Job Description: No Confidence Required

One of the biggest obstacles that keep us stuck when we are considering a change in our career, or going back to work after a career gap is a lack of confidence.

We lack the confidence that we can land the job we want.

We lack the confidence that we can do the job once we get it.

We think that there is something wrong with us.

But, did you know that you don’t need confidence to get that next job or start that new project?

I’m not kidding!

In fact, it would be crazy to be confident in something you’ve never done before!

BUT- nevertheless, if you are like me, that itty bitty committee in our heads comes up with a million reasons why we shouldn’t feel confident. Here were some of mine when I wanted to start something new, after my kids went to college:

You don’t know how to do that!
You won’t be able to do that!
You don’t know any technology!
You are too old to learn new things!
You are going to fail!
People will laugh at you!
Who do you think you are?

These thoughts kept me stuck in my then current reality, unable to move forward. I thought I would fail so I just didn’t try. In essence, I decided to fail in advance. Brilliant, right?

But the real issue was that my itty bitty committee was correct to some extent. There WERE things I didn’t know how to do yet. I DIDN’T know if I would be able to learn them quickly and easily.

What I didn’t realize was that even if that committee was correct, confidence wasn’t the missing ingredient that kept me stuck.

You need COURAGE to start a new job or a new project, NOT CONFIDENCE!

Now courage isn’t that easy to cultivate either. But guess what?

Courage includes the idea that you don’t know how to do something yet, that you know failure is an option, that you don’t know if you can do it yet.

That leaves the itty bitty committee in your head speechless, with nothing more to say.

If you have courage, it means you know that learning, failure, obstacles, and feedback are part of the deal. It’s already baked in.

And if you can create COURAGE, then you will be willing to try, assess, iterate, pivot, try again and figure out what works and what doesn’t. In time you will start to be able to do what you set out to accomplish.

After you start to figure it out you will feel that you are CAPABLE of doing that new thing.

Soon that capability turns into feelings of COMPETENCE.

Do you know what feeling competent leads to? You guessed it.

You become CONFIDENT in your ability to do that new thing!

The icing on the cake is that you also start to feel CONFIDENT that you can do OTHER NEW THINGS, hard things, things that challenge you but you always wanted to do!

You learn that you can handle failure, other people’s opinions and uncertainty.

Courage is what ultimately leads to Confidence.

SO, the next time your itty bitty committee tells you that you have NO REASON to feel confident, you can thank it for its opinion, and even agree with it. But you can also explain that you will proceed, with courage instead, and create your own new evidence for confidence along the way.

Are you ready to take the leap and allow yourself to fail, to learn and to evolve and find out what you are really capable of?

Are you ready to become the confident person who has your dream job?

All it takes is a little courage!

Contributed by Betsy Kent, Life & Career Coach. Don’t know where to start because you don’t even know what you want to do? Want to get UNSTUCK on defining your purpose so you can identify your dream job? CLICK HERE to take Betsy Kent’s PURPOSE FINDER QUIZ and get started.

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