Doubt is like cancer. Once it infects your being, it spreads rapidly. It takes you over. And it's incredibly hard to beat. It acts in a cunning manner - hiding in plain sight, creating side effects, and furthering its scope of reign. But doubt is even more powerful than cancer, because it's contagious.
I have a theory that we have a 6th sense: empathy. I believe we can sense the emotions of other humans, and by our mysterious mirror neurons, we can have a qualitative effect when this sense is activated. We think animals have something like this - something difficult to determine, but observale nonetheless. In some instances, entire herds of cattle have gone mad, when an earthquake or volcano eruption is imminent. It would appear that Dogs have it. Poll any dog owner and they'll agree, dogs respond to our mental state; they become sad when we're sad, and happy when we're happy. They experience depression when we're depressed. They "just know." And so, these stipulations being accepted as truth, it stands to reason that as mammals, we have a synonymous sense.
Doubt can arise from this contagion, spread to us by our peers, our environment, or a single individual who infects us with their doubt. But we can also be the origin of doubt, and then spread it to others. We can internalize the complications in life and empathize too hard with ourselves and our situations, creating deep doubt within us. This is like multiple myeloma, because it's hard to target, hard to defeat, and deeply intertwined in our being. It's not like skin cancer, we can't just stop getting sunburnt to avoid it, analogous to removing ourselves from negative people and thus removing the doubt. This form is entirely self derived and we must fundamentally defeat it singularly.
But Doubt has a kryptonite: Competence. Scientists recently defeated leukemia by utilizing the power of the HIV virus to upload good DNA into the body's own immune cells and then use those cells to defeat the cancer. They used counter intuition, and the age old doctrine, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." We can do the same with doubt. Here's how:
Traditional thought would say that to defeat doubt - a degradation of self confidence - we should find things that make us happy and things that make us fulfilled, to build up our confidence. This doctrine proposes that we shouldn't do things that are challenging, or could make us uncomfortable or unhappy because this opens up the possibility of failure and self doubt - or fear of failure.
But we must use counter intuition. To defeat doubt we have to find the biggest burden we can bear, the most suffering we can endure, the highest responsibility we're capable of -- and bear it. This will lead to fulfillment. This will reveal competence to ourselves, and give us purpose, soundly defeating doubt - pulling the weed from the stem. Taking on a heavy load is thought to be the enemy. It's difficult. It's risky. But it's the origin of true competence. Proven competency can only be derived from achievement. And proven competency is the only mortal enemy of self doubt.
So if doubt begins to creep into our life, the first step is recognition. The enemy deserves our respect. But the second step is execution. We must bear our burdens, take on our responsibilities, and put ourselves in order, inch by inch, through purity of struggle and success. And through building competency and proving it to ourselves, we'll win every time.
I have a theory that we have a 6th sense: empathy. I believe we can sense the emotions of other humans, and by our mysterious mirror neurons, we can have a qualitative effect when this sense is activated. We think animals have something like this - something difficult to determine, but observale nonetheless. In some instances, entire herds of cattle have gone mad, when an earthquake or volcano eruption is imminent. It would appear that Dogs have it. Poll any dog owner and they'll agree, dogs respond to our mental state; they become sad when we're sad, and happy when we're happy. They experience depression when we're depressed. They "just know." And so, these stipulations being accepted as truth, it stands to reason that as mammals, we have a synonymous sense.
Doubt can arise from this contagion, spread to us by our peers, our environment, or a single individual who infects us with their doubt. But we can also be the origin of doubt, and then spread it to others. We can internalize the complications in life and empathize too hard with ourselves and our situations, creating deep doubt within us. This is like multiple myeloma, because it's hard to target, hard to defeat, and deeply intertwined in our being. It's not like skin cancer, we can't just stop getting sunburnt to avoid it, analogous to removing ourselves from negative people and thus removing the doubt. This form is entirely self derived and we must fundamentally defeat it singularly.
But Doubt has a kryptonite: Competence. Scientists recently defeated leukemia by utilizing the power of the HIV virus to upload good DNA into the body's own immune cells and then use those cells to defeat the cancer. They used counter intuition, and the age old doctrine, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." We can do the same with doubt. Here's how:
Traditional thought would say that to defeat doubt - a degradation of self confidence - we should find things that make us happy and things that make us fulfilled, to build up our confidence. This doctrine proposes that we shouldn't do things that are challenging, or could make us uncomfortable or unhappy because this opens up the possibility of failure and self doubt - or fear of failure.
But we must use counter intuition. To defeat doubt we have to find the biggest burden we can bear, the most suffering we can endure, the highest responsibility we're capable of -- and bear it. This will lead to fulfillment. This will reveal competence to ourselves, and give us purpose, soundly defeating doubt - pulling the weed from the stem. Taking on a heavy load is thought to be the enemy. It's difficult. It's risky. But it's the origin of true competence. Proven competency can only be derived from achievement. And proven competency is the only mortal enemy of self doubt.
So if doubt begins to creep into our life, the first step is recognition. The enemy deserves our respect. But the second step is execution. We must bear our burdens, take on our responsibilities, and put ourselves in order, inch by inch, through purity of struggle and success. And through building competency and proving it to ourselves, we'll win every time.
Always bear max responsibility
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