Who decides what you think about yourself?
Have you ever been in a situation where you think somebody doubts your ability to do a job, and then you start to doubt yourself as well? Or maybe you just doubt your ability without anyone else involved. When somebody says to you ‘You can’t do something’, or ‘You’ll never be able to do that’, then that is just their opinion and nothing else, it is only when you start to believe such statements that it can affect your confidence and your outlook on life.
I know I can’t speak Korean, but knowing this doesn’t affect my life in any negative way. I mean if I want to I could learn to speak it. Just because I can’t do something doesn’t mean I won’t be able to in the future and it certainly doesn’t mean I am an incompetent person who can’t learn things.
As an example; Let’s say you arrive at work and see that you have a load of problems to solve ASAP, do you all of a sudden start to feel slightly apprehensive, maybe even a little skeptical of your ability to solve the problems? Perhaps before you know it you are sitting there feeling very unconfident. People can hear in your voice that you are not confident, you are speaking very slowly so nobody can hear what you are saying, you start to muddle your words and sound incoherent. It’s not a pretty site yet it probably all started with your own self doubt about solving a particular problem which then snowballed into huge self doubt, which then made the rest of your day miserable.
Even if you find yourself in a position where you can’t do something, you can at least state that in a confident way and move on with your life. At least be sure that if you wanted to learn something that you could do and just because you can’t do something at a particular moment in time doesn’t mean you should feel bad about yourself. A lack of self confidence in one area shouldn’t spill over to other areas of your life.
I don’t believe anybody can really affect your lack of self confidence the way you can. For most things that we are now doing in our lives, (that we can do competently) there would have been a time when it was the first time we did them, nobody is born with the ability to be good at everything. When we are young we haven’t learnt to be negative and so we don’t doubt ourselves when we start something new. Doubting ourselves and our abilities are all learned behaviors. We learn to be self conscious and insecure.
Only you can really decide how you feel about anything that happens to you. What will it take to have that inner belief about yourself that whatever you do you will do well and with confidence?
If you are faced with problems at work or in your personal life, I recommend that you break it down into smaller chunks and deal with one chunk at a time rather than see the problem as one big whole that has to be solved. Don’t let one little problem affect your whole self-image in a negative way.
Don’t let others decide how you are going to feel; what other people think is of no consequence compared to what you think of yourself. Speak positively of yourself, don’t put yourself down.
The only person who can affect the way you feel about yourself and your abilities is YOU.
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