It occurred to me in a daydream that self-doubt is a dream. So is self-confidence and “self” anything else.

All the “selfs” are mind based dreams – meaning they’re a collection of made-up thoughts, nothing more.

I hate to call on the tried and true again, but old Abe Lincoln was pretty spot on when he said, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their mind to be.”

Most of us dream up self-doubt after a couple of failures. Imagine if we did the same thing when we first started to walk or talk.

I’ll be the first to admit that no matter how much confidence we dream up, there are certain things we just can’t do – like me beating Tiger Woods at golf. If he had the flu and a broken arm, he’d still win. I have legitimate self-doubt concerning that match.

But how much of our self-doubt is just something we dreamed up without a lot of evidence? We’ve replayed our fantasy so many times to ourselves, that we believe it must be real.

Reminds me of a story I’ve told before . . . Our family used to take a vacation to the beach every summer. It was something we could afford according to my calculations. But we had never gone to Disney World. That according to my dreamed up calculations was way too expensive. I was doubting without evidence.

I guess I got curious enough to poke past my doubt and visited a travel agent. As it turned out, we could take the family to Disney for the same money we spent going to the beach. I woke up from my dream about self-doubt.

The question you may want to explore is: “What have I dreamed up, without much evidence, that keeps me doubting?”

Once you isolate an answer, you can take on that endeavor with your eyes wide open this time, rather than walking around in your self-doubt, sleep walking trance.

If you dreamed up self-doubt (and you did), you can dream up something new that won’t get in the way of what you want to do.

Yes, there will be work involved to do what you desire but the major step that has to come first is to wake-up from the dream of self-doubt.

And finally, about this there can be no doubt: Self-doubt is a nightmare that isn’t real.

All the best,

John