One day impulsively in the office, I created a Google meeting, sped off to CANVA to create an invitation for a mentoring session for young professionals and graduates. What propelled that action was the feeling of wasted potential, it had been a few days after a conversation with my then manager who said that I am good at what I do – just not for where I was doing it.
Conversations with him always left a bitter taste in my mouth, the man has a gift of building your confidence and crushing your soul in the same sentence. So I took what mattered and ran with it. I am someone who struggles so much with imposter syndrome, my work confidence is a facet i literally have to wear everyday to survive a work day. I barely ever think my work is good enough; no matter how many times I have successfully completed projects.
Anyway, back to my impulsive action I shared the link on Whatsapp and Instagram, within 3 hours I had over 10 people who RSVPed to attend and that’s when my mind came back! Girl what did you just do? What are you going to tell these people, your career is not exactly a shining star. But I didn’t retract the invite, I just had to put in the work. If people saw value in what I had to offer, I wasn’t going to disappoint them ( I have little issue disappointing myself though).
It took me at least three full working days to complete the presentation, not because I didn’t know what to say, I was just overthinking the importance of what I was doing. Truthfully, I have benefited from having a mentor and I just want to give people the same opportunity, even if it’s not a two year relationship like my mentor and I had. I wanted to teach people to not make the same mistakes that I made which I believe had it not been for some of them, i would be a six figure Brand strategist at this point – sadly I have never even worked in a brand position, could still happen though.
Luckily, I am a little delulu so I activated the part of me that believes in my magic and went on with my work. I asked a few professionals for input and one of my former colleagues actually agreed to come present even though I asked her a week before the session. By the week of the session , I had 22 individuals who RSVPed and that gave me a little confidence boost. On the day of the session, we had 15 people concurrently joining in and as I spoke, fear became foreign and I found my heart dancing up and down.
When all is said and done, my point is GET OUT OF YOUR WAY! We overthink, over analyse and compare ourselves so much that we can barely see ourselves in any light from the blurriness of our negativity. Sure people have opinions, you have them too – it’s a human thing to do. What is common knowledge to you is absolute gold to someone else because we do not have the same brains, we are not exposed to the same things in life -you have something to offer!
If you try something and nothing comes of it, you can at least say that you gave it your all.
Profound ❤️