Stifle Self Doubt to Prevent Failure

Self doubt is something that causes you to question yourself and your decisions. It usually stems from not believing that you have the capability to achieve what you’d like to do.

If you’re an entrepreneur, self doubt usually happens because you start looking at all the success stories of others like you. You see everything that they’ve achieved. They’re doing well financially and they have a huge following.

You look at them, then back at yourself and compare the two. Then you begin to feel discouraged or terrible about where you are in life. You look at their business growth and feel like yours is insignificant in comparison.

You may even start to doubt that you could ever have the same kind of success that the other person has. What you have to do to stifle this kind of self doubt is to remind yourself that everyone had to start somewhere.

There’s no such thing as an overnight success and no one was born a successful entrepreneur. Everyone who achieved anything worthwhile had to work hard to accomplish it.

Many successful entrepreneurs got their start by launching a business with a small product. They started in their home or their garage. They didn’t have a lot of money and had to bootstrap their startup.

Maybe they began writing one article at time for a client or blog posts for others before they built a solid following as an expert in their niche. Don’t give in to the self doubt. You can do the same thing that any other successful person did.

Start with what you have. If you’re creating an online business selling things to customers, you don’t need to start with that big, expensive shopping cart software that everyone is raving about.

Just having a PayPal button on your website can be enough to get you started. If you have a lack of knowledge or skills and that’s contributing to your self doubt, then learn as you go along in your business.

You can find free tutorials if you can’t afford classes. You can also ask questions. Most entrepreneurs remember what it was like starting out and will answer if you ask a question.

Work on having confidence. Do this by creating a success mindset. If you’re telling yourself that you’re a failure, that you’re never going to succeed, then you’re going to bring that about.

You’ll end up buying into that belief and you’ll make it happen, whether you want to or not. Your thoughts have power. You don’t want to say stuff to yourself that obviously isn’t true, such as, “I’m a million dollar entrepreneur” when you have $2 in your bank account because your brain will reject that logic.

Instead, you say, “I am on my way to becoming”… and then fill in the blank with something like “a successful entrepreneur.” Cultivate confidence by continuing to grow. Make a commitment to learn new things. Have goals. Be positive and avoid negative thoughts and situations. Take risks and celebrate all your wins. Each small achievement builds your confidence.

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While it isn’t always good to compare yourself to others, it can be a boost to your self esteem and give you a true picture of marketers in a way that lessens your own anxiety. Some of what you see will be good and encouraging and some might be eye-opening to your own struggles.

At the very least, you should learn that no one is perfect or always experiences success. As a marketer, it’s likely that you follow many other marketers. Dig a little deeper into some of those you subscribe to and try to pick out a few things they might be doing wrong.

Maybe they have some gaps in their products or their video marketing could use some polishing. It could be that even those you admire constantly have some ideas and strategies that you don’t agree with. No one is perfect and gets it right every time – even the most successful of online entrepreneurs.

All suffer from failures and setbacks, but you’ll soon learn as you peer into the online lives of your fellow marketers, that the failures don’t define who the successful ones are. The successful marketers view failures as a chance to learn, pick up the pieces and try again.

The successes will likely far outweigh the failures. And some marketing strategies may appeal and work for others, but not for you. When you see your fellow marketers as humans who have different tastes, ambitions and talents than you, perhaps you won’t compare yourself unfavorably to them.

Online marketing is no different from any other part of life – different strokes for different folks. Striving for perfection can undermine everything you want to accomplish and set you up for failure because absolute perfection doesn’t exist.

Chasing it can only add to your sense of failure and inadequacies and cause unhappiness and great disappointment in your life. It’s best to think of your efforts as striving to be the best you can be. 

If you can view your self worth by knowing that you’re living up to your own standards rather than someone else’s, you can live the life that was meant for you rather than seeking perfection, which is only an illusion.

You may be waiting for the perfect time, place or scenario in your life to begin seeking success. You’re poised and ready, but the world isn’t – so you’re stopped in your tracks. Realize that there’s never a perfect time or place and move forward where you are right now in life.

The most successful entrepreneurs among us have begun on a small scale – refusing to wait until they had time, money and energy to begin their venture on a larger scale. Each success gave them more confidence to try something bigger and better until true success – not perfection – was within their grasp.

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Negative thoughts are the nemesis of creating a successful business – and life – for yourself. It’s difficult to drown out the thoughts that corrupt your thinking and prevent the flow of energy to make yourself better, but there are some ways to calm a racing mind and stop the flow of negativity that threatens to bring you down.

Perhaps you just need some quiet time – time for yourself to ruminate on the positive things you’ve accomplished. Meditation is one way to achieve the quiet time you need to get your thoughts under control.

