Surviving or Thriving...

Doubt is a funny thing..its creeps up on us slowly...sort of a tiny voice that's in the background and it waits around for the right moment and then it rears its ugly head.

My doubt has been about writing, this voice keeps at me, asking me why anyone would want to read what I write...and here's the classic one.... what if i run of things to say?? ...what if I get a block?

Most times I push my doubts into some corner of my mind or try to ignore it and carry on. But its still there and sometimes I think what you resist will persist...meaning the more I try to push it away, the more frequent or stronger the thought. I can choose to prove it wrong by writing something I am pleased with and then when I get one of those doubts, I can discredit it with the fact that I wrote a good piece that day. I can look at the history and see what I have done and talk myself out of the doubt with past evidence. I can visualise a good outcome that I want to shift my thinking to instead of negative thinking. I know, that when I entertain a doubt i am actually feeding it with my energy...energy that be used to create what I want instead of what I don't want.

But at times when the doubt keeps coming back or if it turns to fear...I find myself making a decision to face it and really see what this is about. In other words, I say to myself " Ok, show me everything, lets take this doubt and ride with it" Doubts are always around "failures " ... "what if you cant do this? what if you fail, what makes you think you can do this? who do you think you are anyway to do this? what makes you think others want to read this stuff? what if you are just deluding yourself".... see what I mean?

OK , so what if I have nothing to write and I never ever write again.... what will happen...?? NOTHING!!!...absolutely nothing. I will mope for a few days and get over it and my life will still go on as it is, I am still the wandering dog... I am still me.

I am not sure if its true for everyone , but I find that my doubts are in third party language ...they are not my sentences...they sound like if someone is speaking to me with words like "you" or "it" but not "I" . This tells me that I don't own them yet or perhaps they are words that someone else may have said to me when I was growing up. Well meant , probably stemmed from caring but coming from the angle of " what if you fail" Doubts feed on us and become fears. Fear as someone put it is False Evidence Appearing Real" , paralyses and stops us from doing what want to do.

When I was in my 20's I remember fainting because I had an allergic reaction to some medication. When I fell, I hurt my spine. I was rushed to teh hospital and I could not move, to do an X-ray, they had to move me with the sheets that i was lying on. I had tears sreaming down my face because i was afraid. The thoughts running through my head at that time was that I was too young and "what if I was paralysed for life?" I had to wait for my the results and I remember lying there in my hospital bed thinking " if they tell me that I am paralysed , I will kill myself" This was my first thought that I would rather die than be in a situation where I had to depend on others. I then decided to really think about what would happen if I was paralysed. I remember saying to myself that if people who were born with no arms and limbs can hold a brush in their mouth and paint /do match stick carving ..."I am sure I will find a way to do something useful, I will live and do a good job of it no matter what my condition"

The results came shortly after and I was told that I was badly bruised and that it would take time to heal but I was fine. This was a turning point for me. I decided that day that I was just not going to survive, i was going to thrive in any situation. So these days when doubt creeps into my mind, I look at it square in the eye and say " so what? I will still be fine, no matter where life takes me"