self confidence 101

valuable lesson learned from 

terrific massage therapist I work with:

• no one has perfect self confidence without training themselves to
• everyone feels insecure in at least one area of their life
• no one benefits from you beating yourself up for making a small mistake
• your personal confidence is 100% up to you.

When I first started working at this clinic, it was so frustrating. The girl who I replaced had worked here for several years, everyone loved her, and apparently she made no mistakes whatsoever. I, on the other hand made mistakes by the minute, was afraid to touch anything, and when patients walked in, they would give me a look, and then say, "where is misty?"

I found myself apologizing constantly, even when things weren't my fault. I was miserable at the thought of screwing up one more thing. That's when one of the massage therapists stepped in. She told me that in massage school, she was horribly insecure, and she dealt with it by jokingly saying, "yeah, I'm pretty amazing at massages." Her friends would laugh, and she would shrug with a optimistic smile. After a few weeks of that, she noticed that people began really giving her attention for being such a great therapist. Her teachers praised her, and her classmates would ask her for help. She started feeling confident in herself, and when she would say, "I'm a pretty terrific therapist, and anyone who gets a massage from me is dang lucky", she really started to believe it. 

She's the most requested therapist at our office. 

So I decided to put her theory to test. When I did something good, I would say something like, "yeah- I'm basically awesome," or "I'm probably the only person in the world who can get that taken care of so quickly."  I would walk into the clinic, and say things like, "Good morning, everyone! I'm feeling particularly amazing this fine morning!" Most of the time that wasn't really true. I was just faking it. But I noticed my faking started really working for me. When I finished a tough project given to me, I'd prance into my boss's office, chin up, and after handing him the project, I would say, "you're really going to be glad you hired me when you see how flawless I made this." I noticed the doctors started saying things like, "only alyssa could do this, because she's so great at everything." I couldn't believe it. It was like I put a spell on them just by saying great things about myself on a regular basis. 

And know what? I've started to actually believe it a little. Sometimes on a tough day I have to take a little trip to the ladies room, look myself in the eye, and say, "alyssa- you are spectacular." Then I take a deep breath, and walk back into my day. 

moral of the story: fake it till you make it. 

Really, it works. 

Happy Wednesday, friends!