Tune in and discover how to live more intentionally and authentically by understanding our ghosts of self-doubt and learning to listen and respond to our internal voices.
In This Episode You'll Learn
- What are the ghosts of self-doubt, where do they come from, and how can you deal with them.
- How to strengthen your internal voice so you can make decisions with more clarity.
- The courage it takes to come home to yourself as a woman or marginalized person in the world we live in.
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Transcript
Meg Brunson
Hey. Hey, Familypreneurs. Thank you so much for joining us again for another episode. Today, I'm very excited to have Shohreh Davoodi with us here today. Shohreh is a self trust coach for queer folks and their accomplices, a writer, and the host of Conjuring Up Courage podcast. She's dedicated to helping people move through self doubt and shame so they can live their lives with intention and step into their mother f*ing magic. Thank you, Shohreh. Thank you so much for being here with us today.
Shohreh Davoodi
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today.
Meg Brunson
Oh, I am too. I feel like self doubt, lack of self confidence, imposter syndrome, like, these are all things that entrepreneurs face and deal with every day, it feels like. And it pops its head back up frequently throughout our experience. So I cannot wait to really dive into this topic with you and gain some clarity on how to get out of that self doubt mindset.
Shohreh Davoodi
Yeah, it's definitely something that entrepreneurs in particular deal with so often just because of the nature of what we're doing, we're trying to go out in the world and create something. And for a lot of us, our business is an extension of us. And so any of those self doubts fears that we have about ourselves core to our person are going to eke out into our businesses and what we're trying to do in the world for our careers. And so it makes perfect sense to me that those things pop up in this space as well.
Meg Brunson
And you call them or you reference the ghost of self doubt. Can you talk about that term and where these ghosts come from and what we do when we face them?
Shohreh Davoodi
Yeah, so the ghost of self doubt is a term that I invented and I like it because it's very visual and I think it can help people to understand this concept better. So the ghost of self doubt are essentially the voices that we have in our heads that don't belong to us. So they come from a variety of sources. This is going to be the voices that you heard growing up from people who are in your life. So parents and caregivers tends to be a big one. If you had influential teachers or other adults in your life, those voices may be in your head. It could be from past partners, it could be from even people you only interacted with for a short span of time, like college roommate that you lived with for one year may have had an influence on you that's still living on your head. And these are just like the actual human examples because some of the other voices in our head belong to systems, the different systems of oppression that we're all navigating everyday. So depending on what identities you hold, you may have voices in your head that stem from white supremacy, that stem from the cis-heteronormative society that we live in and all these other different things as well.
Shohreh Davoodi
And so these voices are in there and they're just kind of poking and prodding you and trying to shape who you are and how you show up in this world. So you're getting a lot of these should voices that are like. You should do this if you want to be blank. If you want to be a good parent. If you want to be a great entrepreneur. If you want to be the ideal queer person. Whatever it may be that you fill in that blank with and making you feel like if you don't do it the way that these voices are telling you that you should. That something is wrong with you. That you're broken. That you are not doing it the right way. And you need to fix yourself. And what's really difficult about these voices is that because they start at such a young age and many of the voices that we have, we've just grown up with, we've had them for decades. Depending on how old you are. They can start to make you think that it's actually your own voice. And people really struggle to differentiate between what is it that I want, what's my inner voice saying to me?
Shohreh Davoodi
And what is it that's actually not my own, that I learned from somewhere else that someone told me is the right thing. But maybe it doesn't align with your values. Maybe it doesn't align with the kind of life that you want to live or the kind of business that you want to run. And the work that I do is helping people to separate those two things out because it can be really tricky.
Meg Brunson
Yeah, I can imagine. I feel like the more and more you listen to any type of advice, the more you just believe that that's the way it is. And we are in such a black and white binary world where there's a right way and wrong way, and we're taught not to see those shades of gray in between that binary.
Shohreh Davoodi
Yeah, exactly. We are very much taught that box, and you need to be in the box, and anything outside of the box, it's other, it's bad. Don't deal with that. Don't be a part of that, or there's going to be consequences associated with it. And like you said, this can be any little thing. So I've had clients where maybe they read a piece of dieting advice in a magazine when they were 13 and they just took it as the gospel truth. And it's been in their brain ever since. This thing that I read is true. Maybe it's like, you're not supposed to eat breakfast after a certain time, or breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's a better one. That everyone's like, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But they've never actually gone to think about, like, well, is that true for me? Does this make sense for my life? Is it true in general? Like, if I actually research this, is this a fact that everyone knows is true or is it actually not makes sense for me. And I've just been living according to it anyway because it was something that I read at one time.
