Doubt Your Doubts: A 5-Question Test Before You React

I realise that many of my thoughts are doubts, primarily when interacting with other people. What they did or what they said easily raises a doubt in my mind. Once a suspicion is planted, it sprouts quickly and becomes a whole story that looks so real. Then, based on the story, comes judgement, roughly, without logical thinking and reasoning.

Having doubts is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it is a kind of self-protection system that can be triggered when facing potential risks. However, some people have a more sensitive system than others. It is OK to have a couple of doubts in a day, but if we have countless doubts, if we are living in doubts, we may struggle with enjoying our daily life. We may find it hard to trust other people, or make undesirable decisions based on our feelings rather than reasoning.

So, how do we mitigate the negative influence of doubts? If humans are born to be sceptical, why not utilise doubt against doubt? Doubt your doubts. Adding one more step before we dig deeper into our doubt, by analysing the doubt itself rather than the subject of doubt. Here, I break this process into five questions:

1. Am I having doubts?

2. Is it realistic?

3. Why do I have the doubt/doubts?

4. Do I have any evidence?

5. If yes, what is the evidence? If not, is it worth searching for?

This method does not eliminate doubts once and for all, but it helps to discard those that have no value to our lives. Creating awareness is the first step, but also the most critical step. Once we are aware of our doubts, we are then able to identify them and actively switch our thinking pattern from "feeling" to logic. As I go through the above checklist myself at times of uncertainty, I mostly end up finding the doubt isn't worth searching for evidence for, and I pass and move on immediately. It is worth mentioning that confirmation bias could potentially be a pitfall in Q4 and Q5.

After all the trouble illustrated, communication is another straightforward way to solve doubts. Why not, ASK?

Doubt is a form of thoughts; a sour fruit of anxiety; a way of disbelief; or a spark of something new.

I doubt when I don't get what I want when I want it in the way I wanted it.

I doubt when things don't play out the way I planned.

It's so, SO hard to just lose the control that we thought we had, but in fact we never had any control.

Can't grip and hold onto water.