Sometimes skepticism protects you from being fooled; sometimes it protects you from being moved.

Doubt is useful and it can also be a way of never being reached. Held as a stance rather than a method, it keeps you at a safe distance from anything that might ask something of you: a person, an idea, a piece of art, a hope. Nothing gets in, which reads as rigor and functions as insulation.

Notice whether your skepticism ever ends with you being persuaded. If it never does, it is not filtering, it is refusing. Try letting one thing land this week without immediately checking it for flaws, and see what it costs you, which is usually nothing.