The more important a call to action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel about answering it. But to yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Steven Pressfield insists that self-doubt is par for the course. In fact he says about his own journey as a writer: If I’m not crippled with self-doubt for at least the first nine months of a project (and sometimes a lot longer), something is wrong.

How did that make you feel? As if perhaps Steven is nuts right?

For Steven the overly optimistic, over zealous practitioner is the one we should be weary of.

A young avid photographer wondered what might be wrong with her. She told me that she loved photography yet found it difficult to actually go out and shoot. The message she got was that perhaps photography wasn’t her REAL passion because, if it was, she would be gung-ho to go out and do what she proclaimed to be passionate about.

I have succumbed to self-doubt many, many times in my life. Early on, I set out to rid myself completely of self-doubt. I found every book I could, on developing self-confidence, on being courageous and on just doing it.

Guess what? Self-doubt is alive and here to stay!

I find Steven’s perspective helpful.

The quote I shared at the start of this post is one I discovered twelve years ago, just before my event ‘A World of Possibilities’. I had an aha moment at the time but it was still a head aha. I understood it logically, but I didn’t digest it. My colleague and friend, keynote speaker at the event – Dr. Marcia Reynolds used the quote in her presentation. She too was struck by it and found it to be true.

Like the photographer, we see self-doubt as a stop sign, instead of a go sign. I spent years in futility, trying to outdistance self-doubt instead of recognizing this:

Self-doubt is good. Massive self-doubt tells us that our Resistance, sensing the positive power of the book/project idea/painting/song/symphony we are working on, has pulled out all the stops, trying to undermine us and make us give up.

In other words, the resistance we feel, the self-doubt we experience ‘knows’ we are onto something. Its response: inflict us with self-doubt in inverse proportion to how potentially good our work might be.

When we come up with an idea, think about starting a project, or actually begin working on something we feel is important, we immediately start to conjure thoughts of – no one will be interested in this, this is shit, someone has written about this already, I am wasting my time.

In the words of Maria Popova: how does one befriend this perennial dissatisfaction while continuing to unlock, to borrow Julia Cameron’s potent phrase, the “spiritual electricity” of creative flow?

To this abiding question of the creative life, legendary choreographer Martha Graham (May 11, 1894–April 1, 1991) offers an answer at once remarkably grounding and remarkably elevating in a conversation found in the 1991 biography Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (public library) by dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille.

In 1943, De Mille was hired to choreograph the musical Oklahoma!, which became an overnight sensation and ran for a record-setting 2,212 performances. Feeling that critics and the public had long ignored work into which she had poured her heart and soul, De Mille found herself dispirited by the sense that something she considered “only fairly good” was suddenly hailed as a “flamboyant success.” Shortly after the premiere, she met Graham “in a Schrafft’s restaurant over a soda” for a conversation that put into perspective her gnawing grievance and offered what De Mille considered the greatest thing ever said to her. She recounts the exchange:

I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.

Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have so far used about one-third of your talent.”

“But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”

“No artist is pleased.”

“But then there is no satisfaction?”

“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried out passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

Martha Graham on the Life-Force of Creativity and the Divine Dissatisfaction of Being an Artist

By Maria Popova

One of the greatest skills we must master, whether your are a professional service provider, independent service provider, writer, coach, executive, athlete, artist, poet or musician is this:

The ability to keep going when in the throes of self-doubt.

This is not sexy. We won’t get any likes for this. No one else cares. No one is interested. No one will clap. In most instances – no one will know.

The reward for pushing through will be ours – and ours only.

GET TO WORK. DON’T STOP!