Why do we have doubt? If there was not some evolutionary advantage to having it 40,000 years ago, we would not have doubt today. Why can't we just walk around all of the time with our mojo flowing? Doubt is a protection mechanism. The fact that it cripples you from doing certain things is what keeps you alive. You could be 100% totally congruent in your belief that you can fly but if you step off of the side of a 20 story building, you will not have that belief very long. The problem is not that your doubt system exists. The problem is that the software in your head that runs it, and everything else in you, is about 40,000 years out of date. That is approximately how long it takes evolution to catch up so to speak.

Think of it like this. Let's say that you want to quit your advertising job and start your own advertising company. For some reason you have this unexplainable fear in your head that keeps you from doing it. It's almost like you feel as if your possible failure could result in death. It's completely irrational when you think about it, isn't it? Come on now, really, what is the worst that could happen? You may run out of money and have to find another job working for someone? OK, so you are back to square one. Big deal. Think about this for a moment, logically. What if right now, you lost everything? What if all of your money, positions, and job were completely gone in an instant? Would you die? Nope. In fact, going through something like that could be one of the best experiences of your life because you would realize how unimportant all that stuff really is. So where does this doubt and intense emotional fear come from? It comes from 40,000 years ago.

Your unconscious brain is not running software from today. It doesn't know what an advertising company is. It gets forced to replace the world of today with references from 40,000 years ago as it attempts to make sense of things and give you direction. Here is how your unconscious brain gets told the above story.

Let's say that you want to leave your small hunting tribe and start your own tribe. Once you leave, the leader of your old tribe will never let you back in. If you fail at starting your own tribe, you will actually die. Unless you are 100% sure you can successfully start your own tribe, the risk of most certain death is not worth it. Your unconscious then puts this intense fear in you because it thinks that the fear will stop you. It is trying to keep you alive.

Your unconscious is always trying to help you. The problem is that it has a hard time figuring out what is actually taking place in today's environment. You must learn to use your logical brain to overcome the outdated programming of your unconscious. Evolution has actually built a mechanism to help you with this also. When you use your logical brain to overcome your unconscious and are successful, you get rewarded with happy chemicals in your brain. This is your evolutionary incentive to logically get past your fears.

Jump out of an airplane. Right before you do, your unconscious will tell you, "jump and die." Your unconscious doesn't understand the concept of a parachute because we didn't have them 40,000 years ago. When you make it safely to the ground, your unconscious will be very confused, your logical brain will have won, and you will have all kinds of happy natural chemicals in your blood stream as a reward. This serves as an incentive to figure out what else your unconscious may be wrong about.

As you start playing with this concept, you will find out that you are capable of all kinds of things that you never even knew you had inside of you. For the person who never pushes past fear, they know not what they are capable of. For the person who pushes past fear, they find out that there exists inside of them a complete set of instructions for completing tasks they never thought they could do. This is a very difficult concept for people who have not experienced it firsthand to understand. This instruction set is held by your unconscious mind and it is your unconscious mind that hides these instructions from you. Believe it or not, it does both for your own good. Let's go back to the example above of you starting your own advertising company and how your unconscious sees that as starting your own hunting tribe. I will show this example as if your conscious and unconscious were having a conversation with each other.

Conscious: I want to leave my job and start my own advertising company.

Unconscious: If we leave our tribe, they will never let us back in and we will die when we are most likely unsuccessful. Yup, we are going to either starve to death or get killed by a tiger when we have no one to help protect us. Very bad idea!

Conscious: I am doing it anyway.

Unconscious: Can't you feel this fear? This is me telling you that we are going to die. OK fine. Here is even more fear. How about now? Do you still feel like this is a good idea? Don't kill us.

Conscious: Here I go. I am doing it.

Unconscious: OK, that is the last straw. I warned you. Here feel this, this is crippling fear. Turn back now while we still can.

Conscious: I just handed in my resignation.

Unconscious: We are going to die.

Conscious: I feel good for having the balls to do that.

Unconscious: Well since there is no turning back now, I better show you everything we know about how to start a tribe.

Conscious: What!?! We know things about how to get a business going?

Unconscious: Sure. All those years of watching others run tribes. I was paying attention to everything. I remember all of it.

Conscious: What?!? You have been writing an instruction manual this entire time and you didn't tell me about it?

Unconscious: Yes.

Conscious: Why the hell didn't you tell me that we knew how to do this?

Unconscious: If you knew about all of the instructions I hide from you, there would be no limit to the stupid stuff you would try, and you would kill us in no time.

Conscious: OK, but I have just one more question.

Unconscious: What's that?

Conscious: Why would you take the time to create all of these instruction sets if you never want to share them with me?

Unconscious: Because if I didn't, you would actually kill us when you did stupid stuff like this.

There you have it. The biggest secret your unconscious has been hiding from you. Your unconscious will use fear to protect you right up until the point that you are actually doing something. If you can get past the fear through action, your unconscious will then help you in ways you never expected. At the point that you fully understand this, your life will completely change. I know, you are very upset at your unconscious. I was too when I found this out.

Drawk Kwast is a life coach, author, and motivational speaker with becomeALPHA, an organization that teaches the arts and sciences necessary for achieving unprecedented professional and personal success. He has been recently published by Entrepreneur, Worth, Forbes, USA Today, Details, and the Washington Times. More information can be found at http://www.becomealpha.com