Seeds of Wisdom: "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." -- H. Jackson Browne
A few days ago, Gretchen Pirillo blogged about insecurities and she bravely listed some of hers.
I've often thought about insecurities. Lord knows, I certainly have enough of my own. Whether it be a party, work situation, a convention, I go out among people at gatherings, and I feel like the emperor wearing new clothes. Whatever confidence I had (and I do have some), seems to vanish. I'm left naked, standing in the middle of the rink with no hand rails to hold on to, and I've just learned how to stand on my skates.
I lean on people who I know, people with whom I'm comfortable. I lean on them as if they were crutches, and hope that they will get me from one place to the other. If I don't know anyone, I tend to glue myself to a wall, or a support column, or the chair I'm sitting in like it's the last life preserver on the Titanic.
From this safe vantage point, I look around and I see many other people who seem utterly confident. They breeze around talking to different people with no apparent trepidation. They mingle with aplomb and others seem drawn to them. I wonder why they are so different from me. I also wonder - are they really so different?
Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that these supremely confident people have the same insecurities as the rest of us, but they are simply better at hiding them. Oh, I suppose there are some who are truly ignorant of their own faults, or so egotistical that they refuse to acknowledge they even have faults, but I think most people who appear to have mastered self-assuredness 101 are just like the rest of us beneath their thin veneers.
A number of years ago, a friend said to me, "You always have it all together." My reaction was, "Huh - me? Not me."
Her assessment certainly wasn't in line with my own. Mostly I'm holding things together with spit and safety pins. I don't think I'm doing such a great job of it either, though I'm really good at building a house of cards. As I thought about this, I remembered something I'd read about the three "yous."
There is the "you" that others see. The "you" that you see yourself as being. And lastly the real "you" - which is usually something in between the other two.
I've often thought it would be very helpful to be able to get inside someone else's head and see how they see me. When I was in 8th grade, my teacher attempted an experiment that could give us a hint of that.
She had us put our names at the top of a sheet of paper that had two columns - one labeled positive, the other labeled negative, then she collected all the papers and redistributed them. She instructed us to write one positive comment and one negative comment about the person whose name appeared at the top of the paper we had now been given. After we completed the first, she collected and redistributed them twice more, so we would each have three different people's opinions when she finally returned our own to us.
With more than a little fear, I held mine folded over for awhile. I knew I was not among the most popular in the class. I was a bit shy (BTW - no one who knows me believes this), but I didn't think everyone in the class disliked me. What if I was wrong? What if they really did dislike me? What if there were no really nice complements on the positive side, and what if the negative side was really bad?
I finally opened it and was relieved to see that there were no extremes on either side. I don't remember now what they even were, but I guess they were less than memorable. I do remember one of the negative ones, though. The person had written, "You always wear your beanie in class."
Now I have to explain, that this was a Catholic school and we wore uniforms. Part of the uniform was a beanie hat with the school emblem on the front. We had to wear them outside, but not in school.
I usually just forgot mine, and so I often left it on. I certainly wasn't the only one. But that particular comment really got me thinking - and thinking about it long after I graduated. In fact, you can see that I'm still thinking about it ::mumble, mumble:: years later.
Did this mean that the person simply couldn't think of one negative thing to say about me? I found that difficult to believe. Since the other comments were overpowered by this one, did no one have anything really significant to say about me either way? Had I really just faded into the woodwork so no one noticed me at all? Had I become a non-person in the eyes of my classmates. That was really scary.
I do remember my very young self as being more confident, but as I got older, I lost that confidence somewhere along the way. As I've analyzed it over the years, I have come to believe it had something to do with the timing of my sister's birth. She was born in June and in September, I began first grade (I didn't go to kindergarten).
I think some how in my child's mind, I connected the two events. I couldn't understand why my parents needed another child - after all, they had me. I also couldn't cope with the fact that I could no longer stay home and play with my mother.
As I look back, I remember getting up to sing and dance before groups of people when I was only 4 or 5 years old. I've always had a good memory and I could recite the whole of "T'was the Night Before Christmas," not to mention most nursery rhymes. People apparently thought it was cute. I liked being cute. I enjoyed being the center of attention. But I can't ever remember being comfortable in a crowd, once I'd started school.
I never really had the confidence to be myself. I was always too busy trying to please people. Trying to be the person I thought they wanted me to be. Trying once more to be cute and to win their approval. In the process, I lost myself.
Somewhere along the way as I got older, I began to see that this didn't work. I wasn't that person. I couldn't be that person comfortably, confidently. I realized that squeezing myself into a shoe that didn't fit wouldn't make me Cinderella. It didn't win me any approval prizes.
Slowly, I began reassembling the bits and pieces of who I am. I am now at the point where I can say, this is me - take it or leave it. It still hasn't won me any popularity contests. I'm still ill at ease in a crowd, but oddly enough, I feel more confident with a crowd of strangers than I do with a crowd of friends. With strangers, I mostly don't have to care whether they like me or not. Once I start to care, I have to hold on, lest I slide right back into seeking approval mode.
But mostly, I'm just glad to be me and hang the consequences.
I've frequently thought I'd like to write a book about self-confidence. I'd like to show that people who seem to have it are just as insecure as the rest of us. I've thought that it would be helpful to find people who seem to have it all together - celebrities, leaders both political and corporate - and have them list their insecurities as Gretchen has done.
Would people believe them? Would it help to know that some celebrity has the same concern about being liked and accepted as the rest of us? Does misery truly love company?
I remember identifying so strongly with Sally Field's, "You like me, you really liked me!" comment. I thought, "Wow - we have something in common!" Here she is an Academy Award winning actress and she's worried about acceptance. I felt comforted by that thought.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to go about soliciting comments for the book. I can see myself writing letters to various celebrities and having their agents or protectorates tossing the letters into the trash. I can't imagine any of them thinking this is a good idea. I can hear them laughing about it now.
Therein lies the rub. I don't have the confidence to ask, "are you insecure?"
Posted by Cyberkat at March 10, 2002 1:03 PM | TrackBack