Image by Werner Moser from Pixabay
Validation. Confirmation. Confidence.
No, these aren't the three little words I'm talking about in my title, but they are three very big concepts we're "supposed" to be able to generate all by ourselves. Whether by nature, nurture, or the school of hard knocks, a successful professional "ought" to be able to muster them, from the inside.
Shouldn't they?
Unfortunately, doing so doesn't come easy for a lot of us. Sometimes, it takes a little outside help.
The three little words I'm talking about are much smaller, and yet so much more meaningful.
"I trust you."
The phrase is so powerful it can change a person, even just for a short while. It can provide enough of a boost to help someone who wasn't quite sure of their work to carve a new, bold pathway with her head held high.
They're three words that can affect a person so profoundly--whether they're an employee, contractor, co-worker, even a spouse, sibling or a child--that validation, confirmation and confidence actually receive the opportunity to cement themselves inside the person's neural network.
When was the last time someone said it to you?
"I trust you."
Yesterday, my boss said it to me. I wasn't expecting it. And, apparently, I didn't know how much I needed to hear it. I wasn't feeling particularly fragile at the time either. It was just a run-of-the-mill response to just another writing project.
But it felt significant. And I really, really appreciated it.
Because, come to think of it, I don't think I've heard that phrase before in my professional career. I'm 43. I've been working at some job or another--newspaper delivery, waiting tables, store clerk, court reporting, writing--since age 11. Along the way, someone somewhere must've said I was doing a good job. But this was different.
"I trust you."
Validation. Confirmation. Confidence.
It meant he trusted my instincts. He trusted my abilities. He trusted my capacity to get it done and to get it done right. He wouldn't be looking over my shoulder while I did it, either. And he has no idea how much that meant to me.
[jeezuschristihopeidon'tlethimdown!]
How often are we giving people that kind of feedback? If not, why not?
I don't have a fancy title. I don't have a singular focus, niche or area of in-depth expertise. I'm a writer. And not the kind who wins prestigious awards or gets published in world-renowned magazines or gets called to ghost-write for celebrities. Not yet, anyway. And I'm cool with that. Because I love writing, and I love the stuff that I get to write. I write sales copy. Blogs. Articles. Whatever someone needs me to write.
I dabble in all kinds of subjects, from sustainability to big data to new feminism to politics to trauma to romantic fiction to kids' stories to emotional intelligence. I'm the kind of writer who can crank out copy without much effort, and I do so rather quickly.
My portfolio of published works isn't, admittedly, as extensive as that which has gone unpublished, but if you looked on my hard drive, you'd find file after file of unfinished stories, rough drafts, gratitude journals, wild dreams, poems, article outlines, free-written idea lists and unbearably terrible first chapters.
But they're creations, and they're mine, and some days, that's all that matters. Other days, I'll admit it, I want the glory. The clicks. The 'likes.'
Validation. Confirmation. Confidence.
When my kids and husband wake up in the morning, an hour after me, breaking up my morning-writing-session concentration, I get annoyed (oh, but I love them so...). I should probably have a bumper sticker on my car that says, "I'd rather be writing." And I make great money doing what I do. In fact, I have a lot of happy customers.
Nevertheless, I'm a chronic self-doubter. A loyal critic, with a big long finger pointed ever inward. Which makes life as a writer a bit of a challenge. We writers need to have tough outer shells, they say. To be able to take negative feedback and swallow it whole and turn it into something beautiful. To work inside living, breathing Google docs where clients and coworkers and bosses watch you work from their own computers in real time. And they comment in the margins as we're creating drafts--rough drafts!--and highlight things that don't sit right, asking tough questions, forcing us to defend our word choices...even just that one lousy one among a thousand eloquent others.
And that's okay. I've learned that if you let yourself be there in that moment and remember that you're there as a helper to offer your gift, and that it isn't personal and that you want the best for them so that they're happy and you're happy and you can pay your mortgage this month, you begin to understand this is a wonderful process during which we writers learn and grow and become better at our craft.