Shohreh Davoodi
And to be fair, our brains are biologically programmed to do this because when we take something as fact and our brain is like, yes, check mark that's that thing, it's way easier for us to function because we can't constantly be taking in new information. So if we're like, yeah, that's the thing that's just a truth, then we can build the rest of our lives around it. But if we never go back and examine, is that actually the truth or my truth? That's where we start to get into lives that don't feel good. And we're like, you know what? I'm feeling kind of crappy, and I feel like I'm out of alignment. But I don't know why that is. And it's usually because these voices have been manipulating how we're living. We haven't taken the time to figure out, well, how do I want to be living?
Meg Brunson
I love that you provided that example, and it made me think back to, like, a real life example that happened in my house the other day when my kiddo asked about the color of our blood. And I said, well, it's blue inside your body, and it's only red when it hits the outside, when it hits oxygen. And my husband was like, I think that was disproven. And we had to go through this whole process of researching, and sure enough, I was wrong, but it's such a little margin. But I felt like my whole world changed. I was so confident it was the truth. So I love examples like that because hopefully they help us understand how these things actually play out in real life. So we know what these are and we know where they come from. And I know you work with your clients to help them figure out which is which. Are there tips or tricks for us to be able to identify when it's those ghosts of self-doubt we're actually dealing with versus our actual internal voice?
Shohreh Davoodi
Absolutely. There's a lot of things that we can do. And the first thing that I tell people is that the awareness of these things is the number one step. Because if you don't know that these ghosts exist, then you can't do anything about them. That's true for anything in our lives that we may want to change. If we don't know that there's something that's off or wrong or that's upsetting to us, we can't do anything about it. So the first place that I have clients or anyone else start is to sit down and try to figure out, what are these ghosts? And there's a lot of different ways you can do this, a really simple one is just as you're going about your day for a period of time, write down these messages that you're hearing in your head, these things that are normally really automated, but to actually pause and write down, okay, my brain today, I was doing this thing, and it said this. How do I feel about that? Is that actually accurate? And looking for those should words, like: should, supposed to, I have to - those kinds of terms are the big clue that there's something deeper here if you feel like you should or you have to do something.
Shohreh Davoodi
So writing that stuff down and then examining each of those pieces and saying, all right, if it said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I should eat breakfast, and it's bad if I don't, ask yourself, Where did I hear that? Where did this first come from? And seeing if you can pinpoint a general idea of where that originally came from. Because once you know that, then you can say, all right, that source. How do I feel about it? Do I care what Cosmopolitan in 1995 has to say about breakfast right now in my current adult life, in my current situation, is that an authority I want to be living my life according to? And if not, then how do you feel about it? And that's the toughest part, is starting to figure out how you feel about it. Because when we've spent so much time actually not being in touch with how we feel about things and what we want and what's good for us, there has to be a period of experimentation and figuring those things out. But the very first step is just to become aware and figure out some of these voices, because some of them, you'll very quickly realize you don't even have to do much to stop living according to them.
Shohreh Davoodi
You're just like, Why do I believe this all of this time? And it's kind of like a little mini revelation. And then others are more tricky, especially the voices that are people maybe still interact with, like the beliefs of your parents that they put upon you or the things, like I said, these systems of oppression that may not be those things, but they are a reality in our daily lives. And so figuring out how we can deal with those burdens and work around them can be really tricky too.
Meg Brunson
And I feel like the more privileges we're used to having, the harder it is to acknowledge when those systems of oppression have taken hold on us. Does that make sense? It's like you need to be able to take a step back.
Shohreh Davoodi
Right. That's another layer to this too, because part of these consciousness practices, if you are a marginalized person and you experience various marginalizations, part of the consciousness here is realizing how those systems have affected you and put imposter syndrome in you. But if you are someone who has more privileges and we all have privileges at various times, so we all need to examine this. But if you're someone who has more privileges, it can be really tough to have that come to your consciousness of the realization of, oh, I've never had to think about some of this stuff because my privilege has shielded me from having to do so. And I have certain beliefs that actually come from these systems, like unpacking, that is really tough work.
Meg Brunson
I can relate a lot of this back. As a marketer and somebody who talks a lot about marketing, I can relate this very easily to the situation that many of us find ourselves in, where we have been taught things like to lean into pain points, for example, or to rely on scarcity techniques, like things that are just traditional marketing tactics but don't actually feel good for us when we're doing them. And we have to deconstruct those voices and learn that there are better ways that can still be efficient and effective.
