Doubt it a totally normal experience. It’s comes with the territory when you’re a human born with a brain. It functions to try and keep us safe…to assess potential danger and protect us. However, it keeps us from experiencing true inner – and outer – freedom.

So how do we manage criticism of our career or our creativity so that it doesn’t keep us from putting our unique gift out into the world?

I was reflecting a lot on my life when I grew up in the ‘hood with so little, and when I lived out of my car for 7 years as a climbing guide and how my life was so simple and I made hardly anything and bought hardly anything and I was so so so content.

And while I was content, I admit that while I had confidence in many areas – guiding and my dreams and purpose and my power as a wild woman living in the mountains…I had a lot of doubt if I had what it took to create a different kind of abundance.

If you haven’t realized, I have a bit of a stubborn streak. I like to be right. It’s a thing I do. Once, when I was arguing with someone because I knew I was right and I just couldn’t let it go, he said, “I can tell you really like to be right.” It was just an observation – not a judgment. He even said it kind of nicely. “You really like to be right.”

And I was like, “YES, I like to be right? Why would I not? Do you go around letting people think things that are wrong?” And he looked at me like, yeah, that’s an option.

There’s a saying, “People will doubt but you say but they will believe what you do.” And this is because it is well-known that what we say isn’t always what we mean. What ultimately matters is what we DO. How we show up in the world.

Here we are – at the end of the year, maybe looking back and wondering how it all happened the way it did. Maybe holding some grudges or deep resentments…or shame about how we showed up. The good news is, if we want to, we now have a chance to do things differently.