I Always Doubt Myself. You Should Too.
I always think that I’m a bit pessimistic. But somehow, I also think that being pessimistic after what I’ve achieved in my life sounds a bit ungrateful. It’s doubt. I never feel completely sure that what I’m doing is right. There’s always possibilities for misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and mistakes. Even my dad once said that all his achievements in his life were mostly because of luck. He said he never dreamt about them.
I’ve made several decisions that I considered as significant in my adult life: move to the capital city for work, pursue a master degree abroad, quit my job without another one lining up, switch to an entirely different career, and to not settling down and start a family in my 30s like most people here (at least so far — I’m now 35). It was never decisions that were made comprehensively planned or considered — which I would argue that that is one of my weaknesses. There’s always things that are missed during my planning, even big things with significant consequences. However, there’s one valuable concept I learnt from college (and my first job as an auditor) that’s been very useful when making such decisions: risk mitigation. A simple example would be saving a lot of money before switching career — in case I have to start from the bottom again. The thing is, when making major life decisions, even after you consider everything, there’s always an element of unpredictability and if you always doubt yourself, you wouldn’t assume that that wouldn’t happen at all. So you’ll be more prepared.
I remember the conversation in Late Night with Stephen Colbert between him and Andrew Garfield about Garfield’s film “Silence” where the preparation process had brought him closer to Jesus. He said, “certainty starts war on behalf of ideology”. I was amazed by this. I never thought about it that way. I used to think that it was arrogance (or being overconfident in a negative way) as merely the cause, but certainty is an element of arrogance. Someone who’s arrogant thinks that he or she is right and everyone else is wrong (except if he or she is drunk, of course), and that can lead to a fight. On the contrary, someone who never feels completely sure about his decision would accept feedback and criticism along the way, and those are valuable inputs for future decisions.
In the end, it’s not about being a pessimistic individual. It’s about thinking carefully and preparing backup plans if you fail. It’s about having your mind open to the possibility that you might be wrong in pretty much anything, even in things that are principal and even after you’ve considered all the affecting factors. Only then, you will realise that we all make mistakes and we can do something to fix them and therefore, we can be better human being.
