A heavy flutter of panic takes residence in your gut. You have 2 hours until the deadline of a major presentation with a key account. Best case scenario, this makes up for a poor quarter. Worst case scenario, you’ll fall deeper into the abyss of failure than you had ever imagined. You feel the pressure, like a pack of Mentos dropped into a 2 litre bottle of Cola. This is 2 hours to make life fair, for a change. It’s everything.
In our formative years, we do what we’re good at. We gain confidence in succeeding, and receive recognition from our family, friends, and the institutions of education and sport . This gives us extreme confidence in our abilities. Fast forward until now, and we’ve gone from bad boss, to unsupportive manager, to condescending coworker, to unreasonable client, and so forth. We’ve been spit on, kicked, and tripped en route to where we currently stand. It’s a wonder that we even have any confidence at all.
We embarked on our careers and perhaps now, specialize in specific aspects of our jobs. We gained notoriety as experts in our field, and it elevated our position in society and our standing in our professional communities.
But sometimes, we hit plateaus. We feel like
we’re suddenly stuck. We no longer feel
like we are capable of the very things that garnered interest of our peers or
superiors in the first place. We forget
that we were chosen over dozens- perhaps hundreds- of applicants for our
current roles. We forget that our
clients chose to work with us, over the competition, of which there was
certainly lots of. We forget that we are
who we are for a reason. Being humble is
fine, but we mustn’t forget the reason why we were better than the competition.
When we find ourselves rudderless, incapable of doing things that we would once boast about, we need to stop focusing on our weaknesses. Why is this not working? Let’s reset and try again.
We all have weaknesses and shortcomings. Perhaps you weren’t the best salesman, or the best public speaker, but odds are, there’s something that draws the ire or the envy of everyone in the room. Tap into that. Use it.
It’s what sets you apart from the competition.
By @MarkPavelich CEO The Mark Consulting & Marketing
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