Why the Fear of the Unknown Creates Self-Doubt

Life feels really strange until one day we try to understand it and look at the events of our past experiences with an unbiased filter, and it strikes us. It was actually simple all along.

Can you think of a single thing that, in the past, you weren’t sure if you would get right or not? You still went for it, and yeah, it happened. Maybe it turned out better than your imagination. It could be in your career, in business, making that new friend whose friendship turned out to be very comforting, or that foreign trip.

Do you feel like when you were in school as a little kid, less than 6–7 years old, you weren’t really worried about the results? You would care more about your usual daily playtime than some exams you were supposed to give after a few months. I am sure it was not true for our parents because they had already crossed into adulthood by that time, and now they understood the fear of the unknown.

That story was a little chill nostalgia, but the real deal is that the fear of the unknown in the future creates the self-doubt of today.

How many times has it happened that a certain end of the weekend brings you to something that you really want to explore in your life? You have thought about it many times by now, something that you have felt for a long time that maybe you are really good at. But after half an hour of feeling good about starting that thing, clouds of questions make the path blurry that you were actually trying to form in your head. Other people have more experience than me. What if it doesn’t turn out like I am expecting? What if it isn’t for me?

Now the next few hours bring you down, cut your feathers, and you are back on the ground.

Self-doubt is normal because our mind has the capability to build a lot of possibilities. It is trying to analyze the situation by using multiple thoughts. But you know what? A thought is just a thought; it is not reality. We don’t know the future, and maybe that is a good thing. What we do know is today, this day. And you are born with the privilege to act on today and explore the things that you would love to discover.

If you try to act on the basis of your future thoughts or wait to act until you know the full picture, then self-doubt will occur multiple times. Also, this is never going to happen. Can we ever really know the full picture? Right?

Use this privilege of today and explore what your heart really wants. Remember, whenever you have “if” questions: these thoughts are okay, but they are not my reality.

I have talked about a few more things and shared some additional examples for relevance in my YouTube video. If you would like to watch it, I have shared the link below.