Whether you meditate in the forest, next to a babbling brook or in a quiet place in your home with the television and other devices turned off, the quiet you’ve created can be a catalyst for more creative and positive thought patterns.

When you’re meditating, you may want to try positive affirmations as a way to quiet your brain and push out negative thoughts and feelings. An affirmation can be as simple as repeating to yourself that you’re stronger than all of the negative thoughts that come your way and that you can and will overcome them.

Journaling is also a good way to get your negative thoughts out of your mind, onto pen and paper and see them for what they are. Journaling lets you get and keep in touch with your deeper inner self and create an awareness that you haven’t experienced before.

It’s a fact that writing is an exercise that seems to reinforce and help you understand things better than typing or even speaking. Journaling helps you work out problems that may have cluttered your thinking in the past.

Reinforcing the positive messages you receive from yourself or others is an important and viable way to drown out negative thoughts. The above methods of affirmations, meditation and journaling are valuable tools to ensure that negative thoughts and feelings don’t remain in your life and that you can continue progressing to a more positive inner state of mind.

When weeding negative thoughts out of your life, make sure you surround yourself with positive people whenever you can. It’s easy to be influenced by people who always spout negativity and seem to want everyone around them to feel the same way.

Of course, it’s impossible to feel upbeat all the time. Life is sure to get you down once in awhile. But find a way that works for you to silence the negativity and stop being so hard on yourself.

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How many times do you think Thomas Edison failed in his attempt to bring light into our lives by inventing the lightbulb? Likely, he failed more times than we can count. Imagine how he felt when he worked so hard (during daylight hours or by candlelight) to find something that worked, came so close each time – and then failed with each attempt.

Then, finally it happened. One path Edison took led to the invention of the lightbulb and all other attempts were forgotten. We’ve been bathed in iridescence ever since. Edison and other successful entrepreneurs have all suffered from self doubt, but trudged on through the lack of confidence to make their dream a reality.

Think about the times in the past (even as a child) that you’ve persevered through disabling doubts that you could do something, only to find out that it wasn’t within your grasp even though you gave it your all.

Either you shrugged and went on to something else or withered away in self-pity that prevented you from possible future successes. Virtually every successful person in the world has failed many times before.

It’s doubtful those failures are even remembered because the success is so bright that they aren’t visible. Online entrepreneurs are highly susceptible to self doubt. There’s so much to learn and so many ways to go about each venture that it may seem overwhelming – especially to newbies.

Rather than wasting time stewing over each failure and making yourself miserable, make a firm decision to move on – and then do it. Begin on the new project immediately by setting short and long-term goals and really dig deep into how you’re going to ensure it’s a big success.

Each success will spur you on to the next project – and the next, until you have some firm accomplishments under your belt. Next time a failure happens, you can focus on the successes you’ve had to break the cycle of self doubt and begin again.

Before you begin a project or new venture, think about all of the possible scenarios that can happen. Make sure you include the worst-case scenarios along with the rewards that will happen when you succeed.

After you face your fears of “what if,” you can use those fears as challenges. Looking at fears as challenges rather than obstacles can only help boost your self confidence and help you begin to see success in your future rather than failure.

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Comparing yourself to other marketers can only be detrimental to your present and future successes. You may not be at the same experience level of those you’re comparing yourself to and another person’s success may not be the magical transformation you perceive it to be.

Self doubt can arise from the comparisons you make between you and fellow marketers. Some may seem to have the Midas touch to whatever project they choose to pursue – but you aren’t privy to what goes on before the huge successes.

Those entrepreneurs who are successful have likely spent an enormous amount of time, money and effort on their ventures. It may look easy, but chances are they had many self doubts about their own potential for success before it happened.

Comparison to others and the self doubt that follows goes on in every business - but it’s more prevalent in Internet marketing because you’re always putting yourself out there, presenting yourself and your ideas to others.

If the many failures that are sure to happen were figured into the mix, another person’s success may look entirely different to you. Huge and consistent successes of others can make you feel like such a loser – because someone is always making more money than you or seems to be successful with every launch of a product.

Comparisons like that are dangerous to your own self confidence and can defeat what you’re trying to accomplish. You may not be aware of their many failures in the past or of how many hours and dollars they’ve spent getting to this point.

One way to look at comparisons differently is to view them as challenges. “If she can do it, I know I can!” may be exactly the boost of adrenalin you need to take action and make your own success come true.

Many people who have reached a certain level of success use comparisons to others as a tool to strategize their future business moves. It provides quick insight to trends and what’s working for others so you can incorporate many of the same ideas for yourself.

Competition is fierce among many types of businesses – especially Internet marketing. Looking into strategies of other marketers can be a good thing if you use them as models rather than comparing yourself to them in a negative way.

