Get Out of Your Own Way
You’re defending all the reasons you should fail. What if you started defending one reason you should get it right?
I’ve given up a few dreams — decided the book wasn’t mine to write and let an application deadline for my dream job pass by because I thought I was laughably unqualified. After a while, I wasn’t receiving rejection letters, just deciding that I would be rejected.
And I let my dreams go, even though I was never denied those dreams outright. There was never any grand gesture of denial — no shouting match or slammed doors. Just radio silence. I just felt that since nothing great had happened, it was already too late for me. I stopped asking anything of myself.
You would’ve found the thing that makes you tick by now, I’d think. It’s too late to —
“Do you realize what you’re arguing for?” a lover interrupted me one day. “You’re defending all the reasons you should fail. What if you started defending just one reason you could get it right?”
“We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.” — David Levithan
It was strange to me at first. I had been so adamant about the ways that I would fail and pass up my dreams for a less remarkable life. He saw something else in my eyes, something greater.
“Your dreams are more beautiful than your fears,” he said. “You will have to see that beauty if you want to make them a reality.”
I had a hard time believing him then. Indeed, if you go about your days believing yourself to settle, it can be very alienating to suddenly realize you are worthy of anything else. “You can’t unlearn deep-rooted core beliefs that easily,” as social worker and therapist Amy Morin writes in Psychology Today. “Instead, you have to challenge your beliefs by testing them to see if they’re really true.”
My partner was the first to challenge my beliefs. And after that, things became a little easier. I took it easy on myself. I only had to be confident for 30 minutes a day, sometimes less, I’d tell myself. I only needed enough courage to press send or sustain a phone conversation with a prospective client. I told myself I only needed to be confident at the gym for 20 minutes. It didn’t have to take much at all but I found it strangely gave me the proof I needed to believe in better things.
It takes the same amount of effort to be negative as it does to be positive.
I used to think that some people just naturally had a more positive outlook on life. They could turn lemons into lemonade and come away from difficult situations a better, more grounded person. And since it was a lot harder to look at the bright side of things sometimes, I thought I just wasn’t as upbeat or optimistic as others were.
Being positive was still a stretch, even after my partner pointed it out, but I could at least be neutral or think what if? What if I got this job? What if I got into grad school? What would I do if I had a certain opportunity? I could speculate about the possibility of a new dream and I didn’t have to rule out the possibility just because of my negative, if unfounded, beliefs.
Don’t let your negativity become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Regardless of what your beliefs about yourself are — whether you believe you’re unqualified or actually the best person to do a job — you try to support these beliefs with proof. Making a mistake can become proof to yourself that you’re not good enough, just as succeeding at something can prove you’re really good at something. As Morin writes, “Consider for a minute that it might not be your lack of talent or lack of skills that is holding you back. Instead, it might be your beliefs that keep you from performing at your peak.”
I stopped trying to find proof that I wasn’t the most talented or qualified person. When I made a mistake, it was just a mistake — and not yet another reason I should deny myself the chance at an opportunity. It was freeing. And when I stopped looking for reasons why I wasn’t good enough, I also stumbled upon some proof that I was a good, honest person, deserving of some great opportunities, and with just a little more confidence I discovered even more proof — I got out of my own way.
In the old Cherokee proverb, a grandfather tells his grandson about a battle going on inside all of us. “My son,” he says, “the battle is between two ‘wolves’ that live inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
When the grandson asks which wolf wins, his grandfather says, “The one you feed.” I have finally figured out the one to feed.
