To Doubt Is Human

"I want you to push every doubt out of your mind!"

It is early saturday morning on a hotel elliptical and instead of drinking in the beautiful morning light and desert mountains that surround me, I am flipping through the TV channels trying to find a program that will keep me hypnotized and excercising for a good chunk of time.

Facing the horizon, Cape Cod, Massachussetts

Mostly meager offerings at dawn: (i) mediocre cartoons; (ii) lengthy ads to perfect teeth, abdominal muscles, excercise endurance or (iii) local or national news. After a few minutes, I'm mostly flipping through the news' channels: the plane is still missing, a disastrous bus accident in Philadelphia that could have been much worse without a passenger pressing the breaks, mice in the NY bakery that invented the cronuts...and then something a little more engaging: a young female college bound high school student invited to meet Michelle Obama and allowed to ask the First Lady one question.

I paraphrase her question: "As a woman who, like me, was the first in her family to go to college, what advice do you have for me?"

And the answer:"I want you to push every doubt out of your mind!"

I love Michelle Obama and my throat constricts at little at the answer because she has just advised something utterly impossible to that beautiful young adolescent. Something that many highly intelligent people believe is necessary to achieve indeed, but something impossible nevertheless. Impossible and painful.

Young girl, you will have doubts and they might indeed get in the way of any achievement within your grasp. The task ahead of you is to learn to not let your doubts derail you. This involves something in the zone between swimming in your doubts and pushing them out. Your best bet is being aware of your doubts, and to normalize them. You are human and will have doubts: even Mother Theresa had enormous doubts, including about her faith. Your doubts might even be more than average as you are pioneering new explorations for your family. Do not be ashamed of your doubts. Try to learn to let them visit you like you might be visited by highly critical family members or friends and then learn to not have them be your main guides and to not let them move in permanently and redecorate your whole living space. Actively develop skills to get them out of your house with less and less drama as your skills strengthen. But don't spend too much time hoping to never see them again.

But do not deny that doubt and uncertainty exist, at least some of the time. You can't do that, no doubt about that.

Till Later,

Anne