Vision: When Doubt Sets In.

I hear voices, lots of voices. Ok, not those kind of voices; they don’t tell me to do bad things or hurt people, and they don’t speak different languages. No, I hear the cries of other people in my life. My brain likes to pretend it knows what other people are thinking, it also plays this game where it invents people that I don’t even know and tells me their thoughts too. “Well, that’s just crazy Matt!” I know, as my brain answers the doubting question nobody asked.

I am hard wired like this, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can come up with the most hateful, fearful, doubt-filled comments in my own head, and make myself believe it is what other people are thinking too. I bring this up because my morning, starting at 5am has been filled with these horrible doubting thoughts. All the ones that tell me I’m no good, and I will never reach my goals; that people are laughing at me behind my back because they can’t believe how stupid my dreams are. Well, isn’t that all just a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. Even if it were all true, would it change what I wanted to do? Would it stop me from being filled with the joy that I have been filled with since I started chasing my dreams? No, no it wouldn’t.

The fact that I have these thoughts means that the old Matt is scared, he is shaking in his dirty old sneakers looking for an excuse to run to a bottle of vodka and give up. It is times like this that I have to remind my self, of “Why” and look towards my vision of the future, not my fear of the past or the lacking of the present. I want to share something with the ones that read this. It is my vision statement, my reason or my “Why” for doing what I do.

“To inspire and motivate others to be their best selves. To serve others with humility. To be better today than I was yesterday. To have the courage to live a good life and become the man God created me to be.”

I wanted to share this with you because of my experience with doubt this morning. Yesterday I wrote about having guts and the faith to take action, having just released my first Novel I felt pretty good about myself. Well, as is usual those good feelings last about as long as a cup of coffee. It didn’t take long for the doubt to set in or “the voices,” It was a maelstrom this morning, a deafening cacophony of, “YOU IDIOT, NO ONE WANTS TO READ YOUR BULLSHIT!” And “YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME AND EMBARRASSING YOUR SELF!” I wanted to jump back in my whole and hug my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth like a scared child.

Until I remembered “Why” I was doing what I was doing. I remembered my vision. Nowhere in my vision statement did I say that I would be the greatest writer of all time or that everyone would love me. Nope, instead, my vision is to inspire, motivate and serve others. Not that being the greatest of all time and having everyone love you is bad, it just isn’t “Why” I am in the game. I want to inspire others because I want to be inspired. I want to motivate others because I want to be motivated. I realize that if I want to be successful, I have to love the process of success and find out what success means to me. And at the end of the day, success for me is not a giant house with fountains all over the place. Or tons of really nice cars.

Success for me is a sense of peace and well being. It’s being in Love and being inspired, on a daily basis. If I can achieve that by sitting at a kitchen table or in this case a Hampton Inn, bedroom desk, then by God I am going to do it. All the fancy property and things come as a result of me following my passion and doing what I love, and not focusing on the outcome or the doubt. Other peoples opinions of me are none of my business. Especially if what I am doing is helping me live a wonderful life and not hurt others. Also, I was reminded this morning, by a nice email, that I am doing exactly what I intended to do in my vision statement. I inspired someone, an excellent friend, to start doing something that they have wanted to do but just couldn’t force themselves to do. How awesome is that?  That just so happens to be the exact thing I want to do, my God it’s amazing.  I don’t care what it is you want to do if you haven’t started yet, now is the time.

The doubters will come, and it will feel like you are just banging your head against a wall sometimes, but then you will remember “Why” you started in the first place and your Vision, will outshine your doubt.

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