I sent a friend an email recently, letting him know how proud I was of him and how I was excited about the work he was doing.
In his reply, he thanked me and confessed that he had been doubting himself in a new project. A little encouragement was what he needed to dispel his doubts, trust himself and get back to work.
I was a little surprised. This friend is one of the smartest, articulate, successful people I've ever met. He is gifted in many ways, and the work he is currently doing is right in his proverbial wheelhouse.
To hear that he also has periods of doubt (when so much of the reason I love him is because of his self-assuredness) surprised me. I mean, it shouldn't...we're all human. We all have days of, "Well, fuck. Why do people trust me to do things again? I just put the iron in the refrigerator. Again."
His email got me to think, though, that:
a) Being successful in life is about the "youness of you" combined with the shit you're good at and
b) This Youness+Expertise is a bit like a scale. Or maybe more like a cycle. Or a Venn Diagram. I don't know...I didn't pay a lot of attention in Visual Representation for Blog Posts class.
Anyway, on the one side, we have our "youness"--the things that make us unique individuals--and on the other, we have the shit we're good at.
Sometimes we'll feel pretty all right with being us, and that'll drive that day's work. Other days we will doubt our ourselves, and those are the days we just have to rely on the shit we're good at.
The best days are the days there is a balance or intersection...we trust our unique ability to be powerful in our "youness," as well as our ability to execute the things we know.
All that to say, if you're doubting "you" today, trust what you know. If you're doubting what you know, trust yourself and the "you-y" stuff you can bring to the table that no one else can.
Put that on a poster with a kitten. Or maybe this Venn Diagram I drew on the back of a boarding pass. Yeah, I'm an artist.
So get out there. Be you. Trust what you know. Get Narnia.