Confidence, or lack thereof...

Hi everyone. I am trying hard to post something on a regular basis, but it's been pretty crazy and pretty difficult to post something every day, so a posting once every two days or so will have to do.

Last night while I was in the shower, I began thinking about confidence. What makes me feel confident and the areas that I am lacking in confidence. One of the places where I feel very confident is at work. I really enjoy my job and I'm good at it. I connect well with the kids and foster parents I work with and, after years of listening to my friends (and random strangers in different lines) I have honed my skills and I feel I am able to really help those who want to be helped. So I had a big boost to my confidence this week when I was promoted. I am now a "lead clinician". What that means is that my supervisor, who is moving into a new position herself, has enough faith in me that she feels I can handle running the foster care piece of our office. My friend was also promoted and he will be running the outpatient counseling piece. I am really excited about this because it gives me a chance to grow and I feel I am ready to take on this challenge. Or so I thought... Last night, doubt started nagging my brain and all the old negative talk came back in full force. I found myself thinking, "what have you gotten into?" "You're not supervisory material, what were they thinking?" This line of thinking along with all the negative stuff I tell myself about the way I look just flooded over me and, for a moment there, I felt just awful. I felt like I wasn't worth anything and it was really sad. Then I looked at myself in the mirror and said STOP! This is stupid! I am a 38 year old woman and I have accomplished a lot in my life. I have a masters degree. I am a licensed mental health counselor. I have been out on my own for 13 years and have been able to make it, even when times were really tough. I have friends and family who love me and support me. Why did I want to make a good thing bad? Why is it that I constantly doubt myself? I know I have the ability to do whatever I put my mind to, so why beat myself up? Because it is easy. It is easy to be negative and believe the worst because I won't be disappointed. If I'm negative, I'm already doomed to fail, where if I'm positive and it doesn't work out, then I have to deal with the aftermath. Well, screw that. I can be a good supervisor. I can do well in my job. And, dammit, I can lose weight. It is not going to be easy, nothing good ever is, but if I continue to take the easy way out and be negative, I will never get anywhere.

So my goal now is to focus on the positive, no matter how hard that is. I will stop doing things the easy way and really work on building my confidence. I'm already feeling better after writing this because I am beginning to see some of the roadblocks that have detained me from reaching my goals. I know negative thoughts will come into my head from time to time and I will deal with that, but I will not allow them to keep me from doing what I want to do!

So, to any of you who are striving to make changes in your lives, build up that confidence. You can accomplish anything you set your mind to!