Self doubt can become the nemesis of your future. Guard against comparing yourself to others in a negative light and focus on your present and future goals to lead you to the success you desire.

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Excuses stem from self doubt and may occur when you least expect it. For example, you may be on the verge of a big launch that you’ve worked on, thought about and strategized for a very long time.

All of a sudden (maybe in the middle of the night), you break out in a cold sweat and thoughts of failure that you can’t squash. Fear can take over your mind, body and life before you know it - unless you can weed out the legitimate fears from those originating from unfounded doubts about your abilities.

Although the groundwork of journaling, affirmations and meditation is helpful to assuage these doubts, fear is bound to occur. Rather than giving in to doubts right away and slinking away in the night, be honest with yourself.

How much of the self doubt is real – and how much of what you’re feeling and thinking are right out lies? When your thoughts and fears are legitimate, you should automatically start thinking of ways to turn things around.

By getting your fears out into the open, you can carefully examine them for legitimacy. Your fears may stem from thinking you’re not an expert in what you’re trying to accomplish.

If there’s something you don’t know, it’s fairly easy – with all the powers of the Internet – to find answers. Many times, it’s the experience you get from trying (and even failing) that pushes you toward the status of expert.

And even the thought of being an actual expert in your field may cause you fear and concern. What if you fail or let people down? Think about the worst that can happen if your latest venture fails miserably.

You may lose money and your time and effort may fall by the wayside, but you may also have learned a huge lesson. Try to look for the positives in any failure. They can help ensure your next success.

It may help you quiet your own fears and doubts by realizing that everyone has them. Even the most successful among us have been humbled by negative thoughts that creep into their minds. How they handle the fears and how long it affects them separates the true entrepreneurs from the wannabes.

The best way to stop making excuses and get on with the business of being successful is to replace those self doubting thoughts the minute they enter your mind. Experiment with what method(s) work best for you.

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Beginning an Internet marketing business with a product launch that’s much less expensive than some of your successful colleagues (who love to post their earnings from one launch that would pay your bills for months) can help alleviate some of your self doubt.

Starting on a small scale – perhaps a $7 product instead of a $97 one – can mean less work to get it off and running and a launch that can teach you a thing or two. The feedback and knowledge you get from beginning with a small launch is invaluable to help you move up to higher ticket items.

You’ll likely build your list with each small launch, too - meaning that when you do get to the big ticket launches, you’ll have more marketers who will buy from you. With each small launch, your self-confidence will build and self doubt will begin to wane.

Even the small launches may fail, but that’s a good thing, too - when you use the knowledge you gained to set your focus on something else or to use another strategy because the current one isn’t working.

You won’t have lost much time and energy if you discover these truths from a small launch. Self doubt is often made up from failures of the past, but your small successes can provide positive thoughts about the positive outcomes you’ve realized.

The positive feedback you receive from small successes may serve to set you up for huge success. There’s always something new to learn in Internet marketing. Beginning your business or venturing out in a different direction in small increments helps you sharpen your skills and become more confident in future business situations.

You’ll soon discover if something works – or not – and can quickly tweak or discard it at your discretion. Little will be lost if you haven’t invested a great deal in something you lack knowledge about.

Correcting your course along the way is the same thing pilots do when they’re approaching a bit of unexpected bad weather before reaching their destination. Look at the charts again, learn from the experience you’ve gathered during the small ventures and correct your course so that you’re firmly on a safe and steady path again.

Learn from other marketers. Follow the business path of others to possibly discover more ways you can promote yourself and become successful with your own enterprise. It’s sometimes easy to get lost in your own little world of strategizing and promoting, but you may become stagnant if you don’t allot some time for learning from others.

Trust your instinct and values when making decisions about your business. There are many shady marketers out there who might turn your head with promises of fast money, but if you stay true to your own values, self-confidence will become the antidote to any self doubt you may have.

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If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? Successful entrepreneurs have all experienced moments of self doubt, but also have an amazing ability to move past the lack of confidence and force themselves to go on.

That ability comes from experience and knowledge that even failure provides an advantage of knowing that you tried. Newbies to online marketing can sometimes find themselves in a perpetual state of self doubt.

They lack the experience to know they can overcome obstacles on the way to becoming a successful entrepreneur. That self doubt can make or break even the most successful entrepreneur and paralyze him or her so that no action is taken and failure is imminent.

Remember your school days? You were required to sit at a desk, learn, turn in homework and take tests to see what you’ve learned. Now, you have to take that initiative on your own.

Learning, experimenting and brainstorming new ideas is a bit like learning to ride a bicycle. You’ll likely fall several times, but eventually you’ll get on that bike one day and move on down the path like a pro.

After you’ve ridden the bicycle a few times, you don’t even think about how it works – you just do it. As an entrepreneur, you know there’s always something new to try or think about.

