Doubt your doubter’s doubts

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” William Shakespeare

SLART’s note: This post was going to be called “Doubt your doubt’s doubts” but then I got a weird sense of semantic satiation and felt all weird. So I called it “Doubt your doubts” instead. Edit: It’s now called, Doubt your doubter’s doubts. It feels weird but it is fitting.

I’m tired of referring to limiting beliefs, limiting/negative thoughts etc… So I decided to hone in on doubts, it’s probably just semantics but ‘doubting yourself’ feels different to me. It’s that automatic hesitation which doesn’t make sense in so many cases.

doubt

/daʊt/

noun

a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction.

Let’s talk about the doubtful elephant in the room.

Doubts.

I’m an expert in doubting myself.

I doubt my ability to do my day job.

I doubt my role as an artist.

I doubt my plans.

I doubt my ideas.

I doubt my decisions.

I doubt my ability to be a good husband and father.

I doubt myself.

For a big portion of my life, even now at times, I even doubt what I’m saying when I speak out loud.

I doubt every word, because my words aren’t worth hearing.

I doubt I’m alone in this.

We all doubt.

But we rarely, if ever, doubt our doubts.

Why do we believe our doubts as true but often encourage others to climb over those doubts?

We intellectually know that we doubt ourselves but viscerally we believe our doubts are real barriers.

I even doubt these words I write now.

I got this idea from reading my Substack stats.

My heart sank when I saw that my last two posts only had a 34% and 33% open rate, compared to to the late 40s previously.

My inner doubter decided to call this occurrence “you are shit at writing, give up writing on Substack, people clearly don’t like your words because less people are reading them.”

Wordy title.

I’m truly not looking for any sympathy here. I’m really looking at this with a clear head. As if the doubter isn’t really me, it’s just a voice that I believe to be me.

Because that’s what it really is.

We’ve been indoctrinated with success metrics in the internet age, especially when you’re playing the algorithm lottery on top of getting your work out there in the world.

Let’s take a look at my email open stats since I started writing on

Substack

at the end of July 2023:

If I listened to my inner doubter, I’d have given up by now.

My subscribers have gone up from 43 lovely people who were on my mailing list originally, and as of 12th October 2023 I have 88 subscribers. Thank you all!

So in 78 days it’s gone from 43 to 89 which is a 106.98% increase. A lot of “internet marketers” and bloggers would call this a flop.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. Suzy Kassem

I won’t go into failure, I hate the word, it’s just overused in the personal development Guru’s arsenal, it becomes another blocker. “Fail your way to the top, they say” - This gives my inner doubter fuel to not even try, as it imagines 1000s of failures in the way of this illusory state called success. The inner doubter is trying to keep me safe but it’s got its wires crossed.

I only just found out that Doubt is an anagram of ‘But do’ it’s a good nemonic to remind us “Doubt? But…? DO!”.

Doubt: The initial voice that says you can’t do something.

But: This is the second voice that quashes the inner hopeful voice, it gives you all the ‘buts’ and the excuses as to why you can’t do it.

Do: So whilst all of those nonsense voices are arguing as to why it’s not possible, you can gently go ahead and do it, then the doubter will be silenced.

Back to one one my favourite quotes of all time:

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh

Imagine if I’d listened to my inner doubter when I picked up art again in 2019, after 20 years of creating nothing? The prospect saddens me.

Yeah, the first step was scary.

I desperately wanted my drawing to be “good”, it was nerve wracking. Now I look back at my first drawing again and I feel great about it.

After that starting point, I started creating more and more, with periods such as 2021 where there was less. But I kept going, building that ovrue… ouvre? oeuvre! That’s it, an artist’s body of work. I’ll have to count the number of drawings and paintings but it must be in the hundreds.

Here’s the first two of those first drawings.

I’m fond of them, they have added meaning as they’re of my baby dog, Bruno. They are a reminder of my gateway back into the art world.

When I got my art studio in the middle of 2021, I felt like a ‘proper artist’, which was a big step forward for me. With that, came the doubts around what to create next, how to create it and how to become a professional artist. But with all of that going on in my head, I keep on going.

Would you like to see my art studio?

Here’s a little art studio tour just for you:

I’ll say it again, doubts try and keep us safe, but we must take a step back from them and see them as a friendly voice that cares, but not to believe them so viscerally.

I’m saying this to myself as much as I am saying it to you. When I watch this video, detached from the whirling thoughts in my head that say that I need to do more and more and more. I’m so pleased that I started creating art again.

Thank you for your attention, time is precious.

Memento Vivere,

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath

P.S. I’ll leave you today with one question for you to answer in the comments.

In the context of activities that came naturally to you: What did you like spending your time doing as a child?

Comment below 👇🏼