Struggling with doubt is timeless and common. Some of the greatest figures in history have battled with doubt. Take George Washington for instance, the great American hero and mythical figure of the Revolutionary War and America’s birth. During the war he wrote this in a letter:
“I have often thought how much happier I should have been, if instead of accepting of a command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket upon my shoulders and entered the rank, or if I could have justified the measure of posterity, and my own conscience, had retired to the back country, and lived in a wigwam.”
A quiet life of self-dependent solitude does seem like a preferable option to facing tomorrow’s battles. Maybe our modern day equivalent is living off the grid?
But will our doubts ever disappear? Is it ever possible to empty our lives of worry? Even wigwams in the back country spring leaky roofs.
Maybe there is a solution out there that can make our worries disappear. But no one has found it yet – kind of like bigfoot. So instead of continuing the search it’s probably best to accept that there isn’t a secret solution to making sure we feel happy and confident all the time.
Without being able to find bigfoot, the most practical thing to do is to stop looking and move on with life. You could spend the rest of your life looking and not really get much in the end any way. I think the same goes with trying to get rid of fear and doubt. It’s time to accept these as useful emotions that do not have to get in the way of getting things done. They don’t even have to make your life worse off, they can make your life better by motivating us to get things done.
And in the world of operating a business, that sinking feeling of doubt about the future can be intense. Will my customers keep coming back? Do I need to worry about competitors coming up with a better idea? Is a new internet solution going to wipe out the way I do business. I don’t know how to do blogs and social media, will I ever connect with people and grow my business? What if the economy tanks?
Instead of hoping for one magical day in the future when all of our problems will be solved – when the processes are perfect and everyone follows them, when you have a product that everyone buys forever with little competition, when the economy does exactly what you want it to – embrace these questions and have faith that you can figure them out. They aren’t destroying our freedom or our ability to live a fulfilled life. They actually are the reason we are good at what we do and they are the questions that will keep us in business.
So have faith that you are capable of dealing with all the what ifs. Besides, what could it hurt?
