Your protective self doubt habits will always make sense in the context of your life - but that doesn't mean you can't change them.

So what are protective self doubt habits? They’re typically the behaviours that cause you some friction and deep down you know you should change them. Here are some examples:

• People pleasing
• Perfectionism
• Procrastination
• Passive actions (scrolling or binging)
• Providing yourself
• Placating others

Here's how they make sense. Let's take being a high or over achiever as an example. You might recognise this in your adult life if  you're pretty senior and you probably progressed quickly through the hierarchy. You pride yourself on doing things to a high standard, potentially verging on perfectionism levels. If someone tells you you can't do something you're going to dig in and flippin well do it.

It makes sense because of the messages you've received through your life. These can be explicit in what you've been told or implicit in behaviour you've been rewarded or scolded for.

Let's say you grew up with a challenging sibling. By contrast you were always told by family members "you're so clever". You might have internalised that message and thought, "well I do love learning and people seem to like that about me so I guess I'll do more of it."

You go through the education system which reinforces this message: clever people succeed.

Here's where it gets protective: you arrive into adulthood. You've got a good degree from a good university because that's what you've understood clever people do. But you've leaned so far into doing what clever people do that you haven't stopped to explore what you really want. So you return to your conditioning and ask yourself "what do clever people do?" …The answer comes back: ”Ah yes, get some experience under your belt.” So you get a job. You like the idea of being around other clever people and helping the next generation to succeed so you get a job at a university.

Then you go through this cycle every time you're confronted with a decision point. Instead of slowing down to explore what you really want you revert to what is sensible and what clever people do.

Fast forward to today and you've got a really good undergrad degree, a Masters and potentially even an MBA but you're not really happy and your overachieving tendency has you working really hard, fixing things left right and centre and you’re known as someone who gets shit done.

But the big question that's whispered in the back of your mind for years is now beginning to grow louder: what do I really want? And am I really up to it (whatever it is)?

You've been so busy proving yourself to everyone else, you feel totally untested to yourself about if you can be successful at whatever it is that you do really want....if you can ever figure out what that is. But the idea of figuring it out scares you.

And I want you to know: of course it scares you. You've never done that before. And doing something different might require you to step out of your high achiever persona and into a beginner persona which feels very threatening. It makes complete sense.

I also want you to know that you can do it. With courage and support you can totally figure this out.

I'm a self belief specialist and this is the stuff I love to work on. It's the deep work of reconnecting with your calm, grounded self and resourcing that part of you to be bold and brave and step out of your conditioning and your habits and into more alignment with your self trust and your self worth.