• As is par for the course, everything can’t have gone your way over the year
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With only a couple of weeks remaining before the end of the year, you’re looking back at the year right about now and weighing your performance. If you’re not, you should be.
As is par for the course, everything can’t have gone your way over the year. How could it, especially with the economy we’re having? And so, having spectacularly not achieved things you’d expected to achieve, or failed or not found or lost something you wanted, self-doubt about the coming year is probably wriggling its way into your mind right this second.
I consider myself an expert in self-doubt as writers experience self-doubt more than most. Of course you’ll find self-doubt in other spheres of life besides writing and in writers. One can fail at pretty much anything, even that which one shouldn’t have failed at, and this leads to a loss of confidence in one’s own abilities, self-doubt. But as an expert, I’ll tell you this about self-doubt.
Self-doubt is a b*tch, the kind that wiggles into your head and heart to cause you harm.
You know the type, she’s fine but crazy. She’s trouble but still fine, and much as you’d like to rid yourself of her because she does your head in, you have such a serious thing for her, she’s in every thought you have.
Guys know this chick and if you don’t, I’ll tell you about her. She’s that on-again, off-again or, as Keith Sweat sings it, that ‘Out of your life into your bed, out of your heart and into you head, in-and-out’ girl that has you tied in knots.
She’s fine (I already said that, didn’t I?). Deserves mentioning again because we’re not talking some run-of-the-mill beauty here. Plus she can lay down the loving. The thing about this girl, though, is she doesn’t want the best for you, and so she makes you think you’re safer and comfortable being with her than without. That’s self-doubt.
Self-doubt tells you that you’re stupid, weird, you don’t have what it takes, you’re not good enough, stick to what you know. The aim is to crush your self-esteem, suck the life out of you so you don’t move on to bigger and better things.
And if you even look like you’re thinking of moving, self-doubt cosies up to you sexy-like and whispers into your ear the fear of failure, painting for you pictures of the dark creatures that await you away from the little box she’s put you in called nice, safe, comfortable routine.
Self-doubt doesn’t play fair either because even when you get serious about breaking free, when she senses you cutting away at the chains with a file to escape, self-doubt hits up her girlfriends, namely critics, hecklers and naysayers on text-Insta-Twit-Face to spread negativity in your direction about how you can’t live without her.
Self-doubt, however, is not the enemy. You know the enemy, you’ve met the enemy, the enemy is you. That part of you that listens to self-doubt and believes everything she says.
My advice, auto-reject self-doubt’s calls, don’t read her texts, block her from whispering fear into your mind, ghost that bitch for you’ll never get past the fear of failing again with self-doubt in your life.
Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear – George Addair.