Episode Description:
Being an author means navigating an endless maze of decisions — creative decisions, business decisions, financial decisions, social decisions — and at some point, all of us hit a wall where everything feels murky. The next step isn’t clear. The “right” answer seems to flicker between yes and no. And the longer we sit in that limbo, the more everything stalls.
In this episode, Claire explores the anatomy of doubt: why we freeze, why uncertainty feels so emotionally loaded, and why some types (hello, Loyalists) live close to doubt every day while others completely unravel the moment they encounter it.
If you’re stuck in doubt about your writing, career, or next steps — this episode gives you tools to reclaim clarity and reconnect with your inner authority.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why doubt is a human condition, not a character flaw
The difference between not having enough information and being afraid to act
How impatience, overthinking, or rushing toward certainty can backfire
What “polarity” conflicts are and why they make some decisions feel impossible
How losing trust in your inner authority derails decision-making
Why burnout makes even simple choices feel overwhelming
How to check in with your head, heart, and body to get clear on your next step
Key questions that help you break out of the doubt spiral and move forward
Key Takeaway:
Doubt isn’t always a stop sign — sometimes it’s a signal to slow down, sometimes a nudge to reevaluate your values, and sometimes a warning that your nervous system is overwhelmed. But no matter the cause, you can learn to disentangle the noise, reconnect with your inner authority, and make decisions that honor who you are now.
Support the Show:
If today’s episode helped you breathe a little easier in the face of uncertainty, share it with another writer who might need it too.
You can explore Claire’s courses, coaching, and books at liberatedwriter.com, including her newest release, Write Iconic Characters, available now through major retailers.
Happy writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. All my services, courses and books for authors can be found@liberatedwriter.com. Go check it out. If you're curious about how you can build a more sustainable author career in uncertain times.
Also, I have a new book out called Write Iconic Characters, all about using the Enneagram to develop realistic and relatable characters that live rent free in the reader's head. You can find that on most major retailers or go to book2read.com/wic for right, iconic characters, not wic, the government program that helps mothers, , feed their kids, which you know.
It's being cut drastically because why would we want children to have food anyway? Okay, I digress. [00:01:00] books2ead.com/wic. That's where you can find right iconic characters. Being a writer comes with a lot of moving pieces, it can really just be a lot to juggle and it can become overwhelming if we don't create some silos for what we focus on and when. It's too many decisions to make all at once. So you have the creative decisions about who your characters are and what devious things you're gonna throw at them.
And there are business decisions like what genre you're gonna write in. Will you go traditional or indie? How much time will you spend on a project? How will you market it? What risks are you willing to take financially? Then there are social decisions, like who can you network with, how do you relate to your readers?
And these are arguably also business decisions, but to make things more complicated, they also hit on social anxieties. Yay. Basically, there are a lot of decisions to make in a week, let alone years of a career. At some point, each of us is going to [00:02:00] reach a moment where we find ourselves stuck, unsure which path to take.
This is a frustrating moment. We generally call it doubt. It's the brain flickering quickly between a yes and a no. It's not fun. And when we have a bunch of responsibilities on our shoulders, they can start to really bottleneck if we get stuck in that place of doubt for too long.
So in today's episode, we're going to ask the question, what if I'm stuck in doubt?
You may be thinking that this is an issue specific to one Enneagram type, and I'll say that there is certainly a type that struggles with it more than any other, but doubt is also a human condition. We encounter it when we lose sight of what we're aiming for or simply reach a point where we haven't thought farther ahead. We hit doubt when a deeply entrenched pattern of ours is interrupted, or a presumed X leads to Y relationship is shown to be false. Oh, [00:03:00] shit, what now? So yes, the vice of the type six, the loyalist is usually.
Called doubt. So this episode will be especially useful for the loyalists. They're familiar with the experience and may appreciate some tools for their toolbox, but what I also find is that the types that are less prone to doubt have a bigger, more massive freak out when they hit it. They haven't had the practice with it that say sixes get.
So when an eight, the Challenger finds themselves stuck, in a doubt trap, it can be a really interesting site to behold they are not okay with it since they live most of their lives knowing exactly what they wanna do and making very quick decisions. It's unfamiliar territory, and that triggers the eighth sphere of being harmed so they don't understand the threat because it's novel.
