There are times we experience doubt, so we feel uncertain about something or someone. Sometimes it’s us that we lack faith in, second-guessing ourselves and doubting our abilities, efforts, needs, desires, expectations, feelings or opinions. We don’t acknowledge who we are, what we’ve done or what we know deep down in our gut.
But something I’ve noticed about our feelings of uncertainty is that a lot of the time, our inability to trust ourselves stems from basically trying to be a fortune teller.
If our expectation is that we can only proceed with something if we know ’everything’ and have every step mapped out, then, yeah, we’re going to experience a lot of doubt.
When we believe that we have to know what the future holds, we struggle to make decisions and commitments. We’re likely to cut and run the moment things get uncomfortable, or we’ll struggle to adapt decisions after we’ve gathered further information that allows us to shift gears with more discernment. Rather than recognising the gift of receiving new information, we beat up our younger self and focus on the idea that we’ve ’made a mistake’ or that we’re ’a failure’.
That’s the gift we receive from making all of our decisions, not just the ’right’ ones. It’s what we gain from exercising judgement and trying to trust ourselves–and being willing to learn from our experiences.
What we need to ask ourselves next time we think we’re wrestling with uncertainty is Am I experiencing doubt, or am I trying to be a fortune-teller? Experiencing doubt doesn’t automatically mean that something is wrong; it’s always a call for us to reassure ourselves and/or take some form of action. That’s how we learn to have more faith in ourselves in spite of circumstances we might find ourselves in.
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