No matter what field you’re in, if you want to move up the ladder, confidence matters. Others recognize confidence and reward it with respect, trust, autonomy and promotions. Without it, your career will stall.
I’ve never considered myself an unconfident person. I’ve always felt reasonably intelligent and competent. I’ve been proud to earn various awards and recognitions. I’ve accomplished a number of important life and career goals.
But in other ways I have lacked confidence. I realized recently that I have been following a few destructive “invisible scripts,” as my favorite finance writer would call them. Invisible scripts are ideas that are so deeply embedded within us that we don’t even realize they’re affecting our behaviors. They can be positive or negative, but the ones I’ll share were undermining my confidence. Perhaps you’ve been following some of them too:
- Invisible script #1: “If I haven’t already developed this skill, it’s too late to start now.” As silly as it sounds, I’ve been living by this since high school. There I convinced myself that if I hadn’t started something in middle school, I’d be starting from too far behind everyone else. In college, I told myself it was too late to try anything new, because I was sure everyone else would have started in high school. Later in life I assumed everyone got the leg up in college. Sadly, because of this deeply embedded invisible script, I can probably count on one hand the number of “new things” I tried between middle school and the past year.
- Invisible script #2: “You have to be REALLY good to earn others’ respect.” In my mind, I wasn’t “good” at something unless I was awesome at it. Preferably the best at it, but if not the best, then at least the best in my school, state, age group, gender or some other group. I was sure that if I told someone I was a “fast runner” and they heard my above-average 5K time, they’d compare it to a phenomenal college athlete’s and be unimpressed. So I never referred to myself—aloud or in my own head—as a “fast runner” or a great anything.
- Invisible script #3: “I’m too shy to go out without a support system of friends.” I’m naturally introverted and a little shy, so I decided a while ago that if I wasn’t invited out or if my friends weren’t available to do what I wanted to do, I’d just stay in. It wasn’t much of a problem in college, when I was surrounded by friends, but when I started working from home and moved twice to cities where I knew very few people, that script became more and more problematic.
I probably would have gone on following those inane scripts for the rest of my life, if I hadn’t been hit by a series of negative events in the past couple of years. As is often the case in those situations, I was faced with the choice between a lifetime pity party or some major changes. I decided to change. (Full disclosure: I may have pity partied a tiny bit first.)
First up was abolishing invisible script #3:
I became a joiner.
I moved back to my hometown, but most of the people I’d known had moved away or had new family commitments that made hanging out difficult. I decided that I couldn’t stand my lack of a social life much longer, so I signed up for Meetup.com. I joined a running club and made a new friend on the first night. Then I made some more. Then I joined a happy hour group and met some more people. And then a women’s group and a hiking group. I just kept signing up and showing up. Some nights I had to give myself a pep talk beforehand, but I always showed up, and shockingly, it was always fine—usually really fun, actually. It turns out I’m perfectly capable of socializing without a safety net.
Some members of my running club, after a race in the spring.
Invisible script #3 was kaput, thank goodness. What was even better was that scripts #1 and #2 started crumbling almost immediately too.
I was feeling so great about my successes with Meetup, that I signed up for something that the old me never in a million years would have tried: a painting class. Art skills fell very plainly within invisible script #1’s territory. I hadn’t taken an art class since they were required in middle school, and I’m pretty sure I hadn’t touched a paintbrush in just as long.
The old me would have said “Because I don’t have painting experience, I’ll be bad at it, so there’s no point in starting now.” Now that I’m five weeks into my “Acrylics and mixed media abstracts” course, I can say with confidence that the first half of that statement was true, but the second half was completely false. While I haven’t created any masterpieces, I’ve gotten many intangibles out of the course, like some much-needed massaging of the right hemisphere of my brain and—believe it or not—confidence. It’s counterintuitive that doing something you’re not good at would make you feel more confident, but in my case, it’s true. It made me far less fearful of failure.
Invisible script #2 also was disproven over and over again, once I became a joiner. Maybe I’ve been lucky to have stumbled upon particularly kind groups, but I’ve found that most people I’ve met are pretty darn generous with their praise and respect. Through every single group I’ve met people who have lifted me up and boosted my confidence. A handful of people in my running group exclaimed “What do you mean you’ve never done a marathon or a half marathon? You’re such a good runner!” So I signed up for my first half marathon. And do you know what? A full marathon doesn’t sound nearly as unconquerable as it did a few months ago. Even in my art class, my teacher and peers always have kind things to say about my work, which makes me feel like less of a talentless hack a little more confident each time.
These epiphanies have impacted my personal life in big ways, but they’ve affected my work life as well, if less obviously. There, too, my confidence has risen. A year ago if I received an assignment for something I’d never done before or a topic I wasn’t an expert in, I’d be more than a little nervous. Now, my reaction is “Yes, I can do that.”
What destructive invisible scripts have you conquered?
[Image Source: Shirlington Running Club]
