What My Dreams Teach About Self Doubt

 

The night before last I had a dream that gave me a lot of food for thought including wisdom that I recorded as soon as I woke up because I knew it was important:

In my dream I am watching a supernatural version* of the Lincoln Lawyer**, who does not trust himself, and there is a male boss*** who does trust him and either I or someone else watching says "The boss trusts him because they remember before, so any issues were caused by the drugs, whereas the Lincoln Lawyer does not trust himself because he got hooked on drugs so what will keep him from making another bad choice moving forward"

Which I think is clearly my brain processing some of my experiences with burn out and self doubt. I was in a retail/food service job for 4 years and then could not take it anymore for a number of reasons (staffing issues, organizational issues, …) so I choose to leave. 

I find myself falling into my dream Lincoln Lawyer's patterns and feeling like since that role strongly and negatively impacted my mental health that means I failed and could not and would not be able to do a similar role anytime in the future.  

I know it would be healthier for me to have the outlook of the Dream Boss. Viewing the fact I had to leave in light of the environment becoming toxic not because I could not do the job back then or would not be able to do the job in the future. 

I was reminded of how much self doubt, imposter syndrome I have collected over the years from a wide range of jobs and am slowly realizing how this accumulated self doubt and imposter syndrome has been and will continue to be holding me back vocationally unless I choose to make a change in my thinking.

So I have some idea why Dream of The Endless created the dream for me, even if I don't have any magic way to change my thinking and decrease my career related self-doubt. Hopefully processing  such as by writing this blog will help me honor my own career strengths.  

   

* The Lincoln Lawyer was some kind of wizard or demon hunter
**I have seen a sum total of one episode of the Lincoln Lawyer
I guess Dream of the Endless just borrowed the character to teach me what I needed to know in my dream LOL
*** Yes I know in the show it is a female boss/co-lawyer