Posted on 29 Sep, 2010 -
Making your life move on
Listening carefully to those quite desires that lay brooding in the background
Why we are often mistaken about what we’re thinking about our lives and ourselves
What exactly does it mean when someone says they have no confidence in themselves?
Dear Reader,
It all started at about 8.50 this morning.
Walking into the Co-Op, there it was. Right above the heads of the school boys buying packets of doughnuts and Mars bars for their breakfast, the words ‘I want my life to move on’ shone out at me from a copy of Psychologies magazine on the news stand.
So that was it. That is what I want. I want my life to move on.
Or do I? Because these things are never quite that straightforward.
Now again in life we will have these sometimes unnamed, undefined pulls or desires inside us. Sometimes not that burning, but rather low key yet always there and always underlying everything we do and say.
They come in many forms. For example: I wish I could find a partner… I want a different job.. I wish I wasn’t so shy… I’m useless… I’m too old for anything… Nobody needs me. I’m always such a failure. I want to do something more creative. I want to get out… And so on and so on.
What should we do when we have this kind of yearning?
When we have this kind of low-burning, underlying desire, there are generally two basic ways we can go with it. And two directions in which you might take it if you visited a therapist or counsellor, for example.
First, there is the option of doing something about it. This is where we decide that this is something we definitely need to do something about and start exploring how we can take baby steps to make that happen.
The second option is to really explore and examine what’s going on with our thinking - rather than just allowing it to niggle or float in an unformed, vague form around us.
How can something so strong actually be WRONG?
One way to start this process is by asking yourself whether you are right in assessing your current situation in the way you are. It is surprising how often the view we have of ourselves, our life or our situation is actually not a very accurate one.
Sometimes, for example, we might have decided that we don’t like our jobs, want a massive change or are not a confident or employable person and continue down that route of thought without even questioning it. A wrong analysis of the situation of our personality can even become obsessive or destructive.
The same old record, as it were, plays over and over again until we’re stick of the sound of it… And sometimes we don’t actually want exactly what we’ve got into the habit of thinking that we do. We need to take a much closer look at our feelings, our thinking and our needs.
The mixture of needs, desires, feelings and happenings we find are often a lot more subtle than ‘I want to move on’ and need closer examination. You may even find that a clear strong desire actually turns into something quite different…
Try the Dependable Strengths Inventory exercise out on yourself
But back to those boys in blazers, for a minute. You see, the pull of that message was so strong that I grabbed a copy of the magazine and stuffed it in my shopping basket. And I’m very glad I did. Not because of the article that I thought would change my life for me instantly… but for something a little more subtle.
It isn’t something new but the ‘Dependable Strengths Inventory’ that the counselling therapist, Jacqui Marson suggested doing at least sent my thinking off on a slightly different tangent.
For this confidence-building exercise you first need to think about times in your life when you did certain things you were proud of. For each of the events you recall, also write down a list of what qualities in yourself you think that showed.
“Be as generous as if you were saying it to a friend” about their qualities.
Once you have your list, says Jacqui, try sticking it somewhere like the inside of your wardrobe so you can read it at times of doubt.
So what exactly do we mean when we say that we have ‘no confidence in ourselves’?
Another question that I’ve been thinking about recently is what exactly we mean when we say that we don’t have any confidence.
It’s something that’s cropped up a few times in recent conversations with different people and what struck me each time was that what it often (at least partly) translates as is an inability to get yourself to do things - even if you really want to do them. A certain lack of belief in your own abilities or qualities, of course, underlies this but it is this outward outcome that impacts on your external life.
It even struck me that perhaps the most confident people rarely have any delay between thinking of something they should or want to do and actually doing it.
They don’t, for example, have that two week delay between thinking of ringing an electrician and actually doing it. They don’t think ‘I should arrange to see X but then never quite pick the phone up. There is no ‘but’, no ‘what if’ navel gazing or that vague feeling of shame that puts a brake on all the things that could happen in their life.
And just imagine how much extra time you could free up to get even more done if you didn’t waste half your time and energy prevaricating or procrastinating. How light and busy and easy life would be!
The answer, of course, is to ‘just do it’.
There is also always the idea of taking everything in baby steps. Just a tiny action at a time rather than one big leap.
Although, isn’t there something really exciting about taking a really daring jump?…
Best wishes