Now every single type runs into moments of doubt because it's part of the human condition. [00:04:00] So sometimes it's a useful feeling to experience because it reigns us in and it says, are you sure you wanna proceed that way? Those of us who hate sitting still, once we've thought of a next step, we could really benefit from that moment of asking ourselves if we're sure we wanna proceed that way.
Just a little, little moment to pause. The problem, of course, is when it's not simply a call to think carefully before acting. Instead, we become stuck in it. So let's look at some of the reasons why the authors I talk to end up stuck in doubt. The first reason is pretty simple. They don't feel like they have enough information to make a decision yet.
And you know what? Sometimes they're right. The wisdom of the nine, the peacemaker reminds us that sometimes the right action in a moment is no action is waiting. Mostly things unfold in their own time, and if we're able to remain peaceful as we wait, we will be able to sense [00:05:00] when it's the time to move into action that truly influences the outcome.
This is a difficult concept for some of the more impatient authors among us to grasp. I include myself in that cohort. I understand that it's true, right? But I'm still like, Hmm, maybe I can do something else while I wait that will secretly make the thing happen faster. Right? Sometimes the feeling of doubt is a way your inner guide is telling you that you have the next step, correct.
It's simply not time to take it yet. So that is the stop go that sense of doubt. And then sometimes the feeling like I don't have enough information yet is not wisdom, but fear. So humans want certainty and we, we go after it a few different ways. So one very common way is when we feel doubt about an outcome, we really can't stand that feeling.
So we take reckless or not well-informed action right away. So at least we'll have [00:06:00] certainty, even if the thing we're certain about is, well, that didn't fucking work. Then there are those who want certainty, and so they stall out. They try to learn more and more and more hoping that they'll reach a point where it becomes clear to them that their plan of action is guaranteed to work.
Unfortunately, you can never reach this degree of true certainty.
You might feel fairly confident something is going to work, but if your threshold for action is needing a 100% guarantee, you will be stuck in doubt forever. Now is one strategy better than the other? Is rushing in without enough information, better than waiting, waiting, waiting for certainty, way past the point where action could be effective?
I don't think so. Either one can devastate your author business. Don't worry. Thankfully, there is a lot of middle ground between these two extremes that we can practice aiming for.
Another cause of authors being trapped in doubt is what we call a polarity. So sometimes these are called trade-offs. [00:07:00] If we reach a fork in the road where we can't have two things that we want and we can only pick one, we can very easily get trapped in doubt if we haven't recently taken the time to assess or reassess our values and goals.
The question in a trade off is, what do you want more? Or even what do you want? Less? And while this seems like a simple question, it almost never is. If you struggle to know what you want, don't worry. You're not alone. It takes practice to know what matters to us. It takes experience in not getting that thing, making the wrong decision for ourselves, and then regretting it.
When we meet a trade off where we genuinely cannot have it, both ways, we're brought into contact with the limitations of a mortal life. If we don't feel confident that we can let things go, closed doors that may not be able to open again without, you know, letting that understanding [00:08:00] destroy us, then a simple trade off can become an existential crisis.
It takes practice to let things go. The path to liberation isn't one of changing essential parts of yourself, but rather one of letting go of things that you've been clinging onto for dear life. So this is not a small matter, in other words. We encounter trade-offs all the time, and not all of them even register as such to us.
So let's say you're writing romance and you love writing romance. Meanwhile you hate horror novels and would never ever want to write one, you're probably not going to notice the trade-off that so long as you're writing romance, you are abandoning writing horror. Not every trade off registers to us, but some do.
And generally, almost always, it's the ones that play on our inner polarities [00:09:00] that lead to the grinding halt of doubt. So these polarities may express themselves as conflicting values.
For instance, you may value both short-term success and long-term stability. So what happens when these two things come into conflict? For instance, you have an opportunity to jump into an anthology with successful authors of your genre, but you would have to abandon your long-term plans for the next month to work on the submission. Then all your marketing bandwidth for the next book and your plan series would be eaten up by your obligations for marketing the anthology.
Would this offer enough short-term success to enhance your long-term stability? Or would this be a distraction that could end up making the next book of your series flop in a way that could lead to long-term consequences for the following books in the series? I. Particular trade off might be hitting an internal [00:10:00] polarity of this hypothetical author.
