Dealing with the D-word

Michael Thomas Sunnarborg
4 min readAug 20, 2020

One moment things were going swimmingly. And then the next, doubt stepped in and changed everything.

I’ve been working on a new project recently that has challenged me to be flexible and agile-I’ve had to rethink my process for a task that I’ve known how to do for years.

With routines having shifted dramatically due to the COVID pandemic, we’re all having to be flexible and agile in our approach, even for work that we may’ve been doing the same way for a long time.

From a professional perspective, the project was going quite well. But I had a personal problem that caught me by surprise: I was dealing with the dreaded D-word.

Doubt.

You know, that pesky internal critic? Yes, that’s the culprit.

One moment things were going swimmingly. And then the next, doubt stepped in and changed everything.

“Why aren’t things working the same way? Why aren’t people responding like they used to? Do you even know what you’re doing?”

Suddenly, my confidence was replaced by questioning and my creativity covered by criticism. And it was all my own doing. It was all in my mind.

Then it got worse.

At one point, my doubts squeezed my brain so tightly that it completely shut down my creativity all…

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Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

Transformation Coach| Author | Relentless Optimist | HuffPost, Medium, Thrive Global Blogger. Find clarity & balance on your career path. http://bit.ly/2qV87pg