Believe in yourself
What is your most important need? What helps you get what you want? Invariably we are driven by many needs, although if we are keen to get things done or completed there a number of tasks we naturally (not in all cases):
- Ask questions?
- Go speak to someone ‘who knows‘?
- Research the Internet?
- Pay for someone else to do it?
Have you ever attended a meeting and found you haven’t got a clue what’s going on …it is times like this you are looking for certainty. Certainty is about being sure, certain, happy and clear, we all go through life seeking this basic human need, as that is what it is. Certainty makes decision easier, it helps effortlessly in moving from one task to another and helps with momentum. But how do you create certainty? Possibly addressing the above questions? I believe you need four further human needs to achieve this:
1. Believe in yourself – create an self-eco system that gets you onto the right page, with information (the right and correct information) and knowledge you’ll feel much more confident and with this will have self confidence in believing in yourself.
2. Have a positive identity for yourself – This relates to how everybody else see you. To help, think of someone you know who is a ‘go to person‘, and think of someone else who isn’t. They have created an identity for themselves that portrays an identity. They have created a brand that frames and identifies them.
3. Use experience and modelling – Unless you like to reinvent the wheel, the majority of what you gain will be from past experiences and modelling what others do. An example I like to use from several years ago whilst studying for my PRINCE2 practitioner exam (involved sitting a 3 hour written exam), I found studying the PRINCE2 Management Products related to the UK’s privatisation of Rail Track provided a great insight in the working of PRINCE2 – here I used the experiences of the project manager and modelled how she used PRINCE2 to deliver the project – this was priceless in my understanding.
4. Build a Balance system – Occasionally there will be pieces of work or activities which when you completed don’t provide any benefit or progress. Here you develop a skill set to be able to balance piece of work to establish whether you either continue or only undertake a small amount of input and work? Again this is another self-eco system that gets you on the right page, while bypassing-all activities that provide no benefit to you or others. A useful technique is the Eisenhower Decision Matrix which helps in identifying what is urgent and what is important.
In writing all this, I don’t practise certainty all the time – total certainty reduced creativity – sometimes you need the opposite.
If all we strive towards certainty – we would eventually get bored, we find it all quite mundane, we need uncertainty.
Uncertainty is as an important need – we wouldn’t go watch a football match or watch films if we knew the final result or outcome. Without surprise we can’t change (improve).
How do we manage both? Managing both involves some of the steps I mentioned early … with practice we can carve a happy path through our lives.
How do you manage your certainty and end up believing in yourself?