It was 2004—the year everything fell apart.
This picture seemed fitting in that I’m hanging on for dear life to the cables that scale the back side of Yosemite’s Half Dome (don’t let my casual smile fool you; I was terrified!). At the same time, I was clinging to hope that some sort of rescue was coming for me and my flailing “career.”
I’d just been laid off, and I was a mess on the inside. But my mom wanted our family to climb this enormous rock to celebrate her 60th birthday, so we went (and it was amazing, BTW).
Here’s a bit of the backstory:
In 2001, I co-founded a start-up company with a friend. Three years later the other founder and I could no longer see eye-to-eye on some really important business (and personal) concerns. It was decided that I would be the one to go.
Young in my relationship with Jesus, I was still trying to understand what it meant to find my identity in Christ, so this loss crushed me. I sobbed the entire day that this decision was made and had no idea what to do next.
I had poured myself out for the previous three years, while the company was barely making it financially. By the time it was over for me, I was mentally and emotionally tapped. The idea of interviewing for a J.O.B. made my stomach turn.
But I was single and in debt, so I didn’t have a lot of alternatives.
I thought maybe I could do some freelance work until I figured out what I really wanted to do. (This was before the gig economy was a thing, but I knew people who had done freelance work before and figured I’d give it a shot.)
So I flooded everyone in my network with the news about my new endeavor and asked if they knew of any potential projects for me. Surprisingly, it worked! And the bumpy road of my self-employment started like this:
Partnering with my cousin’s web-developer husband to build a real estate website for my friend’s boyfriend as he started his own firm. (That was quite the first step!)
Writing articles for a start-up company’s e-mail newsletter.
Producing a marketing plan for another small company.
Planning a fundraising event for a local nonprofit.
Managing marketing, communications, and admin tasks for an entrepreneur friend.
And a whole host of other bizarre projects I hardly remember now.
As I did the work, I realized I wanted to be a writer.
I just didn’t have the confidence to call myself one.
In fact, it took several more years of being paid to write by legit companies before I would ever dare introduce myself to anyone as “a writer.”
Confidence is like that. No one is born with it.
You can WANT to do something, like writing (or podcasting, or teaching, or whatever your dream is), but it takes the experience of actually doing the writing (or podcasting, or teaching, or whatever it is) to grow confidence that you’re any good at it.
It takes practice to perfect your skills. “Get the reps in,” they say in the athletic world. Because repetition gives you the opportunity to learn as you do it again and again. And repetition grows your muscle memory so that when you come to the same task or project again you can say, with greater confidence than you did the first time, “I know what to do here.”
If confidence in your abilities has been a struggle for you, there’s one thing that will help:
Grow in competence.
I wish I could tell you that I have found the shortcut for building confidence, but I don’t think there is one.
Because the more you work on the skill or trade you desire the more your competence will grow, and then confidence comes along for the ride. (I’ve got a few podcast episodes you might enjoy if you want more on this topic. You could also Google the Dunning-Kruger effect.)
My advice:
Spend time practicing the skill you want to sharpen. Try new things. Be brave enough to get it wrong. (I also suggest finding people to work with or for at the beginning who will give you grace as the newbie you are.)
Learn from your mistakes. Take breaks from the intensity of learning and trying new things. Do other unrelated activities that bring you joy and remind you of who you are and who God made you. And then go back and keep practicing those new skills.
When I wanted to be a writer, I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I read books about writing. I edited my writing and reworked articles to make them better. And sometimes I submitted garbage, so then I studied and figured out how to not do that again.
It’ll be that way for you too.
And then…
You must, must, must remember that every “expert” you see on social media or IRL started out as a beginner too. Every single one of them. The difference-maker was that they didn’t give up when it felt hard or tedious. (That’s the kicker right there: Perseverance for the win!!)
Whatever you do, don’t let being new at something disqualify you from trying it.
You’d never tell a 1-year-old child that just because he can’t walk that he should just forget the whole thing. Of course not.
So don’t do it to yourself.
Grab onto something steady, like Jesus. Plant your feet and pull up with all your strength. Wobble across the room, and go find some friends who are also learning to walk (or crawl, or eat solids, or toss a ball) and have fun together pursuing the desires God has planted in your hearts and discovering what His version of that could look like for you!
Want some help finding those people?
Click the image below to get on the waitlist for The Dreamer Lab (doors open quarterly) for Christian women who are looking to gain clarity, build community, and grow confidence to finally step into a dream.
