Hello friends now I've had a couple of you reach out to me recently about the
subject of self-doubt. How some of you are doubting yourselves how you're
thinking that you'll never be as good as the other pilots that are out there or
you're doubting your abilities to fly or worse still sometimes you're waking up
scared to go out and fly. But let me let you into a secret - you're not alone and I
felt every single one of those things as a pilot in my flying career as well but
let me explain to you now how I approach those sorts of feelings nowadays.
If you're new to the channel, hi welcome my name's Stef I like to fly for fun and I
do a lot of travel and post videos here on YouTube and I think I've got a fair
amount of experience in terms of challenging myself personally and
overcoming that voice in your head that just gives you those self doubts that
can sometimes stop you from doing the things that you love.
Now self-doubt exists in every walk of life and I'm not talking about
self-esteem here I'm not talking about how you feel about yourself as a person.
I'm talking about that little voice in our head sometimes that keeps
reminding us that we're not as good as we think we are and everyone else is
doing things way better than we ever could. Or to put it another way do you
ever feel that someone else deserves to be in a position that you're in and
you've kind of bluffed your way to get to that point. Now that doubt is
something that I think every pilot has felt at some point in their career but
let me remind you something, something really important and if you can grasp
this to be honest you can stop the video after this point. But the thing
is that's normal, that's not a bad thing. It's what you do with that self-doubt
and how you manage it which is the important thing and that's what I want
to try and help you with today. So the first thing you're going to want to do
is you're going to want to accept the fact that doubt is a good thing.
"The point is ladies and gentlemen, that doubt is good."
Accept the fact that being doubtful in
your abilities is actually going to make you better in the long run than being
overconfident and trying to push through it in the short term. I remember when I
did my aerobatic endorsement we did a series of flights on stalling and the
word stalling in my head sent shivers of fear through my body before I turned
up and actually flew those flights because I was doubting my abilities to a
understand what a stall actually was and was I going to enjoy it and was I
gonna throw up in the aircraft? B - I was scared of the sensation itself. And C - I
didn't really understand what a stall was. Okay so the first thing I want you
to do is I want you to stop labeling yourself as a pilot. If you're learning
to fly stop labeling yourself as one thing in front of other people. Remember
people are multi-dimensional we all have a multitude of skills and the moment you
start labeling or branding yourself as a pilot in front of other people like your
peers your family members your friends they're gonna have a level of
expectation for you which you then have to live up to. And this is where you can
start to put tremendous pressure on yourself to perform and when you don't
perform to those perceived levels that's when you can have a lot of internal
self-doubt and that's when problems can start to happen. So on those days that
you are doubting yourself here's what I'd say don't fly. Don't push through
that doubt just because you think you should or worse still because you think
people are going to judge you if you don't. That's only gonna make it harder
for you to enjoy the experience learn from it and that's going to make
you a worst pilot in my opinion.
So let me tell you about something that I think might help wrap this whole thing
up into a neat little package and really helped me understand how to deal with
self-doubt and thinking that other people out there doing things better
than I ever could. There's something called the impostor syndrome and I have
definitely fallen into this trap in the past.
Let me see do any of these sound familiar? Thoughts like I must not fail. I
feel like a fake. I just got lucky to be here today.
These are classic examples of thoughts that you have if you are going through
this Impostor Syndrome and I've definitely felt this myself in the past
as well, so you're not alone. But like I said before this doubt is powerful and
there's a brilliant phrase that I love. I know I'm moving around a bit but I think
I want to sit on this wall again the view is a bit better, okay there's a
phrase that I really like - doubt grows with knowledge. Or to put it into other
words the more you know the more you realize you don't know. There was a
British philosopher called Bertrand Russell who summed all of that up in a
much better way he said - "The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is
that the stupid are cocksure whilst the intelligent are full of doubt".
And what does that make you think doubt is good so next time you're going
through these thoughts in your head and you're suffering from this self-doubt in
your abilities do me a favor do these three simple things. First of all realize
that doubt is not a failing it's actually a strength. Secondly challenge
that doubt by asking yourself questions and if you still can't answer those
questions go to professionals talk to your flying instructor talk to your
flying friends reach out to people online whatever you do start to try to
answer those questions to understand that doubt that you're having now.
If it's an ability thing if it's like landing an airplane then practice,
practice it do it over and over again until you realize that you can do it.
If it's a fear thing like my stalling then do it over and over again until you get
over that fear and then finally prove that you can overcome that doubt by
proving to yourself that it no longer exists and by having
gone through the experience and realizing it wasn't so bad or having
talked to people and understood where your shortcomings were. Do me a favour
here, stop worrying what other people think of you. Who cares how long it took
you to get your private pilot's license as long as you get it in the end. Who
cares how many people are following you on YouTube. No one cares about that stuff.
You're the only person who cares. It may seem that other people are judging you
but at the end of the day they've all got their own self doubts their own
issues as well let them deal with theirs and you deal with yours and don't care
about what anyone else thinks of you. And remember self confidence doesn't come
from thinking that you're better than other people, it's about remembering that
life isn't binary there's no right and wrong there's no best and worse. The only
thing that's going to give you confidence is to continuously improve
yourself and to grow individually as a person and just not to give a toss about
what anyone else thinks of you.
All right all done thank you very much
for listening I hope that was useful to you. Let me know in the comments below if
you've had any self doubts in the past in your career whatever it is flying or
whatever you do, I'd love to hear from you how you overcame those doubts and
grew as a person. If you liked this video and you found it useful then do like this.
If you're new to the channel and you haven't yet do subscribe, I love the way
that this channel is growing. Otherwise thank you as always for watching and
I'll catch you in the next video.