Maybe Believing in Yourself Isn’t Overrated?

“You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Benjamin Franklin

I’ve always found that to be a very nebulous idea. The use of the word “anything” is likely to blame. I’m not really thinking at length about the endless anythings I can possibly do.

But there’s some truth in there that I’d like to unpack.

I was an underachiever in secondary school.

I bare passed coursework assignments, failed some tests here and there, and did just well enough on the important exams to advance to the next level.

It’s always interesting sharing that piece of information with people who didn’t know me back then. They look at the present-day Siobhan who graduated with first class honours and has a strong work ethic and assume I was always like that.

But teenage Siobhan was not like that at all.

I can look back now and tell you exactly why I was not a top performer in secondary school—and trust me, the list of reasons is comprehensive—but one noteworthy reason has to do with my self-confidence at the time.

My classmates and I were ranked against each other early on in our school careers. I remember realising how amazing some people’s grades were and comparing them to my own. The gap between their performance and my own felt large and impossible to bridge.

So, I gave up.

I gave up on trying to be a top performer because I believed I could never be one, nevermind all the evidence to suggest otherwise.

Now, it might be easy to look at teenage Siobhan and think, “well, that’s a little extreme.” And I would agree with you because teenage Siobhan inherently lived in extremes. However, the ultimate takeaway is this: I thought I couldn’t do it, so I didn’t even bother to try.

I know many of us have found ourselves in this exact situation. To this day, I still fall into that trap.

Believing in yourself is not an easy habit to build if you’re not used to doing it, but it’s not impossible. It’s a muscle that can be strengthened over time. And just as you would with your physical muscles (I’m assuming, it’s not like I’m a fitness expert here), you start out small and build gradually.

This means taking whatever big thing you want to achieve and breaking it down to the smallest actionable item.

Let’s apply this with teenage Siobhan’s dilemma.

“Oh no, I’ll never get grades like the rest of my classmates!”

“Literally who told you that. Okay, let’s refocus. We can start with reviewing your notes from class today to make sure you understand them.”

(I’m oversimplifying for the sake of the example but that’s the idea.)

It’s easy to hit a mental wall of “I Can’t” when you’re envisioning this large task, but every big thing we hope to accomplish is really an amalgamation of little things over time. And it’s a lot less daunting to convince yourself that you’re capable of doing a little thing.

When it comes to achieving our goals, often the biggest obstacle we have to overcome is ourselves. We could have everything we need already within us and still hesitate to take the leap because we don’t believe that we do.

You can consider that and get frustrated and beat yourself up about it, or you can have a little self-compassion and learn how to take it one step at a time.

And if you approach everything like that, maybe you really can do anything you set your mind to.

Until next time,

Siobhan K