Lean into your fear
You can’t get confident before you already are
How many times you’ve passed on an opportunity that could change your life? Job interview you thought was too hard for you. Career change you’re delaying looking for the best moment. Events you could attend to learn more.
But you’re not confident enough that you belong there.
You see me posting on LinkedIn. You subscribed to my newsletter. You think I’m a confident content creator. It’s pretty far from being true.
Each post, I fear it’s not good. I fear it won’t deliver the transformation I want to give you.
I face the same fears as you do. I want you to embrace that feeling. I want you to start seeking it. Fear is the feeling of learning.
You’re not alone
Impostor syndrome. A fancy name for the most common feeling in the world. The fear that you may mess something up while learning. Everybody goes through the same process. Not everybody speaks about it.
A great example is Beyonce. She wasn’t a “stage personality”. She did her gigs anyway and now everybody knows her name.
We’re all in the same boat. We all have our fears. If someone tells you otherwise you can assume they are lying. They don’t want to admit their fear and project fake arrogance to hide their insecurities.
Understand confidence
Confidence is our perception of other people showing comfort in performing their tasks. As I mentioned you can think I’m a confident writer. My team may think I’m a confident Engineering Manager. Each day I fear I make a mess of a situation anyway. You won’t see it but it’s true.
Before confidence kicks in you need Courage. It gets through the start line. It’s what you need the most. Can you remember you wanted to learn something and you delayed it for a long time? Then one day you said “F%ck it” and did it anyway? That was your moment of courage.
The hardest point of learning is the first step. It lays the first brick of the foundation of your confidence. From there, you have an experience and validation, that you can do it.
Whatever is on top of your goals list - make the first step now. You can come back to reading the newsletter in 5 minutes.
Post your thoughts on LinkedIn right now
Open the code editor and create a file for your next program
Google for a book that let you learn the skill you wish you had
The hardest part is behind you now. You’ve started. You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Even if you won’t follow it, it will bother you to the point where you’ll make the second step in the near future.
Building it up
The first thing you need to realise is that you won’t be the same person after you achieve your goals.
It came from me identifying as a shy, bad communicator. I lived over a decade accepting that good engineering skills mean I can’t be a good leader. This belief was the only thing that stood in my way. The only person stopping me from success was myself. I had to change.
There is one way to make the change persistent. It’s to change your identity. Every confident person acts with integrity. Software Engineers make great code. Leaders inspire their teams.
The paradox is that you think you need to earn the identity before you can get confident. What you need to do is to adopt the identity first.
#1 External validation
The most common path, and the least reliable, is to get external validation. You get your first job as an Engineer and everything gets easier as you can put it on your CV. I had a bump in confidence when I got the title of Engineering Manager. When I opened my limited company I got external validation of being an entrepreneur. You can buy a plate saying “Your Name - Senior Engineer” to get a similar result.
#2 Journalling
The second way is a journaling exercise where you have a chat with yourself in the future. I use it to solve problems I struggle with. I ask myself who is confident in what I do for their advice. It sounds silly but it astonished me how powerful it is. You have all the answers you need right now. You may not see them through the lens of who you are right now. Externalising it helps in removing that barrier.
#3 Become the new you
And the most powerful one. At the start of her career, Beyonce created Sasha Fierce. A stage identity that was the opposite of herself. She wanted to protect “who she really is”. She stepped into it every time she was performing. This forced the behaviour of the great performer she is.
It’s a super powerful technique. Especially if you’re not making a step out of your comfort zone but you have to make a leap of faith. As an Engineer, you can reset yourself to a new identity before an important meeting or an interview. Name the new you and step in the shoes of the new you for an hour or two to get the job done.
Just do it!
All those exercises sound silly. I know. I thought the same.
I challenge you to do the journaling exercise right now!
Imagine yourself achieving all the goals you’d like to achieve
Open a text editor or grab a piece of paper
Write down a question you’d like to ask your successful self
Write down the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t overthink it
Spend 10 minutes asking follow-up questions and having a discussion. Act on the answers you got.
And as Henry Ford once said - “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right.”