I found that doubt, or the absence of it, is great leading indicator of personal and company growth.
When I wake up and my doubts are “not there” or I realise they haven’t been there for a while I know I drifted into my “knowing zone”. The zone where I operate with high levels of confidence in the results and value my actions are going to deliver. A zone where failing is unlikely.
When I work with people and feel they “know” what they are doing, to the extent that doubt is absent in their words, I know that person and their company has hit their ceiling. Worse. I know they are already in regression.
Why? Because our current reality is a direct result of the beliefs and assumptions that got us here. Hence the only way to grow is to update the beliefs that created our current limits. The only issue is that to do that we must go through the “doubting zone” and we hate that zone so much we’ll do everything in our power to avoid it.
Am I in the knowing zone?
A simple way of testing if we’re in the knowing zone is asking “when was the last time I felt REALLY unsure? ”. If the answer is not for while then you have probably drifted into the knowing zone. You have opted into the comfort and coziness of knowing.
Proactively doubting our limits
So how can we make ourselves go into the doubting zone if we hate doubt so much? The trick I found takes us almost instantly from the knowing zone into the doubting zone is to “doubt our goals״.
Our goals represent our self-imposed limits. They are a reflection of what we believe we can achieve at any given time. After all, why set a goal of 1 million dollars if we believe we can make 10 million?
This is what makes doubting our goals so perfect for taking us from our knowing zone into our doubting zone. If we are willing to doubt our goals we are in essence willing to doubt our limits. And when we’re willing to doubt our limits it opens the “gates of doubt” which gives us the courage to doubt the original beliefs that created our limits in the first place.
Doubting our goals = doubting our limits = doubting the beliefs that created our limits in the first place.
Doubting our goals is the process of asking ourselves “why did I set this goal? Why not 10X?” and then carefully, without judgment, listening to the story we tell ourselves in order to explain our own (self-imposed) limits.
Doubting our goals is being ready to feel and accept the inadequacies we see in ourselves. It is an instant shot of humility that opens the crack for belief.
All belief needs is a crack
Once we manage to create that first crack in our knowing zone then courage can step in and gradually widen that crack into a gap that enables us to shape an updated narrative that redefines our self-imposed limits.
The trick is to stay in our doubting zone long enough for courage to step in. To stay in our doubting zone long enough so a new belief and new higher limits can emerge and we can tell ourselves a new story about what is possible.
So what is your goal? Why not 10X?