The Tragedy of Self-Doubt & What to do About it
Self-doubt is an indulgence in questioning oneself.
It’s the no-man’s-land of indecision between belief and disbelief. You know the feeling. Tightness in your chest, your face flushes as you wrestle with questions and insecurities in your mind. Maybe a visceral sense of powerlessness overwhelms you with a feeling that you have to have it go any other way than the way it’s going.
We all deal with it. But succumbing to it will put your big dreams and aspirations on death row faster than failure would.
Sitting hunched over his desk with pencil in hand, Ludwig van Beethoven was furiously scribbling a passionate note to the woman he loved. Bursts of inspiration and emotional torment kept him pouring his heart into page, after page, after page. He longed to be with a woman who historians still haven’t absolutely identified, and at that moment it seemed, there wasn’t anything he wanted more in his life than to have her love.
You might not be penciling notes to realize a torrid affair (maybe you are)... but we all have aspirations. We all have those things that we long to achieve. Maybe it’s in love, like Beethoven. But it might be that dream of starting your own business. Transforming a community organization. Launching a new division of your company. Or, just going after those things you want in life.
We can almost watch the self-doubt tragedy that we’ve all played out with our aspirations in Beethoven’s writing. It’s as if roughly 200 years later we can watch his hope for the relationship darken and fade as he writes; giving up on the possibility that they’ll ever be together. He reaches the bottom when he closes the note “Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours.” His love was never to be.
Not addressing the discomfort of self-doubt can make it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. While some of it might be necessary, too much can leave you retreating from your goals and dreams before you ever have the chance to realize them. It’s natural to want to move away from the false impossibilities that self-doubt presents. Nobody in their right mind would want to spend time on something that’s guaranteed not to work out. And by sinking in self-doubt, you ironically make that negative guarantee a reality for yourself.
The romantic tragedy in Beethoven’s life is paralleled in all of us. The experience of having those dreams, passion and aspirations – knowing where you want to go and even taking steps towards it – until that moment when fear takes over and, just like Beethoven, you give up. The self-doubt of worrying that business won’t work out, so never starting it. The plaguing insecurity that you’ve made the wrong choice in a community affair, then shying away from making any others. Or the anxiety and potential embarrassment that you might go after what you really want and fail.
Feeding into self-doubt creates a snowball effect that can take hold. If you let it, self-doubt creates a self-reinforcing downward spiral of unsatisfactory results making it harder and harder to break through. And worse, when unresolved, it can spell the end of a company or a career.
Rather than falling lonely victim to self-doubt, like one of greatest musical composers in history, instead, choose to share your aspirations with someone. Share your dreams, goals and/or what you’re committed to accomplishing with a trusted friend, business partner, confidant, or even better, with the #NoMatterWhat Community on Facebook. The people you share with can help you hold onto your dreams, even through dark times when you don’t see their potential anymore for yourself.
Historians don’t agree on whether Beethoven ever sent that love letter, but they do agree that the doomed affair coincided with years of not composing any major works, in one of the darkest periods in his life. We may never know the details of who he loved so deeply, but we do know our own passions, our own goals and our own dreams. When we let self-doubt manifest unchecked, it may lead us to give up on a goal or dream before we give it a chance to flourish, or have us giving up before we see something through. The self-doubt downward spiral can be devastating and may leave us in a period just as dark as Beethoven’s unproductive years.
That letter was so important to Beethoven that he kept it until he died, likely regretting what could have been. Self-doubt will kill all of our dreams and our ambition to go after them, if we let it. You can be left with unfulfilled ambitions, goals and dreams... wishing things were another way.
Or, we can hunt the discomfort of self-doubt to do something about it and make a real difference in our lives.