Shohreh Davoodi
Definitely. And I think what is important to note is that it takes a lot of courage to do that. It takes a lot of courage to go against these voices that we've been told that this is the right way, this is the only way, this is the best way. Especially when it's something that we feel in our own bodies that this doesn't feel right for me, but that's hard for us to trust because the other piece of this is that we are told our whole lives that our bodies can't be trusted as women, as marginalized people. We're told that we're supposed to look outside of ourselves for the answers. And so it can be really tough to go against that message, to do things like this. And that's where it takes a lot of courage.
Meg Brunson
I'll be transparent and that I failed in that sense. I started thinking I would just follow myself. But then I gave into those voices and decided to go try some of the bro marketing techniques because I'm like, well, they clearly have found success. Whatever they did obviously worked. So maybe the reason I'm not seeing six figure months in my first year of business is because I'm not following these strategies. And it felt awful and it didn't work. And I quickly had to realize that I knew better than that. Random Guru.
Shohreh Davoodi
I think we've all been there as entrepreneurs. We have all tried things that were like, this is supposed to be the secret to success. That if I just do this, even if it doesn't feel very great, it will work out. The reality is it usually doesn't work out. And even if it had, we would have felt icky getting there. And how long is that going to last? It's not really sustainable.
Meg Brunson
What are some strategies for strengthening your internal voice so that you can make those decisions with more confidence and more clarity.
Shohreh Davoodi
So this is all about self trust. That's what we're talking about. And when we think about the trust that we have with other people, so let's say your romantic partner, you trust them very deeply. What does that mean? It means that you trust that this person is going to show up for you, that they are going to have your back, that they're going to be honest with you, and they're going to have your best interests in heart. These are some of the core components of trust. And it's the same thing in our relationship with ourselves, even though we don't often think about it that way. So if we want to build a relationship of trust with ourselves, we have to do the same thing. We have to teach our bodies that, yes, we are going to show up for you, that we're going to listen to you, we're going to have your best interest at heart, and that we are going to step up to the plate for you and give this everything that we can. And there's a lot of different methods to do that, but one of the best ways to do that is just in how we care for ourselves.
Shohreh Davoodi
And our bodies are constantly telling us what they need in terms of sleep, in terms of pleasure, in terms of the food that we eat or the exercise that we do. There's so many different aspects to care and we regularly ignore those. We just pretend that we don't hear them or those signals are crossed. So we miss them and we feel crappy as a result and we don't do anything to change it. So one of the ways that we can prove to our bodies that, Hey, actually I do trust you. I'm going to show up for you. Is to figure out what kind of care that you need and to consistently give it to yourself to go out of your way to make sure I'm showing up for myself in this way because it's going to strengthen relationship and it's also going to just make you feel better overall. Which is the goal of all these things.
Shohreh Davoodi
Especially as entrepreneurs, it is so hard to do our work when we feel like garbage. And one of the best ways that we can deal with that is to figure out are we putting our needs first? Are we taking care of ourselves? What is it that we even need in the first place? And this is where that experimentation piece kind of comes in because a lot of us just don't know. When clients come to me a lot of times they're like, I actually don't really know what it is that I want, down to very simple things. Like if I asked a client like, hey, what are some of your favorite foods? They may not be able to answer that question because maybe they've been dieting for however many years.
Shohreh Davoodi
They've been doing this and that for however many years because of all these other voices in their head. So they don't really know because they've never explored it. So there's this exploration piece that has to come first in this, where we can't care for ourselves until we actually know what it is we need. And the way to figure it out is just by some experimentation, trying different things, seeing how your body reacts, seeing like, what isn't working. Usually people can figure that out first. They're like, well, I've been doing this and this, and it's not working for me. So it's like, cool, we can rule those out. Those aren't working for you right now, so let's try some other things and see what effect those have and then we can compare it back.
Meg Brunson
I love that, and I feel like those were my exact thoughts when you were starting to go through that. I was like, sometimes I feel like I don't even know what it is that I know I need to practice some self care. I know I need to relax, I need to put myself first. But it's like, how? What do I need? I love that process of experimenting and keeping track of what does and doesn't work and eventually being able to hone in on what the most helpful things are for you.
