I am one of the most confident people I know. I always assume that I will be awesome at any new task, and never doubt my ability to achieve whatever it is that I want to achieve. I don’t have an issue with public speaking, I love being on camera, and besides bugs, there’s very little that I fear. I will always bet on myself. Do I have setbacks or failures? Of course I do. But they are only minor impediments to me getting to where I want to go. I don’t have imposter syndrome, and I certainly don’t have voices in my head that say “I can’t…”
Why am I telling you all of this? Because I want to tell you a little story about a recent moment of doubt. And I want to tell you what I did to get over it, in the hopes that it may be helpful to you in your less-than-confident moments.
This past weekend, I was at the Cleveland Magazine Best of Cleveland Party, with my business, Bombay Taxi. You see, Bombay Taxi had won Editor’s Pick for Best Online Jewelry Store in its very first year of operation and I was on top of the world. For the first year ever, the Best Of… Party was allowing vendors to sell, and I was having a great night- women were stopping by my booth, oohing and ahhing over the pieces, providing lots of lovely feedback. I had a busy evening selling, and then right as we were about to pack up, it happened. A gentlemen stopped by, and as I reached over to hand him my card, he gave me a dismissive wave. And then this conversation:
Guy: “What is this nickel content in this jewelry?”
Me: “Well, most of my pieces are brass”
Guy: “So you don’t know”
Me: “No, I don’t know. Is it something that you’re allergic to?”
Guy: “How can you….” shakes his head in disbelief
Now, keep in mind, this man was not my ideal customer. If anything, I think he was a jeweler because he was wearing an extraordinary amount of diamond jewelry for a man who was very clearly not an athlete. Second, I am very open about what my jewelry is made of, and I would NEVER suggest that someone buy something that they might be allergic to. But this man, and his reaction… it planted that seed of DOUBT.
Needless to say, I immediately googled if brass contains nickel (it does not), and then proceeded to OBSESS over this man and what he said for the rest of the evening, well into the morning. In fact, it was so bad that I was even having dream rebuttals to this guy in my sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, still thinking about this, I was amazed at how I had let one man and his comment derail an entire evening’s worth of positive feedback. And yet, as women, we do this ALL. THE. TIME. We will wipe out any feeling of progress and accomplishment by opening that door to doubt, even when there is no reason for it to exist.
So after almost 12 hours of obsessing, I had enough, and then I tried something I heard about in a podcast. I chanted. Yes. Chanted. Silently, and in my head, but there was definite chanting. And my chant was this “I love and approve of you Shibani. You will be successful at anything you do.” And I mentally repeated this over and over until that feeling of doubt gradually disappeared. I would be lying if I said I had not thought about the incident again over this week, but every time I think about it, I chant again until it goes away. And each time, it takes fewer chants to get over that feeling of doubt.
So the next time you find yourself in a moment of self-doubt, give this chant a try “I love and approve of you [insert your name]. You will be successful at anything you do.”
Because you should always believe in you. And because that chant might just come true.
