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When Doubt Strikes…
Who of us hasn’t been there, hasn’t had a dose of doubt at one time or another? We’ve all been there; we’ve all been struck by that abominable feeling of uncertainty, that feeling of not knowing what to do next, or if what we do next is the right course of action.
Left to its own devices, doubt can paralyze; it can dethrone our best ideas and make mince of our ambitions. It’s insidious and lies dormant, all the while waiting to pounce when the time is ripe, when the time is opportune to make that which is certain, into that which is faltering.
“With knowledge grows doubt,” said German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), and such is the breeding ground of doubt. The more we know, the more we doubt, and the more we doubt, the more hopeless we become. The recipe for doubt is knowledge without end; the cure for doubt is action with purpose.
Yes, we must think before we act, but nevertheless we must act (see Take Action and Achieve Happiness…). Great achievements come not from the unending search of knowledge, but derive from those putting that knowledge to work, testing the strains of that knowledge, and determining whether or not that which went before, stands the passage of time. Through action, and it’s only through action, shall we garner experience, and it’s experience which is the birthmark of wisdom. Without experience there can be no wisdom, and without action there can be no experience.
Doubt can arrest action in its tracks; it can kill its flame before it has a chance to light. Where conviction fires the soul, doubt floods it, extinguishing the hope of dreams, goals and desires. It promotes dithering, indecisiveness, and misgiving, and destroys that which conviction embraces. Do we want to succeed? Do we want to accomplish? Do we want to achieve? Then we must banish doubt and its inherent confusion from the corners of our mind, and replace it with that which spells determination, with that which spells fortitude (see Fortitude and the Wherewithal to Carry On…)
To let doubt fester is to lead a life of missed opportunity and missed fortune. Whether Columbus crossing the ocean, the Wright brothers taking to the sky, or the putting of a man on the moon these were not the acts of doubting people, but the acts of people placing doubt aside. Courage filled the void, the courage to act when others doubted, the courage to risk, when others nay said, and above all, the courage to live life when others dawdled.
It’s time to wrest doubt from our existence and leave it to those who know nothing better; it’s time to move forward with action and join those who do. Shall we surrender to doubt and know not what could be? Or shall we embrace action and clutch what life may offer? The choice is ours and ours alone…
For more, check out The C.A.T. Principle: Change, Action, Trust – Words to Live By, a Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of 2014, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. See the latest Amazon reviews here. Now revised and expanded, and a Nominee for the Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of the 2015 Global Ebook Awards.
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A 2014 Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook.
2015 Global Ebook Awards Nominee for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook