Understanding the nature of doubt begins with seeing how it is associated with an attachment to a desired outcome or to a sense of forward movement in life. Most of you need to feel as if you are moving forward, evolving, growing, and becoming more than you believe you currently are. It doesn’t really matter what part of your experience this sense of “forward” refers to. As long as at least one area of your life seems to be improving and not falling behind, you feel validated that your life is moving forward.

If you are a contemplative person, you might seek to gain awareness and have deeper meditations. If you are more outwardly driven, you are likely to have career aims and monetary goals and to seek forward movement with external measures. Most of you entertain both internal and external gauges, always calculating — perhaps unknowingly — where you are compared to when you last evaluated yourself.

The moment you find yourself in evaluation mode is when you entertain doubt. We suggest that doubt — a kind of skepticism or inability to trust the moment — emerges out of evaluation that takes place because you are attached to “moving forward” or achieving a desired outcome. This attachment to moving forward is discomfort with the now, or at the very least it relies on a belief that staying in one place would cause you to feel as if you were stuck. Attaching to an outcome defines your forward movement more specifically.