A slight understanding

I am up to day 16 of the SEP. I feel slightly better but have a long way to go. I just realised something. I get very fearful of doing new things. Like at work. All my peers have a false perception of me. They see me as calm and competent and always come to me for advice. The truth is (which I sort of knew but am only now acknowledging it), that I am constantly fearful of looking foolish in other people's eyes. This results in a feeling of nervousness and being hyped up prior to and during a meeting or training course. Although it has never happened I worry that I won't be able to concentrate or won't understand the content of the course. I need to stop being so hard on myself. I need to stop worrying whether others can see my flaws. This leads me to the question. How do I stop these feelings of insecurity and negative self talk.?

 

This is a great question and something I struggle with as well. I would love to hear what others on this forum would suggest. In my journey, I have found that developing compassion for myself is really key. I may be assuming to much, but your nervousness in these situations may come from a perfectionistic personality, which would lead you to believe that if others see any flaws or imperfection in you, then you fear you would be unworthy of their friendship. Steve o's book talks a lot about the need to connect with others and the power of the fear of not being connected. I think lots of self love and lots of compassion for yourself would be very helpful and maybe digging into why you feel nervous and where these feelings come from could provide great insight. Best wishes!

 

This is a great discussion. I really relate to it, about putting pressure on myself at work.

Years ago I was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a really stressful job.
Each morning we general assignment reporters would go to a wall of mail box slots and
get our daily assignment. I always worried that this would be the day I would not understand
the assignment or accomplish it. That never happened, but still I worried every day.

No one was putting pressure on me to be the perfect reporter except myself.

We need to learn to trust ourselves to do our best and not worry about doing or being
anything less.

It's not easy, but a goal worth striving for, and we avoid a lot of TMS if we can lighten
up on ourselves. Our performance will very likely be twice as good as anyone else
even if we do half as much.

 

I'm guilty of this too. It's a difficult habit to break, sometimes I skim over something or just don't do it on purpose as a kind of experiment and nothing happens. It's only me pushing myself too hard to be Miss Perfect. I know exactly why I do this, it's to gain approval because I have a terrible fear of rejection.

Try to look beyond yourself and find some "perfect" people, I think you'll find there's no such thing, so why expect it from yourself.

Bless you