(He’s just a cartoon, dude.)
This may be your #1 enemy.
Crouched in your mind, lurking to spit some scorching fire about how you are not good enough to succeed, or everything you want to contribute is already being done by someone else, but in a better way.
Quietly sneaking whispers “It will fail. You will be a fool.” Underneath boiling, dishonest breath follows: “There is no point to your dreams, you do not make a difference, funny you should try!”
You lean in listening to more lies and live afraid. The stealthy self-doubt dragon loves to steal your fire. Consuming it until your passion dies out and is used against you to consume you.
The stealthy self-doubt dragon is a loser. Telling you failure is inevitable, like failure is a the end of things; like you could never learn something valuable from it. As though perfection in the first round is better than growth in the second round.
What started it all??
Did you see a need to fill? Did you see a vision to grow? Did you learn something you can’t wait to teach? Is that when the doubt crept in? Increasing its racket as you shifted direction toward a triumph?
Why then, would a dragon keep you from going forth? With what power can you be stopped but by your own?
The stealthy self-doubt dragon says you do not have what it takes to defeat failure for victory. What a seething tongue of garbage lies!
People have moved society forward, not because they were the best, but because they were willing to show up and do the work. They slain their dragons each day, soon realizing the fire-breathing façades that kept them from exploring their successes were illusions.
What is your purpose?
If you were to forge a defense against self-doubt, purpose and passion would be the among most durable materials you could wield. Fold them together under the heat of intense focus and the dragon will usurp you with great difficulty, if at all!
Skill comes when knowledge gets applied in building experience. The pain of being a fool over and over, forms a callous of competence. After slaying so many dragons, you see they only survive when you feed them, and you defeat them when fear no longer leads you straight into the liars’ lairs.
What does your stealthy self-doubt dragon tell you? How does your dragon keep you from running after your vision and purpose? Are your injuries in failing while you try worse than the regret of giving up or never having tried at all?
Will you take the steps?
You could tell yourself the first step is the most important one.
But then, up close you see it is the next one, and the next, and the next three, and the ones that are the most important to take are the ones that are the hardest to take.
The steps that you take after you’ve bled your feet and skinned your knees to the bones. When standing seems impossible, those are the most important steps to push through. Those are the steps in the trenches, the ones near the finish lines.
A journey forged under fire is one that yields the strongest material. The stealthy self-doubt dragon stands no chance when you fire back using your own brilliant blaze.
So stand firm, look your dragons in the eye and declare to gain strength through your fumbling, power through your learning, resolve through trying again, and victory through every new failure that leads to new answers and better questions.
Because triumph comes to those who know it is not a question of if “CAN I?” but rather a question “WILL I?”
So get to slayin’!