Meanwhile, other authors may not think twice about either jumping into the anthology or just passing on it and sticking to their plan.
A no-brainer decision for one person will leave another person stuck in doubt because people experience different polarities from one another. This is why when you are the person who is stuck in doubt and you ask one of your friends for advice, they may look at you like you're slow for even asking the question.
They simply don't have the polarity that you do. So this trade off doesn't feel like one to them. The answer seems obvious.
The next reason one might find oneself in doubt is that you've simply lost trust in your decision making skills. This is not an easy rupture to mend, but it is something that practice will solve over time. This loss of trust in self, which we describe in the Enneagram as a disconnect from inner authority can develop in early childhood, as is the case with [00:11:00] sixes, but it can also come from a particular traumatic experience or simply entering new territory and not yet understanding the best way to proceed.
What this usually turns into is trying to find an expert to guide the way. To be clear, listening to experts is not a negative thing. It's how we learn, and frankly, I think we could use a little more of that and a little less doing our own research lately. Yet again, I digress. The problem with always looking for an expert is that we can put someone else in charge of making decisions for us.
We let them override our inner authority, which is really useful for saying, that's not for me or that is for me. A sound decision is a blend of listening to topical information, learning from experts, and then filtering that through what you know about yourself to make the decision.
For instance, some years back, a [00:12:00] lot of authors entered the wild world of indie publishing. They felt overwhelmed and understandably so, and started looking for an expert to help them break through the self-doubt they were feeling. What you look for, you'll find sort of, because there were a lot of people saying, this is the way to make money off your writing, and the answer was, as many of you listening already know.
Write a bunch of books as fast as you can. Don't worry about the quality, and then hit publish.
So that advice worked well for a while for those who didn't have an inner polarity between quality and speed. It was almost always doled out by people who did not have a strong pull toward quality or else they would've known that. For those who do have that pull, writing as many books as fast as you can without worrying too much about quality is like slamming down the accelerator pedal of your car while also keeping a foot on the brake.
[00:13:00] It's not gonna end well.
However, among those who did have a strong polarity between quality and speed, meaning both of those mattered and they were being pushed and pulled between the two, some of those folks overrode their inner authorities voice saying, this is not for me, and tried to follow the perceived external authorities.
Anyway, many became just straight up apostles of it. The whole rapid release, uh, approach, it became pretty cult-like in that anyone who dared question anything about it was cast out of online and social groups called a Luddite, a snob, or even lazy, right? You probably heard someone go, you just don't want it bad enough.
Want what? That's the question. Want what? Bad enough. A catalog of books. You can't stand to look at three years from now because your need for quality is spitting up in its mouth anyway. And listen, I tried the [00:14:00] rapid release thing for myself. I listened to the people on stage saying it was an elixir. We were all seeking, and I mustered all my straight A student energy and gave it a shot, and it worked to some extent.
I hit a hot market at the right time. I pumped out 11 books in a year and made some money. It was, it was nice. It felt kind of good for a while, but my inner authority made it clear this isn't for you. I was giving up too much quality according to my standards, and I kind of wanted a life outside of just typing, you know, typing and publishing and marketing.
So we each have that inner authority that talks to us, but you have to practice listening to it before you hear it right off the bat. Otherwise, like me, you end up taking a road for a little while that isn't for you. Before you hear it say, , I told you so. Too bad you didn't listen to me. Another reason you might be stuck in doubt is that there's a path ahead of you that you can see clearly, and you want to [00:15:00] take it, but you're objectively not ready for it.
Your doubt is holding you back because it's not the wrong path for you, but you need to set up a base camp to prepare for the road ahead first.
Every author I've talked to possesses the courage to try something they would consider challenging. That's not the issue. The problem is often that they don't have enough support in place to take on the challenge. So we can't forget to amass our allies before heading into the underworld.
If you wanna take on a challenge like trying to fit, I don't know, an extra novella into your already packed writing calendar, go for it. If you have enough support for it to work without you simply expecting yourself to take on superhuman powers, you've previously never possessed.
