239 Get Out Of Your Own Head and STOP Underestimating Yourself (It’s costing you more than you think)

Speaker A: 00:00:00

I am going to take a wild stab in the dark here, but I reckon there's a decent possibility that you are a little bit blind to your own brilliance and that that could possibly be holding you back in life because you have certain gifts and certain qualities that you're not quite owning yet. So I'm using today's episode to show you what you're missing out on.

When you don't see the qualities of strength and resilience and ambition and compassion or whatever else it might be that everybody else can see, and how you can start to recognize that in yourself and then walk into it and fully CL that identity for yourself.

When women do this, that's when they truly shine, when they become magnetic, when they stop underestimating themselves and start leaning into their lives with more trust, more abundance, and more joy. Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to well Being, the podcast women who are done with the hustle and are ready to feel at home in their own skin.

I'm your host, Alix Life, therapeutic and fitness coach for busy women who want to do less, live more, and feel good from the inside out Week. I'm going to help you to cut through the noise, challenge the shoulds, and find new ways to live and move that actually feel like you. Hello there.

Welcome back to the podcast. This week, amazing to have you here as always.

And this week is all about uplifting you because I think it's safe to say that pretty much most women that I meet do not appreciate the gifts that they have. And when you can't appreciate the gifts that you, you have, you can't use the gifts that you have.

And one of the things that is really my mission when I work with women is to really help them to see that, to help them to see the amazingness that they have within them so that they can use that to shine, they can use that to become more magnetic, they can use that to get closer to the goals that they have in their lives. And we have a habit of burying that, don't we? We have a habit of downplaying the gifts that we have, of downplaying the qualities that we have.

And I think it is just about time that we all did a bit more of recognizing what is in there, recognizing what is good, and recognizing how we can actually use that to achieve more of what we want, to make our lives better, to bring more joy into our lives as well. And if you've been burying certain things for a long time, if you tend to maybe err towards negativity when you Talk about yourself.

Then it's time for us to change that. It's time for you to shine.

Because what I see in a lot of women I work with when they first come to me is they cannot see themselves as they truly are or as others see them.

They tend to downplay and deny their gifts and their qualities, and they judge themselves way more harshly than they would ever dream of judging anybody else. And what happens when you do that is that you get trapped in fear.

You make decisions from fear, and that means that you stay small, that you don't utilize the amazing qualities that you have, that you don't fulfill the amazing ambitions that you have for yourself, because you operate from a place of fear. And I definitely want to get you past that. And, you know, fear is one of those things that we all experience in our lives.

It's not the existence of fear that is the problem. It's how we deal with it. It. It's how we use that in the decisions that we make.

And I do just see a lot of women making decisions from fear rather than from, do you know what? I might fail, but I'm going to do it anyway.

So I'm really going to lean into that today and lean into this idea that you definitely have gifts that you are downplaying right now.

I remember reading a book quite a long time ago about, like, the difference between men and women in the workplace, for example, and it was saying in there that when men apply for jobs, they are much more likely to talk up certain aspects of themselves, whereas women are much more likely to talk down certain aspects of their achievements and things like that. They tend to minimize their achievements.

And I want you to be able to maximize your achievements, to be able to recognize your gifts, recognize your qualities, and use that to step into the identity that you are waiting to step into. The one that you're always saying, oh, I'll be able to do that when. I'll be able to do that when I've achieved this.

I'll be able to do that when I finally feel like this. The time is now. You have to start stepping into it now. So that's really what we're going to be talking about today.

And I think one of the interesting things I do see when I work with my clients, one of my favorite exercises that I often do with them is that I'll ask them, how do you want other people to see? Or how do you think other people in your life see you?

And it's always really interesting, the difference in the answers I get to that as opposed to the areas that they've been judging themselves.

So they've been judging themselves on their discipline or their willpower or how busy they are, or how much they've achieved or how much they do for others. And when I ask them and I say, well, what do you think other people see and feel about you? They will come up with completely different things.

