Self-Doubt: Whose Voice Are You Hearing?
Most of the things we want never get said out loud. They stay in the notes app, or in the back of the mind, or somewhere between "someday" and "who am I to want that." And a goal nobody else has heard is remarkably easy to let go of.
In this episode of Candid Coach Conversations, Kimberly Boyd, founder of Live Life Fully, sits down with two certified Live Life Fully coaches: Shuntá Montgomery, speaker and creator of the LevelUp digital planner, and Tiffanie Hughes, creator of the RE:YOU method. The three of them get into what happens when you name what you want where other people can hear it... and what to do with the voices, outside and inside, that say you can't.
When Tiffanie says something, her family knows she is going to do it
Tiffanie has a track record at home. In 2009 she told her dad, "I think I'm gonna move to Europe." His answer: "Well, okay, I think it looks like you're gonna move to Europe." She moved. Later she told him she thought she was going to get married, and he figured he was about to become a father-in-law. He was right about that one too.
So when a new idea had been chirping in her ear for a year or two... little birdies, as she puts it... and she finally said it at home, "I think I want to become a coach," the answer was not "are you sure?" It was "Okay, what can I do to support you?"
That is the part of saying it out loud that tends to get missed. Tiffanie calls it accountability, and she means it warmly. You want to be trusted. You want people to cheer you on. And they cannot cheer for something they have never heard about. Once you've said it, she says, it's out there. The idea stops living only in your head and becomes a conversation other people are having with you.
Shuntá said it once at a retreat, and it scared her
Asked for a time she said something out loud and then made it happen, Shuntá could think of exactly one. At her first Live Life Fully retreat, she told the room she wanted to be on the stage at the next one.
She did not write it down. She did not have a plan. "It was scary to say that out loud in front of everyone," she says, "'cause I didn't know what that entailed, how I was gonna get there, what I needed to do to get there. I just knew that I wanted to be there."
She has since spoken at several Live Life Fully retreats, and those stages led to more speaking engagements beyond them. Saying it, she says, released it... and whatever she needed to get there started showing up.
Sometimes someone else has to remind you what you have already done
Here is the moment that makes this episode worth a listen. Kimberly had no trouble thinking of more examples, and she asked Shuntá's permission to refresh her memory.
There was the day Shuntá said she wanted to create a digital planner. She did. There was the day she said she wanted to write her story. She has written the rough draft. And there was the day she said she wanted to love herself more and put herself first, so she could overflow onto others. She did that too.
"All true," Shuntá says. None of those had come to mind for her at all.
Tiffanie offered an explanation most of us could use. Shuntá was searching for the big, public goals, the kind you share with a room. The things Kimberly named were about her own growth. Those quiet goals matter just as much. They are simply easier to overlook, especially when you are the one who achieved them.
Kimberly turns it into a practice: take time to reflect, over your day, your week, your month or your year, and give yourself credit. Acknowledge what you finished. And acknowledge what you did not, because some things were never meant to be finished. Sometimes the unfinished thing is the sign it was time to pivot.
Saying it out loud interrupts the loop
Tiffanie named something a lot of people will recognize: rumination. The same thought, circling. A circle, she points out, has no beginning and no end. It just goes on and on.
Putting a thought out into the world puts a stop on that loop. It also tends to surface what surrounds the goal... the conflict you feel about it, the resources you did not know existed, the person who says "I had a similar experience" or "we're going to a retreat next week." When something stays in your head, she says, it gets heavier. When you say it, you free it and give it room to grow. And if it does not become anything? You still learn something from it.
Kimberly adds a simple observation: our brains are always listening. When the words, the heart and the gut line up, things start to change quickly.
The naysayers are real, and they can become fuel
Sharing a goal carries a risk, and Tiffanie is honest about it. It is vulnerable, and it opens you up to critique. She wants to buy a castle someday... dilapidated is fine, she will make it wonderful... and she has no interest in hearing that it is a silly idea. Her advice is discernment: choose carefully who hears the tender things, and surround yourself with people who want you to do great things.
Kimberly's answer to a naysayer is disarmingly calm: "Sounds like that would not be something you'd wanna try." Their words do not have to become her story.
She also leans on two kinds of resilience she credits to her friend Christian Moore. Street resilience is the "watch me" kind, turning someone's doubt into fuel. Relational resilience asks a different question: if I move forward with this, who could benefit? Thinking about the people in her life, her children included, keeps her going when the doubt gets loud.
Tiffanie knows the street variety well. "You don't think I can do it? We'll just see about that. Watch me."
The loudest naysayer might be the one in your own head
When Kimberly asked about naysayers, Shuntá admitted the one she has dealt with most lived in her own head. Her answer to it is one of the best lines in the conversation: "Now I trained myself to stop listening to myself and to start talking to myself." Instead of listening to the doubtful voice, she speaks the words of achieving the goal.
Kimberly shared her own approach. When a fearful thought shows up, she stops and asks: is this true? Then: what do I know for certain? What she knows for certain is that she can figure things out. She does not need every answer today. She needs a commitment to herself and the idea, and one step... one rung on the ladder.
Tiffanie adds a question of her own. When an "I can't" shows up, she asks whose voice she is hearing. Who in her life, or in her past, is telling her that? Because she knows it is not her. "Tiffanie would never do that to Tiffanie."
Can't, don't know how, and the word yet
The conversation closes on a friendly argument. Tiffanie offers what sounds like the safest example there is: she cannot jump thirty feet in the air. Nobody can.
Kimberly does not let it go. Is that really a can't, or is it an "I don't know how"? She often invites clients to swap "I can't" for "I choose not to" or "I don't want to," because that is usually closer to the truth. Shuntá agrees... she has no interest in jumping thirty feet, so for her it is a don't-want-to.
And for the things you do want, where someone has already shown it is possible? Kimberly's suggestion is one small word at the end of the sentence. Yet.
Shuntá adds the reminder that keeps all of this honest: saying it is not the whole job. You still have to do the work. Tiffanie knows. She applied for more than two hundred jobs to land three. She said it, and then she did the work to follow through.
About the Coaches
Shuntá Montgomery is a certified Live Life Fully coach and speaker who believes that if it isn't on your calendar, it will keep getting pushed to someday. Her LevelUp digital planner is available in the Live Life Fully store. Learn more or book a complimentary strategy session with Shuntá at llfully.com/Coach-ShuntaMontgomery.
Tiffanie Hughes is a certified Live Life Fully coach and the creator of RE:YOU, a six-step system for reclaiming the version of yourself that got buried under everyone else's expectations. Her coaching runs on curiosity rather than correction. Learn more or book a complimentary strategy session with Tiffanie at llfully.com/tiffanie-hughes.
A certified Live Life Fully coach can help you take the next step, together. Book your complimentary strategy session at llfully.com.
