Self-Doubt…

Here’s the thing. I get you, really, really, really understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been in this boat ever since joining KP. It’s funny how easy it is to compare yourself to others, isn’t it? You’re so confident in yourself then one day, boom! your confidence up and walks away. So rude. 

Like I said, self-doubt has been a struggle for me my entire life. It’s never really gone away. There’s always been someone smarter and stronger to compare myself to, so I completely understand. But there is hope.

I’m a firm believer in God ordaining our steps, and one of the ways I think he does this is by putting little passions and interests in our life to help us grow. Writing is one of mine, and its obvious its one of yours, too. But the growing is difficult, and it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it’s earthquakes and floods–meaning, sometimes, we’re faced with struggles like self-doubt and left to combat them on our own.

Only, you’re not alone. If God placed this passion in your heart, then that means he’s there to see you through it. Dunno if you’ve prayed about this on your own (I’ll be praying for you too) but I know for me personally, taking my emotional struggles to God gives me great comfort. He is our Prince of Peace, after all.

And get this: these passions God has placed in our heart come in all different forms. My dream, for example, is to get published one day. But I’d be just as happy as a stay-at-home mom someday, telling awesome, God-centered bedtime stories to my kids, because that way, my stories are getting somewhere, and maybe that’s where God wants them to be. My dream may not be your dream, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have room to grow, and that certainly doesn’t mean you’re any weaker as a writer because of that.

To sum things up…God has given us all different levels of passion. Some of us dream of being published, while others just enjoy writing as a hobby, and that’s okay.

Don’t feel bad for being kinda stuck right now, take advantage of it. Pray and ask God what he’s trying to teach you, and try to keep your heart and mind open for his answer. Growing in your relationship with Christ (and in writing) isn’t easy, but sometimes, I think God has to slow us down to remind us what’s important.

And as for struggling with comparing yourself to others, I would pray and ask God to help you be satisfied with where you are now. I’m right in the middle of having to do the same thing, albeit under different circumstances. The truth is, there’s always going to be someone better, so if you’ve got to stop and appreciate how far you’ve come. Look at your own strengths and acknowledge where you’ve already grown, and give God the sadness the comes when think others are passing you by.

That was a lot, sorry. Hope this helps, and I’m praying for you.

@Dekreel Oh honey. I feel ya. I’ve been dealing with self-doubt myself over the past few months, and the conclusion I’ve basically come to is this:

You can’t be better than your best.

We look around at other people’s writing and beat ourselves up because we’re not as good or as ambitious as them, but we can’t even remedy the problem because we’re not physically capable of being there yet. So all you have to do is write to the best of your ability. That’s all God wants. He doesn’t care about nitty-gritty plot aspects or whether you want to get published or not. All He wants is for you to do the best that you can with the talent He’s given you. So if you’re a fantastic writer, that’s amazing. If you’re a horrible writer but you’re still throwing yourself whole-heartedly into using your passion for God, that’s equally fantastic. If you want to get published, or if you want to write as a hobby, it doesn’t matter. Do your best. That’s all He cares about. And believe me, that’s all we care about as well.

@dekreel *kindly refrains from ‘petting’ you* God has given you the amazing talent of writing, and what you do with it is between you and Him. No one else. Someone else’s standard of getting published, writing the deepest and most profound character arc ever to grace paper, or writing 58,231.2 words in a day isn’t your problem. No one should look at your writing and say, “Seriously, Dekreel? Only 0 words today?”

Not even you.

Wherever God puts you in the realm of writing, that’s where he wants you.

@Dekreel basically what has already been said. I struggle with this too. Especially recently. I found an author whose skill in my chosen genre is so crazily far beyond my own I don’t dare dream I’ll ever reach it.

And much as I hate to admit this, that thought drives me absolutely bonkers.

It’s not that I’m jealous of him, just that I loathe myself for not being as good as he is. I’ve always been competitive. I hate being bested in anything, but most especially writing because that’s my calling, and it’s where I most want to excel. Wounded pride, I guess you could say. So much for humility. 😛

We’ve already had a lot of amazing advice from the rest of you lovely people on relying on God, trusting His plan, and being content with the gifts He’s given. (Did I mention I love this community?) I found @Daeus’s post and the metaphor of the One Ring especially apt… and convicting. *gulps* That’s a good way to describe it.

So I guess I’ll just share a little thought that mightn’t be stunningly profound, but I think it’s important. You can’t judge ‘perfect’ by measuring yourself against the people around you. You’ll always come out dissatisfied, because it’s not you that’s flawed— it’s your standard. For one thing, perfection in God’s eyes is not the measure of your skill or accomplishment, but the degree to which you have surrendered all skill and accomplishment to Him. He does not value what the world does.

