Learning is important
I’m a huge advocate of continuous professional development. I believe that in order to be the best we can, we need to keep learning. Just as an athlete needs to keep working on her body and skills in order reach the desired performance level, we need to keep improving our professional knowledge and skills in order to stay competitive and be of the greatest service.
When too much learning indicates fear
However, so many of us, and especially women, tend to use chronic learning as an excuse not to address low levels of self-belief, confidence and self-worth. We don’t feel ready because we haven’t taken this or that course yet, we are afraid of not being accepted by our peers or superiors because we don’t know enough, we are afraid that people will find out that we are ‘a fraud’ when we put ourselves out there without knowing enough – and let’s face it, we never do know enough, do we?
And so, we keep expanding our knowledge and skills, we keep learning, investing our time, energy and also finances into improving ourselves. But the day when we finally feel worthy of success and acceptance, worthy of sitting around that table, confident enough to stand up for ourselves, to speak up regardless of what people may say or think, that day never seems to come… We may experience fleeting moments of what it would feel like if we truly believed in ourselves, but they usually fade away rather quickly.
Learning does not compensate for an emotional discord
Learning and professional development are important and good for your career, however they won’t fill the gap which is causing you to feel unworthy of your success, unworthy of sitting around the table, not confident enough to deliver a convincing presentation or to get that important buy-in from the stakeholders. They won’t compensate for a lack of self-worth and self-belief.
Powerful questions helping us to understand and allowing us to heal
It’s therefore crucial to also work on our personal development.
- What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
- How would you feel?
- What would you be saying to yourself?
It’s important to ask yourself these questions and to be honest about your answers. And if you are, you will soon discover where the beliefs, which don’t serve you, come from and how they have been holding you back all those years. You will soon start realising that the reason why you don’t feel worthy or confident enough originates in negative past experiences, which may go all the way back to your childhood. Experiences, which have knocked-you off your feet and from which you haven’t allowed yourself to fully recover because you were afraid.
Playing small and keeping safe seems to be the right thing to do because it keeps us from exposure to criticism; it keeps us from being hurt. But deep down we know that we were born to be so much more. And it’s this knowing that is causing us to feel the emotional discord.
Until we address these questions and our experiences around them, all the learning and professional development will be just another way of slapping a smiley face on an empty gas tank!
