When We Feel Like We’re Not Enough

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Picture this. You're starting something new. A new passion project, a new hobby, a new job, a new relationship, and you're so excited. But then it hits.
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That tight chest, the nervous sweat, that feeling of, "Oh man, maybe I'm not good enough." Today, we're talking about
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something almost everybody feels, but maybe doesn't say out loud. Self-doubt. And besties, let me tell you a secret.
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Everybody from our top athletes down to the therapists and mental health professionals at this table feel it.
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We're diving into where self-doubt comes from, how it presents in our lives, and maybe looking at some tiny compassionate
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steps that we can take to calm that inner critic. I'm Shelby. Welcome to Be Well, Besties.
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All right, friends. We are talking about a topic that is maybe a little bit more difficult today. So before we jump in, let's do that selfcheck-in that we
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always do that you are here sign so that we know how to arrive for ourselves during this conversation. Right? So on
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that scale of zero where we're calm and at peace, we're feeling good all the way up to five where we're maybe in crisis mode, we're feeling anxious, we feel
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like we need more support, where are we landing today?
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H I'm going to put myself at a solid two in the moment. Um it's I feel again I
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feel like we say this every time, but it has been a week y'all. Um and it's just been a lot of stuff going on. So like
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not feeling overwhelmed by it all in this moment, but just a little heightened. Also excited to be doing this again, which is is a fun thing. So
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I would solid two for me today. I think I'm going for 1.5. I don't normally have the 0.5 fives in there,
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but I noticed that a lot of times when we're offering it to other people, they usually put in a a little half there and we we give that permission. So, we don't work in binary. We don't, you
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know, so no particular reason why, but I think just 1.5 for me today.
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I think I would put myself at probably a two, maybe a 2.15. I know Bailey likes the 0.1's. Um, yeah, like Bailey said, I
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think we say it every time, but every week it's true. It's true. It's It's been a week. There's been a lot going on. Um I am just back from vacation and
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so I am uh feeling a little floaty and trying to get my literally floating.
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Literally floating. I was on a cruise ship for a week so I'm getting my my le legs back in. Yes. Yes.
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But right so we are talking about something today that is one of those things that probably everybody experiences but maybe we just don't say
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out loud. It's that self-doubt that a little bit of imposttor syndrome maybe feeling like we don't uh actually know
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what we're doing that hits me sometimes. Um yeah but I think I want to start with the story. So
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wow four years ago now remember it clear came to the B well team right and I left a job where I was sure in my skill set.
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I knew what I was doing. I knew how to solve all the problems that would come up. And coming into a new role where I was doing something different, I didn't
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really know my teammates, man, that self-doubt, that imposttor syndrome that wow, maybe they did not make the right
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decision hit me hard. Hard enough that I was sitting at my desk on a Tuesday afternoon like close to tears because I
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just kept ruminating on those thoughts that man, I'm not good enough. What if they find out? What if they decide that they made the wrong decision and and in
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two weeks they're going to tell me, "See you, sorry." And looking back now, it seems so silly because nobody on that
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team would have said, "Wow, you really suck." Nobody but me to myself. Um, nobody would have judged me for saying,
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"I I am two weeks into this job and I don't feel confident because that's silly, right?" But those moments stick out clear as day to me.
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Um, I was wondering for me personally, a lot of times that self-doubt, the physical aspects of it hit me before
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the emotional aspects, right? My body can tell what's going on before my brain catches up. So, what does that look like
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for you? If if you have ever felt or if you do feel those moments of self-doubt or those moments of a little bit of imposttor syndrome, how does it show up?
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Um, for me, the physical signs usually show up in like my heart is beating
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rapidly or it just feels really, oddly enough, like heavy, like it's beating hard. Maybe it's not even super rapid, but it's just like that hard heartbeat.
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Um, I get tension in my chest. I am like shivering cold, but then also somehow sweaty at the same time.
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Sweat. Yeah.
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And my hands are clammy. And um then it goes from the physical signs for me right into not right into a lot of times
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into like the negative self-t talk that can then kind of proceverate or spiral and just take off from there. So that's
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kind of my warning signs, my red flags that um that self-doubt is creeping in and maybe manifesting in a way that's not super helpful.
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Mine's a little different. Um, I am well literally the oldest at the table, but I don't know if that's the the answer or
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not, but it is very rare for me to not I'm not saying I don't have self-doubt, but it is very rare for that to kind of spiral into the next and the next and
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the next. Um, I have done a lot of work with myself over the over the years and with my these cool brains that we have
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and almost have a way to um really just jump into the positives that I know I can do. So, it's a little bit different for me sometimes.
