What Ancient Rome Can Teach Us About Self-Doubt

The Humanity Of Self Doubt

Oftentimes, self-doubt feels very individualistic, exclusive only to our subjective perception.

We think to ourselves, “I’m so garbage at this. I’ll never be good enough to make something significant happen. I doubt I can achieve greatness.”

I, I, I.

That’s the common expression amongst all of these sentences.

But the universality of self doubt (probably) goes farther back than we can even conceive.

Today, I was fortunate enough to visit the Academia Gallery in Florence, Italy with my family.

There are many notable museums and galleries in Florence, but this one in particular is special—because it holds one of the most infamous sculptures of all time: the Statue of David.

As I stared in awe at the sheer size of the lad (and I swear I just mean the size of the entire sculpture, not his junk), I thought to myself, “To get to this level of precision, attention to detail and ability, you must be of an almost god-like level.”

I continued to walk around and look at the other pieces of art within the building, and each ancient work evoked similar (but not equally as much) feelings of reverence and awe.

But it wasn’t until I sat down to look at this painting (pictured above), and let my brain process what I was actually seeing, that I started getting hit with some insight.

How long do you think it took the artist to finish this entire canvas?

4 months? 9 months? Several years?

There’s no doubt that to produce a work of art such as this, it would take at least several months of nonstop painting to do so.

When we look at paintings of ancient times, hung up on walls that are attributed with so much praise and status, the last thing we think of is, “I wonder how much this artist doubted themselves.”

It doesn’t even occur to us that someone from so long ago, who is so ethereal, and who had achieved such a great feat, had shared the same sentiments that many of us face on a daily basis.

But it’s not like human biology has changed much (if at all) in the past few hundred years—and that meant that there was another point of view I could adopt to help me with my doubts in the present day.

So for the first time when looking at these paintings, I viewed them from the artist’s perspective—except, instead of viewing it in terms of it’s level of mastery, I viewed it in terms of the everyday struggle the artist had to go through.

I am positive that whoever created that painting (In hindsight, I really should’ve looked at the name of it) had an equal amount of “good” days as they had “bad” trying to finish it.

Picture the artist hovering over one small section of the painting—forehead almost dripping with sweat, having to wipe it off every few seconds, meticulously stroking in each shadow, color, and line.

In many of the days they showed up, they must’ve thought to themselves, “Shit….I have no idea how this is going to turn out. I don’t even know if people will like it.”

I’m sure even Michelangelo thought the same about the Statue of David.

Hell, when ranking his own works, he might’ve even thought the Statue of David was in the C-D tier. We can never really know for sure.

But what we do know for sure, when pondering this aspect of the creative process—instead of seeing it as an other-worldly entity—is that they doubted themselves. They, too, were human.

So what makes you think you aren’t capable of creating your own masterpiece?

What’s left out from the history of ancient times—probably due to the fact that we remember and idolize our wins more than our losses—is how each memorable human faced the same sort of doubts and failures as all the people that were not remembered for anything then, or aren’t revered now.

Now, I feel our culture places such a heavy emphasis on comparison, and not being the best, that we think the greatest names from history didn’t also deal with these things.

But the doubts are a natural—and in fact, necessary—part of becoming something greater.

Each time the fear starts to set in at the thought of accomplishing a difficult achievement, far beyond your current scope of possibility, think back to the humanity of the legendary artists of the past.

Equalize your struggle to produce a better life, a better mindset, and a better future, to their struggles—because there is truly nothing separating you from them.

And when you visualize the process of the ancient doubtful artist, and all the adversity that they went through—and you shake hands with the dead’s biologically engrained necessity to doubt—you realize that you, too, share a little part of that greatness within you.

Nothing that could enhance your current ability to create, to think smarter, and to feel more meaningful could start emanating from within you unless you at first doubted that that future could exist.

Because everything that does not yet exist is hypothetical and doubtful…

until it exists.

Where Your Self Doubt Comes From

Developing the correct mindset and perspective on self doubt is fairly easy to learn about, but much harder to implement frequently.

What’s even more difficult is understanding why you doubt yourself so much (apart from the fact that everyone deals with self doubt sometimes) to the point of paralysis.

It did start somewhere—but understanding where and why at a deep level is really the key to unlocking lasting change, so you never want to give up in times of doubt again.

Many of you are currently stuck in a state of self-sabotage.

Of binge watching self help YouTube videos, and thinking to yourself, "Okay, this is finally the day everything changes."

The motivation to take action is strong, and you feel yourself developing into a newer, more self-aware identity.

But after a while, that motivation wears off, and you're back to where you always started.

Why does this happen?

It happens because:

1. You are unable to accept yourself as you are right now.

2. You don't have access to the most in depth information that is specifically tailored to you (and not a social media audience.)

3. The only person that is trying to hold you accountable is yourself (and that will almost always fail.)

If you want to truly master yourself for good, gain more self awareness surrounding your self doubt, and you want to join a community of like minded individuals all looking to improve, you should check out my Ultimate Self Mastery Course.

The course features 14 videos with 15+ worksheets, a guided meditation, and an exclusive community where we all hold each other accountable and give further advice.

This course is a culmination of years of research on behavioral science, psychology, and of course, trial and error from my own life.

Being able to actually apply the advice you receive, and get consistent feedback from like-minded people are probably the two most important factors in seeing permanent change.

And I’m guessing you currently feel like you can’t talk to anyone in real life about your struggles with self development, right?

That’s why our community meets in a group coaching call every other week to make sure we are all staying on the path towards self mastery.

Here's a picture from one of our recent calls:

So If you're ready to join our community and see lasting change, you can check out all the details by clicking here.

Watch the intro video on that page to see if the course is right for you.

Hope to see you in the community.

Quote of The Week

Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope you enjoy your weekend.

(btw: I put ancient Rome cause it sounds better than another part of Italy for the email title—I don’t think the Statue of David was actually created there.)

-Cole