The Real Reason You Doubt Yourself (And How to Break Free)

Identity feels solid until you start looking closely at where it actually comes from. In this episode, I explore why so much self-doubt stems from the stories we tell ourselves and why those stories are built on shaky ground.

I share the awakenings of Eckhart Tolle and Anita Moorjani and use their experiences to unpack the difference between improving the self and realising the Self. One manages symptoms. The other dissolves the cause. I also explain how Vedic Meditation helps you access a deeper, unshakeable sense of identity that sits beneath personality, memory and conditioning.

If you have ever wondered who you really are beneath the noise, this episode will open something new for you and address the real cause of any self doubt or lack of confidence that might be a part of your life.

You can listen to or watch this episode of The Path of Least Resistance below, or you can read the transcript beneath that.

Identity and Self Doubt

So many of us are plagued with self-doubt. And if we're plagued with self-doubt, how can we find our path of least resistance? How can we get rid of suffering? How can we get rid of stress if we don't have a real solid sense of who we are?

What if your entire identity, your personality, your story, your... "This is just who I am," was nothing more than a mental habit. Psychologists tell us that the self is a narrative that the brain creates in order to make sense of the world around us. But that's a narrative that's built on shaky ground, because the world around us is constantly changing, we are constantly changing, so it's a story that we struggle to believe in

So the real question is, if your story isn't you, then who is? And wouldn't it be nice to finally meet them? Let's find out.

Am I One or Two?

So to set the scene I'm just going to pull in a couple of quotes from some well-known authors. The first is Eckhart Tolle. If you don't know Eckhart, his backstory is he was in his twenties, he spent many years in chronic depression and then he had a turning point in his life. He had a realisation that basically turned his life around and he went on to inspire millions of people around the world. He's written several books that the most popular or the most well-known is The Power of Now. And the quote I'm going to read to you comes from that book and it's the moment that he had that realisation that turned his life around.

So it goes like this. "'I cannot live with myself any longer.' This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. 'Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me. The I and the self that I cannot live with. Maybe,' I thought, 'only one of them is real.'"

And it was that realisation that led Eckhart to go through a process of self-inquiry that led him to write The Power of Now, which essentially is a book about living in the present moment. And what Eckhart says is you can only discover yourself, you can only know who you really are if you are living in the present moment.

And the next quote comes from Anita Moorjani Anita wrote a book called Dying to be Me. Anita's back story, she was diagnosed with cancer. She spent four years on a steady decline until she got to the point where she was essentially on her deathbed. She was in a coma for about 30 hours. Her organs had started shutting down and her doctors didn't expect her to come out of that coma. Essentially they said they didn't expect her to survive at all.

But while she was in that coma Anita had a, you could call it an out-of-body experience, a consciousness expanding experience, which she shared in the book in quite some detail. And she also shared it on a blog post called My Near Death Experience.

I'll read you some of those quotes now.

"I felt no emotional attachment to my seemingly lifeless body. It didn't feel as though it were mine."

"It was more as though I'd awakened, perhaps finally being roused from a bad dream. My soul was finally realizing its true magnificence."

"I was overwhelmed by the realisation that God isn't a being, but a state of being, and I was now in that state. Since I'd realised who I really was and understood the magnificence of my true self, if I chose to go back, my body would heal rapidly."

And that is in fact what happened. She did choose to go back to her body and within about... she came out of the coma. Within a few days, her tumors had shrunk considerably,

and within a few weeks she was discharged from hospital. And she's gone on since to write many books and speak around the world and inspire many people.

So there we've got two examples of people who had life-changing events where they discovered that they're not their personality, not their story, not even their body, not their thoughts. Beyond all of that was where they discovered their true self. That was Anita's words, she discovered her true self. And then from that point on, that's where they found their path of least resistance, their suffering reduced dramatically.

The Limitations of Self-Improvement

So we've got to ask the question, why does this make such a difference? And I want to refer back to the previous episode where I talked about object-referral versus Self-referral. Object-referral is where we're looking at the world outside of us. We're relying on circumstances to make us happy. But the trouble with that is circumstances can also make us unhappy. They can also make us suffer.

So the invitation in that episode was to forget about outside circumstances, forget about circumstantial happiness, to get a deep sense of inner self to rely on the Self for a sense of happiness, for a sense of peace.

