Doubt, but keep going.

Doubt. We've all felt it. It's that little thing that makes you hesitate before a decision, and even once you've made the decision it stays around, asking you whether you're sure that you did the right thing - are you sure that there wasn't another option to pick, a better option? Doubt can come from different sources: it can be from an offhand comment from a friend that didn't mean much but sets off a series of questions in your mind, it can come from a fear of the unknown keeping you off-kilter and making you question that which you can't possibly predict, or it can be from insecurity, an inability to trust your own decisions. It's the last source of doubt that can be the most damaging. 

Doubt can be a good thing, as it can make you double-check to see if you really do have your keys, or it can make you question a person's motives when they don't seem entirely genuine and save you a whole world of hurt. However, when you doubt yourself on a regular basis, it is rarely beneficial. There is a difference between questioning yourself and doubting yourself. When you question yourself, you ask pertinent questions to make sure that you're doing the right things for you: do I really want to take this course or am I doing it to please my parents? Do I like this style of coat or do I want to buy it because everyone else has it and I think I'll feel better when I 'fit' in? Am I happy with this relationship or has it become more of a habit? 

Self-reflection is important so that you always have a sense of self: who you are at the moment, what you want, and the general direction you're heading. Questioning what you do provides you with answers to move forward. On the flip side, doubt does everything it can to keep you stuck in one place. Imagine that you have a wall which you need to climb over - you have two options. Option one, you ask yourself how you're going to climb over it, who you know that might have a solution to your current or if you could Google a way, in order to work out a strategy. Option two, you doubt whether you can even get over the wall. You question your decision to even climb the wall. Why climb the wall? What's wrong with being on this side of the wall? 

In one scenario, you're moving forward, because after all, nothing stops you from climbing back over once you know how to climb it in the first place. The other scenario stops you from doing something that you might like to do or getting the hurdle that will bring you closer to what you want. And the funny thing is, both options take about the same time, but only one of them gets you results. The time you spend questioning a decision is about the same time you could have spent executing it. 

For years I have let my dreams lie dormant because every time I made the decision to follow them I would be racked with doubt: do I have what it takes to be a writer? Would I ever even make a living writing? How could I possibly have original content when there are so many other writers out there? Hasn't it all been written before? During the time I was doubting my dream, I could have been asking more pertinent questions like: if I want to be a writer, what do I have to do? What can I do today that would take me in the right direction? Instead of doubting my dream, I could have been moving towards it.

Now that I've started blogging, I still have doubts: I doubt whether I'm taking the content in the right direction, whether there's any point of having another blog in the sea of blogs, and whether I shouldn't be working on fiction, or non-fiction, or anything else really. However, I've learnt over the past couple of months that doubt, like fear, will always be there, it's just a question of not letting it get in the way. Over time, you begin to doubt what you do with less intensity and regularity, but in the beginning - especially if you have a habit of doubting your decision - it's going to be difficult, and some days it'll feel almost impossible to look at practical ways of getting over your current obstacle rather than wondering why you should get past that hurdle in the first place.

My only advice is: doubt, and keep going. If you don't like where you end up, go back, but don't let doubt paralyse you. Doubt the doubt, but don't doubt yourself.

Thoughts On Sunday: The Learning Curve Doubt Syndrome

I have this terrible habit of doubting what I'm doing when I've just started doing it. For example, this past week, I've been constantly doubting my ability to grow and maintain this blog. I question what my overall aims are, if I'm a beauty blog or a lifestyle blog, what the point of it all is, if I'm not just adding to the thousands of blogs already out there. I forget that I'm doing this because I like writing, because I enjoy trying out new products and discovering new brands. I forget that I'm just starting out, that's it's normal not to know pretty much anything and that in due time I'll figure it out bit by bit and find my feet. 

 

I seem to think that despite the fact that I only started blogging a month ago, I should have it all figured out. And so the doubts of my ability to succeed start creeping in.

I like to call this the Learning Curve Doubt Syndrome, an emotional condition closely linked perfectionism and a lack of patience, which can be defined as wanting to be perfect, and wanting to be perfect right now and consequently doubting yourself when you realise you're not. If we imagine for a moment that perfection actually exists, most people will strive to attain it with the semi-realistic belief that it will take time and hard work to get there, and that the learning curve is a necessary step on the road to their idea of Perfect. Those us of us suffering from Learning Curve Doubt Syndrome? Well, we'll start questioning our ability to ever attain our goal within the first couple of weeks - if we get that far.

Why do we do this? Because the learning curve is hard. That's a fact. There are those who naturally enjoy hard work and get satisfaction of working through a hard puzzle, so they have no problem with the learning curve. It's just another exciting challenge. Then there are those of us who are not so naturally inclined to deal with the hard work that comes with accepting that you can't possibly be good at something from the outset. That you are going to make mistakes, that you are going to go through setbacks as you work it through and that it's going to take time, the length of which depends on individual skill and the steep of the learning curve ahead. 

So when we're confronted with this reality, we immediately begin to doubt ourselves. The end picture seems unattainable and we fixate on that instead of the journey that's ahead, that promises so much if we just give it a chance. With the Learning Curve Doubt, logic goes flying out of the window. I mean, logically, the idea that I can create, grow and maintain a blog that I am almost a hundred percent happy with and that I can run like it's second nature without any hiccups or mistakes within the space of a month is ridiculous.

 

You've probably heard of the Ten Thousand Hour Rule (or heard the Macklemore song inspired by it), an idea most associated with Malcolm Gladwell and his book 'Outliers: The Story of Success'. The idea is that those who are successful in their field owe their success to the  ten thousand hours they invested into the task. Though this theory has been criticised, the general premise of the idea remains solid: in order to be great at something you have to practise, you have to practise every day, and it has to be at the very least ten thousand hours of practise. 

And yet the Learning Curve Doubt ignores this rule entirely. I've maybe put in about twenty hours so far, and I expect to be an expert. I want the answers now. I doubt whether I'll ever seem to have it figured out like bloggers who are able to queue posts to cover absences or have captivating features and formulas that I grow to admire and love. I forget that they went through the same wobbly phase of finding their feet. In fact they're probably still trying to find their feet, but the one thing all successful blogs seem to have in common, whatever their content, is perseverance.

 

Actually, when you think about it, perseverance is the key to any form of success in whatever you want to do. It's not going to be easy, especially not in the beginning when the "Errr, is this right? Is there a right way - I can't remember - how do you even do this? Argh! What am I doing?" sets in, but so long as you enjoy it, you just keep doing it. You push past the Learning Curve Doubt, and instead of giving in and giving up, you keep going until you decide you want to stop. And then you move onto something else. 

 

Wouldn't it be great if things felt as simple in practise as they sound in theory? Ha.

All I know for sure is that I really enjoy blogging, and for now, that's all that really matters. I'm still not a hundred percent what my content is going to be, how to write regularly, how social media is going to come into the mix and keeping up with everything, but I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually. I just have to ignore the little voice in my head that spews doubt and get on with it. I still have another 9,980 hours to go before I can declare that I'm just no good at blogging.

For all my fellow suffers, bear this in mind when the doubt starts creeping:  

the Learning Curve Doubt Syndrome can be beaten and the way to beat it is perseverance.