We sometimes have a negative little voice in our head telling us to not do something because it’s scary, we’re going to fail, or we’re just not good enough. This voice is a nuisance and doesn’t deserve our attention and for the most part it’s a good thing to ignore this voice. The voice will always lead you down a path of missed opportunities and regret.
Last weekend I went down to Chicago so that I could go to my first Ruby meetup. The closer it came the more that negative voice wanted to prevent me from attending the meeting. Over and over again it said told me I wasn’t good enough or there’s no way I could communicate with the other developers there. That little voice was building a negative narrative in my mind, creating unattainable expectations and was setting me up for failure.
Knowing this voice though I knew it was all lies and I knew exactly what I needed to do. Ignore it. So I did, I ignored the voice and I cleared all the negativity from my thoughts and carried on with the task I put in front of myself. The meetup went great and was no where near as terrifying as that voice was leading me to believe it would be. In fact I had a great time and met some really great people. I very much look forward to the next one.
The point is that we all have this voice in our heads telling us that we aren’t good enough, strong enough, smart enough, etc. It serves no good to listen to this voice because it will always lead you down a road of negativity and regret. I’ve fallen to its coercive nature before and missed out on some excellent opportunities. When the voice kicks in we need to address what it’s saying and then ignore it completely. We don’t need to listen to the doubt or negativity our brains can brew up out of fear of the unknown. Ignoring that voice will lead to beautiful and life changing experiences. Today lets all ignore our negative voices and do something positive and out of our comfort zones.