Killing the fear inside
One of my long-term goals is to remove self-doubt from my life. I know. A big goal that I'm sure that a lot of people can sympathize with, but little know exactly how to do it. Do I know how to go about doing that? No idea. But a guess is better than paralysis. So here I am, returning to a blog that I haven't updated in about six months time. My life has changed a lot during that time, but this post is not about my life. It is about removing self-doubt.
You can't see this as the reader (or maybe you can if you are a savant), but I am trusting myself right now. What do I mean? I set myself a timer for five minutes. I have five minutes to write down my thoughts on self-doubt and the ways that I am combating that. So far I haven't said very much about it, but that's not the point. Discussing self-doubt and how I feel was what I was doing about 30 minutes ago when I opened this blogging platform and got stuck trying to figure out what word to put in front of the next. What is the idea, thesis, themes, images, relationships that I can use as examples for what I am talking about. What is it that I actually feel when I have self-doubt. Bullshit. I've just fallen into my own trap. Now, I am not interested in that. If I want to eliminate self-doubt, I have to practice that. I don't want to continue using it as a filter for my words and thoughts. So this is how I think when I am writing as much as I can on a subject I ruminate on. Can you see how much it actually matters to me?
In the end, it's not very much because when I am actually writing and focusing on just getting the words down, I feel pretty good, I feel confident. I am not worried about entirely making sense and getting the idea completely developed. That is not what this is for. This is exercise. If it has been a while since you haven't run, don't plan for a marathon, just go around the block. Even now I feel winded. It's obvious this confidence thing takes a lot of practice and trust in yourself. Do I trust myself? Rational mind is saying yes, but my gut is not so certain. Now I need to feed myself good reminders that I can trust myself. Like now, my timer is over and I have a whole beautiful post ready for you, the reader to enjoy! I hope you like it, because after five minutes of total trust in myself, I feel better than when I started.
-bzg
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