You can either choose to give it all you’ve got – or leave an idea by the wayside and move on to something else. An idea may work for some, but it may not be for you. You’ll learn to be discretionary in latching on to new ideas or different ways to do things.

Eventually, that ability will be so innate that you won’t even have to think about it as you move forward to meet your goals. Sometimes, you’ll try something that backfires or simply doesn’t work out the way you thought it would.

Rather than doubting your ability and becoming paralyzed by the situation, take a step back and remember what got you where you are in the first place. Even newbies can think back and remember what decisions led them to take action and become a marketing entrepreneur.

It’s likely a decision based on goals you’ve achieved in the past or a deep interest or appreciation you have for the possibility of making more money and having a business of your own.

And then forgive yourself for any mistakes you may have made. These mistakes give you the advantage of knowledge and you can now move ahead knowing you won’t make that mistake ever again. Your ability to succeed has just increased.

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Even the most confident person you can think of has an occasional bout of self doubt. The trick is to recognize it for what it is and then get on with the business of being successful.

That’s how successful entrepreneurs beat the self doubt plague. Consistent self doubt is as crippling as clinical depression and you may soon find yourself in a rut that’s difficult to extract yourself from.

As a fledgling – or seasoned entrepreneur, you have a lot riding on your ability to stay focused. Your ultimate level of success and satisfaction with your chosen career depends on it.

It’s imperative that you develop the resilience to overcome self doubt you’re sure to experience and replace that negativity with other thoughts designed to build your confidence rather than bringing it down.

Self doubt can cause indecision and procrastination – both lethal detriments to your ultimate success. Yet, every challenge you face in your quest as an online entrepreneur brings with it old hauntings from your mind that may prevent you from overcoming the challenges and achieving your goals unless you can get a grip on them and see them for what they are – lies.

The higher you climb on the ladder of success, the more self doubt you’re likely to have. What can you do to alleviate some of these obstacles and direct your energy in a more productive manner?

It begins in your mind and progresses to taking action as you learn you really are capable of facing and overcoming any challenges that come your way. First, you should know and be comforted that you’re not the only person (successful or not) who has suffered from self doubt along the way.

Acknowledging that others have felt as you do and became successful in spite of self doubt can alleviate your worries and help you get past the feelings more quickly. If you haven’t already set some personal and business goals for yourself, do it immediately.

It’s part of the plan that you’ll use as the map to the magic kingdom of success. It’s perfectly okay to set lofty, long-term goals. Just make sure you set attainable, short-term goals, too - so you can experience success in small increments along the way.

Short term goals are important because they provide continuous realization that you are moving along quite nicely and are well on your way to meeting those long term goals. It lets you bask in the sunshine of the smaller wins, while waiting for the big payoff at the end.

Some things will happen along the road to success which is beyond your control. It’s important that you recognize this and keep from blaming yourself. In all lives, a little rain must fall. Be prepared in every way you can and press onward to your goals.

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You may know for sure that you have the knowledge and experience to succeed, but there still may be nagging doubts that you can’t or won’t succeed online. These doubts can be confused with low self esteem, but they’re very different in how they factor in to results.

When you have high self esteem, you feel good about yourself. You may be physically fit, very intelligent or are known for being a hard worker who gets the job done. Self doubt may creep in when you’re faced with something new or different such as an online marketing business.

Even those who have been in the business long enough to have gathered a reputation of success can have doubts about their abilities to bring their businesses to the next level of success.

There’s always something new to learn and you have to be ready and willing to put the time and effort behind your ideas. Self esteem comes from positive self-talk that brands you as a person you can believe in to achieve the outcome you want.

Self doubt can crush all of that by focusing on past failures, comparing yourself to other marketers and giving in to fear. One way to fight self doubt and let your self esteem take over is to take action.

That’s the only way you’ll ever gain the experience you need to reach the business goals you’ve set for yourself. You’ll gain confidence as you progress through the smaller goals to reach the larger ones and this will boost your self esteem and push the self doubt into the background.

Self esteem is knowing your capabilities and self doubt only sets up obstacles for you to overcome to reach your goals. A little bit of both (self doubt and self esteem) is natural and can be good for you if viewed in the right way.

Your self esteem can push aside self doubt when it threatens to paralyze you and ruin your plans for the future. After all, you’ve succeeded with many things in the past and can do it again.

Reach back into your mind and remember the successes you’ve had in the past. If you’re new to Internet marketing, you may have to remember successes in other areas of your life, but as you overcome the self doubts associated with marketing, you’ll be able to feel good about yourself in that area, too.

Your self esteem will carry you far in life. The self doubt you may feel when starting a new business can be put to rest by taking action and gaining valuable experience that silences any questions about what you’re capable of.