You can’t convince yourself to feel confident

We talk to ourselves all day long whether we realize it or not.

We live in our heads.

Making judgments and assessments about what we experience in a nanosecond.

And most of those thoughts are negative.

Focused on what is missing.

What could be a threat.

What others are doing, (and we aren’t yet).

What ifs and worst-case scenario planning.

It can be a dark scary back alley in our minds.

So, what do you think happens when we are faced with doing something a bit out of our comfort zone?

We naturally and unknowingly look at the task or the conversation or the event on our calendar through a fear-based lens.

None of us want to live in fear.

We want to be confident.

We want to approach our tasks or conversations or calendars ready to take on the thing in front of us.

Feeling calm, clear and capable of hitting targets and reaching goals.

When we *feel* less than confident – uncertain, insecure, inadequate, confused, scattered or anxious – we try to talk ourselves out of the *feeling*.

Those feelings seem to make everything harder, and we want them to go away.

The problem is – you can’t talk yourself out of a feeling.

Feelings aren’t easily convinced to calm down or change direction.

Ever had someone tell you to “Calm down!” or “Chill out!”?

How helpful was that response?

It usually churns up more feelings, like anger.

So why do we keep turning to our minds to take care of our feelings?

Because we are taught to prioritize thinking.

Being smart is better than being emotional.

Especially in a business setting.

Well, how about both?

How about being “emotionally intelligent”?

What would it be like to use your feelings for good?

To not see them as hinderances or hurdles to getting shit done?

When you begin to see feelings as signals, as useful guides that are providing you with in-the-moment information about whether something is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ then you stop fighting your natural human instinct to feel.

Running a business as a solopreneur/servicepreneur means YOU are the business.

And YOU have feelings about your business.

If those feelings seem to be getting in your way, keeping you stuck or stalled out, it’s probably time to explore working SMARTER, i.e., WITH your feelings instead of trying to override them.