DOUBT THE TRAITOR
Faith is the torch that leads the way when the other faculties
cannot see.
It is doubting and facing the wrong way, facing toward the black,
depressing, hopeless outlook that kills effort and paralyzes
ambition.
There is a divine current within us which would always flow
Godward, always lead to our ultimate advantage, did we not
obstruct it, or turn it aside by our doubts and fears.
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.
JAMES ALLEN.
When David Hume, the agnostic, was twitted with his inconsistency in
going to hear the orthodox Scotch minister, John Brown, preach, he
replied, "I don't believe all that he says, but _he_ does, and once a
week I like to hear a man who believes what he says."
If you utter a lie with the conviction that you are speaking the truth
people will believe what you say, whereas if you proclaim a truth in a
weak, hesitating voice, in a doubting manner, no one will believe you.
If you should take a tray of genuine gold pieces upon the street and try
to sell them, while showing by your very expression that you did not
believe in what you had for sale, you could not dispose of those gold
pieces for a tithe of their value. Nobody would believe either in their
genuineness or in your own. Your timid, doubting, hesitating manner
would queer all your chances of doing what you wanted to do.
I used to go trout fishing with two men, one of whom was always saying
that he never had any luck fishing, that he somehow didn't have the
knack, and never expected to catch many fish. This doubt totally
unfitted him for successful trout fishing. He didn't take enough
interest in the sport to study the habits and the haunts of the trout.
He did not know the likely places in streams and rivers to drop his
hook. He did not know the best kinds of bait to use. His doubt of his
ability led to indifference, and this made him a failure as a trout
fisher. The other man never had a doubt of success. If there were any
trout to be caught he felt sure he would catch them. For years he had
made a study of trout habits. He could tell which side of the big rocks
to cast his hook, and he knew how to cast it in a way that would tempt
the trout. Fishing in the same stream alongside the doubtful,
indifferent fisherman he would catch ten times as many fish.
If there is a great big doubt in your self-faith, if you have left a
bridge standing for your retreat in case of defeat, if you lack
clean-cut, firm decision, if there is any interrogation point in your
confidence in yourself, there will be a limp in your success gait, and
you will not be able to rise out of mediocrity.
Our worst enemies are not outside but inside of us. Every human being
harbors a traitor who is always on the watch to thwart his ambition, to
turn him aside from his aim. That traitor is doubt. You must make up
your mind at the very outset of your career that you will always be
followed about by certain mental enemies, mental traitors, which will
try to dissuade you from doing the highest or biggest thing possible to
you. Doubt is one of the most insistent of these, and will dog your
steps to your grave. The man or woman who is not strong enough to
resist its insidious attacks will never do what he or she is capable of
doing, and was sent into the world by the Creator to do.
The person who is always fearful of consequences, who is in doubt as to
the outcome of his acts, or whether he is really capable of doing what
he undertakes, will always be a weakling. No one who is not bigger than
his doubts can ever accomplish anything great or worth while, because
this subtle enemy kills initiative and self-confidence, and without
these dominant qualities no human being can measure up to his
possibilities.
But for doubt, which strangles the very beginning of things, initiative
instead of being so rare would be a common virtue among all classes.
Nine out of ten average individuals are held back from testing their
powers by the suggestions of doubt. If it were possible to drive from
the human mind this specter which stands at the door of our hopes, of
our resolution, which throws its baleful shadow across our vision,
civilization would forge ahead by leaps and bounds. This miserable
traitor, under the guise of a friend, is holding down millions of men
and women below the level of their powers, keeping them from beginning
things which they are capable of doing, but which doubt warns them at
their peril not to attempt.
Doubt is responsible for more suicides, more misery, more bankrupt
lives, more failures, than any other one thing. It makes more people
afraid to start out on a course they know they ought to pursue than any
other thing. Standing right at the gateway of our choice, at the parting
of the ways, when we have fully resolved to take the path that is best
for us, a hard and forbidding one compared with the easy way along the
line of least resistance, doubt calls a halt. It bids us pause and think
once more, asks us to look again at the rugged path we have chosen and
consider whether we really want to pay the price of our choice, to take
that turning when the other looks so much brighter and pleasanter and is
so very much easier.
This is the point of cleavage which marks the beginning of failure for
the timid soul who is not bigger than his doubt. The suggestions pushed
into his mind by his enemy make him hesitate. He is moved to "stop,
look, and listen." He begins to reconsider, to look again at the
obstacles ahead, and the longer he looks the bigger they grow. He
becomes frightened, fears he cannot do the thing that at first seemed
possible, and finally turns aside to the easier path of mediocrity and
commonness.