But if you're plagued with self-doubt, that's very difficult for you to do. It's like, "I'm anxious, I lack confidence in myself, I doubt myself. This is not gonna go well if I go down this Self-referral path."

So the path that a lot of people take when they do have self-doubt, lack confidence, and all these kinds of things, is the path of "self-improvement." "Well, if I can fix all these flaws that I see in myself, then I'll feel better and then I'll feel okay."

So they might use affirmations, visualisations. They might get a mindset coach or read books, whatever. Go through all sorts of practices in order to fix their flaws in the hope that that's what's going to give them a more stronger sense of Self and peace in the world.

And it does make a difference, don't get me wrong. However, that difference is kind of superficial because it does not get rid of the causes of the self doubt or the lack of self confidence in the first place. It kind of covers them up.

So the analogy that I use, it's like getting a seven year old to clean up their room. It might look tidier than what it was, but if you look closely, you'll see that the mess has just been pushed under the bed or it's under the pillow. Things have just kind of been hidden away. So yes, it does make a superficial difference, but the mess is still there.

And that might seem like a flippant comparison, but when you think of so many of our subconscious beliefs are formed in those years from when we're zero to seven. Even though we're here in adult bodies, we're still being driven by beliefs, subconscious beliefs that were formed in those years of zero to seven.

Self-realisation and Vedic Meditation

So there we've got two examples of people who had life-changing events where they discovered that they're not their personality, not their story, not even their body, not their thoughts. Beyond all of that was where they discovered their true self. That was Anita's words, she discovered her true self. And then from that point on, that's where they found their path of least resistance, their suffering reduced dramatically.

So we've got to ask the question, why does this make such a difference? And I want to refer back to the previous episode where I talked about object-referral versus Self-referral. Object-referral is where we're looking at the world outside of us. We're relying on circumstances to make us happy. But the trouble with that is circumstances can also make us unhappy. They can also make us suffer.

So the invitation in that episode was to forget about outside circumstances, forget about circumstantial happiness, to get a deep sense of inner self to rely on the Self for a sense of happiness, for a sense of peace.

But if you're plagued with self-doubt, that's very difficult for you to do. It's like, "I'm anxious, I lack confidence in myself, I doubt myself. This is not gonna go well if I go down this Self-referral path."

So the path that a lot of people take when they do have self-doubt, lack confidence, and all these kinds of things, is the path of "self-improvement." "Well, if I can fix all these flaws that I see in myself, then I'll feel better and then I'll feel okay."

So they might use affirmations, visualisations. They might get a mindset coach or read books, whatever. Go through all sorts of practices in order to fix their flaws in the hope that that's what's going to give them a more stronger sense of Self and peace in the world.

And it does make a difference, don't get me wrong. However, that difference is kind of superficial because it does not get rid of the causes of the self doubt or the lack of self confidence in the first place. It kind of covers them up.

So the analogy that I use, it's like getting a seven year old to clean up their room. It might look tidier than what it was, but if you look closely, you'll see that the mess has just been pushed under the bed or it's under the pillow. Things have just kind of been hidden away. So yes, it does make a superficial difference, but the mess is still there.

And that might seem like a flippant comparison, but when you think of so many of our subconscious beliefs are formed in those years from when we're zero to seven. Even though we're here in adult bodies, we're still being driven by beliefs, subconscious beliefs that were formed in those years of zero to seven.

So the cause of self-doubt is the story that we tell ourselves. And if we keep just changing the story, we're still reliant on the story for our sense of Self rather than the pure self the true self that is available to us.

So how do we uncover that true self? And the invitation here is instead of opting for the process of self-improvement, is to opt for a process of self-realisation: look at the self through "real eyes."

So how do we do that? Do we have to be depressed for a couple of years in order to have the insight that Eckhart did? No, we do not. Do we have to have a cancer diagnosis and go into a coma and have an out-of-body experience like Anita did? No, we don't.

There's another option that's available to us, which is more elegant, more graceful and puts you in control of things. And that option is through the regular practice of Vedic Meditation.

The detail about Vedic Meditation, you can find that in episode 2, Vedic Meditation, The Path to NO Resistance. But here's a very brief summary for you.

In Vedic Meditation, a teacher, a qualified teacher, someone like myself, we give you a mantra. The mantra is a meaningless sound.

