The Pain of Self-Doubt Could Just Be Our Ego Hitting the Gym

“Father, I think there’s something wrong with me,” the young man bemoaned as the father-son pair was making their way back from their daily forage under the mid-morning sun.

“How do you mean, son?” the father responded flatly, while stopping to admire the view from the cliff edge they were standing over and not paying particular attention to the young man.

Rather than seeing it as a lack of interest, the young man sensed the mentor was almost expecting it, and felt more at ease in opening up about his woes, “I had imagined I should be getting stronger, with our daily expedition to the hills…”

“What’s the problem?” the father interjected, turning to look at his protégé more directly, “You’ve been keeping up with me as usual, haven’t you, despite the more challenging tracks we’ve been using?”

“I have,” said the young man, “but I find myself working harder than I had expected, I am afraid I might not be able to keep up tomorrow. I guess I am trying to say, I am losing confidence in myself.”

“Son, it is better to be mired in a crisis of confidence than lie with complacency. You are aware of the tougher routes we’ve been taking, which is obvious, but you had not noticed that for a whole month, I have been gradually adding extra weight to your backpack, so in fact, you have been growing stronger! Your environment is always changing and sometimes, in ways that may not be immediately apparent to you; self-doubt is not a bad thing, but only if you see it as a prompt for introspection and eventual realization of growth opportunities.”

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. (Bertrand Russell)

How often do we audit our confidence?

In today’s environment of fast and intense changes, if we mostly find ourselves confidently tackling familiar challenges with formulaic solutions, maybe we should also hang a picture of the boiling frog on our phone background!

Efficiency cultivates assuredness but new learning transiently dents confidence; therefore, being task-capable today feels comfortable and satisfying, while readying for tomorrow is counterintuitive and inefficient.

What if we see the pain of self-doubt as our ego hitting the gym? Self-induced developmental changes are naturally traumatic to the habitual feeling of competency – presenting to the Board, giving feedback to a colleague, believing in the good intent of a difficult person, and so on; externally imposed changes are equally challenging, except they may not become apparent without some conscious perspective taking and asking for feedback – getting a new boss, peer getting a new boss, pressures from the wider industry environment, clients’ demands and demands on the clients, and so on.

Self-Doubt will happen anyway, but would you rather it’s due to your preparing for tomorrow, or consequences of not having prepared for today yesterday?