The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Fighting with yourself

3) Doubt

Poor Ezekiel. The guy has lost so much — His pet, his community, his kingdom, his friends, his sons, his wife, and now, his health — it’s just sad. What might have been one of the saddest things in this week’s episode (Running neck-and-neck with Beta apparently missing performing for an audience) was Ezekiel being forced to put down his horse, and drawing parallels between his horse’s situation and his own, particularly, his doubts about his physical ability to even make it to Charleston and back.

If it weren’t for Yumiko talking him through it, Ezekiel might have just given up, decided he was slowing the team down, and that he wouldn’t make it.

This is the sort of anchor that doubt can be in your mind if you let it. Questioning decisions or other things you’re unsure about is fine, but, be careful, because, it doesn’t take too much for such doubts to snowball on you. You can get from “Should I have done this instead?”  to “I’ve doomed everybody!” surprisingly quick if you let things fester too long.

Like I mentioned last week, the worst part about doubt is its ability to cripple you. If you start to constantly doubt every decision, you’ll soon get to the point where you can’t make one because you’ll be fearing that whichever decision you make will be the wrong one.

Worse still, in a case like Ezekiel’s doubt can cause you to write yourself off well before you’re actually beat. The simplest way for the forces trying to bring you down, whatever they might be, to win, is to convince you that you’ve already lost.