The Art of Self Belief
As a teenager I had the notion of becoming a psychologist, but some irritatingly bad careers advice, meant that I ended up doing 2 A levels that were next to useless. I wanted to do English, Psychology and Music. What I actually did was History, Biology and Music. How???? I mean, I had a photographic memory which meant I could read books at lightning speed, I liked music (note the word liked, not loved) and I loved the thought of psychology. But oh no. I was told (and this gives away my age slightly) ‘psychology is just starting, and we aren’t sure how it’s going to pan out and all those books you’ll have to read when you do English won’t be sustainable with your music’. Great. Fabulous. So, I had to scratch around for 2 others. I chose History because I liked Henry the V111th stories as a kid. I kid you not it was the biggest yawnfest of my life. It was dictation for 2hrs three times a week and no rampant sex scenes to be seen anywhere!
Looking back, I should have stuck up for myself and defended what I wanted to learn but I was 18, what did I know? Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved where my career has taken me and perhaps my life is richer for the experience. As it happens, maybe my underlying need for understanding other people led me back to the psychology piece, albeit in a different guise. But I just didn’t have the self-belief back then to stand up for myself, for me and what I knew. Lack of self-belief is a tricky one, because it lies in the very essence of us. Our environment, our upbringing and our experiences all have a part to play.
I like to think of myself as successful, not in an arrogant way, but in a ‘I’m quietly proud of my achievements’ kind of way. That isn’t to say that I haven’t had gut wrenching ‘I can’t do this’ moments. I remember us winning a big job in the consultancy I was working with and I was down as lead project manager. It came at an important time for the office in the middle of the recession and suddenly, all the attention was on it and being successful. Now I knew fundamentally, I had the skills, not all of them but the ones that would see me through; determination, the ability to motivate everyone, pull everything together and get the job done. But all I wanted to do was run away. I felt sick. What if I failed? I felt like that for days and then one day my boss called me in and said ‘this is great for the office and a big job for you, but you are not alone. Things will go wrong and it isn’t whether things go wrong or right that we will be measured by, it’s how we overcome them’. I was struck by the word ‘we’. It was a pivotal moment, because he made me feel like we were in this together, that no matter what happened, we would find a way. Needless to say, some things did go wrong, but a hell of a lot went right.
There are many moments in life when we can doubt our abilities. Sometimes we don’t always have the answer within ourselves, we need to speak to others in order to find the courage or find a different approach to make those decisions that require us to believe in ourselves.
Here are some things I think about when working with clients, or ask myself if I’m in a, ‘but I can’t do that’ moment:
If you find yourself lacking the belief you can actually do something, look round for the evidence, where you have tried new things previously and failed? Chances are you can’t, or, if you can, you have learned a hell of a lot from it.
If your best friend was saying the exact same thing, what advice would you give them? It’s often much easier to give others advice than ourselves.
What do others believe to be true about you that might help in this context?