You know, they'll come up with personality based things, they'll come up with how fun they are, how you support people not in terms of the things you do for them, but the ways that you support them, the ways that you're there for them, how strong they are, how resilient they are, how compassionate they are, all of those things. And these are qualities that other people are seeing in them, but they are not recognizing themselves. And I know, I know that you are doing that too.

Because we are often trying to hold everything together while simultaneously feeling like we are not doing enough. And because. Because of that, we believe that we are not enough. So what you're doing is you're managing everything.

You're managing work and family and meals and workouts and emotional labor and you're not seeing that. You're not seeing the resilience that it takes to do that. Instead, you often feel like you're dropping the ball left, right and center.

You're getting things wrong, you're making mistakes, you're failing at things, but never taking credit for anything. Never taking credit for all of the amazing things that you actually do. You're only seeing the failures.

And look, there's nothing wrong with looking at the things that have failed, the things that haven't gone right. But I think what we often do is we do that to drag ourselves down.

We do that to convince ourselves that we've not done enough or we've not been enough or we're not good enough. Instead of looking at those and going, that was a learning experience, here's what I'm going to take from that.

Here's how I'm going to take that into my next phase, into the next time I try and do that thing. So not only are we only seeing those failures, but we're not even taking advantage of them.

And we're certainly never giving our credit, ourselves credit for the things that are going well. And I think there's a lot of reasons that we do that. I mean, I think the first one is that a lot of us have normalized our own resilience.

All of that overwhelming stuff that you do, all of the things that you manage Every day, all of the things you juggle every day, it's just become your norm. So suddenly anything less than that feels like a failure or feels like you're being lazy or feels like you're not doing enough.

And so that level of resilience that you actually have created, it's just become your normal. It's become just the thing that you do. And so you don't recognize that. You don't recognize that power, that strength that you have within yourself.

I think that we also often have created such a high capacity within ourselves that what we're doing, it just feels normal. Others are looking at you thinking, how the hell is she doing all of this?

How the hell is she juggling all these balls all the time and seeming to stay calm? But you've created such a high capacity that you just keep doing it. It just feels normal to you.

And so you are not recognizing the gifts, you're not recognizing the things that have taken you there and that are carrying you through. You're dismissing them. Well, that's just normal, isn't it? That's just what people do. And the answer is no, that is not just normal.

I think also, of course, our brain is constantly filtering what we're doing against its negativity bias. That's just the way that we are wired as human beings. We are scanning for failure. We're scanning for where we're falling short.

We are not looking for what's going well. We're not looking at ways in which we have been awesome this week. And so all of that stuff gets brushed under the carpet and forgotten.

And what happens as a result of all of this is that you downplay your qualities, you downplay your strengths, you downplay the things that make you shine and you end up believing that you don't deserve more, you don't deserve better.

And I hope that today this will maybe prompt you into doing a little bit of self discovery and realizing that you do, you do deserve more, you do deserve to shine. All of those negative things, they are not the truth about you. They are just what you have taught yourself to believe about yourself.

So how can you start to recognize this? How can you start to recognize the great things that you've going on? How can you use this to really shine?

How can you translate this into a bit more abundance and joy in your life? How can you channel this into reaching your goals with a bit more ease, a bit more belief, a bit more energy behind them?

So there's a few areas that you can really start to work on or think about.

If you think that this is something that you should do, and I think that it definitely is something that you should do, because like I say, I would estimate that every single one of you listening right now is downplaying certain parts of what you are good at and certain parts of your great qualities.

So the first one is going back to what I said before, is that little exercise that I often do with my clients, which is, what are you judging yourself on versus what do you think that those who are close to you actually love about you? What are the qualities in you that they appreciate? And I reckon if you were to write those two lists down, they'd be very different.

You would be judging yourself based on output, productivity, what you can produce, what you can achieve, how, I dunno, how disciplined you are, how much willpower you've got, how thin you are, whatever that might be. And I can pretty much guarantee you that the list of what people who are close to you would say would be very, very different.

They would think very different things about you. And so doing that exercise is going to really help you to change your perspective.

