Are you a questioner or a doubter? 📝

There’s a difference between questioning yourself and doubting yourself.

People who question themselves are simply running through the motion of covering their bases. You need to consider how accurate you are, how reliable and rational you are being.

Questions are good, when you adapt and alter appropriately. It leads to confidence and a sense of emotional security.

… then there’s:

People who doubt themselves may seem like they question themselves but it comes with punishment for being wrong, the criminalisation of failure. It causes all kinds of toxic junk to flare up.

Examples:

Type A — The Questioner

“Pretty sure that battle happened in 1610 not 1601”

“I’m reasonably sure but let’s Google it because I’m usually pretty good at this but you know what it’s like when your brain’s playing tricks on you… oh what do you know you’re right! Ah yes I remember now it was the treaty that was signed in 1601 and the famous battle occurred 9 years later after blah blah blah”

“Weird how that happens sometimes isn’t it?”

“Well we’re all only human, glad you corrected me I’ve got an exam next week. I’ll have to review this again to make sure I’ve got it down.”

That’s of course two questioners conversing. If the other person was a doubter they would be likely to infer that the person who got it wrong is an idiot. Flames them for inaccuracy. You can be right and still be a doubter. That’s the hard part really.

Type B — The Doubter:

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to put that in the microwave?”

“Duh, I think I know what I’m doing my dad’s an engineer… you’re such an idiot. Don’t question my understanding of microwavial technology again.”

“Ok, if you’re sure… but I’m gonna step back”

“You knew this would happen and you didn’t stop it because you just wanted to see me fail!!”

“I tried to say, but you insisted on not reprocessing your actions, and chose to boost your confidence through ego and pride.”

-Insert lashing out blaming behaviours-

Nothing is learned.

If this person had been a questioner they might still have blown the microwave up but their chat would have gone more like:

“I mean, I do see your point and we will definitely stand back… in fact help me take this into the yard. I’m just curious what happens and it seems a fun experiment. It’s almost certainly going to explode but I’m equally curious about what if it doesn’t?”

“Plus then we can try and fix it!”

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Now I know that’s not the perfect analogy I just came up with but the point stands that questioners can have civil discussions and fold their human capacity for inaccuracies into their core identity. They’re reasonable even when being foolish or even outright dangerous. You aren’t arguing you are discussing, they aren’t going to take it personally… they’ll break things down and at worst there’s an element of a game at play when you hit Google. A playful wonder at whether or not their brain is toying with them this time. There’s a separation between what they claim and what they take ownership of, how they bolster their position and secure themselves. They are well aware their brain is unreliable, and that they didn’t build the machine nor did they do the research. Besides they probably aren’t qualified to really know, and they’ll say so. You are discussing details, it’s all second or third hand information.

They don’t get off on appearing higher than they are. A doubter can not handle a threat to their reputation, which is all smoke and mirrors. Sometimes, it has substance too… which is infuriating to deal with. As I say a doubter can be right, but it’s now they leverage a claim without substance to up their cred that’s the issue. They gamble with losing face by living on the edge of what might even seem reasonable assumption. Correlation isn’t causation though.

Just because I can play guitar doesn’t mean I can just play piano. At best I can make the claim that one day, just like with guitar, I’ll be likelyto develop skill. IfI put the time in.

A questioner gets beaten at a game they are good at and asks how, show me my mistakes. A doubter eagerly demands a rematch until they win and/or insists that you cheated. Or rage quits.

I’m a questioner. But I do not question my self worth, I prove it. I make it so with effort.

When we talk about people who question themselves we are normally talking about people who doubt themselves.

There is a world of difference.

The word admireis a choice in the question that made it intriguing, I do not admire those that question their worth. I’ve been it, that’s a pitiable state of being and uncertainty is a torture of a mindset.

I do admire those that question their accuracy and are wise enough to avoid grasping onto egotistical self driven unsubstantiated blown up narratives through a fear of failure and bravado to cover the insecurity because they know that humans are clumsy beings, incredible yes but they intimately understand and appreciate that in effect walking is falling forwards then catching yourself with a foot before you face plant the floor.

