Hey there, friend—
I hope this finds you living well and feeling inspired.
I’m feeling called to address something you likely continue to struggle with, despite all the healing and personal growth work you’ve done.
Self-Doubt
There are likely some areas in your life where you feel capable, confident and like you’ve got things pretty well-dialed.
What I’m referring to, however, is the part of your life where, despite having made some progress, you may still harbor doubts about your abilities and your worthiness.
I know how frustrating it can feel—to have done so much work and to have come so far and, yet, there’s this one thing—this one area—where no matter how hard you try…
You’re just not able to be who you want to be or do the thing you’re wanting to do.
Addressing self-doubt is one of the cornerstones of healing and personal growth because it impacts your sense of self-worth, which directly influences your ability to pursue things that are important to you.
Whenever my clients ask me how to improve their self-confidence and belief in themselves, my reply is always to “do the thing” you’re so afraid of doing.
Period.
Cultivating self-confidence is the way to diminish self-doubt.
When I was working toward getting my private pilot’s license, I had to overcome so many things that absolutely terrified me.
One of them was practicing power on stalls where I had to pitch the nose of the airplane toward the sky until there wasn’t enough airflow over the wing to remain stable, which would cause an abrupt drop of one of the wings, resulting in a nose-down spin.
Over and over again, I had to put myself and the aircraft in this position and demonstrate my ability to either prevent the stall from happening, or to safely recover from the spin once it started.
[ How’s this for an aviation metaphor for life?!? ]
Another was flying solo cross country flights—longer distances that required multiple stops before returning to my home airport.
These are just a couple examples of where I had PLENTY of self-doubt around my abilities as a pilot, and I also knew that they only way to be self-assured instead, was to keep doing the thing until it was no longer a ‘thing’.
I learned that by cultivating self-confidence, I was able to overcome my fears and my self-doubt.
It taught me to embrace new opportunities and challenges with a level of courage and resilience I didn’t know existed inside of me.
Here are a few things I apply whenever I’m up against self-doubt.
Practice self-affirmation:
When I first began flying, my husband had just left our marriage for the girl he was having an affair with. Interestingly, that’s what drove me to aviation.
I needed to do something that was intense enough to override the unbearable pain, grief and humiliation I felt. The loss + flying airplanes imprinted a mantra that I still live by today—Always Be Rising!
This mantra helped me stay focused on my own healing and growth—and aviation helped me to alchemize my pain into something incredibly rewarding. Both things helped me rewire my inner dialogue and reinforce my belief in myself.
And, it’s what got me across the finish line to getting my private pilot’s license.
Challenge negative thoughts:
While they may feel real, they are not true. Challenging your negative thoughts and reprogramming your BS (belief systems) to focus on the positive outcome you’re after is another invaluable practice.
Whenever you come up against negative self-talk, or you find yourself in the comparison trap (you vs others), simply redirect your thoughts toward who you’re becoming and what you are going to accomplish.
For me, it always came back to the whispers of Always Be Rising!
Celebrate your wins:
While this may sound like simple jargon, let me tell you that this is one of the most important things you can do to improve your self-confidence.
Take the time to recognize and celebrate your successes, no matter how small. Then go and do more of what you just did—and then celebrate some more!
Acknowledging your progress will help you counteract self-doubt because you now have a tangible result to point to, and your once-held limiting belief begins to disintegrate.
I remember the precise moment when I shattered my self-doubt around being a safe and proficient pilot.
I was still mid-air, returning to KCRQ after my long solo cross country flight, when Air Traffic Control asked me to make 3 left 360’s—meaning, turn left and make 3 big circles, before resuming course.
I could see my home airport and had already developed a level of comfort in this airspace, plus I was circling over La Costa—and I could see my house below me.
I remember having the thought mixed with intense emotions—tears sliding down my cheeks…
“I DID THIS!…
“I freaking DID THIS!”…
And it was amazing, and it was huge, and it was scary as hell—AND, I DID IT!”
All the self-doubt vanished in that instant and was replaced with a kind of self-confidence that’s inexplicable.