Doubt has killed more splendid projects, shattered more ambitious
schemes, strangled more effective genius, neutralized more superb
effort, blasted more fine intellects, thwarted more splendid ambitions
than any other enemy of the race.
Talk about drug victims and slaves of drink! Doubt has more victims than
even these terrible enemies of the race. We see them everywhere in
menial and lowly positions, perpetual clerks, discontented drudges,
hewers of wood and drawers of water, paralyzed at the very gateway of
their career by that fatal trait which they have never learned how to
strangle, to neutralize with its opposites, faith, hope, confidence,
assurance.
How many thousands of employees plodding along in mediocrity to-day
could have been in business for themselves but for this great enemy
inside of them! How many splendid young men have been kept out of the
pulpit, how many superb lawyers, in possibility, have been strangled by
this traitor! How many men are to-day clerks, bookkeepers, or other
subordinates, who might have been managers, superintendents or
proprietors themselves but for the work of this damnable traitor!
When opportunity presented itself these doubters were afraid. They
waited for certainty. They dared not take chances. They did not realize
that opportunity is a maiden who admires the bold, courageous,
self-confident suitor. They did not wake up in time to the fact that she
will not trust herself to the timid, the hesitant, the over-cautious
suitor. When too late they realized that while the doubter is wavering
and hesitating, wondering if he dare try to win, the daring, intrepid
wooer steps in and wins.
The great prizes of life are for the courageous, the dauntless, the
self-confident. The timid, hesitating, vacillating man who listens to
his doubts and fears stops to make up his mind, and--the opportunity
has passed beyond his reach.
Doubt, uncertainty, or fear as to results, is the great discourager of
the human race. It is the dire enemy of all achievement. It tells the
poor boy and girl who long for an education that it is foolish for them
to think of going through school and college without money or without
somebody to help them. It tells them that there are many more poor boys
and girls in every school and college who are trying to pay their way
than will ever find opportunities to make their education available. It
is always whispering to them that there is a big waiting list of men and
women who were graduated years ago everywhere looking and waiting,
trying in vain to get something to do to earn back the amount they spent
on their education.
No matter what you attempt to do, what new enterprise you may undertake,
what progressive plans you may make, the traitor doubt will bob up and
call a halt, will try to dissuade you from your purpose. It will suggest
to you how many others have undertaken similar things and have gone to
the wall, have failed to accomplish what they expected. It will tell
you that you had better go slow, that it is foolish to go into business
in times like these, that you should wait until you are better prepared,
until you have more capital; in short, that there are stumbling blocks
in the way, and that you must consider the step very carefully before
you venture to decide.
It does not matter what we plan to do, doubt is always there ready to
knock our resolutions, and, if possible, to discourage us even from
attempting to put our plans in execution. Who could ever estimate how
many superb inventions and discoveries, which would have helped
emancipate the race from drudgery and hard conditions, have been
side-tracked by this traitor!
Doubt kills activity, discourages ambition and destroys or neutralizes
the biggest brain power. It would make a pigmy of a Webster. By filling
his mind full of doubt of his own creative power, a hypnotist could make
a Shakespeare believe he was a fool. He could inject a doubt into the
mind of a Napoleon that would cut his genius down to the mediocrity of a
common soldier.
This arch traitor of mankind is so closely related to fear that it is
almost impossible to draw a dividing line between the two. They are
twins. Wherever doubt can get a foothold it introduces its brother fear,
and fear brings with it all of its relatives, worry, anxiety,
discouragement--the whole failure family. A single day of doubts, of
fears, of unbeliefs, of the crime of self-depreciation, will drive away
from a man all that he has attracted to himself in many months.
There are multitudes of people to-day suffering from the fatal disease
of self-depreciation, the seeds of which were implanted in them by
doubt. All the victims of discouragement, those who are suffering from
despondency, those who are going through life disheartened, hopeless,
despairing, are the authors of their own misery. They persist in killing
the very thing they are pursuing, in queering their own quest by the
poison of doubt.
The doubting Thomases never get anywhere, because they have no vision,
and "without a vision the people perish." The man who would do anything
worth while in this world must have a vision, and he must have courage
to match it. Courage is the great leader in the mental realm. Whatever
paralyzes it strangles the initiative, kills the ability to do things.
Doubt is its greatest enemy. It suggests caution at the very moment when
everything depends on boldness. If a general were to be over-cautious,
to wait for absolute certainty in regard to results before putting his
plan of campaign into action, he would never win a battle.
