I Think I Can....No...I KNOW I Can

Too often I put myself in situations where I use the words, "I think I can do that...". And then people say that I don't have enough positivity in myself. But, I do. So I have been working on saying I know I can instead. Knowing and thinking you can are two totally different things. I think I can jump off a cliff and be okay if I am strapped to a bungee chord, however I know I can watch someone else do it safely from the top of the bridge with nothing strapped to my ankles. Odd example, but you get the point. I have always had an assumption that people are out to compare me to others, when in reality I do it by myself in my own head. No one else is doing that. 

I can distinctly remember when I was in High School and not getting the grades that my parents were hoping for, and not doing cheerleading, and I wasn't involved in the newspaper, that I assumed my parents just wanted me to be my sister. That she was the perfect daughter, and I was nothing but a let down. But they didn't feel that way. They actually told me the complete opposite, that they supported my art career and that they thought it was a good direction for me to go. I had made up the whole scenario in my head that my parents wanted me to be a person that I wasn't. Yet they had no feelings like that at all.

So as I grow older, and I got better at not comparing myself to others, because I am my own person. I began growing my own opinions, and my own thoughts about things. I became who I always wanted to be. When I was in college, I had my own mindset. People took my feedback and realized it was good feedback. I was heard, and not as what someone else wanted me to be, but as myself and as an artist. It was the first time in a long time that I felt that my opinion mattered, and that I was my own person, not someone I thought people wanted me to be. 

But now, as I come into my own as an adult out of school (well Undergrad at least), I find it more difficult. I find myself constantly being compared to other people and it makes me not want to work harder. It makes waking up in the morning painful. It makes putting on my uniform exhausting. Each day I wake up, look at the ceiling and pray that we win the lottery so that I can quit my job and stay at home every day. But that doesn't happen, and it never will. I have to get up, put on my uniform, and go to work so that I can pay the bills and feed my family. 

As I was extremely uncomfortable and even more so angry about the way certain things were being handled, I found myself, for the first time, sticking up for myself. I never have liked confrontation, but enough was enough. I stood up for myself. I put my foot down to the things that were going on and said that I don't respond well to being compared. I don't respond well to comments I don't find suitable for the work place. I work with integrity and care about making the customer happy and working with them as long as it takes to make sure they are fully set up. I don't lie, or keep things from them. I believe in full disclosure. I wish everyone in the world would take this advice and use it for not just a sales job, but in life. 

Don't be something you're not, just to get the results you think are required. Work with integrity and pride. If you don't, you won't be true to yourself, and you will continue to be compared to others. Who cares if those others do not work with the same work ethic you do, you know you are true to yourself. It has taken me a long time, a lot of lectures, and a ton of tears to figure this out. But I know who I am, and that I should not care that I am compared to others. I am proud of the person I am. I have worked hard to get to where I am in life, and I will let no person tell me otherwise. I have fallen over and over again, and I have been mocked, teased, pushed down, told I couldn't do it, de-motivated, bullied, and in the end.....I always come out on top. 

So I challenge you....be YOU. Not the person someone wants you to be.....be you. I am finally realizing, that that's the best person I could possibly be!