It's gonna help you to see yourself the way that other people see you. And I think when you allow yourself to do that, you'd be very surprised at how differently you start to view yourself as well.

So try that little exercise and seeing yourself through other people's eyes, because you will suddenly see yourself very, very differently. The second one is be really honest about your qualities.

So as a little example, when I think about myself and my business, I certainly have had phases where I've just seen a lot of failure. Being self employed, being an entrepreneur, that's what it's about. You are going to fail over and over and over and over and over and over again.

No matter how hard you try, sometimes it's not going to work. No matter how much you believe in something, sometimes it's not going to work. And that's just the way that it is.

And for a really long time I used to think, it's just me, there's a problem with me, this is why I'm failing. And I was looking around me and thinking, well, everyone else is successful, everyone else is making it work.

But the more that I've seen, the more that I experience, the more coaches that I've worked with, the more I've realized that failure is part and bloody parcel of your business.

And you can use that to drown you and to convince you to stop doing the thing, or instead you can look at that and you can go, bloody hell, how resilient am I that I failed that?

And yet I picked myself up and I tried again and then I failed that and I picked myself up and I tried again and again and again and I kept adjusting, amending, changing directions slightly, doing it in a different way, saying it in a different way, trying something different. And when I look back over the last 13 years, I mean, bloody hell, for sure I've had more failures than I've had successes.

That's just the way it goes when you run your own business. That's how it falls in this kind of business.

But instead of me seeing that as a failure, which is what I used to, what I do now is I look at that and I go, bloody hell, I am so fricking resilient.

And that, that recognition is actually the thing that has really helped me, particularly the last couple of years, because every time something doesn't go to plan, yeah, okay, I might get a bit annoyed about it for a few days, but then I'm picking myself up and I'm going, yeah, but you're resilient.

You know that it doesn't matter that you're feeling a bit rubbish about that because ultimately you will pick yourself up and you will carry on because that is what you bloody well do. And that is what means that it's going to work because you have that resilience. Not everybody is going to do that.

Plenty of people would have those failures and they would let that mean that they can't do it anymore. So that's just one example where I used to see lots of failure. Now instead I see resilience and I use that failure as well.

I take it, I look at it and I go, okay, how can I make it better next time? How could. What's the saying? Fail better, fail better. There's lots of sayings about this, you know, you should never judge yourself on your successes.

You should always judge yourself on how you keep going even through failure, and that you are going to fail. So just fail better, fail better, fail better, learn something from it.

So that's one of the things for me where I've got really honest with myself about, yeah, bloody hell, I'm resilient, I really am. So what are those things?

What are the little threads, I suppose, in your life that keep coming back and that make you recognize, oh, gosh, yeah, I do have this particular quality because that is the kind of stuff that helps you to build more self belief.

And I definitely have recognized myself that it has given me much More self belief where there have been times in the past where I've kind of carried on anyway. But I know that underneath I'm saying to myself, oh, it's probably going to fail, it's probably going to fail.

But the more I've allowed this to be an amazing quality in me, the more that I've recognized this in me, the more, you know, every time I try something, I have that feeling of, no, I think this is going to succeed this time. I trust myself, I trust that it's going to work.

So be honest about your qualities, stop doing yourself down and be honest about the couple of qualities that make you you. The next thing is remind yourself about those qualities every single day, the ones that you admire in yourself.

Remind yourself every day, even look at the qualities that you see in other people that you would love to have for yourself and claim them for yourself. Start to look at how you can embed those qualities into your life as well.

You know, maybe take a deep breath, close your eyes, and connect to how that feels within your body.

That's something that I've learned to do as well, is just you take that deep breath and for a moment you just let yourself feel that feeling of resilience or power or whatever that thing is, and you feel that in your body and then you carry that with you. You carry it with you and you keep reminding yourself of it over and over and over again. It's a muscle that needs developing like any other.

It's inactive at the moment because the other muscle, the one that leads with doubt and negativity, is overdeveloped. But you can develop it. And it's not about telling yourself things that are not true.

It's about amplifying the things that you have kept quiet, amplifying the things that you have maybe not recognized about yourself before. Once you get honest about the qualities, then you can start to amplify them.

