Doubt, The Change it brings About

If you go and ask a person who has never stepped on stage to give a speech to an audience he would not accept the task, they would say that they doubt their ability of public speaking. Go to an introvert and invite them to a social gathering, they would decline as they doubt their socializing skills. Ask an orthodox person to dress more fashionably, they would hesitate as they doubt if society would accept their dressing sense. Go ask a person to propose to his crush and they would hesitate and hesitate and hesitate as the person is never really sure if their love is mutual.

Everywhere in the above lines, doubt is characterized as a force or notion that holds you behind, that binds to preset confines.

These confines are either what you have set for yourself or what society has set for you. These confines must have been enforced upon a person long enough for him to believe that those are his true limitations. In most cases, we face doubt only in situations where we have very little or no experience in handling them. Doubt acts as a question mark that hooks you down and pulls you back from achieving your goal.

We can also deduce an interesting fact :

Fear originates only in the presence of doubt.

Doubt that torments you or disturbs you to a great extent transforms into fear.

We can come to an agreement that the general perception of doubt seems to be much associated with negativity or limitations. So, do you think that this is the best way to visualize doubt?

Negativity is always easier to spot out and describe. It’s always faster and easier to categorize something as bad than taking the time to understand the good in it. The same way, how we associate the term doubt also matters.

Instead of visualizing doubt as restraint, consider it to be a safety belt. Both pull you back and hold you at the same place. But a restraint doesn’t let you move forward while a safety belt ensures you don’t injure yourself while moving forward.

Instead of focusing on doubt’s association with fear, associate it with change. Change is the only constant in our world and change defines the origin of doubt.

Only when we are thrust into situations which we haven’t handled before, this change makes us ask ourselves the question, “What am I supposed to do in this juncture?”

This question transforms into the restraint that holds us back when we do not know what the answer is or do not take the required effort to answer it. All we need to do is understand that there’s always a button to unbuckle the belt and finding it makes all the difference.

We’ve all heard about the 3D’s to success, Direction, Determination, Discipline. But the only D that no one talks about, the one that helps us quantify the other 3 D’s, that’s doubt. Doubt your Direction to keep correcting your course. Doubt your Determination to understand your resolve to your goal. Doubt your discipline to work with due diligence. Accept your doubts and persevere to solve them or you will succumb to the doubts of million other people just waiting to spot them.