The Benefit(?) of the Doubt

"Doubt—a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction."  That's Google's definition.  I'd like to add fear, lack of confidence, and the feeling that the ground you are standing on is growing unsteady.  And it’s been on my mind for a while.  Well, it’s always around, but usually I try to ignore it.  Not today.

I like to think of myself as a confident person.  I get away with this because I know for a fact I used to be much less sure of myself than I am now.  Education, maturity, and an improved sense of self-esteem have all given me a lot of faith in myself over the years.  But it is so easy for doubt to creep back in.  I can check twice to make sure the shopping list is in my purse, but if my roommate texts me to ask if I have it, I have to check again.  It’s not just about little things, either, like whether I brushed my teeth or whether I locked the door.  I doubt other people’s intentions and their opinions of me, even when there is no evidence in their actions to give me reason.  For example, a coworker recently offered to cover one of my shifts this weekend, saying that I have been working a lot lately and deserve a day off.  I was very grateful to accept and touched that she had noticed my fatigue, but a little voice in the back of my head just wouldn’t be silent.  It told me that she just needs the money, that she is actually laughing at me with her friends, calling me lazy or foolish—“we don’t want to work with her anyway.”  Never mind that that kind of behavior is immature to the extreme, not to mention illogical.  The doubt is still there.

We live in a world today where danger is not a constant companion.  Yes, I might get hit by a bus or robbed out there, but the likelihood of physical harm is slim in the secure life that I lead.  Instead we find our dangers these days in the social and emotional realms of life.  To survive, to be happy, we need to have a solid position in society, to be seen as strong, to be valued, to be loved.  So we spend much of our time measuring ourselves against others, trying to guess what they think of us, trying to influence their opinions.  We can even do it all on our own, holding ourselves up to high standards that we could never really be expected to meet.  It gets exhausting after a while, and the doubts never really go away.  In fact, I’ve found that the more you feed them, the more they grow.

The solution I’ve found to these pests is a simple one: to kill doubt, you must have faith.  I’m not talking about capital F Faith, though I will say that my religion gives me a great deal of security in my life.  But in this case, it is enough to find something that you know is true and rest in that.  Get in touch with a friend whose actions and words you don’t have to analyze.  Do something that you know you are good at, or else something that doesn’t require you to be the best.  When you have a refuge where you feel safe just being yourself, you’ll find that the doubts do a little less shouting.