My super power: COWARDICE!
Marie Flore MORETT, YLAI Fellow 2017 — HAITI
We all know this sneaky character who manages our thoughts and our lives just by driving doubts that we fight hard to overcome. Each time, it’s the first inner voice that inspires us to create some new thing. So, we train ourselves both in the morning and the night for it. We start saying to the mirror, to our deep self, that being successful is the ultimate goal and we start a new project! This is how I start most of my novels and short stories. Inspired by that insidious voice, I jump into my creative work, motivated as ever, convinced that I’m writing the next big prize! This is the mood I was in when I applied to the 2017 YLAI Professional Fellows Program.
But, in half-way, the same voice comes back and suddenly says that maybe I wasn’t that talented… Maybe I should try something different, easier… Maybe there was someone with a better project… more brilliant… Maybe I would quit before the end, before the start… Professional motivators call it “Impostor Syndrome”. I call it cowardice. Yes, I am that kind of girl who — over her skills and self-confidence — panics about everything at its beginning, even if there’s no reason to stress out. I list all the reasons why I shouldn’t start or what could make me fail, before most of my projects. But as my mom used to say: “You can be stupid and a coward 364 days a year if you feel it, but there’s one day that you have to use at its deepest potential. If not, you don’t even deserve to call yourself a human.”
So, I went back to my process. I tried to be motivated and productive. But the chains were already over my brain. And it was too painful to break them, because I was my own opponent. This is where, like anyone else who’s in doubt, I start to work less, to think that I should give up…multitasking and self-confidence were no longer enough. Somehow, I spent one hour a day on my application, even if was just to read it. It takes a lot of work to restart our mind once we’ve been in those kind of thoughts. I was thinking to myself: “Try to find how this fear can help you grow up. If you can’t let it go, shape it to a useful skill”. That’s how by taking it day by day I finally completed my form for YLAI.
By applying, I found out that every action counts in the balance, even the smallest ones. This process helped me to remind myself that there were some helpful things that I made for myself and the people around me. My whole project was about these forgotten acts that I haven’t registered as a personal benefit. I’ve been teaching the alphabet to people miles away from my capital city. I used to get involved in hygiene and family planning workshops. In some communities, I was motivating folks to say no to violence because they were uncomfortable with some gender differences. Those same people were the providers who I bought my products from. All these actions were the starter of my business and I haven’t noticed it.
Then, the email was there. I was shocked at the first word: CONGRATULATIONS. It took me several readings before I finally got that a team, somewhere over my doubts and my lack of self-confidence, selected my project, selected ME, to be part of this prestigious program. Being part of the YLAI Professional Fellows Program wasn’t any longer about my fears. It was totally about impacting people’s lives and keeping in mind that the ones who reach success identify their skills before anything else. At the end, super heroes are the ones who’ve caught on to the idea that fear is the greatest power to build on. We all have our weakness, but each skill in a community blinds them. This is how we create the change and every powerful and successful team.