So ask, what responsibilities will you be handing off to create space for the new challenge? What [00:16:00] support do you need to be able to make this new challenge possible without regretting it later? For instance, okay, you're gonna take on this novella. Maybe you drive the kids to school in the morning and your partner picks them up in the afternoon, but the morning is your best writing time.
Can you switch with your partner so that you pick up instead of dropping off? Could you create that kind of support for your new writing challenge? I can't tell you how many people are reluctant to ask for this kind of support until I peer pressure them. Uh, then once they ask, they actually discover that the people in their lives are more than happy to support them in the way that they need.
Those people just had no idea what it was until they were told. A lot of the time. The issue isn't that you don't have enough support to start down the challenging road, but that you have it, but just haven't seen it yet.
The seeing it [00:17:00] part is crucial until you see it. You may not have the confidence that if something doesn't go according to plan, you have a safety net to catch you. Until you see the support that you have waiting to be tapped into, it won't even cross your mind to reach out. Let them know you're trying something new, and ask if they'll show up for you in a specific way for a period of time.
Okay, so side note, if you notice that you have a lot of adults who rely on you for support, but who aren't interested in stepping up for you, when you ask for support, that's probably a sign that it's time to cu your social circle. I know that's hard to hear, but that's a reality check. They're adults just like you, right?
If they're not willing to give, maybe it's time to readjust the flow of your attention. Now, I know a lot of people are taking care of ailing parents or a disabled spouse, so I'm not advocating that you cut those people off entirely, right? But. [00:18:00] Honestly, the number of times the person I'm talking to does everything for a parent or spouse, not because the person isn't capable of doing some of those things, but because the author I'm talking to has built their self-esteem on people needing them or hasn't developed skills around asking for help or letting others struggle in a productive way that leads to more independence.
It's truly mind boggling, like. I don't know your life, but it might be worth doing a little check to see if you're actually stealing some agency from the people around you by going beyond what they really require, insofar as help, and I mean specifically the adults, right? Children are of course, selfish little heathens, and it's not their job to support adults.
Anyway. I know this is hard to hear, so listen. I love you. You know your life, but if you feel prickly listening to me, say what I just said, it may be a sign that it's time to ask [00:19:00] some hard questions of yourself. The path to taking care of too many people and not getting the care you need and deserve ends in the emergency room.
Okay. I see more and more people lately who are closer to that destination than they realize. It's not a done deal, though. You can make a change before disaster strikes. And if you need help with that, that's what I'm here for. I'm not saying this to scare you, I'm saying this to help wake you up to something that maybe you've fallen asleep to because we all fall asleep to parts of ourselves.
Then the last reason I'll touch on that you might find yourself stuck in doubt is that you friend are in burnout. Wom. I know it sucks, , but we are not great at making decisions when we're in burnout, and that's just the way it is. So probably you're trying to make a decision that would've worked well for you prior to the burnout and the burned out part of your brain is going [00:20:00] Stop, halt.
Do not pass. Go simply because. You're fucking sapped in this case, unfortunately, you need to listen to the Gandalf in your head going, you shall not pass, , to that ambitious monster of yours, , who's denying the reality of your situation, right? When we're burned out, we have to stop doing things we used to do, period.
That's the only way out. I know it sucks, but what I've also found is that. Burnout can be an amazing pivot point in our life and career. We are forced to reevaluate all of our givens. So some of the things we were doing and the intensity with which we were doing them aren't aligned to who we are now.
That's how we burned out. So what if we start from scratch, getting to know ourselves again? It can be a really beautiful thing like a phoenix rising from the ashes, right? Can it [00:21:00] cause relational problems? Yes. Can it cause financial problems? Yep. Can it cause health problems? For sure. But denying the reality of it only intensifies all of that.
It is time to shed skin and rediscover who we are beneath all of that. That's one of the things that burnout is actually calling us to do.
All right. Now that I've been so kind as to point out all the causes of doubt for many authors or some of the causes of doubt for many authors, uh, how about I do something useful and show you some tools for extricating yourself from the trap? That would be thoughtful. I mean, wouldn't it? Okay, so the first tool for your toolbox, which I cannot praise highly enough, is to check in with your three centers when you hit a moment of doubt.
Often the issue is that one center is telling you to take the path that forks to the right and another is screaming at you to take the one that forks to the left. Until we take a [00:22:00] moment to tune in and distinguish what our centers are saying, it can really turn into a big mush inside of us That leads to doubt.
