One Apple A Day #467 - on self-doubts
Self-doubts are thieves. They sneak into your mind, and they steal your self-confidence and your creativity. It's an awful feeling to stare at a blank page realising that you're as empty at that page.
Sometimes life tests us. Things don't go exactly as planned. The expected results are not coming. The self-doubts lurk in. And before we realise it, we are questioning everything.
I know the feeling. I've been there often. It still happens.
We all have moments of doubts and fear when we question what we do and who we are. I used to rely on self-reflection to find my way out of those moments. But in doing so, I was adding even more questions and making the hole bigger. I was feeding my fear. Now, when it happens, when the self-doubts arrive I ground myself in my rituals. I stop the thinking that is just feeding my self-doubts and rely on the habits and structures that I created when my self-confidence and my creativity were full and energised.
"Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, 'You can't do a thing'. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all." - Vincent van Gogh