like, oh man, why am I doing this? And I'll go in and then practice will start. I'll have a great time. I'll get a sweat on and yeah, jiu-jitsu is hard, right? I get choked out of punch.

I get arm barred, I get kimura'd, all that stuff. But after practice, I always feel great. I always feel like I had such a great time and I'm energized and I come home and I get great sleep. And then I wake up in the morning I feel so good about myself that I went to practice that day. Essentially what happens there is that I'm thinking about it, right?

And it's almost like the the part before I'm actually taking action is worse than the actual practice itself. Right? Just thinking about practice is worse than the actual practice and what you've got to go through there. And that's what we do to ourselves in our lives. Right?

You think about something, you think about how hard it's gonna be, you think about all the things that you need to do and you think about the long road ahead. But once you start taking action, that's what takes the self doubt away. A lot of this audience has been to boot camp whether you were in the Marine Corps, whether you were in the Army, the Navy or the Air Force, right? Or the Coast Guard. And the worst part about boot camp for me was the day before.

I'm sitting at home and I'm so nervous and I'm like looking at my mom I'm like I'm gonna miss my mom, I'm gonna miss my house, gonna miss my neighborhood, I'm gonna miss my friends, I'm gonna miss my girlfriend and then you know the recruiter came to my house the next day at 4AM, picked me up, drove me to the airport, get to the airport and I'm thinking about everything all the way up to it and then I fly down to South Carolina and the second I get off the plane in South Carolina there's a marine standing there he's like why the hell is your shirt not tucked in? Tuck that shit in and then stand up against the wall put your head down. And then right then I wasn't thinking about my girlfriend anymore. I wasn't thinking about my hometown or anything I was gonna miss. Was thinking about boot camp.

That's the thing. We sabotage ourselves when things are still in our head. Once you actually go out there and you start something, by the time I was three or four weeks in a boot camp, was just enjoying boot camp. I was just there to try to become a marine. By the time you actually start doing something, that's where your self confidence rises.

Again, I'll use the same analogy, as you go through boot camp you get better at wearing the uniform, you get better at speaking in the third person, you get better at drill, you get better on the rifle range. Then as you go through your Marine Corps career, at every level you're introduced to new things. New things that you have to encounter. At those levels you start doing those things, you gain your competence, and then that self doubt slowly gets put away. So my advice to you is this, and this might not sound like advice at all, but it is.

If you're experiencing self doubt about something, just go out there and do it. Go out there and do it. Right? Take action. If you're having doubts about your job, if you don't think that you can fill this position that you're about to go in, well go out there, learn, apply yourself, actually do the job.

And you know what, you might screw up, you probably will screw up, you'll probably make mistakes. And remember this, that's okay. That's okay because every mistake is going to teach you something. As long as you come at it with the right mindset. If you're sitting there and you're saying, well, I didn't really I tried my hardest on this and I didn't really make a mistake.

If you can't take criticism, that's one thing. But if you come into it with the mindset, the white belt mindset, right? That's in jiu-jitsu, when you start out, you get a white belt. Right? And you're getting choked out, you're getting arm barred, all this stuff.

But if you're humble and you learn why you're getting choked out, why you're getting arm barred, and you keep practicing and you don't let that get in your way, and slowly you're getting better at it. Right? It's the same thing with life. Anything that you do, you're gonna get choked out. You're gonna get dust kicked up in your face.

Right? You're gonna fall on your face Many times, over and over and over again. You're going to fail. Be okay with that. Because every failure is an opportunity to get better. Every obstacle you face is an opportunity to come up with a solution that is going to make your life better.

That's going to bring you closer to that person that you want to be. And that doesn't mean that self doubt is going to go away because it's not. You're going to still have those doubts in your head about what you can do every level. As long as you're improving, you're gonna get self doubt. Right?

As long as you're growing, you're gonna get self doubt. But as long as you're taking action, that is what's going to erase the self doubt. Not immediately, but slowly. You are going to gain more confidence. You are going to gain more sure footing in the positions you're trying to cover, and you're going to get better and stronger as a person.

Alright? So that's my advice on how to overcome self doubt. It's not about overcoming it, it's about taking action in the face of it. Now, first off, for those of you who are new to this podcast, this is the Warrior Soul Podcast and my name is Chris Albert. Now, normally when I'm here, I'm talking to somebody who is a lot smarter, lot more accomplished, a lot more, I guess you could say famous and more notable than I am.

People like Gary John Bishop, people like Robert Greene, people like Grant Grant Cardone, can't pronounce his name, but great dude. People like Les Stroud, Donnie O'Malley, Vincent Vargas, Nick Koumalatsos, you name it, we've had them here on this show. The whole mission behind this show is to empower US military veterans to live their absolute best lives. We do that by delivering tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas. The reason why I get guests like that on is because I don't have all the answers.

I'm just a normal guy just like you guys and I have screwed up over and over and over again. I've failed over and over and over again. I'm not some guy who's gonna sit here pretend like I'm a baller driving around in my Benz or whatever the hell else people are driving around in these days. I'm just a normal dude who's trying to make it just like you guys. So I'm going out to try to search answers for you.

I publish three times a week. Mondays are normally interviews. Wednesdays, I'm either doing a Warrior Notes edition like this is where I'm coming on and giving you my thoughts about a subject or I'm doing an ask me anything. That's where I am answering questions about any subject that the audience brings up to me. Where do I get those questions?

I get them from our private Facebook group, the Warrior Soul Agoge Empowerment and Resilience Group. And you can join that, it's free to join, anybody can come on. And on Fridays, it's either an interview or I'm doing a second Warrior Notes. Alright? But three times a week, check us out.

If you like this podcast, here's the deal. I don't ask for anything in return. I don't make much money for doing this. All I really ask is that you guys go out and spread the word. My mission here is to help veterans and anybody else who's willing to listen.

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I also have a number of courses on building your own business, building your own clothing company, building your own lifestyle brand like this where you will run your own podcast, run your own media company and things like that. You can check those out as well. The biggest thing I've got going on right now is our private mastermind and that is the Warrior's Obituary Society. And that is a group of men who gets together to empower each other to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries. And we've got an eight week development program in there where you can design your own your own fitness plan, your own personal finance plan.

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Just please share these episodes out. That's all I really care about. So I want to thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you got a lot out of this episode and I'll be back at you next week with some more awesome content. We've got some great guests coming up for you.

I've got Austin Alexander coming up. We've got Baktash Ahadi who served as an interpreter in Afghanistan. Really interesting story there. Tons of content coming your way. So with that guys, I wanna thank you again.

I'll be talking to you soon, and I am out.