I've talked about the three centers on previous episodes, but for those who may have skipped them or not listened in a while, our three centers are the head, the heart, and the body or gut. So thinking, feeling, and doing.
Sometimes only two out of three centers agree on a path forward, and the dissenting one happens to be the center we most rely on for making decisions. So that presents a real problem. For instance, let's say you're a head centered person, which many authors are, you have three different series in progress, and you're trying to decide which book to write next.
Your head may look at the sales numbers and say, series A is selling best, so I should write another book in that series. The problem arises when your heart is saying, but Series B is so much more fun to write, [00:23:00] and maybe your gut is saying There's only one more book left in series C before it's complete.
And completing things feels really good. So what if this is your situation? Well, you might wr your hands over it for a bit and finally give in and schedule an author alignment with me to get some clarity. Hey, that's what I'm here for. Use me. , but until you separate out what each of the centers is telling you about the decision, you're going to feel like you're swimming in a s sludge.
So maybe on Monday you feel clarity. That Series A is the ticket. Your brain is right. So you write a chapter in it. On Tuesday, you sit down to write and he can't stop thinking about series B, so you get very little words down for series A and you feel very frustrated about that. Then on Wednesday, you decide to go for it with Series B, listen to your heart, and you have a blast writing it for about an hour.
Then on Thursday, you feel guilty about wasting time on [00:24:00] Series B, and you're so sick of the back and forth that you decide, screw it. I'm gonna finish series C so that I don't feel pulled in so many directions. You spend Thursday chipping away at a book in Series C and then wake up Friday morning and go, what the hell did I even get done this week?
Ah, sound familiar? Anyway, start by asking your head, your heart, and your body slash gut, , what it wants you to do in that situation. Give yourself space to listen to. That's very important. Give yourself space to listen to each center. Write down notes. You will struggle to connect to one of the three centers because it's just your lowest center.
But try to practice patience and keep listening. It can help sometimes to imagine that your lowest center is a shy child, and then you treat it with the care and patients that it requires until it speaks up. Our lowest center is usually [00:25:00] quiet because we've been calling it useless our whole life. So yeah, you might have to win back some trust.
Once you've heard what each of your centers has to say, you can start asking yourself a few questions and now there's no right answer to any of these. Only an answer you feel like you can live with. So here are some questions to get you started. What center do I usually listen to? Have the results been what I wanted? Or am I ready to experiment with letting another center have it say, next question, does my head have the facts straight? Or is it relying on assumptions that might not be true? Next question. Does my heart simply need to be heard? Is there a way I can care for my heart as I follow my head or gut's preferred path?
Next question, is my gut's answer based on fear or intuition? Is it telling me to go because it's impatient or because it senses that the time is ripe? [00:26:00] Is it telling me not to go yet because it's scared or because it senses that events are still falling into place for the best time to proceed? Next question.
When I've made a decision in the past and it didn't work out the way I'd planned. Was it actually all that bad? If so, how did I get back on my feet? And if I could do it, then couldn't I reasonably do it again even if it is kind of unpleasant. Next question. What is lost by staying in this holding pattern?
Am I willing to lose that? How might taking a risk for what aligns with my values lead to a deeper sense of self-respect? Could that be worth the risk?
There are more detailed questions that you can ask for your particular situation, but these are some general ones that may be enough to shake you free from doubt. Doubt is often a result of asking what if without fully answering it. So if you're asking, what if, I'm stuck [00:27:00] in doubt. I hope something in this episode helped you fully answer the question and that the answer you came upon was essentially.
If that happens, I'll be okay or know what to do to make myself okay.
Doubt is not always a bad thing. It can be painful for sure, but there are ways to peel its bony fingers from off our shoulders so that we can handle all our adult responsibilities and enjoy life the way we deserve. If you'd benefit from some individual coaching around this issue, go to liberated writer.com and schedule an author alignment with me.
We can get into the specifics of your situation decoding what underlying pattern is at play and developing strategies that work for you. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of What If For Authors. I'm Claire Taylor, and I hope you'll join me next time as we journey into our fears and find our way out on the other side [00:28:00] together.
Happy writing.