Let’s get real:
Doubt has a PR problem.
We treat it like that awkward relative who shows up uninvited to every family gathering. It walks in, plops down at the dinner table, and starts asking uncomfortable questions. And our instinct? Pretend it’s not there. Pour another glass of wine. Keep the conversation light.
But here’s the twist: doubt isn’t trying to ruin the party. It’s trying to get your attention.
Doubt is less like a villain and more like gravity—a quiet, invisible force constantly tugging at us. Sometimes it keeps us grounded. Other times, it pulls us toward something bigger.
The problem isn’t doubt.
The problem is that most of us have never learned how to work with it.
The Day Doubt Showed Up on the Rugby Field
When I arrived at the Naval Academy, I wasn’t supposed to play contact sports.
Too dangerous. Too risky.
And if you saw me then, you might have agreed.
But something about rugby called to me. It wasn’t just the sport. It was the brotherhood. The grit. The elegance within the violence.
I still remember standing on the edge of the practice field that first day, cleats digging into the grass, watching upperclassmen collide like guided missiles with bad attitudes.
Doubt tugged at me hard.
Can I handle this?
Am I out of my depth?
Am I about to make a huge mistake?
It felt like standing at the edge of a canyon, fog swirling below, every cell in my body whispering: “Play it safe, John.”
But there was another pull — quieter, steadier — that said: “What if you belong here?”
I stepped forward.
That moment changed my trajectory. Rugby became a crucible for leadership, resilience, and belonging. And just this month, that team — the 1993 Navy Rugby Team — was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Looking back, I realize that day wasn’t just about rugby. It was my first real encounter with the gravity of doubt.
Doubt Is a Feature, Not a Bug
Psychologists have a wonderfully unsexy term for the moment doubt kicks in: prediction error.
It’s what happens when your brain expects one thing, reality hands it another, and your inner narrator goes, “Uh… wait a second.”
Doubt is your cognitive tug. It’s the system alert that says: “Look closer. There’s more here.”
The problem? Instead of listening to that gravitational pull, we often do the opposite. We panic. We project. We scroll Instagram. We bury it under “busyness” or other people’s opinions.
High-performance psychologist Michael Gervais calls this FOPO — Fear of People’s Opinions. It’s one of the greatest constraints on human potential. Because the moment we start worrying about judgment, we redirect the energy of doubt away from growth and toward impression management.
And once you start orbiting other people’s expectations, it’s very hard to escape the gravity well.
But Wait… Some Doubt Isn’t Even Yours
Here’s where things get even trickier:
Not all doubt originates inside you.
Brennan Spiegel, author of Pull, studies how invisible forces in our environment shape what we pay attention to, believe, and even physically feel.
His research shows that we’re living in a gravitational field of information.
Technologies, algorithms, cultural narratives — they’re all pulling on us constantly.
When doubt flares up, sometimes it’s not because you’re broken.
It’s because your internal compass is clashing with an external current.
That’s why it’s so crucial to pause and ask:
“Is this doubt actually mine? Or is it being shaped by something outside of me?”
Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable.
Which, ironically, is exactly why we need doubt in the first place.
Radical Doubt: The Skill Nobody Taught You
This is where Dr. Bobby Parmar comes in. He argues that doubt isn’t just something to survive. It’s something to structure.
When uncertainty hits, most people either freeze like a deer in headlights or sprint toward the nearest decision just to make the feeling stop.
Radical doubt is the third way.
It’s a disciplined process of pausing, zooming out, interrogating assumptions, generating options, and then deciding — not despite doubt, but because of it.
Bobby shared a story about questioning his identity as a martial artist — a moment that forced him to rethink everything. Instead of shoving doubt into a closet, he invited it to sit down, poured it a metaphorical coffee, and asked it a few hard questions.
That’s the move.
Enjoying this? Let’s go deeper.
You’ve explored how doubt shapes your psychology, how external forces pull at your attention, and why radical doubt is a hidden leadership superpower.
In the subscriber-only section, I’ll walk you through five practical tools to harness doubt as fuel, plus:
A step-by-step framework to apply Radical Doubt to real decisions
How to spot external pulls in real time (and stop outsourcing your clarity)
A downloadable Companion Workbook to map your own “doubt gravity field”
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