We teach you to repeat it in a particular way. And through repeating that mantra, you're able to experience it at more subtle, more subtle, more subtle states until you get to the point where you go beyond the mantra, you go beyond thinking, and you experience a state of pure contentment.

We call it bliss. Ananda is the Sanskrit word for it. And it's bliss not in the ecstatic sense of the word, but bliss in the sense of it being a state of pure contentment.

That field of bliss is where you discover who the real self is. You have an experience of the pure self. You go beyond your story, beyond your personality, beyond your thoughts, beyond your body, and you have an experience, a lived experience of the pure self.

And if you do that on a regular basis, you go down to that level of transcendence, that field of Being we call it, Being with a capital B, because you're not doing anything, you are just being, you are existing. You have a sense of awareness, but there's no thoughts.

Real-world Results from Practicing Vedic Meditation

If you keep going down to that level, and then when you come out into the real world, you bring that sense of Self with you. Bit by bit, gradually, gradually, that sense of Self increases over time and helps you form your own path of least resistance, get rid of the suffering that causes the stress in your life and causes the self doubt, the lack of confidence. All of those issues that you might have been trying to fix with self-improvement, they become overshadowed by that big sense of Self

They no longer become something that you have to fix. They just become minor details in your life. They're minor parts of your story because your story becomes something so much bigger than what it was before.

I got a text message the other day from one of my students who learned with me three weeks ago and she sent me this text message. I was checking in on her, as teachers do. We usually check in on our students after their practice to see how they're going. And here's what she said.

She said, "Yes, I am regimented in doing the practice. It's made an enormous difference to my outlook. Not much troubles me. I have real peacefulness inside me, which as I told you, I was craving. Sometimes I have a wave of happiness come over me for no particular reason. I am so incredibly grateful to you and this beautiful meditation practice. I just love it."

This is an example of a woman, she's 68 years old, she's spent her entire life trying to shape the world around her and then she realises that her sense of peacefulness is inside of her, that's where her path of least resistance is coming from.

The True Meaning of Identity

So let's bring it back to identity. Fun fact for today, the meaning of the word identity, we've got it all wrong. We think it's what makes us unique, what makes us separate from each other. But the original meaning of the word identity, comes from French origin and the meaning is hidden in plain sight. It means that which makes us identical.

So it's not our story, it's not our DNA, it's not our circumstances that make up our identity. It's that which makes us the same. And when we practice Vedic Meditation and we go down to that field of Being, that Unified Field, the state of pure consciousness, we could call it the super-conscious mind, that's what makes us the same as everyone else. That is our true identity and that is the true self that we want to be calling on when we're going for that state of Self-referral that gives us the stability of mind that keeps us on the path of least resistance.

And then the ultimate realisation beyond all this is that you are the universe having a human experience. This is a conclusion that comes from the Veda, a school of thought called Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta means non-duality and the conclusion of Vedanta is there is only one consciousness and you are it.

Now that's a bit of a mental leap. One minute I'm a seven-year-old cleaning up my room, and the next minute I'm the universe having a human experience? You don't have to try to get this intellectually and even if you do get it intellectually it's not going to make sense until you actually have an experience of it.

You Are the Universe Having a Human Experience

And this is a gift, or one of the gifts of Vedic Meditation, is that it gives you a sense of who you really are, what your true identity is, and that you really are the universe having a human experience.

So there you have it, if self doubt is a feature of your life, if you lack confidence, if you feel like you're at the mercy of circumstances outside of you and you want to develop that sense of Self-referral, this is the path in order to do that.

If you face doubt or fear, you can answer the question, who is it that's doubtful? Who is it that's fearful? Because it's not your pure self, your true self doesn't experience that at all. It's the story, the narrative that your brain made up about yourself that's having that experience.

So if you allow yourself to regularly experience who that true self is through Vedic Meditation, then ultimately you'll overcome that. You can bypass the self-improvement techniques that deal with these symptoms rather than the cause of the suffering in your life.

In the next episode we're going to take this a little bit further and even though you are not your story, your life is in fact based on a true story. We're going have a little bit of fun with that and I'll see you there.

In the meantime remember to take your path of least resistance and see where it takes you. Bye for now.

Curious to learn more about Vedic Meditation? Contact me directly and I'll give you the lowdown.