Life's Discoveries...

Once we have found our Life's Purpose what could possibly stop us
from living it? Here are 3 big Life's Purpose "stoppers":

1. Self doubt 2. Relationships 3. Money

In this Discoveries Issue #10, we will look at
self-doubt, why it manifests itself and what we can do to overcome
it.

What is self-doubt?
You may recall from my previous LPD the 2 things we look for when
finding our Life's Purpose, these are: excitement and fear. The
fear we experience is the anticipation that something "bad" will
happen because (we believe) we do not have the internal resources
(i.e. courage, confidence, faith, skill, communication and
determination) to be that someone "unique and special" we need to
be to live the Life's Purpose we have found.

There are many forms of self-doubt
We have many ways of doubting ourselves and our ability to live our
Life's Purpose.

Here are some emotions we can experience and the
internal dialogue (self-talk) that goes with them:

§ feeling unworthy ("why me?", "who am I to . . ?", "I can't see me
doing . . .") 

§ feeling unready ("I can't do this until . . .", "maybe after I
have . . .") 

§ self-analysis ("can I . . ?", "should I . . ?", "what if I can't
. . .?")

Doubting our Life's Purpose
The questions that arise from self-doubt such as "why me?" do not
have a definite answer, and the fact that we do not know the answer
may cause us to doubt we have found our "true" Life's Purpose. This
doubt can manifest as self-talk that goes something like this:

"If I am feeling this uncertain surely this cannot be my true
Life's Purpose!"

If you find yourself saying something like this, well done - you
have very likely found your true Life's Purpose because if you have
all the answers the Purpose you have found cannot be "unique and
special" - if you know what you are doing you have done it before!

Living our Life's Purpose is our ultimate challenge, we can expect
there to be huge "why me?" type questions and challenges that
require us to use all our internal resources - especially those we
do not believe we have.

A 3 step strategy for overcoming self-doubt
The way to overcome self-doubt is to learn to live with it and not
allow doubt to become a Life's Purpose stopper. To do this we must
become passionate about living our Life's Purpose so that despite
our doubts we live it anyway!

Here is a 3 step strategy for doing this:

1. Answer question 4 from the Find Your Life's Purpose technique,
here is the question:
If you had unlimited amounts of each of the 3 resources you most
need (the 3 you identified in question 2 of the technique), what do
you really want most to achieve?
Make this the biggest, boldest and grandest achievement you can
imagine (see Discoveries #7). 

2. Ask yourself these questions:
a) Why is this achievement important to me?
b) How do I feel while I am having the experience of [your answer
to question a)]?
These questions together reveal one or more of your values; a value
is:
"a state of being that is important for your mind and body to feel
or experience".
Examples of values are: happiness, creativity, self-awareness and
freedom. 

3. Become passionate about the experience of these values and use
each action step towards your achievement as a way of creating that
experience. Passion is:
"the intense desire to experience now a value we anticipate we will
experience in the future".

An example of the 3 steps

1. Let's say your answer to question 4 from the technique reveals
your achievement is:
"To write an inspirational book". 

2. Asking yourself question a): "Why is writing this book important
to me" reveals the answer: "Because I have a message I want to
share"
Question b) then becomes: "How do I feel while I am having the
experience of sharing this message", and reveals the answer:
"Excited and fulfilled". 

3. Now design each action step towards the achievement of writing
this inspirational book so that excitement and fulfillment are part
of each step.

By ensuring you experience your values, using each step towards
your achievement as the "means" (something you do) to create that
experience, the question "why me?" is unconsciously answered by
(using our example): "because being excited and fulfilled is
important to me". It is the anticipation that we will experience
our values - our passion, that motivates, inspires and empowers us
to become the person we need to be, to do what we need to do, to
live our Life's Purpose.