All around self-confidence

Confidence, where are you?

For the longest time, I've thought that I had low self-confidence in specific areas of my life, such as in clinical work (compared to research), sexiness (as opposed to humor), and fun-ness (compared to my... wisdom?). Other than these select parts of me, I thought I had pretty good self-confidence.

Especially after my practice-interview, I thought I was feeling good about myself.

But then 2 things happened and now I am not so sure. The first is that I had my 1st phone interview and I did not feel good afterwards. Talking with 5 people in a conference call and getting no feedback was a killer to my ego. My self-doubts got the best of me. I imagined them writing notes on their legal pads, giving each other smirks about this incoherent interviewee, and raising their eyebrows to express their doubts about me. When the interview finally ended, I felt terrible. I felt nauseous, my chest felt tight, my back and neck felt stiff and sore, and I had a terrible headache. I felt that way for hours without any improvement. I even worked out for 30 minutes on the treadmill and took Mr. Z. for a cold brisk walk. Nothing worked.

The second thing that happened was that I collected all of my data for my dissertation project. This is the project of all projects, and it is a huge accomplishment, let me just say. But I couldn’t fully enjoy it because I had some glitches along the way that made me doubt whether my product was “good enough.” The self-doubt plagued me, I tell ya! And it was nothing I could do because the glitches were based on my participants’ lack of following my instructions. Nevertheless, I worried about this for awhile before talking with a professional and getting her feedback that data is data and that I am officially done. She also said something to me that made me re-assess my self-doubts as a whole person. She said to me, “You know, even the way you’re framing the question puts a doubt into my mind and makes me wonder things I don’t need to wonder about. You’re putting that there when you don’t need to. You need to have confidence in the work that you do and to tell people what you have and what you’re going to do with it. People don’t need to know all of the teeny details. They want to know what are you going to do next, and since you know, then you should just have the confidence to proceed.”

BAM! What a reality check that I lack confidence in every which way possible. I am going to think about that some more this weekend because her comments are so true and touch me at a very deep level.