What To Do When People Doubt Your Awesomeness

What do you do when faced with Doubting Debbies?  The people who tell you that what you want to do can’t be done?  Or, worse yet, that YOU specifically won’t be able to do it?!  

Do you internalize and adopt their lack of confidence in you?  Do you get angry?  Or do you use their doubt to fuel your motivation?

This vacation week, I found this 1000 piece puzzle (with hidden objects!!!) at a consignment shop for a couple of dollars and decided to buy it to give the kids (and myself) something to do when it rained or we needed to have some indoor down-time.  

As we started the puzzle, and realized how daunting of a task this might actually be, my father innocently commented that he wasn’t sure we’d be able to finish it within the week.  And my husband agreed.  

Here’s where my semi-oppositional nature kicked in.  I try to use this particular trait for good, rather than evil, but when I’m told I can’t do something my inner voice automatically says, “Oh, Heck no!”  

When they were starting to prep me for interventions with my son after 23 hours of labor, on pitocin, without any pain management this is what my inner voice said to me as I stopped their evil plan and pushed that baby out.  When they were prepping the OR after birthing my daughter because (without getting into the gory details) the things that are supposed to happen after birth weren’t happening on their own in a timely fashion, I heard that voice kick in again, and no surgery ended up being necessary.  

“OH HECK NO” is the automatic neural network I’ve built when faced with other people’s doubt.

So when I heard two of the significant men in my life doubt our collective ability to complete the task at hand I knew that this puzzle would be completed before we ended our week.  When I found this sign at a store in Sunapee Harbor, I knew that I needed to have it simply from the fiery motivation I felt just from reading it.

So we worked on the puzzle on and off over the days and...  it was missing one stinking piece!  😂  While this was a good lesson in humility, I’m still going to own our success.  And anyway, my sign covers the missing piece perfectly!  

More importantly, I’m bringing my sign home to put in my office to fire me up when I start to have doubts about my own hopes and dreams.  And I’m encouraging you to adopt this attitude as well. 

If someone ever tells you that you can’t accomplish your dreams, I hope that your inner voice responds with a big old “OH HECK NO!”  And, if your inner voice isn’t quite there yet, feel free to use mine.  We are all capable of far more than we realize, we just have to be brave enough to stand up to the doubt.