For another thing, if you were exactly like the authors you idolize as perfect in their calling… you wouldn’t be you. The same God who blessed Tolkien with his wild imagination and Dickens with his piercing insight into human nature decided the world also needed you. God doesn’t give gifts at random; He obviously has a reason for giving you the gift of writing. There is something you can give to the world— something you can say— that no one else can. If you give that up because you want to be more like someone with a ‘better gift’, you’re essentially telling God he gave the wrong gift to the wrong person. But we are not competitors. We are not separate and individual entities, all racing to claim one single glory that only one can achieve.

If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be?

1 Corinthians 12:15-19

It’s hard to watch others of the same calling succeed when you feel like you’re stuck on the ground and there’s nothing you can do about it. But who says you’re stuck? Only you, because you’re measuring your journey against the journeys of others. Don’t. God wrote their story. For them, it was perfect. God is also writing your story and directing your journey. You are exactly where He wants you to be, and if you miss that, you miss so much of what He has for you in the present. Just because your path doesn’t seem as grand or glamorous as others doesn’t mean it’s any less important. Yes, we all want to be the general— striding out in front of our troops with our sword brandished high, spurring whole nations on to glory. But what is a general without his officers? Without his foot soldiers, even?

On top of that, we have these two promises:

His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ 

Matthew 25:21

and

Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before unknown men.

Proverbs 22:29

That word, ‘excels’. By whose standards? God’s. God’s standard is the only absolute a Christian ever has to worry about.

@everyone “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Cor 10:13)
This verse came to mind as I was reading through everyone’s posts. I’m thankful @dekreel that you were willing to be vulnerable about your struggle. As you can see, so many of us deal with this same thing, and so often we believe ourselves to be alone in what we’re dealing with. But we’re not alone. I will say, I too have been so encouraged by what each of you shared. Blessings to you all, and I’ll be remembering you in my prayers!

@dekreel

I’m so sorry that you have to go through this! it’s happened to me before, and it’s horrible. I have to say though, I tend to have the opposite problem…I compare everyone else’s writing/whatever it is to my own and I get really arrogant. So…we all have our flaws.

But seriously, God made you to love writing! he maybe didn’t make you to be a published author, I don’t know. But he made you to enjoy creating people and worlds. He made you to take pleasure in it, even if you never ever show it to anyone else, or get it published. He DID NOT make you to doubt yourself. I know that’s it’s easy to feel like we’re useless or no good at anything, I feel like that when it comes to basically everything but writing.

I was telling my friend yesterday that sometimes I feel like a twisted key (that analogy came from the blackout poetry prompt from a few weeks back). a twisted key isn’t good for anything, it doesn’t fit any locks, it’s only use is to be thrown away.

But God is the sort of locksmith that doesn’t make twisted keys. We might feel useless, and purposeless and no good for anything, but God has made a lock for us, a purpose for us. It might take a while to find it, but it’s out there somewhere. We can’t judge ourselves by the world’s standards, because the world likes conformity. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, because God made us to be US not HIM or HER or THEM.

everyone else has written amazing things, so I’ll just leave you with what my friend wrote to me:

” God bless you girl! You’re amazing, I hope you believe it, if not I’ll just have to keep telling you until you do, till you see how God created you! Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

Ultimately, self doubt or no self doubt, God still loves us :D. And if you’re writing for Him, then it is amazing writing, whether by everyone else’s standards or not. It’s worship to him and that makes it amazing.

To be totally honest, I almost started crying as I read through this thread. I’ve had a really tough weekend emotionally, doubting everything I’ve been working on with my writing + my future. My mom was talking to another parent about how I “know what I want to do” and up until this past Friday, I thought I did but I somehow ended up going on a downward spiral mentally. Then I started reading this thread and started feeling 1000x better. So thank you, everyone, for your beautiful words, and thank you @dekreel for being vulnerable about this because I think God just used this thread to help me.

Dekreel, as everyone’s been saying, you are most definitely not alone in this. It’s so easy when we’re trying to improve to start comparing ourselves to other people. I think the most important thing to remember is that it’s not about us. It’s about God, every moment of our lives. When we compare ourselves to others, we’re thinking of ourselves, not of Him, because when we think of Him we realize that He is in control and has us exactly where we need to be.

When God made you, He had a specific purpose in mind. He gave you talents and passions that would help you achieve that purpose. That doesn’t mean you’re going to find that purpose overnight, but everyday you can do the one thing that He calls everyone to do — love. And if in your strivings to love Him you decide not to be a published author, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not every writer has to become an author with a big platform and lots of readers. They don’t even have to become an author. God is going to use your talents in amazing ways somehow, someway, and you don’t have to try and do something you’re not super interested in doing to let Him do that.

I’ll wrap up my ramblings with a bit of imagery from a book I recently read: imagine a meadow. Only instead of all sorts of wildflowers, there would only be roses, and absolutely nothing else. There’s nothing wrong with roses, but the beautiful variety of the meadow is gone. No one type of flower is better than the other, but each adds to the beauty of the field. I think it’s the same with writers; not every single one of us needs to go on to become best-selling authors. We can glorify our King just as well writing stories for fun or doing something else. 🙂

I’ll definitely be keeping you in my prayers <3