Always better.
And then, slowly but surely, with enough experiences like those, and with a little luck, we begin to build that confidence. We start to naturally generate validation from within. We feel around for the soft, squishiness of confirmation until our hands get warm. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens slowly, bit by bit.
But this feeling of growing esteem doesn't come easy. And it sure helps to get a little nudge from outside your own heart, outside your own head.
No, these aren't the three little words I'm talking about in my title, but they are three very big concepts we're "supposed" to be able to generate all by ourselves. Whether by nature, nurture, or the school of hard knocks, a successful professional "ought" to be able to muster them, from the inside.
Shouldn't they?
Unfortunately, doing so doesn't come easy for a lot of us. Sometimes, it takes a little outside help.
The three little words I'm talking about are much smaller, and yet so much more meaningful.
"I trust you."
The phrase is so powerful it can change a person, even just for a short while. It can provide enough of a boost to help someone who wasn't quite sure of their work to carve a new, bold pathway with her head held high.
They're three words that can affect a person so profoundly--whether they're an employee, contractor, co-worker, even a spouse, sibling or a child--that validation, confirmation and confidence actually receive the opportunity to cement themselves inside the person's neural network.
When was the last time someone said it to you?
"I trust you."
Yesterday, my boss said it to me. I wasn't expecting it. And, apparently, I didn't know how much I needed to hear it. I wasn't feeling particularly fragile at the time either. It was just a run-of-the-mill response to just another writing project.
But it felt significant. And I really, really appreciated it.
Because, come to think of it, I don't think I've heard that phrase before in my professional career. I'm 43. I've been working at some job or another--newspaper delivery, waiting tables, store clerk, court reporting, writing--since age 11. Along the way, someone somewhere must've said I was doing a good job. But this was different.
"I trust you."
Validation. Confirmation. Confidence.
It meant he trusted my instincts. He trusted my abilities. He trusted my capacity to get it done and to get it done right. He wouldn't be looking over my shoulder while I did it, either. And he has no idea how much that meant to me.
[jeezuschristihopeidon'tlethimdown!]
How often are we giving people that kind of feedback? If not, why not?
I don't have a fancy title. I don't have a singular focus, niche or area of in-depth expertise. I'm a writer. And not the kind who wins prestigious awards or gets published in world-renowned magazines or gets called to ghost-write for celebrities. Not yet, anyway. And I'm cool with that. Because I love writing, and I love the stuff that I get to write. I write sales copy. Blogs. Articles. Whatever someone needs me to write.
I dabble in all kinds of subjects, from sustainability to big data to new feminism to politics to trauma to romantic fiction to kids' stories to emotional intelligence. I'm the kind of writer who can crank out copy without much effort, and I do so rather quickly.
My portfolio of published works isn't, admittedly, as extensive as that which has gone unpublished, but if you looked on my hard drive, you'd find file after file of unfinished stories, rough drafts, gratitude journals, wild dreams, poems, article outlines, free-written idea lists and unbearably terrible first chapters.
But they're creations, and they're mine, and some days, that's all that matters. Other days, I'll admit it, I want the glory. The clicks. The 'likes.'
Validation. Confirmation. Confidence.
When my kids and husband wake up in the morning, an hour after me, breaking up my morning-writing-session concentration, I get annoyed (oh, but I love them so...). I should probably have a bumper sticker on my car that says, "I'd rather be writing." And I make great money doing what I do. In fact, I have a lot of happy customers.
Nevertheless, I'm a chronic self-doubter. A loyal critic, with a big long finger pointed ever inward. Which makes life as a writer a bit of a challenge. We writers need to have tough outer shells, they say. To be able to take negative feedback and swallow it whole and turn it into something beautiful. To work inside living, breathing Google docs where clients and coworkers and bosses watch you work from their own computers in real time. And they comment in the margins as we're creating drafts--rough drafts!--and highlight things that don't sit right, asking tough questions, forcing us to defend our word choices...even just that one lousy one among a thousand eloquent others.