From that point on, whenever I’m faced with self-doubt, I pull up that memory and then I apply that strategy to whatever I’m facing in the moment.
I remind myself that if I can overcome big things in the air, I can handle anything life throws at me on the ground.
Wherever you’re at on your journey, and however self-doubt is showing up for you, know that your best weapon for battling this is to simply DO. THE. THING.
Simple doesn’t always equal easy. Yet, the formula is not overly complicated.
Your work is to be in the work, and being in the work means doing what you know you need to do, despite your self-doubt and your fears.
Something I often emphasize when it comes to healing the past and forging a new path is that there are no quick fixes, no shortcuts, no one size fits all kind of approach.
Being in the work is unique to each of us.
The Inner Work is a life-long journey filled with practices and processes that require consistency, tenacity, and a genuine desire to become a better person.
While that may sound like a heavy load and a long haul, it’s a beautiful path to walk once you start seeing the results and experiencing the internal shifts.
We all share these ongoing inner struggles, to some degree. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how committed you are to overcoming them.
If you need support—in a group or 1-1 setting—click here to get in touch with me.
All the love,
Tris
An International Bestselling Author, Lifestyle and Leadership Coach and speaker, Tris Thorp is one of today’s leading experts in the field of personal growth and leadership development, specializing in emotional healing, women’s empowerment and shadow work.
Having spent a decade traveling the world, being trained by and sharing the stage with Dr. Deepak Chopra in the field of social emotional learning, consciousness and mindfulness-based practices, Tris has a real gift for integrating the ancient spiritual teachings with modern-day science and mindfulness to help people all over the world let go of their past and create an empowered new future.
During her tenure at the Chopra Center, Tris apprenticed under the Chopra Center’s co-founder Dr. David Simon, co-facilitating the Healing the Heart and Emotional Freedom workshops alongside him. Prior to his passing in 2012, Dr. Simon appointed Tris as the person to carry on his teachings in the field of emotional healing. In addition, Tris was fortunate to be mentored by the late Debbie Ford prior to her passing in 2013, which is where she continued her extensive studies of the unconscious mind and concepts of the persona and shadow. After the loss of her two mentors, Tris went on to become certified through the Ford Institute as a coach specializing in Shadow Work and reconciling mental and emotional issues stemming from past experiences. She continues to share the gifts of emotional healing and facilitating this work in the footsteps of her former mentors.
Tris is the International bestselling author of Healing Your Heart: Rewrite Your Story with Awareness and Intention. A guide book to understanding your emotions, how we create our story and workable tools and techniques to heal from the past, Healing Your Heart stewards you through the process of releasing mental and emotional baggage, forgiving yourself and others, setting and enforcing boundaries and consciously communicating your needs in a loving and effective way so you can be who you’re meant to be, do the things you want to do and have all that you deserve to have in this life.
Tris is also the co-author of bestseller Mental and Emotional Release® with Dr. Matt James. Written in a language both professionals and non-professionals can understand, Mental and Emotional Release® offers real life case studies, an overview of MER and its foundation, step by step scripts to follow, and clinical efficacy studies comparing MER to other therapies.
Clearly in her dharma, Tris’s passion and dedication to gently guide people on their inward journey through personal growth is evident in her work as a Lifestyle and Leadership coach, Trainer of Mental and Emotional Release and workshop facilitator. She teaches various courses on leadership development, personal empowerment, social emotional learning and higher states of consciousness – both in online courses and her certification programs, live workshops, VIP retreats and 1-1 clients.
Tris Thorp is Board Certified by the Association of Integrative Psychology as a Trainer of Mental and Emotional Release ®, Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, and Mental and Emotional Release ®, a Certified Reiki Master, and an Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher with Yoga Alliance.
Tris is devoted to inspiring and empowering others to cultivate and maintain mindfulness-based lifestyle practices that lead to greater clarity, purpose and fulfillment. Through one-on-one coaching, online programs and live events, Tris specializes in helping people to fully release negative emotions, limiting beliefs and unconscious patterns, enabling them to make quantum leaps into the life they are truly meant to be living.