CONFIDENCE IN LEARNING

I have been having one of the worst weeks, not worst considering I am now a very happy and in love woman (Be sure to remind me to write a post about this and make the unhappy-with-love people hate me) My personal life has been experiencing a lot of love and light but my work life has been quite the proverbial thorn in my side.

I have never been the over-achiever or the best one in my class, all through high school I just made it by and by the grace of God and countless prayers from my concerned mother I got into university. In university I realized the things that God blessed me with a little into my second/third year. Not that I am blowing my horn or anything but I guess in a post about confidence I am allowed to. I am a people person, an encourager, a catalyst (don't hate me :-D) I see what I call people possibilities and I can instantly see what makes people tick. Honestly speaking it has made me friends- other times enemies- and it does give me great opportunities. So basically over the past few years I have been on "confidence-peak" mountain especially about myself and my abilities. I have been confident about what I know and I know quite a lot of things that are confidence raising. So trying to teach me new things was always met with minimal excitement and in turn whenever I was in situations where other people knew more than me I would feel threatened and pull back. Then in walks this job and I am looking at life at a totally different angle, it hits me that I KNOW NOTHING!

Working as an Exec assistant to a very ambitious CEO can be hard. I love my job, I love the experience but I do not like the challenge. My confidence has taken quite the plunge since started taking up more and more administrative work. Let me tell you, I know very little about administrating anything other than myself let alone an organization.

I will save you the tears that followed after the grim realisation that I know very little and for a while my work output had been quite the "how to be an under-achievers manual" lol or chicken soup for the underachiever :-D I just didn't see the point in trying or pushing myself especially since it wasn't good enough and actually trying to do my best seemed like it was too much- too much to learn anyway.

Here comes the light at the end of my tunnel though. I came to a point where I was very complacent with my abilities. "I am not the best communicator but I am OK, I am not the best Exec Assistant but I am OK". I was OK with being OK though I knew in my head that I want to be the best but being the best involves a lot of learning and re-learning or is it un-learning, it involves making a lot of mistakes and facing a lot of correction (funny how I knew this but never really understood). Being the best actually means you are still on the growing process. My boss told me, "Waithera, growing is painful. I will push you, I will demand so much of you and from you and it will be painful." I hated hearing that but it was true, growing is painful being the best will be painful but it also involves a lot of learning meaning you can't be a know-it-all or a complacent-with-all. And I believe that's how confidence in the workplace grows, when you see yourself as a student, no not the one who skips class but the annoying teachers pet sitting at the front who just loooooves this Monday afternoon triple lesson math class whoopp whoop!

How much can you really know? I am thinking not enough, because if you are confident in the fact that you have all this and that you get hit by the strong fact that there are others who have so much more. If you base your confidence in wanting to enrich your mind, body and soul then it can't be shaken and you never get to a point where you say,"well I am the best in being confident, I am at the peak of confidence".

I call it being confident with knowing nothing not so that we just raise our glasses to being bums but confident in the fact that there is so much out there to learn and experience. Then when you experience it, go after it like a child experiencing and learning all this for the first time.