The Two Wolves Within

What is self-belief? It’s trusting your intuition, accepting yourself completely with all your inner and external beauty, flaws and scars standing by your decisions irrespective of the outcome.

What is self-doubt? It’s second-guessing every decision and constantly thinking “I’m not good enough”, “what if I end up failing”, “maybe I’m not worthy” etc.,

Can they both exist together? May be, maybe not. But if they decide to stay together, there will be fights, arguments almost every day creating a lot of tanaav (tension) for the container holding both.

I remember the classic story of two wolves.

There are two wolves who reside within us:

One is positive, confident, believes in self, the other is anxious, critical, always looking for excuse.

Who do you think will win at the end?

The one we feed and allow space to grow to support our choices in life.

In my case unknowingly, I allowed both to reside within me as I was growing up.

Let’s name them as SB (Self Belief) & SD (Self -Doubt). The initial growing years SB was the one who was fiercely in charge of every decision & choices that I made in my life.

During that phase whenever SD tried to sneak in, it was quickly kicked out by SB. However, as life happened, I didn’t even realize how and when SD started taking charge and grew beyond my control!!!

We often share our success stories and achievements, which are just the tip of the iceberg.

But how often do we reveal the part of the iceberg that has endured struggles and fought inner demons and insecurities?

There were moments in my life where I almost gave up, yet something kept me going and reminded the grit & resilience that I showed as I arrived into this world.

I’m starting a series to share my personal “seesaw stories” incidents where my SB & SD clashed and how these moments shaped who I became in the process of exploring life.

This series is an attempt to bring those moments to light.

Through these stories, I hope you’ll pause and reflect on your own inner compass recognizing which wolf you’ve been feeding all along and consciously making a choice to nurture going forward.

And when I look back down memory lane, I realized that this seesaw didn’t begin later in life… it began much earlier than I ever imagined even before I came into this world.

Let's explore that in my next story