And that's okay. I've learned that if you let yourself be there in that moment and remember that you're there as a helper to offer your gift, and that it isn't personal and that you want the best for them so that they're happy and you're happy and you can pay your mortgage this month, you begin to understand this is a wonderful process during which we writers learn and grow and become better at our craft.
Always better.
And then, slowly but surely, with enough experiences like those, and with a little luck, we begin to build that confidence. We start to naturally generate validation from within. We feel around for the soft, squishiness of confirmation until our hands get warm. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens slowly, bit by bit.
But this feeling of growing esteem doesn't come easy. And it sure helps to get a little nudge from outside your own heart, outside your own head.
| As the youngest of four girls, I grew up at a time when kids weren't hovered over at every moment by their parents. I learned to lean on myself: for fun, for snacks, and for plenty of mischief. Which led to some powerful and swift punishments. I messed up. A lot. My parents were, and are, amazing people, but they were firm believers in free-range parenting long before we had a name for it. So, after-the-fact repercussions were the norm as opposed to on-the-job life training. |  Image by Claude Mondestin from Pixabay |
For guidance, then, oftentimes I leaned on my three older sisters. Incredible women. Hilarious. I love them. We are close, each of us, to this day.
But when I was little, one of them dressed me up as a tiny punk rocker, in lieu of dressing up an actual doll, perhaps. Ripped jeans, heavy eye liner, black boots. She's a miniature girl version of Johnny Rotten! I was 9, and I loved the attention.
Another sister made me be the student every time we played school. She'd teach me hard math and critique my errors. And there were soooo many errors. She'd give me spelling words that were way too hard and invent dunce caps out of construction paper. It sucked, playing school. She became a real teacher in adulthood, and a damned good one, so.
The third sister, when we ventured to sleep-away summer camp together, urged me to just mimic everything she did and stay otherwise quiet--in a helpful way, not meanly--so as not to embarrass her, or myself, on the long bus ride into the countryside. It worked. At the archery range, in the cabins, 'round the campfire, by the end of the week we'd both earned camp cred as being among the "cool girls" there.
Were these experiences formative? Hell, yes. Were they confidence-building? Not so much. Did they help me test my own ideas and give me the chance to believe in the validity of my own choices? Hardly.
It's not their fault. It was just easier to follow along. To admire them and want to be like them. I figured it just wasn't in my cards to be a go-getter. Why bother? But early on, I didn't ever get the experience of feeling sure that what I was doing was the right thing or the best way. I didn't even try to think for myself sometimes. I didn't really have to, because someone else always surely knew better. I could stay in my lane. Tell some jokes. Write some poems. Ride my bike. Hang out with friends. Make a little money.
Until many years had passed and I'd had to make my own mistakes, figuring out my own way on my own trajectory and at my own pace, I was afraid to speak up for myself or assert my ideas. After all, they were probably nowhere near as good as the person's sitting next to me, so why embarrass myself?
"Fake it 'til you make it," they told me my first week on the job as a court stenographer. I was in my late twenties. I chewed on that phrase every day for ten years, heart pounding, anxiety mounting, as my fingers clobbered my little steno machine. I tried to keep up with a courtroom full of people talking over one another, in difficult accents and using curious colloquial turns of phrase I'd never heard before, like, "It's on and crackin'." (Which means something to the effect of a nefarious plan is presently underway, in street lingo.) It was a hard job, but helped me build that tough outer shell. Yet, not one of the days on that job did I ever feel like I was really nailing it. After all, you were only acknowledged if you did something wrong in the courtroom; never if you did a thing right or well.
After changing careers a few times, taking giant risks, I built more confidence by scaring the pants off myself to gain more experience and expand my skills.
"Can you ghost-write some articles for Forbes.com?"
"Y-y-y-yes?"
"Can you interview the head of an enormous government agency in D.C.?"
"Uh-huh..."