Meg Brunson
And I feel like too, just the concept of self care. Many of our listeners, in addition to being entrepreneurs, are parents or caregivers of some form, whether they're caring for another family member or even just caring for a pet. And it's hard to put yourself first. I feel like we've been conditioned to put the needs of others before the needs of our own. And that kind of brings us full circle with this whole conversation, right? Because we have to be able to evaluate those beliefs as well so that we can put the proverbial mask on ourselves first.
Shohreh Davoodi
Definitely. And this is where one of the biggest pieces comes in, which is being able to set and maintain boundaries not only with other people, but also with ourselves. And it is so difficult, especially if you have kids, if you have a family, you have other people who have to care for. But being able to see where is the line between I was conditioned that I come last and everybody else comes before me and my needs don't matter and I am less worthy. And the line between I have children who I love and care for and I want to take care of them, but without also sacrificing yourself. And boundaries are hard. Like, no matter what situation you're in, especially if you didn't grow up learning about boundaries. Most of us didn't. We maybe have finally heard this term as an adult or finally learning like, okay, what can this look like? And it's scary, especially if you have people pleasing tendencies and you hate the idea that someone might not like you or that someone might react poorly to a boundary that you set. That's why this is something that I call a courage practice, because it's really difficult to do and it takes a lot of courage to step into that.
Shohreh Davoodi
But it is so worth it because, again, this is a way that we teach ourselves that we can be trusted and that we can rely on ourselves when we need something is your body needs to trust that you are not going to drop everything for everybody else and you're going to put its needs first and that they're going to be a top priority for you. The same way. Again, going back to the example of trust with a partner, your partner needs to trust that too. If you're spending all your time on work, on other people and other things and not on your partner, that's going to cause an issue in the relationship and they're going to feel like, why are you not setting boundaries with these other people and prioritizing me? And it's the same thing with ourselves.
Meg Brunson
So good. I feel like you just opened all of these doors and now I'm aware, and I think we all probably are, of how many different areas of our lives we could do this work in. Where can people continue to connect with you, learn from you, work with you?
Shohreh Davoodi
Yeah. So I am very active on the Internet. My username is ShohrehDavoodi it's just my first and last name everywhere. I'm most active on Instagram and on TikTok. I also have a newsletter called The Queer Agenda, which I try to send out a few times a month. You can sign up for that on my website, which is ShohrehDavoodi.com, specifically. You can get to that at ShohrehDavoodi.com/subscribe. And then you also mentioned at the beginning, I'm a podcaster. I have a podcast called Conjuring Up Courage. There's over 130 episodes, so there's tons of great self trust stuff to delve into there as well.
Meg Brunson
And I just want to say I consider myself to be a creative and I love your website, so I feel like people just need to go and spend some time on your website. I just love it. I feel everything about it.
Shohreh Davoodi
Thank you so much. Yeah, I redid my website maybe a year and a half ago now and I was just so pleased with I will give a shout out to the group that did it. They're called Flourish and they are in Australia and they perfectly encapsulated me and my brand and what I wanted to put out in the world. So I love it. Everyone should check it out.
Meg Brunson
Yes. I loved it too. I listened to one of your podcast episodes. I love that too. Highly, highly encourage you to go check out everything that Shohreh is doing in the world. And I want to thank you so much for being with us today to share your wisdom and your insight with all of us. I know. I, for one, we deal with self doubt, and we really need to continuously work on getting ourselves to a place where we're more self trusting. So thank you so much for helping us to take those first steps.
Shohreh Davoodi
You're very welcome. It's my pleasure.
Meet Shohreh Davoodi
Shohreh Davoodi (she/her) is a self-trust coach for queer folks (and our accomplices), a writer, and the host of the Conjuring Up Courage podcast. She's dedicated to helping people move through self-doubt and shame so they can live their lives with intention and step into their motherf*cking magic.
Shohreh works and plays in Austin, Texas, on land that is the unceded territory of the Tonkawa and Comanche tribes. She's almost too gay to function, a fire sign (shocking, right?), and an overall rainbow glitter bomb of a human. When Shohreh's not in front of her computer, you can find her on her trapeze, shooting her compound bow, traipsing around in nature, playing music, doing crafty shit, and loving on her girlfriend and two pups.
Connect with Shohreh
- Website – https://shohrehdavoodi.com
- Facebook – https://facebook.com/shohrehdavoodi
- Instagram – https://instagram.com/shohrehdavoodi
- Twitter – https://twitter.com/shohrehdavoodi
Subscribe to The Queer Agenda
A weekly email newsletter filled with self-trust tips & wisdom to help people come home to themselves. Subscribe at: https://shohrehdavoodi.com/subscribe.