And you amplify them by reminding yourself every single day about these qualities that you have, this person that you are, this amazing person that you are. And then moving on from that, you then start to make decisions from that place.

So rather making decisions from fear or decisions from doubt, you start asking yourself, what would I do today if I knew I couldn't fail?

Because I'm willing to bet that if you knew you couldn't fail at something, you would approach it very differently to how you would if you were thinking to yourself, well, it's probably going to fail anyway. It's probably not going to work anyway. I'm probably going to be rubbish at this.

You start to think, no, how would I do this if I knew I couldn't fail? That will really change how you approach things. That will really change the results that you get from those things as well.

And also thinking about how you can see this as an experiment rather than something you have to get right or else how can you lean into that idea of failure? How can you use that to help you to change and to adapt and to build even more resilience going forward?

Me and my business being a prime example of that. Like I said, fail forward. I don't have to get everything right, but I'm not going to get anything right if I don't try it in the first place.

If I don't allow myself to step into these qualities that I know I have. So step into them. Make your decisions from that place where you are, you're fully in that power. You're fully in that awareness of your qualities.

You're fully in awareness of the things that make you shine. You're fully in awareness of the things that make you unique. When you make decisions from that place, you make more authentic decisions.

You make better decisions for yourself. And then a final thing is what are things you can do to make you feel more alive and get you out of your head?

And I know this might seem like a bit of a sidestep, but it's not really. Because I think we live in our heads so much, don't we?

We live in our heads thinking, I can't do this, this is too hard, I don't have what it takes, I'm not good enough, this is never going to work. We do an awful lot of that to ourselves.

So getting out of our heads and getting into a place where we feel the energy, we can feel more alive in ourselves is really, really important. For one of you, it might be a big long walk in the woods, the weekend. For another person, it might be a high intensity run.

For somebody else, it might be dancing around the house, doesn't matter. How can you do more of that?

How can you bring in more energy that makes you feel more like you, that allows you to really lean into the things that are making you unique, the things that are going to make you the person that achieves the things that she wants to achieve. How can you bring that energy into the rest of your life? What are the things that you are going to do to help that happen?

And I think honestly, you have so much more brilliance inside you than you ever, ever give yourself credit for. So Maybe now is the time to start letting some of that shine. And this isn't about being arrogant.

This isn't about having an inflated sense of yourself. It's just claiming something that's already yours.

Claiming something that's already there, recognizing something that's already there and then amplifying it. Amplifying it by reminding yourself of that quality every day. Amplifying it by making decisions from that place every day.

Amplifying it by creating the energy in your body that allows you to see that in yourself every single day.

Amplifying it in a way that allows you to feel more powerful, that allows you to feel more confident in yourself, that allows you to feel more confident in the way that you are doing things. That allows you to make decisions from that place of self trust.

Because instead of you being the person that doubts, instead of you being the person that downplays your gifts, you are somebody who has stepped into it.

You are somebody who has claimed those gifts and you are somebody who is going to live from those gifts rather than continuing to bury them underneath and just practice it, embody it every single day.

Keep reminding yourself over and over and over again, these are my gifts and I am doing myself a disservice if I do not allow them to be a part of my life, if I do not allow them to inform the way that I live my life as well.

So really think about how you can embody that higher version of yourself, how you can live her, live those qualities as much as you can and see how things start to change for you. Not just in terms of your life in general, but in terms of how you feel about yourself every single day. Because that's what this is about.

This is about having that self belief. This is about knowing that you are powerful. You get to choose, you get to shine.

And it's only when you claim those gifts that you can really truly do that for yourself. So I'll leave you to absorb that. Have a think about that. Let me know how you get on. My DMs are always open on Instagram.

I always love to hear from you, but for now I'm gonna love you and leave you and I'll see you back here again next time. Thank you as always for joining me.

If this episode has hit home, share it with another woman who needs to hear it and come connect with me on Instagram at Life Edit with Alix for more real talk, mindset shifts and daily inspiration.

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