Pushing Through Your Doubt

I was reading a friends blog post, who is dealing with doubt, when I was struck by the following quote in her article:

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will”

~Suzy Kassem

Very true words that reflect on every one of us at any point in time.  Whether it be related to our business, our personal life, or a decision we made, we all deal with doubt …. the killer of dreams.

While pondering this, I ran across an old article from Alyson Stanfield published on her website,  Art Biz Success, that, to me, seemed like a good solution to dealing with doubt.

Defining Your Purpose through a Quest

According to Chris Guillebeau, author of The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life, a quest has the following elements.

1. A clear goal and specific end point.

2. Presents a clear challenge.

3. Requires sacrifice of some kind.

4. Is driven by a calling or sense of mission.

5. Requires a series of small steps and incremental progress toward the goal.

(taken from the Arts Biz Article:  Schedule a Scary and Extraordinary Art Project)

Full disclosure:  I have not read The Happiness of Pursuit, but I see the advantages of turning your doubts into a quest!  Let me explain.

1. We can push past our fears and doubts when we develop clear goals we wish to experience.
2. To be effective, these goals lay out a clear challenge to our current comfort zone causing us to push ourselves beyond our doubts.
3. We need to accept that getting what we want requires some sacrifice on our part.  Where that be a sacrifice of time, resources, it may be just sacrificing our fears and doubts!
4. In order to push forward, we need to see this as our calling or mission.  When we see things in that kind of light, we gain motivation.
5. Nothing happens all at once!  We need to take baby steps — especially if we are still dealing with our doubts and fears.

So what project or product do you wish to move forward on, but are plagued by doubt?  I encourage you today to push through all of it!  Try following the steps above and see where it leads you!