My first ghost written article got over 50K reads in the first few hours it went live. And that organization head I interviewed was reaching out to me weeks later to say hi and offer some new tidbit of info I might like to know.
Validation. Confirmation. Confidence.
It takes a lot of resilience and patience to feel okay about your work. And it takes a lot of courage to press that 'send' button and see what might come back to you as a result.
That's the best any of us can do. Send our creations out there into the world and see what sticks.
But as a writer, there's always that chance that someone will hate your work. Will shred it to bits. Will tell you you've got it all wrong.
The thing is, they don't really do that. Not usually.
Sometimes they even love it. And then they tell you they trust you. And, man, does that go a long way.
But when I was little, one of them dressed me up as a tiny punk rocker, in lieu of dressing up an actual doll, perhaps. Ripped jeans, heavy eye liner, black boots. She's a miniature girl version of Johnny Rotten! I was 9, and I loved the attention.
Another sister made me be the student every time we played school. She'd teach me hard math and critique my errors. And there were soooo many errors. She'd give me spelling words that were way too hard and invent dunce caps out of construction paper. It sucked, playing school. She became a real teacher in adulthood, and a damned good one, so.
The third sister, when we ventured to sleep-away summer camp together, urged me to just mimic everything she did and stay otherwise quiet--in a helpful way, not meanly--so as not to embarrass her, or myself, on the long bus ride into the countryside. It worked. At the archery range, in the cabins, 'round the campfire, by the end of the week we'd both earned camp cred as being among the "cool girls" there.
Were these experiences formative? Hell, yes. Were they confidence-building? Not so much. Did they help me test my own ideas and give me the chance to believe in the validity of my own choices? Hardly.
It's not their fault. It was just easier to follow along. To admire them and want to be like them. I figured it just wasn't in my cards to be a go-getter. Why bother? But early on, I didn't ever get the experience of feeling sure that what I was doing was the right thing or the best way. I didn't even try to think for myself sometimes. I didn't really have to, because someone else always surely knew better. I could stay in my lane. Tell some jokes. Write some poems. Ride my bike. Hang out with friends. Make a little money.
Until many years had passed and I'd had to make my own mistakes, figuring out my own way on my own trajectory and at my own pace, I was afraid to speak up for myself or assert my ideas. After all, they were probably nowhere near as good as the person's sitting next to me, so why embarrass myself?
"Fake it 'til you make it," they told me my first week on the job as a court stenographer. I was in my late twenties. I chewed on that phrase every day for ten years, heart pounding, anxiety mounting, as my fingers clobbered my little steno machine. I tried to keep up with a courtroom full of people talking over one another, in difficult accents and using curious colloquial turns of phrase I'd never heard before, like, "It's on and crackin'." (Which means something to the effect of a nefarious plan is presently underway, in street lingo.) It was a hard job, but helped me build that tough outer shell. Yet, not one of the days on that job did I ever feel like I was really nailing it. After all, you were only acknowledged if you did something wrong in the courtroom; never if you did a thing right or well.
After changing careers a few times, taking giant risks, I built more confidence by scaring the pants off myself to gain more experience and expand my skills.
"Can you ghost-write some articles for Forbes.com?"
"Y-y-y-yes?"
"Can you interview the head of an enormous government agency in D.C.?"
"Uh-huh..."
My first ghost written article got over 50K reads in the first few hours it went live. And that organization head I interviewed was reaching out to me weeks later to say hi and offer some new tidbit of info I might like to know.
Validation. Confirmation. Confidence.
It takes a lot of resilience and patience to feel okay about your work. And it takes a lot of courage to press that 'send' button and see what might come back to you as a result.
That's the best any of us can do. Send our creations out there into the world and see what sticks.
But as a writer, there's always that chance that someone will hate your work. Will shred it to bits. Will tell you you've got it all wrong.
The thing is, they don't really do that. Not usually.
Sometimes they even love it. And then they tell you they trust you. And, man, does that go a long way.
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