Dearest Darling Friends,
What if all your doubts are fakes?
No one wants to fail.
No one wants to be abused.
No one wants to create a mess.
No one wants to get heartbroken.
No one wants to take bad decisions.
No one wants to be taken for granted.
No one wants to get passed over for promotion.
But, guess what? These things happen.
When I am a sportsperson, injuries are a part of the deal. When I am a horse rider, falling off the horse many times is a part of the experience. When I am outspoken, being trolled means I am indeed ruffling feathers. When I am a writer, getting the writer’s block is a part of the journey. When I am an inventor, failures are routine.
Getting injured, falling off the horse, being trolled, the mind hitting the wall, failures in experiments, are all hurdles in the smooth journey that we wish to have. Each one of these hurdles invariably creates doubts within us. That’s their job.
Doubts hijack the future history we are about to make! I used to worry about what if this person doesn’t like me, why that person didn’t support me, why my business partnership broke up, am I thinking too big, etc. Not any more.
The truth is, ‘Doubts are a part of every dream’. As my friend Reema Ahmad would say, “This means, it’s work in progress.” In my life, doubts and doubters have been directly proportional to the quality of dreams I have. Today, I remind myself, ‘The bigger you dream the more you will doubt yourself along the journey of pursuing that dream’.
How to tackle these doubts?
When my mind tells me to take it easy or to quit and give up or to postpone my dreams, I remember
▪ all the obstacles I have overcome so far
▪ all the sacrifices I have made along the way
▪ the faces of people who would be so proud of what I have done when I am done.
▪ …and abracadabra…I move my butts and I am back to working on my dreams.
In hindsight, I feel, I needed all the doubts that accompanied my dreams to refocus on my dreams and to double up my efforts. You know, when these doubts came, my shoulders slumped, I become lazy, I postponed what needed to be done. For some time, I gave in to my doubts.
Sometimes it was not people who love me nor the past travails that helped me come out of my lethargy. I was jerked out of my hibernation with a crazy thought…what if each and every one of my doubts are fakes? What if, each and every one of my dreams are the real stuff? I then zoomed out the doubts, wished them RIP, zoomed in to my dreams, laughed at the silliness of the mirages my doubts made me see and merrily moved on. Remember the nursery poetry, ‘Row, row, row your boat…….merrily merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’ The poet did not say, “Life is but a doubt.” He said, ‘Life is but a dream’. Let us live that dream.
Do not allow doubts to hijack the history you wish to create! Deal?
With love, prayers and exceptional wishes,
naren
Imagine, when we wake up, we are given only what we had thanked for.