They see the functional eloquence yet often humorous calamity of being an animal rather than bolstering a superiority attitude. They see that duct tape got the job done, and it might not be perfectly attractive but it’ll do for now.

If it functions then it isn’t stupid.

Those you cannot question doubt themselves. Those you don’t need to doubt have shown their working.

You can have high levels of failure without being a doubter, it depends how you generate a sense of value and what you pin your identity and emotional security on.

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This question also begs to ask where I stand on this, where I fit in:

I strip the illusion from my own eyes and expose myself to reality frequently. It usually isn’t pleasant. I do this to stay grounded because I dream big — ‘Nobody ever did it before’ big.

I want to believe that by opening up my entire recorded million minutes archive of ideas to the public I am redefining artistry and by practicing open inclusive development, building the framework for it, that I’m shifting a cultural narrative and challenging a longheld status quo and illusion that marketing thrives on. That I’m demystifying creativity.

I might be shooting myself in the foot.

The reality is the time it takes to do this is time not spent doing other things which are potentially essential. It comes with a cost. There’s a gamble at play by which being the first to do it is highly valued and feeds into my persona as a trend setter, which also risks making a myth of myself since a million minutes of ideas seems beyond human to most regardless of my willingness to buffer and deauthorise myself.

It will potentially work for me by suggesting hints of originality, the dream of breaking the rules and reshaping things, making me double down on my behaviours and keeping me motivated since consistency is key with the kind of success I am seeking but the largest hurdle is believing that it is possible. So you must ‘break the rules’ and refold the box until it is a more pleasing shape.

I can’t fail I can only appreciate the value of the status quo because when I challenged it I discovered it functions just fine after significant effort. Then I can write about why I consider it a waste of time with authority rather than questioning every foundational structure I come across. My drive is often ‘how much of this is assumed?’ and ‘how have times changed since we started following this without question?’.

In regards to creativity and my plans for doing things differently, well the internet came along and so did infinite free storage with Google and so on. This is a very recent development. Therefore now is the time when my goals are plausible when previously they were not.

I was a dreamer, it was only technically possible with significant effort when I first started 10 years ago but now it is easy, automatic and accessible.

I’d argue I’m ahead of the curve here because as a geek I’ve made certain connections between music and basic computing possibilities. Long live the cloud, long live the Internet Archive and long live the derived analytics of big data haha

I won’t cry about it if I’m wrong in the end, I’ll have helped others avoid it.

I’m banking on it not being the case and I am happy enough to have dedicated myself to the cause of giving people access to my entire process rather than building the illusion that everything I ever create is good. The artistry, in fact, is in how you select what to develop.

We deny others that context and so they cannot learn our process. This is a shame to me because the negative space and counterpoint is context denied and erased.

Show me a draft songbook filled with crossed out lines by any songwriter and I’ll be desperate to see what was rejected. Only then can I truly appreciate and learn from their mastery. Otherwise I’m just impressed without an appreciation of their failure. They appear and make themselves appear as magical. They have talent and I have a lack of skill.

Businesses thrive and feed on these assumptions. When you’ve never seen your heroe’s frequency of failure on the path to being a hero it is hollow. It’s a marketing gimmick.

I’m an inventor as well, but I lack the capacity or opportunity to build most of my inventions. I don’t pin my self worth on whether or not the invention gets built, I base it on whether or not I’m the kind of person who might think of other awesome ideas and share them willingly.

I can easily achieve the second because I only need to perceive a might, there only needs to be possibility. Besides I’m aiming for the impossible so even 1/1000th of an infinite is still infinite achievement. You can’t truly fail if it was impossible, you can only enjoy the battle with your own nature. I find this a useful motivator.

Anyways, I think that demonstrates a mentality by which I can substantiate claiming to be a positive questioner rather than a doubter.

Grayson King

( ར ₹, ཬ )