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You're Better Than You Think You Are

This article is more than 7 years old.

We’ve all experienced times where we’ve had a false sense of security, but we’ve also experienced times were we’ve had a false sense of insecurity…in ourselves. Too often we are our own worst critics. When circumstances of life don’t go the way we hoped for, we often allow them to make us think less of ourselves. We end up with a false sense of insecurity in our own talents and abilities.

As an entrepreneur, your most important role is to set an example for the people you lead. A few years into starting my first company I began to notice a trend that would occur - whenever I was feeling insecure about my own abilities everyone else working for me seemed to feel less secure in their own abilities as well. A definite ripple effect would occur. I knew that in order for my company to succeed I needed my team to believe in themselves, but it became clear that for this to happen I, myself, was going to have to become more secure first. So I set out to figure out how I could overcome my false sense of insecurity and here are a few of the things I was able to discover:

One way we cause a false sense of insecurity is by focusing too much on how far we still have to go and all the challenges that lie ahead of us. When we do this we end up feeling discouraged and we question whether we will be capable. In order to overcome this we have to be willing to give ourselves credit for just how far we have come and just how much we have already achieved. One way to make that happen is to schedule time each week to set our to-do lists aside, step away from our computers, and turn off our cell phones so we can have a quiet moment to reflect on all of the trials we have already overcome which will allow us to recognize just how capable we have already proven ourselves to be.

Another way we cause a false sense of insecurity is to constantly compare ourselves with others. We start convincing ourselves that we won’t be good enough ourselves until we have more than someone else does, or until we achieve something greater than they have. In our minds we create an ‘us against them’ atmosphere that makes it impossible to ever feel like enough because inevitably there is always someone out there with more than us.

The only person we should ever compare ourselves to is the person we were yesterday. Everyone’s situations are totally different in life which makes that the only accurate comparison to measure yourself against. By focusing solely on becoming a better person today than the person you were yesterday you will be far more productive and progress at a substantially faster pace.

Another benefit we receive when we stop comparing ourselves to others and instead focus on improving ourselves is that it allows us to gain a better appreciation for what others are bringing to the table, because we no longer feel threatened by them. This allows our relationships with others to improve and it naturally draws more people to want to associate with us because they feel of our genuine desire to see them succeed, and this then leads to an increase in our own feelings of self-worth and confidence. After all, the more time we spend feeling happy for others, the less time we have to be feeling a false sense of insecurity in ourselves.

Without a doubt the best way I know to overcome our false sense of insecurity and feelings of inadequacy is to simply get to work! The more we engage in doing work that forwards a cause, the better we feel about ourselves and the more success we will find. When Michelangelo finished work on his statue of an angel he was asked how he produced something so beautiful. He replied, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” When we have a vision of where we want to go and we actually get to work at it, it is then that we will see our own masterpieces created. The people who become the most successful aren’t the people who start with the most, they are the people who do the most with what they started with.

Finally, it is serving others that will give us the greatest feeling of security in the person that we are. As Spencer W. Kimball said, “The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls. We become more significant individuals. … Indeed, it is easier to ‘find’ ourselves because there is so much more of us to find!”

~Amy Rees Anderson (follow my daily blogs at www.amyreesanderson.com/blog )