I just finished a coaching session where I was exploring thoughts about trying to complete an online course I’m creating for sale. I’m having trouble being motivated to actually do the work and finish making the course. We uncovered that I’m having a series of negative thoughts about what I would believe about myself if I created the course, offered it for sale, and no one bought it. Currently, I’m making that mean that I would be a failure, that I’m not good enough. My brain is now using these thoughts as excuses for not doing my work. The result is that I’m feeling more like a failure because I’m not even doing the work.

The coach encouraged me to look at creating the course as a series of facts. Rather than trying to make a good video recording of me narrating my PowerPoint slides; instead, I could view it in a factual way: I’m narrating and recording some slides for a course I’m creating. To take the subjectivity out of it. So when I don’t do the work and don’t create the slides, I don’t think about it with subjectivity (I’m a failure for not doing my work) Instead, I could just look at it factually – I didn’t create some recordings.

So my question: If we don’t want to use achievements or outside circumstances to derive our value, where do we derive it from? Especially if we look at everything we do as a set of facts.

Thanks