How to Let Go of Doubt and Take Back Your Life at Any Age
Medium | 17.01.2026 23:03
How to Let Go of Doubt and Take Back Your Life at Any Age
Cut it down at the knees
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Doubt is always arch-enemy number one for anyone trying to change their life.
It kills more careers, relationships, and futures than any real threat or limitation ever has.
Doubt tells us:
“It’s not going to work.”
“You can’t do it.”
“You’re too old.”
“You’re too young.”
“You’re not good enough.”
“It’s not the right decision.”
So it stops us before we ever get started.
And even when we muster up the courage to act in spite of doubt, it sets the foundation for self-sabotage.
You’ve heard this story before.
You commit to a goal, but in the back of your mind, you doubt whether it will work out.
Or even worse, you believe it can work, but you doubt whether you’ve made the right decision.
But you push through your doubt and do it anyway.
The courage is admirable, but because of the doubt, you hesitate, second-guess yourself, and act with one foot in, one foot out.
Or you go overboard and end up doing way too much.
You see this in relationships all the time.
Doubt makes someone clingy or too distrustful, so they do something that hurts the relationship.
You see it in the workplace.
Someone doesn’t truly believe they can grow their business or get that promotion.
So they don’t fully put in the work.
And surprise surprise …. it doesn’t work out.
You also see it with writers who don’t publish regularly because they doubt anyone will read (guilty as charged).
In all of these cases, doubt makes you act in ways that cause the thing you doubted to come true.
And in this way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You then make the mistake of believing that your doubts were always justified.
You say things like “I knew this would happen.”
And now that your doubts have come true, you believe in them even more.
This creates more of what you don’t want.
So it becomes a vicious cycle that can make life feel like it’s slipping away.
The good news is that the cycle can be broken, and everything can change.
So there’s no need for regret or guilt.
But most people try to battle doubt at the surface.
They use logic and reason to convince themselves that their doubts aren’t real.
But the problem with this is that your doubts don’t come from a logical place.
So they can’t be reasoned with.
That would be like speaking French to an English person.
To truly deal with doubt, we first have to understand where it comes from.
The source of all doubt
Most people think that doubt comes from uncertainty about the future.
Because we don’t know what will happen, we feel a lack of control and experience doubt.
But just look at most kids.
They have no real certainty about the future because their lives are largely in the hands of parents and teachers.
But you’ll see them taking the most confident actions.
And even right now, there are billions of factors completely out of your control that have aligned just for you to be reading this article.
- Science
- Technology
- Food production
- Family
- Friends
- Nature
- laws of the Universe
And so on ……….
If you focused on every single thing you don’t know, don’t understand, and can’t predict, you’d be paralyzed by doubt 24/7.
The reason you’re not (and it’s the same for kids) is that you don’t focus on that stuff.
You just focus on what you know and can control, trusting that everything else will work out as it should.
And as it always has.
The real source of doubt is not an uncertain future; It comes from where we place our focus.
In our need to control the future, we focus on everything we don’t know and then assume responsibility for it.
And at the same time, we forget about everything that works in our favour.
As human beings, there’s so much we don’t know about the future and even how life works in the present.
Yet we’re here, living, breathing, and evolving.
Whether you believe in God, the Universe, or just pure random chance, whatever force has got us here has clearly done an okay job so far.
When you live in doubt, it’s because you’ve forgotten you’re not alone, and you don’t need to have the answers to everything.
Are you doing the best you can right now?
Are you doing what you believe to be right and true?
Does this make sense given what you know now?
And if you truly feel like you have no idea, then just do something.
You’ll see what happens and figure it out from there.
You don’t need to know how things will play out to make the right decisions.
Because the truth is, things will play out however they do, and you’ll adjust if you need to.
The Marriott hotel chain started out with a guy selling root beers on the street.
Samsung started exporting noodles to China, and now they’re one of the biggest electronics companies in the world.
Nintendo started selling playing cards before eventually pivoting to consoles.
None of them could have foreseen how things would play out.
They just did what made sense at the time and dealt with things from there.
You can’t judge your decisions based on information you don’t have.
But you can make the right decision, with the information you have right now.
And that’s where you find certainty.
Not in the future, but in what you know and have right now.
This requires a shift in focus.
Matthew 6:22–23
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Cutting down doubt at the knees
Instead of focusing on what you don’t know or have, focus on what you do know and have:
- Your family
- Your friends
- Your eyesight
- A beating heart
- Opportunities
- Current knowledge
- Health
Focus on all the ways life has panned out for you in ways you never expected or didn’t understand.
And the things you can do right now.
This creates certainty right now.
And flips the vicious cycle of doubt on its head.
Nero Knowledge calls this the annoying law of the Universe.
That you can only have what you already have.
Many books call it the law of attraction.
It’s also referenced throughout the Bible
Matthew 25:29
“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
It’s the principle that you won’t find what you’re looking for in some distance future.
You find it right now, and then that draws more of it into your life.
Cutting Out The Noise
This process doesn’t work by forcing new actions.
It works by shifting focus, which is the cause of action.
Right now, companies are investing billions into marketing that steals your focus and directs it to lack.
Because lack creates uncertainty and doubt, which makes us compulsively buy to fill the void.
So one way to take back focus is just to do less:
Less social media, less TV, fewer conversations with friends who gossip and focus on lack.
When you do, you’ll feel confidence and sureness that pushes you forward in life.
Action will feel more effortless because you’re not being pulled back by the friction of uncertainty.
And you’ll make better decisions.
It is important to note I’m not saying you should ignore anything that’s uncertain.
Of course, we still need to make plans and think about the future so we can direct our actions.
That stuff doesn’t stop.
I’m also not suggesting we try to be perfect and remove all doubt forever.
Or that removing doubt means you’ll always get what you want.
But if we can live with more certainty and less doubt by shifting focus, life will be better.
And you can always pivot if things don’t go to plan.
