A friend of mine has been dealing with a subject I deal with everyday. I was reading his blog and made a comment, and decided to post it here too. He was talking about fear, but I think of this subject as noise. The text of my comment is below:

Some people call this noise rather than fear. You just let all these doubts build up in your head from whatever sources: self, parents, friends, media, books, tv… Then you give these doubts too much control over your life. You give into the noise. Most things in life can be broken down to small decisions. Why don’t you work on your resume? Why don’t you click the send button to send it to an employer? Why don’t you put an email in the to address? Fear? No, I don’t think you are afraid of typing in an address. I think it is the noise in your head. This is what stops so many people from being successful. Some consider self control being able to not do things, like eating chocolate or french fries. The other side of it is you have to be able to do things.

Here’s an example. My friend Dylan is not that competitive in medical school. He tests ok, but isn’t in the top quartile of his class. He wants to do opthomalogy. That’s a very competitive field, good pay, great hours. Some would tell him not to try, just do anasthesia. He is able to push out that noise and apply anyways. He’s got 5 interviews lined up for optho programs. Yeah! Another guy in his class, does better in school than Dylan. He also wants to do Optho, but he lets the noise get in his head and stop him. He thinks its too competitive and just applies to anasthesia where he feels he can get interviews. Result: 0 interviews for Optho. Could he have gotten some interviews? Sure. Why doesn’t he have any now? Noise.

Don’t let it distract you from your goals.

A guy I know on the RichDad boards also posts a lot on this subject. I learned to identify it thanks to him. His name is Les Gee and you can find his posts pretty easily by searching the rich dad forums for “lesgee +noise”. I hope this helps all of us who doubt ourselves and hold us back from our true potential. Here is one of his posts I found for you. And another one. And one more good one, just for good measure.