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I think you make a really good distinction there, Nia, that I think is important for us to address, too. So, self-doubt is something very normal and natural that happens for human beings.
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We've talked before about negativity bias and how our brains go to can sometimes go to that worst case scenario. And actually having a bit of
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self-doubt um can help us perform better. It helps us grow into a better version of ourselves, right? But when it
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can and that is sort of different or separate than when that self-doubt can manifest into things like that
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negativity spiral or the proveration of thoughts where it is when you said the what if they find out that is like one
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of the first places that my brain goes is the what if I'm I don't meet their expectations what if I let somebody down
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what if I disappoint someone which is a huge sort of activator for me I hate hate hate disappointing people.
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The attack button on the one every time.
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Yep. It is a a hard one for me to navigate. And so like getting into that spot of what if I don't have the skill
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set? What if this? What if that? And I think one of the times so similarly I felt that way coming onto the BW team,
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but a more recent time that I can experience. I came in to a leadership role sort of all of a sudden and
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unexpectedly. And I've been leaders and other things, but never at this level or really in the professional realm. And
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when I stepped in to the leadership role, first of all, I was like, I have no idea why I was even chosen. Like, I
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don't know what I'm doing. and was automatically going to that negativity bias and looking at all the gaps of what
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a leader what I feel like a leader should be or what that should look like and how I had none of those attributes like how how far I was from the mark and
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so would sit there and think like okay I don't know what to do I what if they find out that I actually have zero idea
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what I'm doing what if I show up into a professional meeting with people who are at a higher status than I am and I say
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the wrong thing or do the wrong do the wrong thing or I don't have an organized meeting or and it just kind of spiral
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into that and then I struggle and get stuck there and it stays there for a while. Um, so I think that I I just
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wanted to make that that sort of the difference between self-doubt completely like typical for people and not that the
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negative selft talk isn't but but how that can kind of manifest into something bigger. Really Bailey is a fantastic leader by the way.
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Bailey is great. Um, and I think part of it is because you're so human, right?
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You do allow yourself when you make mistakes to admit that you made mistakes. Also, I think that example
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um during that time and this makes me think that maybe some of the self-doubt is our brains trying to protect us um
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kind of that survival mode. You guys, I have a really strong uh flight response when I love this about you.
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are when things are going wrong um or feel like they're going wrong or feel like I can't uh be the best version of
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myself in that in those moments. And I mean a flight response. I am googling flights out of the Springfield airport to anywhere else. And that's exactly
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what happened when um that kind of unexpected shift in our team happened because and I didn't even know Bailey
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was having these same same thoughts, right? I was sitting at my desk on the other side of the building and it just it that immediate self-doubt, that immediate I don't know if I can pick up
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the pieces that I need to pick up to make sure the team keeps running, to make sure things keep happening, that all the projects keep happening. So, it's it's really interesting that you
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were having a a very similar experience during that.
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Yeah. Well, and FYI, Shelby, I love like the nerdy therapists in me when we talk about like fight and flight. I love that
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your brain is like, "No, literally I will fly your flights out.
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Where can I get get me out of here?
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Those quick $79 flights like take me to Phoenix. I don't care." Yeah. You know what I'm really good at is sitting on the beach with a book. So, I'm going to go do that instead of
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worrying about all of the things I'm maybe not so good at.
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Yes. Yes. Let me do the thing that feels good.
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Uhhuh. Yep. What kind of environments kind of put you into or maybe activate that self-doubt a little bit more? And
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as a follow-up question to that, how do we maybe hold ourselves with a little bit more grace and understanding during those times because they're going to come?
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Yeah, it reminds me of times that um I've been lucky enough to work with children um small children. Yeah.
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Elementary school, preschoolers, preschoolers and parents and it's kind of a question of like why does it happen or where does it come from? And it's
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been really interesting and eye opening to me during my career that you do see even our smallest people already having
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that already having that negativity bias like we call it the thing that maybe they don't even want to try something new because they're afraid it's not
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going to work out. Maybe it's um getting real frustrated real real real quickly with a um a puzzle or a toy or something like that.
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So I think it's really interesting that sometimes the answer is I don't know where it comes from right but then the
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idea that we are all humans maybe it is that we have seen it somewhere before or we experienced it before we've felt it somewhere before um but it probably does
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come up in all of us in some aspect and I don't know if it's the question as to if we have it or if we don't but what is the next step we can put into in into
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place for ourselves um if something like that should come up.
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Yeah. And I think um the piece here that kind of stands out for me is that the normalization of it as a human experience. And we have, you know,
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recorded conversations from people that we would view as elite, the best of the best. Like there is a video recording of
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Maya Angelo talking about after she published her 11th book saying, "What if they find out that I'm a terrible poet?
