There are very few people that I can believe are interested in what I am sharing. I know there are a few people though because, they say, hey I read what you wrote. I am so appreciative of their supportive comments and acknowledgement.

With that, I want to ask if anyone else has the demons of doubt that verbally acost you any time you try and do something good. I think it comes with being somewhat broken. I am referring to the imaginary conversations, the ones that plague you when you are trying to just make it through. Let me give you an example, in my mind, I hear (not literally) things like

• Nobody cares.
• You are lazy.
• You never do anything right.
• You are going to fail.

On and on, the voices go.

I know in my case, I think it was because I was bullied pretty bad in elementary school and junior high. There were a few kids that were terrible. I was called all the standards, stupid, four-eyes and even stinky for a while. They also came up with a few more colorful adjectives, that I won’t share. (In all fairness, I did stink. I didn’t know that then. You see, my parents were chain smokers, and we didn’t really keep a clean house, so I really did smell pretty awful. Not to mention it was overlapping with puberty and boy smell. But, I digress.)

All that taunting and teasing is still with me after all these years, and though I KNOW that isn’t me now, it lasted for years, and I can’t escape it.

Now, some of you that knew me in my later teens and early 20s, may have not realized that my false bravado and arrogance were defense mechanisms to hide my insecurity. But, those walls have come down, mostly 😉 . Having kids and raising a family has required that I be more authentic. (I should mention, that was a slow transition, and it made marriage unbearable in the beginning for my wife.)

But now, here I am. Trying to be humble, trying to be authentic and those demons are there again. Doubt, fear, pain, panic all come beckoning for me to listen to them. I don’t know the solution. The weight of being a good father, husband and contributing member to society are now small endeavor, at least not for me. So, the voices come.

Do I have the answer? Nope. All I think we can do, is drown them out. Drown them out with action, with effort, with experience. They are there just to discourage us, to give up without even trying. I think that is their purpose, make us quit.

They are liars, they only way they win is if we listen. If we keep going and push through, we will see that they are wrong, because we will have persevered and that is something they never expected us to do.