Dare to Believe in Yourself
Posted on May 12, 2008
This weekend I had myself a nice little “pity party” and it had nothing to do with the holiday weekend. As far as the blessings of life go, I appreciate how lucky I am to be on this side of infertility with two happy and healthy kids to share my days with.
No, this two-day party was very trivial, I must admit. When it comes to my expectations about myself and my career nothing is ever good enough. When it comes to all other aspects of my life I am totally fulfilled, however, when the topic is me I’m not always satisfied with the result. When my career is the topic, I start my long list of all the things I could be doing better along with a second list of what I’m not doing right. I guess it’s a matter of self-growth. If we didn’t think we needed to improve then we would remain stagnant and never reach our true potential. So, I guess I’m still trying to reach my true potential.
I do think that a state of sadness, disappointment, frustration, etc. can be helpful. Sometimes I need to feel less-than-positive emotions to remind myself of what I have done or accomplished. I have a coach helping me with aspects of my business and he challenged me to write a list of accomplishments with regard to both my business and personal life. As I started writing I was shocked at what I had accomplished and I was surprised by the length of the list. I expected to stain for ideas, but they flowed onto the paper very smoothly.
One of the things I am most proud of is my marriage. About 6 months after my daughters were born I was in a state of constant anger, except for the activities that related to being a mom. My marriage was rocky, at best. A psychic told me that I would be divorced within 2 years. She said some not-so-nice-things about my husband, of which I didn’t defend, but instead took the information she provided and made a plan. I realized that I needed to do something about my attitude/moods before any real change could take place. I made the decision to be happy again and utilized medication to help me. I didn’t try to change my husband, however, I did take a different approach with how I communicated with him. Amazingly it worked. Today, I can honestly say that I am happily married. And even though we have our moments, we love our life together.
So this past weekend, instead of focusing on one of my accomplishments, I focused on the fact that I wasn’t good enough. I entered the Arizona Book Publishing Association’s 2008 Glyph Award competition for my book Tiny Toes. About two weeks ago I received notification that I was a finalist in the competition. I was so excited! Saturday night was the award ceremony to recognize the finalists and crown the winner. Sadly, my book was #2 and not #1. So instead of focusing on the fact that my book held its own against other books by larger publishers, such as the University of Arizona Press and others who have been in the business a lot longer than I have, I focused on the fact that I didn’t win my category. To some extent I guess I needed to be sad that I didn’t win because after two days of processing I realized that it was, in fact, a HUGE accomplishment to be a finalist.
Recently my mom gave me a card that said “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you do with what happens to you.” Anonymous. On the inside of the card it said “I’m behind you 100%.” Along with this card she gave me a small trinket that says “Dare to believe in yourself.” We’ll I’m learning to believe in myself. And maybe some day I won’t be so darn hard on me.
Make a list of your accomplishments and share them with me. I’d love to hear what you are most proud of.
Creative Commons image courtesy of julie70.
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Love this post!! I can feel what you are saying – but in all honest, major major kudos to you for getting 2nd place- that is AMAZING!! But again, I feel for what you are saying. But best of all – you are in the Mommy Club and that always helps make everything seem a little less gloomy. . .
Why is learning to believe in one’s self so hard? If/when I have kids, one of my greatest hopes is that they will grow up with that- that they will never have to “learn” how to believe in themselves, that the belief will just always be there. I guess I probably need to learn to believe in myself a little more though, before I can really pass that on. I’m working on it though!