Sometimes a little bit of self-doubt is good for me. It stokes the rebellious fires within until I prove to myself that “I’ve got this”, that I’m a total badass. But every now and then self-doubt swallows me whole. Fighting it is futile. And one particularly debilitating moment of self-doubt etched itself so vividly into my consciousness that I found myself flung back to it again and again. But then something beautiful happened …
It was a cold, blustery morning and I had tucked myself into the cosy corner of a quiet little coffee shop. The soft wintery sun kissed my cheeks and warmed my hands as I waited for my next “big client” to arrive. I was going to ghostwrite her book. And it all sounds kinda nice, except there was a storm raging within me, more furious and more punishing than the crazed wind huffing and puffing on the other side of the coffee shop windows.
Self-doubt had, bang-out-of-nowhere, without warning, snaked its sneaky little tendrils around me and unceremoniously dragged me into its murky waters where it squeezed the life out of the big dreamy dreams I was dreaming. Suddenly all I could see were the obstacles ahead of me, the bitter questions clouding my mind.
Just who do I think I am? What am I even doing here? Who am I to tell this woman’s life story? How dare I dream these big dreams? What makes me think I have even a drop of what it would take to make it? Seriously? What’s the point of trying? How am I ever going to …?
It was such a spiteful strike that over the next few months I felt myself wrenched back to that moment again and again, hovering over it, studying it, poking it, questioning it. Because I know that I am human. I know that I will feel it again. But I also wanted to know how I could swim to the surface again when it did. I wanted to find my lifejacket.
And suddenly I found myself talking to that ever-so-slightly younger and achingly bewildered self with such deep truth that I wanted to remember the words forever.
“Firstly, babe”, my wiser self said, “breathe. Because this, just like anything else, will pass. Doubt is fleeting compared to the dream you’ve cast for yourself: that dream, that calling, it will always be there. And it’s not always going to feel impossible. So don’t freak out, just accept that this is what you’re feeling – for now.
And stop obsessing about all the obstacles, the things that you think are standing in your way, the battles you think you must fight. Stop obsessing over the things you need to overcome, and the thousands of things you have to do to get there; the long journey that it will be. I know that you have your heart and mind trained on the big picture, but it doesn’t all have to happen at once. You know that right? In fact, it definitely won’t happen all at once.
Our journeys are not made in leaps and bounds. Sure they happen, but mostly our journeys are made by all those thousands of tiny steps we take every day. So focus on one tiny step. Forget about everything else. Do that one little thing you can do today. Right now. In this exact moment.
You may not have the strength to move an entire mountain, but you will always have the strength to turn a stone.”
And years and years later, that little piece of wisdom still holds true for me. I will always have the strength to keep doing the little things, those tiny little dream-affirming, life-enhancing, confidence-boosting, forward-moving things. Even if it’s just sending an email, or finding the answer to a question, or actually resting and being patient with myself.
I’ve learnt to trust my inner wisdom, to stop fighting the nature of the moment. So I do what I can, even if sometimes that looks like “nothing”. Because believe me, I’ve waded through enough broken glass in my lifetime to know that doing nothing is not nothing.
Life isn’t a race. I think we keep forgetting that. And when I focus on the little things, the things that I can do now, in this moment, it kinda deflates the self-doubt because you’re not giving it anything “big” to bitch about.
So it’s not really about overcoming self-doubt, or trying to beat it down (because we know that doesn’t work), it’s more like side-stepping it, so even if it’s still there, it doesn’t really matter because you’ve taken its power.
And so I move the little stones … and that’s how we move mountains.