Caution is an admirable trait, but when carried to excess it ceases to
be a virtue and comes perilously near being a vice. It may render
ineffective many noble qualities. There are a great many people who seem
to be courageous enough, but an excessive development of caution holds
everything in abeyance to wait for certainty. I know men who wait and
wait, never daring to undertake anything where there is risk, even
though their judgment tells them they ought to go ahead.
We are creatures of habit, and the constant raising of doubts in our
minds as to our ability to do what we want to do in time becomes a habit
of thinking we can't, and when we think we can't, we can't. When a man
begins to listen to his doubts he is beginning to weaken.
Why delay beginning the thing that you know perfectly well you ought to
do? What are you afraid of? Failure, even, in an honorable attempt, is
preferable to forever postponing the thing that you ought to do. Is it
the additional responsibility you shrink from, the extra work? Do you
have a horror of possible failure? Do you shrink from the possible
humiliation of losing out in your venture? What is it that enlarges your
doubt and holds you back? Some handicap, some invisible thread? Are you
carrying a great excess of baggage, clinging to unnecessary things which
handicap you?
I have heard of a sailor who lost his life in that way. He was one of
the crew of a ship that was carrying a large quantity of gold nuggets to
a distant port. The ship ran upon a rock, and, when all hope of saving
her or her precious cargo was gone, the captain ordered everybody to
leave the sinking ship. The last boat was ready to push off, but this
sailor refused to get into it until he had loaded himself with gold
nuggets. He said he had been a poor man all his life, and now he was
going to be rich at last. He would take away with him just as much of
the sinking wealth as he could carry. Heedless of the warning of the
captain and his companions that they would not wait for him, he loaded
himself with gold. Then, the boats having pushed away, he jumped
overboard and tried to save himself by clinging to pieces of the wreck.
But, owing to the weight he carried, he could neither float nor swim,
and so the wealth he felt he could not leave behind carried him down to
death.
Your doubt of your success is probably your biggest handicap. But it
would be a thousand times better to make mistakes by forging ahead too
rapidly, by undertaking more than we can carry out, than to be forever
hovering upon the edge of doubt, delaying, postponing, waiting for
certainty, until we become slaves of a habit which we cannot break. And
remember that the habit of putting off, of waiting to see how things are
going to turn out, to see if something more certain, something with less
of risk, will not turn up, is fatal to initiative, fatal to leadership,
fatal to efficiency.
I know a man who has been resolving for a quarter of a century to start
something in which he thoroughly believes. Every year during that long
period he has told me that this was the year for him to start. He was
really going to begin his great life work, but doubt has engendered the
putting off habit, and this has such a grip upon him that he shrinks
from undertaking anything new. He seems to have a great fear of getting
out of his old rut, to try something different, a fear that things may
not work out right, that it is not the psychological moment to strike.
He has gray hairs now, the enthusiasm of youth is gone, and he never
will begin to do the thing which everybody who knows him believes he is
perfectly capable of doing.
All history shows that while experience increases wisdom, it does not
always increase faith. The inexperienced youth will often undertake
things which stagger the older and more experienced. Confidence is
characteristic of youth; but after a few setbacks and disappointments,
many begin to wonder whether, after all, their first confidence was
based upon good judgment, whether their enthusiasm and faith were not
the result of lack of experience, and then they begin to doubt and to
fear that this voice of ambition which is ever beckoning them on and
upward is not reliable. They say to themselves: "What if this should be
merely a mirage to lure me on the rocks," and before they realize it
they are weaving doubts and fears and over-caution into a habit that has
ruined multitudes of careers, a habit that is responsible for a larger
percentage of unused ability, of locked-up powers than any other one
thing.
Have _you_ done the biggest thing you are capable of doing? Is it not
possible that there is something within you, some unworked mental
territory which, if cultivated, would lead you out into that wider field
you dreamed of when a youth? Why do you go on year after year in the
same old rut, expressing nothing, doing the same old thing in the same
old way because doubt whispers it would be rash to try new ways, new
ideas? How long have you been just an ordinary employee? Do you realize
that habit is getting a tremendous grip upon you, and that before you
realize it you may be a "perpetual clerk"?
The longer you remain in one position, doing the same thing without
promotion, the stronger the inertia habit will grip you, the bigger will
grow your doubt as to the wisdom of making a change. It is a dangerous
thing to get into a rut. Bestir yourself before it is too late and begin
to put into operation that plan which has so long haunted you, but which
doubt has been telling you is not feasible, is not practicable.
