Seven Certain Steps for Dealing with Doubt
Doubt is a double edged sword, too much and you’re doomed, too little and you’re doomed. But, one thing is certain…
Doubt-free leaders are dangerous.
3 reasons you have no doubts:
- You’re engaged in small, inconsequential activities.
- You haven’t thought seriously about the the challenges ahead.
- You’ve succeeded at this before, and conditions haven’t changed.
Bad doubt:
Doubt is the result of either/or thinking.
There is no progress with doubt. Everything is do or die. Doubt ignores the process and demands guarantees.
Unhealthy doubt builds a prison of safety.
The person who constantly explains why things won’t work, has courage issues, or they aren’t on board to begin with.
Doubt that persistently affirms inaction is deadly.
Good doubt:
Everything great begins with doubt. Someone doubted that the world was flat.
- Uncertainty fuels preparation. Unexamined plans make you look foolish.
- Doubt motivates investigation. The pursuit of clarity and certainty uncovers the best path forward.
- Doubters drive excellence when they question plans.
- Successful execution includes doubt regarding success.
The more I know the more I doubt I know.
7 steps to dealing with doubt:
- Define the big win, before doubting the path.
- Set a short-term goal, before fearing failure.
- Evaluate risks.
- Determine the level of confidence required to move forward.
- Build relationships with key players.
- Develop fall-back plans.
- Take action.
A small step forward defeats doubt.
10 questions to answer doubt:
- Why is this important?
- On a scale of 1-10, what is your confidence level? Is that enough?
- How much more confidence do I need to move forward?
- What actions elevate confidence?
- What will we not have done, if we fail?
- Who has done this before?
- How important is this to organizational success?
- How are the strengths on the team suited to meet this challenge?
- How much difference would training make?
- What does a series of small wins look like?
How can leaders find enough certainty to move forward?
Facebook fans respond: “The best ways to deal with doubt include ______.”
If one waits to have enough certainty to move forward till they act, I do not even know what to say to that!!!! Hehe
Dan LOVE you started the questions with WHY!!!!!!
Tickles me pink!!!!!
Look, we are where we are today cause previous brave souls before us….where we are is cool and all but BETTER is waiting us!!
The fear of not doing anything was greater than moving into the fear of the unknown!!! Thank God for these Leaders bravery, if not for folks with GUTS like them we would still live in caves.
Today I started a new Movement, will end poverty.
Will also give the folks freedom from this money only to survive thingy.
See when folks ask you to dream they always start their line of whooey with, if money were no object, what would you do with your life?
Then comes their line of whooey!!!! Bottom line if what they were preaching was working for them they would most likely not be talking to you!!!
So if one is gonna be bold enough to ask that question they better darn well have a functional answer!!!
I do, the Movement to Better starts today. Wanna help? Just go to my blog and watch the video. After that just wanting me to succeed in my chosen mission helps!! If nothing else just WANT to believe I will succeed if allowing tells you otherwise.
Lots of changing going on and one is this greed mentality shifted to a more cooperative method.
We have unlimited abundance thanks to God, we just need a way to share it with one another better!!!
Ok I got that!! Check it out if you dare!!
See Dan I start moving into the unknown, today.
Do I know I will succeed, yep!! Do I know how yet? Nope!!!
My part is what….check!! AIM Academy!!! Do I know WHY? Yep my Momma has Alzheimer’s and I am gonna impress the heck out of this gal I can’t live without. Plus May 22 I will be sober and clean 30 years. See I owe!!
So you folks go to the Movement to Better blog and check out my cool video!!
What is is not the way it has to be. Why not move into BETTER?
All it takes is enough like minded thinking thinking it leads to actions leads to results.
Anyways take care Dan, cool post!!
The Movement to Better, help change or stay where we are!!!!
SP
EA
The people do not doubt have nothing to lose including themselves.
Today’s post reminds me that “Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.”
Khalil Gibran. Perhaps a response better suited for Grace Freak. I have forged a personal witness that Gibran is correct. Doubt is lonely, but faith fills the space when invited to do so.
I love how you start this. If you have no doubt, the first reason may be “You’re engaged in small, inconsequential activities.”
And I have seen this often when someone is confidently going forward with a task and not really engaged in “big” work.
It’s also intriguing to me to see how some leaders have no doubt, are supremely confident even as they go down in flames. Others have too much doubt and others smell the fear, causing failure.
I like your “good doubt” overview especially.
In Buddhism we talk about doubts leading away from the truth and doubts leading towards the truth. When we have the wisdom for them to guide us towards the latter they lead to great insights. In that case, doubts can be regarded as positive.
Amen to this post
Jim Rohn would agree and tell you to drive doubt into a small corner, but do not get rid of it because doubt has its place. -BEAST
This is truly one of the best motivational post I have read.
Bad doubts really do kill more dreams than failure actually does.
Great post. Lesson learned.