Whose got it?

Story time –

When I was in grade 1 I participated in a Hindi Story Telling competition at my school.

It was a tale about a sparrow, she brought food for her family everyday until she got swindled by a pigeon.  The pigeon stole the sparrow’s food.   The sparrow knew how to keep the food safe; but the pigeon didn’t.  When the pigeon came home one day all his food was gone. He didn’t know how to get more food so he went back to the sparrow to say sorry and ask for her help.  When the sparrow saw he was starving the sparrow decided to help him.  The sparrow taught the pigeon how to get food for himself.  The pigeon was thankful to the sparrow and they became friends.

Obviously, the story was for kids and it was loaded with morals and lessons.  I performed (yes, performed) the story in front of the class to qualify for the competition.  After I qualified from my class, I then got to perform in the school auditorium in front of a 1000+ kids and teachers.  I projected my voice, I was animated with actions depicting my words, used the entire stage, looked everyone (including the judges) in the eyes.  I still remember that point when I looked around at the audience and thought, I’m really good at this.  I had faith in myself.  Now that I look back at it, I had faith because I was having so much fun telling a story.   Others around me said I did well but it didn’t matter what they thought, I knew I did well.  I loved the feeling of knowing I did well.  I was proud of myself for just telling the story.   It was as if I was at the bottom of a ladder at the beginning of my story and after I finished, I had floated up to the top.

The results really didn’t matter.  No one (including me) was expecting anything of it.  I only ended up joining the competition because my Hindi teacher volunteered me because I could speak Hindi.

Later in the week, when I got the result –  I won the first prize for my grade!    I’d never won anything in my life.   I was a mediocre student with no special skills that made me stand out from the crowd.  This was the first time that I stood out.  I came to realize I was good at something.  Going through the story telling competition at 6 years old, gave me something I didn’t realize at the time but it was confidence in myself.

I’ve been thinking about confidence lately.  As a young kid running around the stage, there was nothing in the back of my mind making me doubt myself.     I wasn’t trained at story telling; I just knew a story I’d heard from my mom.  I rehearsed it with my teacher a couple of times so she knew what I was going to say.  I just thought, I’ll go on stage and have a great time and tell a story that my mom taught me.  I didn’t have anything on my mind about winning or losing; I was in it to just tell a story and have fun.

I find that the ability to have fun as you grow older goes away.  The voices in our mind that make us doubt ourselves take the fun out of things.  These self-doubt voices are traces of things you hear from others or thoughts you might have had in passing when you couldn’t accomplish a goal.  The voices make us forget our own skills and abilities.  I know I’ve been a victim of myself where my self-doubting voices become so loud that I drown out that story telling little girl in my head.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself overthinking a lot of times.  There are days when I wake up and think, Life – I got you!  Those are the days I actually get things done.  But there are other days, when I wake up and there is a bubble of questions roaming around my head – Will I send the right message?  Will I be able to accomplish my tasks?  These questions weigh down my confidence bubble.  Those are the days when my goals never get accomplished.  Obviously, there are many factors in play but a key factor is confidence in myself.   Normally, I’m a very resourceful person, but the days when the self-doubt is in high gear that I forget my own abilities.

I’ve discussed the topic of confidence with many of my friends, family and colleagues over the years in different contexts.  Everyone has a different spin on the word.  Some think of it as faith or belief in yourself others call it your self-esteem.  Some people are really good at controlling their confidence level in front of others so it looks consistent, while others are not afraid to show their weaknesses (which in itself takes confidence).  For some, it comes from external sources and for some it comes naturally.  What I’ve learnt about my own confidence is:

• Its in my control,
• Its natural for it to increases and decreases depending on what I’m doing and where I am in life.  My confidence is not like a straight line, its more like a sine curve going along the x axis of time,
• When it decreases, I have to adjust my goals; and have confidence 😉 that it will come back.

These days, when I feel my own self doubts coming, I think about myself as that little girl running around on the stage singing a story about a sparrow and the pigeon.  The moral I am going to take for myself from that story about the sparrow is that if I just do what I know is best and enjoy what I’m doing, the over-thinking conversation in my head will subside.  I will go back to that feeling where I will wake up the next morning and think – I got this!