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Like what if they what if this is not enough?" Right? They I mean similarly we've talked about like Simone Biles and
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during her last summer Olympics getting the twisties and her saying on camera physically it's there but mentally I
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don't feel confident in this and I don't know where I am. I think we see I I think part of where this comes from is
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especially when we we see how humans are either put on a pedestal or we are viewing people we see the end results
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and not all the practice. all the leaders in our lives, we see them in their moments where it's like they're stepping in, right? And we don't see all
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the work or the training or the mistakes that happened up until that moment. And so I think it's really easy to get selective about, oh, they're there and
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they it would came easy for them or was natural for them or there wasn't all of these mistakes that happened beforehand.
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Maybe a really salient example of this for me anyway is parenting. Like I think I love my parents and they did the best that they could, right? But their
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generation there wasn't a lot of I made a mistake type stuff. Um and I think about when I have two littles and I figured out how to parent the first one.
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I figured out what she needed and I was like, "Okay, like am I perfect?" No. But am I rocking the parent thing? I got this. And then number two comes along
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and I think I know what I'm going to do and I'm like, "Yep, copy paste." Right?
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this is we're just going to keep this going. And she needed a totally different parenting style. And so there
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was one very distinct moment I can remember is we were in Macy's. She was toddler age and she was done and we
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still had things we had to get done. And so she starts having big emotions right there in the store and it just like
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collapses on the floor. And I think many parents have had the moment where their kiddo is somewhere public and they just like limp body sprawl out and you're
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like, "Okay, I'm gonna look like a monster and drag my child out of here." A limp a limp child. Yes.
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And it looks like you're a terrible person.
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And so I pick her up out of the middle of the floor, pull her at least under the carpet and just put her in her lap in my lap. She's still just going just
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and I'm watching other parents and I just c have to keep reminding myself my job is to parent her. It's not to make
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other people feel comfortable like just be her mom right now and having all the
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self-doubt like am I how how can I do best for her? How like am I good can I parent her in the way that she needs? Am
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I going to show up? How am I going to harm her if I can't figure out how to be the parent that she needs?
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And that's such a good example. Sorry to interrupt, but you're a therapist.
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You're a therapist for kids and you still have those same thoughts and those that same self-doubt.
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And even thinking about like it happens often enough in elite gymnastics that they have a word for it. Yeah.
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So you guys, it's just human.
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It is. It is very very human and I think meeting in my best moments it is meeting myself with that grace and saying like
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this is human. Um I would love to say that happens 100% of the time but even being in this work it's maybe 30% of the
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time but it's just I think it's figuring it out and then figuring out how to repair. And I think that is the piece like when I think about other
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generations of maybe parenting is when I make a mistake cuz I'm going to make a mistake and hopefully I realize it. I
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don't always realize it. Sometimes it's the people that love and care about me around me saying, "Hey, did you know?"
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And that doesn't always feel good either, right? But being able to say, "Ooh, mom got a little bit or a lot of
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bit yelly there." And that is not super helpful. I I can tell that's not what you needed and I'm really sorry. Mommies make mistakes and I had a big feeling
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and was trying to figure it out and it wasn't my best moment. Can we try again?
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Um like not getting that a ton when I was a kid. Again, parents did the best they could with what they had and that
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is absolutely what it is. But trying to to model that for her, it does two things, right? It it gives me the
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permission to be human. It gives me the permission to say like you're gonna screw this up. And I talk a lot about um
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and I've talked to my own therapist about this about my sort of quitessential parenting moment will be when my kids are grown-ups and if I've
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done it well enough for them to be able to say like us have the relationship where they can come back and say, you know, mom, that thing you did wasn't
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super helpful. And me be able to be like, yep, it wasn't. I'm so sorry that happened. and it being able to to humbly
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own that, right? Because the second part is then that models for my people, my littles, the people around me that we're
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fallible. We're human. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to do the things. And it's actually not about the mistake usually. And that's not always
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true, but usually it's not about the mistake. It's about what you do afterwards. What the what the follow-up is.
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Yeah. We're just humans being humans, right? Yeah. Yeah.
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All right, besties. You heard it here first. Even therapists don't get it right 100% of the time, and that's totally totally normal. So, if you're feeling self-doubt, congratulations.
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You're human. But if you're looking for some tools that you can add to your toolbox, so maybe the next time you're feeling that, you can help yourself feel
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a little bit more grounded. Join us in our next episode in a practice for self-doubt. We'll see you then. Take care, besties.
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I'm unbreakable, unstoppable.