“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.” – Kahlil Gibran

Being saddled with doubt and worry is a detriment to your health. Both harangue with uncertainty. They stagnate forward motion. Doubt makes you uncertain and worry causes anxiety. Each stem from and exude fear.

Doubt crops up when you expect events and relationships to follow your plans yet fret they will not. As you enter a party, doubt undermines your confidence. You distrust people will like you. Doubt assumes and expects the worst. It surrounds itself with negative naysayers. To challenge the ebb and flow of life, emboldens cynicism. Furthermore, it feeds the bitterness of disbelief. Luckily, the antidote to doubt is faith.

Worry, on the other hand, harps on anxiety. Like doubt, worry craves a situation (like getting the job) will work out and makes you afraid it won’t. You agonize as you constantly forecast gloomy weather. Worry has you embedded to a specific result. You fixate on a particular outcome. This leads to dread. You fret and suffer with a trembling despair you will ever work again, for example. Worry takes over your common sense, logic and the laws of probability. To banish dark worry, respond to it with the light of hope and optimism.

Plenty of stress and misery comes from both the ambiguity of doubt and the anguish of worry. It is a vicious, unhappy and crazy cycle of doom and gloom. If you continue to delude yourself you can control anything but your own reactions, the more out of control you will feel. I know this powerlessness feels like defeat, but don’t allow doubt to raise your suspicious antennae and entangle your mind. Instead, accept life on its own terms and counter with your best self.

In place of rehashing the past and predicting a dismal future, await life with wonder. Live in the present moment. 

Behind every fear you have, is a lack of love and faith.

I understand my doubt and get beyond my worry when I trust in love and my beliefs.

I am a capable, competent woman filled with courage, power and confidence.

THINK ACTION: Dwell on your purpose and sense of worthiness. Do you treat yourself as a worthy human being?

How can you build your understanding of self-worth without swinging the pendulum too far and becoming self-absorbed, self-centered or conceited?

When have you found more joy in the doing or giving than in the product or the monetary reward?

Write a list of ways, reasons and attributes that make your existence a beneficial one to the world (start slow and gentle if you are humble – but proceed nonetheless).

Your tasks and chores may appear meaningless, common or mundane, never ending – a runaway train on the rails. We can make them special, however, by envisioning them as fruitful, necessary and giving.

Give your best self to your career or sail away to a different shore. For, example, my first paying job was in Argentina. I packaged and stored fruitcakes in a hot bakery. With other temporary, part-time working women we stacked the holiday goodies in the warehouse’s floor to ceiling shelves. I toiled for mere pennies yet I took pride in showing I could keep up with the careful, skillful packagers and the fastest stockers.

It is in the striving and exertion, not the dividend, that we sense and grasp our worth. In other words, we profit from giving our best in all of our transactions.

Even if today you get low, blue or hopeless – understand that in the hushed dark of your descents – you are still precious and loved. If walls are closing in, remain calm. When the time comes, you are led through a lit window or an open door. This has happenned to you often.

Sometimes it is in our best interest to stay quiet or away. In a protected cocoon, we ward off drama and trauma. For instance, when the love of my life was in a terrible car accident, I was thousands of miles apart from him. Strangely enough, it was his near-death experience that changed my geographic location (moving closer to him after) and so my story’s trajectory. When I lost myself to an abusive relationship, I stayed quiet, not rocking the boat. Meanwhile, I planned my escape.  It is only in the battle we reveal our worth — not in the revelry after.