I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was about a week sober and I went to have lunch with a friend. As we sat down to lunch, I was telling him how I decided to go sober. I had a week under my belt and I was pumped with excitement. This was the longest I had been sober in my entire drinking and drugging career.

He had been sober at one point so he knew what it entailed. I remember him looking at me with eyes of doubt and telling me there was no way I could do it. He gave me a week, tops.

I remember leaving that meeting so fired up. I was like, oh really? I’ll show you!! Proving my friend wrong gave me just the extra boost of motivation that I needed at the time. It was a God thing.

We have stayed in touch over the last seven years and every year on my sober date, he says something along the lines of, “Wow, Benson you really did it!”

At the time it pissed me off to no end. He wasn’t the only one to doubt me or be a naysayer when I went public with my sobriety. There were plenty of others who never thought I would actually do it or be able to sustain it.

There were those who questioned my willpower. Those who tried to get me to break by offering me shots or egging me on. There were some I had to get pretty stern with to protect my seriousness about sobriety. And while they might have made me angry at the time, I look back now with only sincere gratitude. For, in the end, they were some of my greatest motivators.

In life, not just sobriety, people are going to doubt you. There will be people who will say you can’t do it or that you don’t have it in you. Instead of letting it deter you or become convince you of their uncertainty, let it do the opposite. Let it motivate you.

When some one tells you that you can’t do something, you’ve got to be able to turn around and confidently say: WATCH ME!

Doubt is an invitation in disguise. Whenever someone else expresses doubt in you or you are feeling doubt inside of yourself, take it as an invitation from God, however that looks for you, to expand.

When we are feeling doubt, whether it’s from ourselves or someone else, this is simply a low level of fear. Usually when we are in fear of something, that’s the very thing we must to do.

When we step outside of our comfort zone and we rise to the occasion to meet whatever challenges might be in front of us, that’s where our real growth happens. That’s where we find out what we’re made of. That’s where we see our potential come to life.

I still don’t know to this day if he wouldn’t have said I couldn’t do it or if he didn’t challenge me in his own way, if I would have stayed sober. It became my mission to prove to myself and to everyone else that I COULD do it. And it wasn’t about being prideful or egotistical. It was about rising to the occasion. It was about taking on the challenge and running with it. It was about reassuring myself that “I’ve got this!”

Doubt became one of my very biggest motivations. It fueled my fire. It lit me up. It made me get my ass in gear. I can’t have anything but love for the divine challenge it turned out to be. My gratitude is unending.

So, the next time someone doubts you, including yourself, step into that for a minute. Ask yourself:

What would it look like if I did actually do this?

How would I feel?

What is it going to take?

Am I ready and willing to do the work?

When we shift our perspective about what doubt is, we recognize it as an invitation to grow and expand, which leads to more motivation, happiness and freedom.

Accepting the invitation helps us figure out how badly we want something. Instead allowing doubt to cause us to question our abilities, the only real questioning at hand becomes:

How bad do you want it?

Photo Credit: Nois7