I don’t know about you guys, but here’s what seems to happen everytime i get a new *brilliant idea* for my biz.

1. Brilliant idea occurs – something just clicks and I know it’s a cool thing to do in my biz (love those moments!)
2. Brilliant idea simmers – there is this lovely space of “aaaaah” that I simmer in for a few days, letting the idea marinate and start to take shape
3. Brilliant idea is shared – i share my idea with others, could be folks on my team, colleagues, etc
4. Brilliant idea is doubted – i start to wonder then, is this such a brilliant idea? doubt starts to set in… “maybe my idea sucks, maybe i won’t be able to do it, not sure i have the time/money/energy to do it, folks might think it’s stupid… [insert your own brain chatter here]”
   And depending on my response then step 5 is either:
5. Brilliant idea is brought to life OR Brilliant idea withers and dies

So what’s up with that pesky Step #4? See this process happens to me quite a bit in my business, and I find when I hit the doubt stage I either find a way through it or I don’t. As much as this stage can suck I do think it actually serves a pretty big purpose for me and my biz, namely:

• doubt forces me to take another look at my idea – maybe it wasn’t so brilliant after all. maybe the reason that the idea was brilliant last week no longer applies this week.
• doubt could be a “warrior” against the bright, shiny, object syndrome – as i start to plan for 2011 i’m seeing that there is ALOT of stuff i want to do, maybe too much? how much of that is BSO that may be taking me off my true course? always great to run ideas through the BSO detector (every entrepreneur should get one of those, LOL)
• doubt can be a form of self-sabotage – and for me is actually a way that I can easily stop myself from taking the next steps (especially when i’m doing something bigger or new.)

I read Gay Hendricks book The Big Leap a few months back and it was a light-bulf moment for me re: how we get in the way of our own success. He talks about how we all have an Upper Limit of how much positivity and success we can handle, and when we reach that limit we’ll do something to sabotage it. This can take the form of worry, criticism (of self & others), deflection and even getting sick at really inopportune times.

My big one is worry, which really is a form of doubt… I go down the road of “what ifs” and then my brilliant idea starts to turn ick on me. And if i’m not aware of what is happening then it can be really easy for me to get to the point of “forget it, let’s scrap this idea.”

The flip side of this of course is using doubt as a tool – when the doubts creep in it can actually mean that this is simply a big leap moment. If I remind myself of that I can shake off the doubts. In that case it’s time to take a deep breath and go for it… that’s not the time to run away (even if i want to. 😉