Sometimes, when all seems lost, all we can do is hope.
Hope that we’re just going through a rough patch right now, and that it’ll be over soon.
Hope that we have all the answers inside ourselves – and don’t need anything to be given to us by anyone else.
Hope that we do have what it takes, that we do have a vision that’s worth making real in this world, that we are worthy of success.
Hope that the risks we’re taking won’t hurt us, and if they do, all we can do is hope that we’ll be able to get up, dust ourselves off, and live to take more risks, to gamble even more on ourselves.
You Have Every Reason to Believe In Yourself
We all go through rough patches of self-doubt – times when the very life seems to be sucked out of your limbs and you’re left wondering, “What am I supposed to be doing with myself – and how can I rid myself of this awful, gnawing feeling of anxiety?â€
Self-doubt is crippling – I’ve experienced it often, even though I’m usually very, very sure of myself. Normally, I’m a great decision-maker. But sometimes, no matter how strong we are, we can be brought to our knees… By ourselves. By our own fears.
Actually, to admit it: right now, I’m going through a stage of ultimate self-doubt. Contributing factors: my hockey team lost in the district final game for the third year in a row, and it’s my senior year. I’ve had three chances in my high school career to win it all, and I lost all three of them. That’s depressing – and it makes me think: am I not deserving of winning? Will I ever be able to claim victory? Will I ever experience true success?
Three days later, last night [at the time of writing] I got a rejection letter from one of my top-choice schools. The rejection didn’t sting as much as losing in hockey did, but it still contributed to the sense of self-doubt that I’m feeling.
Right now – I don’t know what I’m doing with myself and my future. I know I’m going to be blogging here for a while – as long as my creativity lets me and I have useful lessons to teach you, reader – but as far as my real future, like what I’m going to be doing for a job (I think I want to be an entrepreneur, but, again, my fear is staring back at me and is saying that I won’t be any good at it, because I “lack ideasâ€. See how absurd fear is?), or even more pertinent questions like where I’m going to go to school next year, are totally unknown.
Because I don’t know them, I don’t know what to do with myself in the meantime.
I’ve quickly found out in the past few days that endless consumption is not going to save me. Reading books en masse is not a good strategy to dig myself out of my rut. It’s running away from the problem.
And I’m paralyzed. By fear. By The Resistance. By the idea that every moment I spend right now has absolutely no weight – I feel like it’s meaningless. Or, at least, that’s what the fear is telling me. My fear’s also telling me that my plans to start a new website (about my own personal life and my personal projects), self-publish the novel I wrote over the summer on the Web, and write an ebook (for this site) are all bad ideas. My fear thinks they’ll all end in failure.
You know what I say to that?
We’ll see.
Right now, I feel like everything is turning itself around – even as I write this post. That’s the power of creation – and why I know that the solution is to start working on those crazy projects of mine immediately.
Creation proves that I am worth something, that my mind is productive, that I can make change in this world. It’s proof that I am not insignificant. Being able to create is proof that yes – I can make something of myself, if I allow myself to dream big and work my hardest to make them a reality.
You can create too. You’re not a blogger like me, but you do something as a form of art, something you can create (or work at creating) each and every day. Even when everything else seems to be in doubt, return to your work, my friends. Return to your creative side, and see what you can make.
What you make is an expression of your soul – and is proof that you can have hope, proof that you have every reason to believe in yourself.