Confidence and Self Esteem

Have you ever had one of those situations in a meeting or when talking to someone when you feel tense, uncomfortable, anxious and you just want it to be over?

Or maybe you sometimes feel that some people are more intelligent or somehow better than you and when you speak to them you get a bit lost in your own thoughts, maybe even not saying much because you don’t want to look stupid?

And then you kick yourself because someone else suggests the same thing you were thinking and everyone responds positively. It could have been you who said it!

Putting People On A Pedestal

Obviously there is nothing wrong with admiring somone who is gifted at some skill, or wanting to learn from them.

However, recently I was working with a client who felt way, way down the pecking order at work and put everyone on some higher level in her mind compared to herself.

In meetings she would be reluctant to speak because her managers had been doing it longer, knew more and she thought she would make an idiot of herself. She would try to avoid giving her opinions and even try and avoid speaking to senior managers or others who she felt knew so much more than her. 

In these situations she would feel tense and anxious. Sometimes somone wlse would say the very thing she had been thinking and she’d mentally kick herself about her failure to speak up.

So how did we easily change this?