Confidence and the Lack Thereof

I'm generally a pretty confident person. When I walk into a meeting with a client at my day job, I'm relaxed, curious, inquisitive, eager to meet whomever I'm meeting, and generally pretty sure I can accomplish what I've set out to accomplish. When I enter a creative collaboration, too, I feel good and strong, able to communicate what I want, ask questions when I don't get something, put myself out there, listen to my collaborators, and pretty much just plain like myself.

But sometimes there are moments... and tonight I had one of those moments.

The details aren't important, not really. Suffice it to say that for about two minutes, I felt anxious, riddled with low self-esteem, confused, and not generally myself. It happens from time to time, of course -- to all of us, I realize -- and it passes, even if it sometimes lasts longer than we'd like it to last. But in recent years, I never really let myself get into such situations. I avoided them; I put myself in situations in which I was likely to be successful, to feel good about myself, to be without self-doubt. I was, quite simply, afraid.

So what I'm grateful for is that I've now entered a period of my life in which I'm able to feel those uncomfortable feelings. I think it means that I'm taking new risks, challenging myself, daring to open my heart more, to risk. And even though it makes me feel pretty awful -- and sometimes makes the people around me feel awful, too -- it's a good thing, in the long run. I'm sure I'm bound to learn from it... assuming I keep moving through it and examining it properly. Which, I am quite happy to say, I am eager to do.