If every human being to-day were doing what he has at least some time
thoroughly believed he could do our whole civilization would be
revolutionized. What has been accomplished is but a tithe of what might
have been accomplished if every one had been true to his vision, had not
allowed it to be blotted out by doubt. If I believed in a real devil I
think it would be that unseen monitor, that mysterious something within
us which whispers doubt, which tells us to hold on, to be careful, to go
slow; which pulls us back when we are attempting to reach out, trying to
do the thing we long to do.
Are you not tired of having your plans thwarted, your efforts blighted
by the traitor, doubt? Has it not dwarfed your life long enough, has it
not kept you out of your own long enough by forcing you to live on the
husks when you might have had the kernel? Are you not about tired of
being defrauded by this thief of the blessings and the good things which
the Creator intended we all should have? Why not turn it out of your
mental house? Neutralize it with a great splendid faith in yourself, in
your mission, faith in your possible contribution to the world. Doubt
has very little influence with the Saint Paul type of man, with the
masterful type. It is only the weakling that doubt strangles, paralyzes.
Be a man and not a weakling, a mere apology of a man.
You know that the devil which has followed you through life, which has
blocked your progress, put out the lights in your path, tortured you and
undermined your confidence in yourself, has been the devil of doubt. It
has been the whispering fiend which told you that you could not do this
and you could not do that, which stepped in and killed your initiative
when you were about to begin to do that which your ambition had hoped to
accomplish.
Don't let this enemy thwart and baffle you any longer. Have a good heart
to heart talk with yourself and break the habit chain of unbelief in
self with which it has bound you. Say to yourself, "I will not listen
any longer to the voice of this fiend. I will not allow it to spoil
God's plan for me. There is something inside of me which insists that I
was planned for victory, not for defeat, for happiness, not for misery,
for peace of mind, not for a life of worry, anxiety, and fear. I do not
believe that I was placed here to be a mere puppet of circumstances.
Faith, hope and confidence are my helpers. Doubt is a child of fear, and
fear has the great majority of human beings hypnotized, so that they do
not dare to forge ahead, do not dare to undertake the things they are
perfectly capable of accomplishing. From henceforth it has no power over
me. I will not listen to its treacherous voice."
If you would succeed, you must avoid rashness as well as over-caution.
But when you have fully considered in all its bearings whatever project
you are about to undertake, and have decided on your course, don't let
any fears or doubts enter your mind. Commit yourself to your
undertaking, and don't look back to see if you could have done something
else, or started in some other way. Push on, and don't be afraid.
After we have launched out in an enterprise, have committed ourselves
before the world, pride steps into the situation and pushes us on
through hardships which would have discouraged and turned us aside
before we had fully committed ourselves. But when we have taken the
plunge, made the venture, we have practically said to the world, "Now,
watch me make good. I have made up my mind to put this thing through,
and I am not going to turn back." Our confidence grows as we advance and
then it is comparatively easy, even under difficulties, to keep forging
ahead.
Every child, every youth should be taught the danger of this fatal human
enemy, doubt. They should be so imbued with the philosophy of expecting
success instead of failure that doubt would never get sufficient grip on
them to strangle their capabilities and blight the fulfillment of their
dreams. If every child were reared with the conviction that he was born
for happiness, that it was intended he should realize his vision, his
mind would be turned towards the light, his whole mentality would be so
firmly set toward success and happiness that doubt could not get hold of
him. As it is the lives of multitudes of people are constantly filled
with doubts and fears and uncertainty in regard to the future. Young
impressionable minds are often stamped with the failure suggestion
before they are out of their teens. Most of us are born with the doubt
germ implanted in our brain.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country to-day who
have splendid ambitions, who have made resolutions to carry out those
ambitions, but who are cowering victims of doubt, which keeps them from
making a start. They are just waiting. They are unable to make a
beginning while this monster stands at the door of their resolution.
They are afraid to burn their bridges behind them, to commit themselves
to their purpose.
At the very outset of your career make up your mind that you are going
to be a conqueror in life, that you are going to be the king of your
mental realm, and not a slave to any treacherous enemy, that you will
choose the wisest course, no matter how forbidding or formidable the
difficulties in the way, that you will take the turning which points
toward the goal of your ambition, no matter who or what may bar your
onward path. Don't let doubt balk your efforts. Don't let it paralyze
your beginning and make you a pigmy so that you will not half try to
make good when you have a waiting giant in you. Confidence,
self-assurance, self-faith--these are the great friends which will kill
the traitor doubt.