The stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell
Doubt everything. Find your own light.
Gautama Buddha
A while back I wrote about imposter syndrome and how, when allowed to run rampant, it can hinder progress and encourage bad behaviors. As pervasive and damaging as it is, though, imposter syndrome is not nearly as insidious and debilitating as self-doubt, which can rapidly harden into regressive and persistent habit.
Since then, I have embarked on an ambitious journey to make a quantum leap, an exponential advance in my development as a person and as a professional. These essays I publish every week are a small part of that effort.
Lately, though, I have been plagued with self-doubt. How could I, little ol’ me, do anything of great value? This voice of doubt echoing in my skull, is, of course, the result of the garbage thinking and baseless assumptions that have cluttered my mind and probably your mind for decades. As vapid as these thoughts are, they are largely — perhaps entirely — responsible for every time you and I have tried something stupendous only to crap out.
What if, though, the onset of these doubts is itself part of the process? What if great progress is impossible without the experience of profound and debilitating doubt? Furthermore, what if powering through the doubt is exactly as wrong as yielding to it?
In fact, self-doubt is a necessary and beneficial part of the pursuit of any worthwhile goal. When you experience doubt, you know you are approaching the periphery of success. The more you doubt, the closer you are. Moreover, the absence of self-doubt is a sign that your goal is not particularly bold. Being absolutely sure at every moment of a process means that the end was always in reach. That is a perfectly dandy state of affairs for incremental development but only if you do not long to advance much beyond the status quo. On the other hand, if your ambition is to move well beyond what is already accessible, you will have to suffer self-doubt, and — rely on it — the more devastating the doubt, the more laudably aspirational the objective.
Easy and familiar effort will yield easy and familiar results.
Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.
Piet Hein
The Danish poet, inventor, artist, mathematician, scientist, designer, Resistance fighter, and all-around underachiever Piet Hein, posited that any problem worth solving is going to put up some serious resistance. By extension, any significant goal worth achieving is going to generate intense pushback as well. Much of that pushback (maybe all) is from inside ourselves, and much of that internal opposition will be in the form of self-doubt. (Fear is another factor I may address in a later piece — perhaps when I have made more headway overcoming it.)
Yes, the habit of self-doubt is a destroyer…if we let it be so. The impulse to self-doubt can become so overwhelming that it feels like we are mired in a thick, viscous goo. What should we do? Just give in and go nowhere?
Many choose the opposite and fight hard to dislodge themselves from the muck of self-doubt. Their resistance is noble, but it comes at the expense of time, energy, and resources. Even if they overcome their doubts, they will likely still fall well short of their goal and settle on some incremental achievement. They make progress, to be sure, but not the astounding progress of the exponential leap.
Think of the toy known as the Chinese finger trap. It consists of a short tube woven of bamboo strips. The idea is that, after putting an index finger in each end, if you try to remove your fingers by pulling them out, you will find they are stuck. The harder you pull, the more stuck you become. Increased effort, in fact, is counterproductive. If you have ever encountered one of these diabolical machines, you probably felt a moment or two of consternation as you struggled to extricate your helpless digits. Alternately, you could just resolve to spend the rest of your life with your index fingers bound fast together. Up to you.
What is required for extraction though is — counterintuitively — to push your fingertips toward each other rather than pulling away. As a result, the tension will slacken, and the tube will widen enough to release your fingers. You then will be free to try the trick out on some unsuspecting child you wish to torment.
It is the same with self-doubt in pursuit of a goal. If you choose not to give in to the doubt, your inclination will be to fight it, to plow through it only to find yourself more unable to move than ever. Instead, you need to do something completely unexpected (and, in reality, opposite). Don’t give in. Don’t battle.
Welcome, Frenemy!
We have already seen that self-doubt is a positive sign that you are on the right path of a worthy goal. We have also seen that neither giving into the doubt nor battling with it will get you very far. If you are still committed to your goal — your exponential explosion of progress — what choice do you have, then?
Time to reach for the counterintuitive.
Welcome the doubt. It is a happy signpost on the road to success. Encountering discouraging doubt along the way confirms both that your goal is worthy and that your direction is sure. Success is achievable.
Embrace the self-doubt. Embracing your doubts does not mean giving into them. It means learning from them to better understand the habits that hold you back so that you can adopt new, more useful paradigms to guide you.
Celebrate your self-doubt. Doubt is a manifestation of the challenging problem or ambitious goal fighting back from within to prove its value. It is a necessary step, an indicator of advancement, and an opportunity to discover more about your own self-imposed limitations. If you want to leap beyond what you thought was your potential, if you want to try something bold and new, if you want to become the someone you always desired, befriend your self-doubt. It is the frenemy you cannot do without.
Do your personal and professional goals fill you with debilitating self-doubt? Worse still, do your ambitions seem overly easy and familiar? How can you change your mindset and move toward your aspirations?
Your goals are achievable and you deserve to reach them. Understanding and overcoming doubt and other obstacles are critical to success, and I can help. Click below for your free consultation.
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