Why You Second Guess Yourself, Even When Things Are Working

If success is finally happening… why does it feel harder to trust yourself?

In this episode, I break down why second-guessing isn’t self-sabotage; it’s your brain trying to keep you safe. And how to update your internal “operating system” so your beliefs actually support the version of you you’re becoming.

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Transcript

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If you've ever wondered why you keep second-guessing yourself, even when you're doing the things and getting the results that you want, well, this episode is for you. I was recently talking with a colleague of mine who runs a small business. She told me that over the past several months, things have been working better than they had the entire year before. And it wasn't gradual either. This was a jump. Like suddenly everything was clicking. She was finally getting the kind of results that she had been working towards for a really long time. And here's the wild part. As things started working, her own doubt and insecurity actually increased. So now that she was getting the results, she actually was starting to trust herself less. And that got me thinking about how often we second guess ourselves, even in the face of success. And more importantly, why that happens. Because when you're doing the things and you're getting the results, and your brain is still going, are you sure this is the right move? Remember all those times that it didn't work? Well, that's when you end up negotiating with yourself just so you can keep going. You know, you're basically talking yourself into continuing to do the thing that is already working. You're just white knuckling your way forward, playing life on hard mode. And yeah, you can keep moving forward like that. But that is, well, it's exhausting and it's not sustainable. And that is exactly the kind of hustle and grind that just leads to burnout. So there has to be a better way. But before we get into that, we need to understand why this is happening in the first place. Because you'd think that once you started getting the success that you wanted, that all the doubt would just disappear. You know, rainbows and sunshine and confidence unlocked. Yay! But the reality is the opposite tends to happen. And here's why. Your brain's primary job is not to make you successful. It's not even to make you happy. It is just to keep you alive. That's it. Your brain's job is to keep the meat fresh. And that means that anything that is unfamiliar, anything that's different, it gets flagged as a potential threat. Not because it's actually dangerous, but because your brain doesn't understand the nuance. So all your brain knows is different equals unknown, unknown equals potential danger. And that sense of impending danger is what triggers the emotion of fear. And fear is designed to make you want to stop, to hesitate, and to stay where you know it's safe. So whenever you step outside your comfort zone, whether that's, you know, starting a business or changing careers or really making any sort of big life change, your brain will push back. And that's where the fear and the doubt come from. And the surprising thing is that this fear can actually get louder when things start working. Because we humans, we adapt. You know, we get used to the way things are when they're a certain way. And so if you've been used to struggling or to things not clicking, and then suddenly you're successful, well, that is unfamiliar. And things that are unfamiliar, even when they're things that you want, they get flagged by your brain as unsafe. The faster that that success happens, the bigger the fear response is. So all that second guessing comes in and it tells you to slow down, to rethink things or to play it safe. A lot of people will call this self-sabotage. And I really want to push back on that because that's not actually what's happening. This isn't self-sabotage at all. It's really self-preservation. It's your old self, that version of you that was calibrated for how things used to be, trying to maintain stability, not to hurt you, but to protect you. So if you feel like you're having this sort of tug-of-war with yourself, I want you to know that you aren't broken. Your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do, but it wasn't designed for the kind of life that you're trying to build now. So here's how I like to think about it. It's like having a brand new state-of-the-art laptop that's running Windows 95. The hardware is fully capable, top of the line, but the operating system running it is out of date. And until you update the operating system, there's going to be a lot of friction. And that's what's happening when that self-doubt starts to creep in in the face of success. It means that your identity hasn't caught up to your reality. And that gap is where all that noise and friction lives. So if you want this to feel easier, if you don't want to have to keep white knuckling your way through to success, then you have to update your own internal operating system. And what that actually means is that you have to recalibrate your beliefs to match who you're becoming, not who you used to be. Because your current beliefs were built for a very different version of you, a version of you who had different experiences, different results, and a different sense of what was possible. And if you don't consciously update your beliefs, your brain is just going to keep trying to pull you back into alignment with that old version of you. So here's the shift that actually is going to make a difference. A belief is really nothing more than a decision that you made at some point in your life about how the world works. That's it. It's not a truth. It's not a fixed certainty. It's a conclusion that you came to probably a while ago and usually based on what worked for you at the time. And then you kept reinforcing that conclusion. And so that means that if a belief is created through decision, then it can be changed through decision. And that's where most people get stuck because if someone thinks that their beliefs are fixed, then their only option is to fight their own thoughts or override them with willpower. And that's hard and it's not sustainable. And again, it leads to burnout, not the best way to do things. But if you understand that your beliefs are merely decisions, well, now you have agency. Now you can actually look at your belief and ask: is this aligned with where I'm going? Or is this keeping me anchored to where I've been? And if that belief isn't aligned, well, you get to choose again. You get to decide something new. And your brain, being the congruence-making machine that it is, will then start to gather evidence to support that new belief that you've chosen. Okay, so quick caveat because this really matters here. All of this is a lot harder to do when you're in red alert status, when you're stressed, anxious, tense, you know, your shoulders are up around your ears and your jaws cleansed. It's fight or flight. It's a threat response. When your nervous system is in that state, when you're in fight or flight, you got no interest really in updating your beliefs because your brain thinks you're in danger. Before you try to shift any beliefs, you have to first regulate your nervous system. You got to de-stress. Do whatever you need to do to calm that sense of fight or flight back into the parasympathetic, you know, rest and relaxation mode. Pause, take some deep breaths, come back into the present because you cannot think your way out of a threat response. You got to calm your nervous system first. So here's the bottom line. Here's the takeaway. The things that look like self-sabotage, that doubt, the resistance, all the second guessing, even when things are going well, that's not really sabotage at all. It's just your nervous system doing its job. It's your old self trying to protect you from the unfamiliar. So it doesn't mean that you're broken. You're just running an outdated operating system and you need to upgrade it. And the way that you update it is not by pushing harder. It's not by willpowering and gritting your way through things. It's by understanding what's actually happening and questioning the thoughts that are no longer serving you so that you can make new decisions about what you believe is possible. That's how your new reality starts to feel normal. That's how you shift from going through life on hard mode to doing something that actually feels sustainable because it is sustainable. You just have to learn how to outsmart your own programming. So if this resonated, make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. And if you happen to know someone who tends to be all up in their head about their own success, please send this to them. They'll thank you for it.