Doubt is an essential emotion for an entrepreneur. After all, it’s because you doubted something was being done as well as it could be that you decided to start a business.
Throughout my career I’ve had those moments when I’ve been gripped by doubt – am I capable of building this business? Is my team the right make up of skills and attitudes? Are our plans right? The product features we’re working on, are users going to find them as valuable as we think they will? Going through those bouts often yields the best results and over the years I’ve become more and more comfortable with doubting. In fact, if I don’t deal with my own doubts now I get a little nervous that I’m not thinking critically enough about things.
Doubt triggers introspection, investigation, and planning and is an integral mechanism for change and innovation. Constant optimism, on the other hand, leads to complacency and stagnation. If you always think what you’re doing is right then there’s no need to think about different approaches or to study what your competitors or the market are doing.
Fear, the inability to deal with doubt, leads to paralysis and failure. I appreciate that there is a fine line between the two and have developed a mental process for making sure my doubt doesn’t turn into fear. To put it simply, it’s important to appreciate doubt for what it is: your gut screaming at you that you have to flesh out in better detail some of the things you’re working on. Before you panic, and start to fear, appreciate that you’ve got some hard questions you need to answer to smooth things out.
