008: Doubt’s Double Edge

It is exactly 2 weeks until my next race. As I sit here now, we’ll be approaching 12 hours running at this point in 14 days time. 

The miles are logged, the elevation endured. 

Taper time.

Which, for me, consists of carbohydrates, sleep and enough self doubt to put someone of sounder mental faculties off the endeavour altogether. And so, here I am, trying to rationalise my own self destruction in a manner that might help anybody else who may suffer the same affliction. 

Doubt, in my opinion, gets a bad name. 

It’s the voice in you that says, “you’re not good enough” or ,”you’ll never manage to pull this off.” 

Most do their best to silence it. They bury it under mantras and mottos, motivational quotes and other such distractions. 

Personally, I try to listen to what it has to say. 

Not because I want to believe it, but because, in my experience, it can be quite useful.

Time and time again, doubt has been the spark that lights the fire under my work ethic. When a project feels too daunting, when I question my ability or fear that I’m faking it. 

I don’t shrink. I get to work. 

I run further. 

Work harder. 

Choose my words more carefully. 

Not to prove doubt wrong exactly, but the best way I’ve found to soothe my doubtful thoughts are to out-work them.

What results is usually my best effort. 

In this regard, I’ve always tried to make a friend of my doubts. They’re there at mile 45, when everything hurts and I wonder what I’m trying to prove. They’re present when I’ve shared something Ive drawn or written and I feel like an imposter. And they’re there at the beginning of the next day when I sit down to do it all again. 

But here’s the other side of it. The side I don’t always like admit. 

Sometimes the same doubts don’t drive me forward. 

Sometimes they stop me dead in my tracks. 

At its worst, at my worst, doubt paralyses me. 

It makes the blank pages terrifying, the big idea untouchable and, at present, the race un-runnable. 

The risk of failure so consuming that I don’t even try. 

And that might be the most destructive thing about it. Not that it questions my ability, but that it convinces me I have nothing worth giving effort to in the first place. 

There are projects I haven’t started, opportunities I’ve quietly stepped away from, ideas I’ve left to gather dust. Not because I don’t care, but because the doubt that I wasn’t enough to realise them left me frozen in place. 

That kind of doubt doesn’t just sap your willpower, it robs you of the chance to feel fulfilled. 

To grow. 

So I’ve had to learn that doubt can be a tool, but it is also a trap. A tightrope to be walked on a daily basis. 

I think the trick isn’t to silence it, for me at least that doesn’t seem possible. Instead, recognise the difference between when it’s pushing you toward something meaningful and when it's just keeping you small. It’s about realising when you’re working from a place of curiosity and courage and when you’re scrambling for proof that your ideas deserve to be here. 

Because, for all it has cost me, I owe a lot to my doubts. They made me relentless, resourceful and determined. That being said, I’m doing my best to live in a way that no longer depends on it. To create and step forward from a place of belief, not resistance. 

I suppose that’s the real task ultimately, to keep showing up, even when the voices in my head say I can’t. 

They’ll be there in two weeks time, that’s for sure. 

When I’m twelve hours in.

Tired, sore and questioning everything. 

But so will all the proof I’ve built in preparation.