Doubt Is A Dream Killer
Today, I want to talk about doubt because doubt in my life has probably had one of the biggest negative impacts out of any other kind of emotional response or action that I’ve taken in all of my life. And doubt is a lot bigger than people think it is because when you doubt yourself you don’t realize the gravity of the things that you’re stopping from coming to fruition. You don’t realize how many situations or opportunities that you just shut down by not even taking a step forward because you doubted yourself.
I used to doubt myself all the time. My self-esteem was negative at some points. I just loved creating. But I loved creating alone, by myself, with nobody to judge me, and nobody to say anything bad about it. I didn’t want to show anybody anything that I did because I just I doubted that everything that I did wasn’t good enough. I doubted even opportunities with other people. I doubted their intentions. I doubted my ability to carry through with things and go places. Doubting myself stopped me from a lot of opportunities. It is really something that I think you have to be like aware of because it’s one of those things that can sneak up on you and just prevent you from going where you want to go in life.
In game development, I see it a lot in the younger generation of these guys that want to make games. It can start with technical doubt. They doubt their ability to learn a complex piece of software like Unity or C++ or C sharp or whatever it is. And that’s where it can start. Let’s say you dive into that, you can doubt your ability to finish and your publish your game. You can doubt the fact that anybody would pay for your game—you can doubt all these things. By doubting these things, you are shutting yourself off from the beautiful and amazing things that you can experience if only doubt wasn’t a part of it. For me, I got stopped in my tracks a lot of times by straight-up doubt, and I just want you guys to know that doubt is a dream killer.
If you ever doubt yourself, you’re saying, “Hey, I don’t think I can do this or I don’t think I could pull this off or whatever”, just remember that, literally, you can do whatever you put your mind to. Whatever you want to learn you can learn. Whatever you want to build you can build. Now this gets a little tricky when you’re talking about scope versus doubting your actual ability to do it. And the way that I always think about this is: I never doubt my ability to do anything at all. I know I can do anything with long enough time, with enough resources, with enough people, or whatever. But I’m also realistic and I look at am project like, “Okay that’s a big project, that’s a big scope project, that’s going to take a long time, that’s going to take a couple years, and I’m not willing to invest that kind of time or money whatever into the project as of now.”
So again, don’t get it confused with, “Oh Tim said not to doubt myself so I’m going to go make the next massive MMO, take on World of Warcraft all by myself.” You can but I wouldn’t recommend it because it’s going to take a long time, a lot of people, a lot of money. It could take your whole life! That’s a very big game made by many very experienced people. But don’t let doubt hold you back. It irks me every time I see people that just doesn’t believe in themselves. They don’t think they can do it. They just fire back these resistance walls for whatever reason, like, “Yeah, but you could do this. No, I can’t because of that. Yeah but you could do that. Oh no I can’t because of…” Don’t block yourself from getting somewhere. Don’t ever doubt yourself and think that you can’t do something. We live in one of the most amazing times in human history.
In my YouTube channel, you are watch me through a thing called the Internet. And I recorded those videos at a different time, all alone, in my room from some random place that you probably don’t even know about. You watch those videos and you are absorbing the knowledge that I’ve experienced over my lifetime in a place that has the entirety of knowledge known to man, okay? There isn’t anything that you can’t get ahold of, there is no piece of information that is not there. Seriously, YOU CAN DO IT. Don’t doubt yourself. Don’t second-guess things that you think you can or can’t do. Just go for it! Just know that if you want to do something, and if you’re willing to put in the consistency, you’re willing to put in the time and effort, and you’re willing to make mistakes along the way, you can get there. Don’t doubt that you can because you can.
Trust me. There are so many things I’ve done in my life that I never thought I could do. And if I could go back to my 16 or 18 year old self, I would doubt the hell out of some of the things that I have done in my life. And I really had to fight self-doubt a lot of my life. So when I see it come up in other people, it really bothers me and I really want to get through to them.
So, I hope this helped you out. If it did, please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.
