After I'd finished my blog yesterday. I did manage to some of my Uni work, Hooray! Then when I was trying to get to sleep (horrible insomnia) I started to think about whether it was procrastination or confidence or both.
Much as people think I am, I've never really been a confident person hiding behind a facade. I always wanted to be an actor but I'm pretty shy really (I can hear all my friends laughing at that comment). I think it's why I enjoyed working in hospitality, I sort of made the restaurant my stage, being the comedian and trying to make people laugh. I thought I was funny anyway, no matter what other people think.
So back to my thoughts while I was trying to get to sleep last night. Is it procrastination (I love that word) or is it confidence. I remember writing a blog a few years ago when I drove to Spain on one of my adventures and it seems that the people who read it, really enjoyed it. Now I am, as I said in my last post doing a degree in Creative Writing, but for some reason I don't think what I write is good enough. Like most things in my life, I've never thought I was good enough. Why is this do you think? Is it because of my child hood? Is it because a lot of my life I've taken things personally and felt put down by certain people who have come into my life? or maybe I don't feel my tutors give me enough or constructive feedback? I know on my course there are some very good writers who I feel intimidated by, not by them personally but by what they write!
I remember when I decided to start the course. I'd been through a lot in my life over the last few years, illness, death, loss of friends and it really shook me up. So, I decided I was going to do something for me, something I wanted to do. So I found a course I was interested and found out when the open day was at the University and off I nervously trotted. While I was on the bus I was getting more and more nervous. What the hell am I doing I thought to myself, 45 and going to University to do a degree? I'll never be able to do it. And that's my problem. No confidence or belief in myself. That's wrong. I find myself now like I said procrastinating because of the confidence issue. I need to get over it and get on with it. Onwards and upwards they say. Lets see what happens. You never know until you try and if you never try you never know. So get on with it!
Bye for now.
Mark
Really great blog Mark and really well written! Not feeling good enough is a really common belief, so many people think that about themselves, and I've felt that about myself too. It's a decision we've made when we were growing up and then we have looked for evidence to back it up all our lives. But it's not the truth!! It's just something we made up! Instead choose to say something more powerful to yourself like "I am perfect just the way I am".....because that really is the truth. Love you xxx
ReplyDeleteBut, Mr Fell, it takes a huge amount of guts and confidence just to go back to uni when you're on the other side of eighteen. For that alone you should be really proud of yourself.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the bird suffers with the same lack of confidence so I know you're not alone in this boat. In the moments where she feels confident about herself she immediately feels quietly guilty about it, as if it is somehow wrong to be confident about one's own attributes. She has the confidence in there somewhere, or she'd not keep picking up the pen. Lack of confidence is a hard thing to unlearn so in our therapy sessions (she's so lucky to have her very own untrained therapist squatting in her front room) we no longer use the word 'confidence'. Instead we talk about self belief. It somehow feels easier to have the belief in oneself than it does to have confidence. One day and one sentence at a time is what I tell her.
I also tell her this: "Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained."
It's good to read your blog, and watch your fish!
My regards to you,
Your friend and neighbour to be,
Frank
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