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Martin J. Watts

Martin J. Watts

Entrepreneur, inventor, and author of "When Doubt Becomes Design" (martinjwatts.com)

Sep 30, 2026

WestinoHOST
7:38
What exactly does this mean, and how can someone recognize it's operating in their everyday life?
7:45
So, typically, we apply doubt holistically to us, right? We are all in doubt of something or sometime.
7:53
I mean, have you ever felt super confident about something that you're doing? And then something shifts or changes and doubt floods in.
8:04
It happens to a lot of us.
8:07
Or maybe we're waiting for an answer from a school or maybe a bank loan or maybe the doctor is supposed to call on it.
8:14
And as time has passed, you painfully watch the days and the hours tick by.
8:21
And what happens during that time is that even though we made the calls and we did the things that we're supposed to do, that time starts dragging out and it actually, the gap of doubt grows wider.
WestinoHOST
13:26
How can someone develop the confidence to question established ways of doing things?
6:10
Sure, yeah.
6:11
I grew up in a different era.
6:13
And so I found that yellow envelope.
6:17
And I got myself a cup of coffee, sat down, and I decided to read it.
6:22
And one thing I discovered...
6:24
The big thing I discovered was the man reading it was not the same man who wrote that.
6:32
I saw a lot of doubt in that man that wrote it.

13 MINS LATER

19:41
Now, I know you have your four factors of instability, right? And how do they show up in life? Let's dive into that a little bit.
5:13
What inspired you to write it? And why do you believe doubt is often misunderstood?
5:19
I didn't start out writing a book about doubt or design.
5:25
What it was is 30 years ago, I had grown up in a very unstable home.
5:31
Now we'll just leave it at that.
5:32
It was a very unstable home.
5:34
And one day, you know, I just had all this stuff in my head about where I, that was just bothering me from some of the childhood stuff I went through.
5:44
And at that time I was married, had a few children, And that trauma response or those things started bubbling up in my relationships.
8:24
And so this makes me to ask, how can people begin to see doubts differently?

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