Behold the Stars

Tip #28: Have Faith in Others’ Faith in You. September 16, 2008

David plays music in local clubs. All his life people have told him how talented he is.  At a normal performance, he gets requests for his original songs, girls cry when the sad ones remind them of a recent breakup, and couples often ask him to perform favorite songs at their weddings. But while people are complimenting him, his inner voice is talking as well: “Didn’t they see that you missed a note on the solo? And what about the flubbed word in the second verse?” He always suspected that either they were lying to be kind or had tin ears. He wants to be a musician, but he doubts that he’ll go anywhere.

Janice dreams of being a photographer. She has had shows in local galleries, won awards, and has had photographs in magazines. Other photographers like her work and tell her so, but she still isn’t sure she has the goods.

Diane is looking for a new job. By all standards, she has had a good career, but she was recently laid off. She takes the layoff to be a cosmic assessment of her professional worth and has begun to find in her past reasons she wasn’t good enough to be kept on.  Despite the fact that everyone who knows her or looks at her resume is impressed, she finds it harder and harder to believe that she is worthy of a good job.

Does any of this sound familiar? Is there some part of your life in which you believe yourself to be deficient, yet for which you continue to recieve accolades? Many times we rate ourselves against the highest and most perfect, when those around us judge us on a more human level, one which may be more appropriate to our place in the process.  In other words, while we beat ourselves for what we aren’t, others love us for what we are.

Well, maybe it’s time we started to listen to them.

Sometimes you have to believe in somebody else’s belief in you until your own belief kicks in.
~ Les Brown

We all face times during which our faith in ourselves falters. These periods have something in common — a sense of crisis related to our personal key issues, like jobs, dreams, and love.  In other words, The Big Ones. When we doubt ourselves, we can’t give the effort, or project the confidence, necessary to truly go after whatever it is we want. We need to find some help. And you know what? Help is all around us in the form of the friends and family who support us. We can connect with their faith in us and use it as a crutch to get us through the tough times. Les Brown sums it up nicely: “Sometimes you have to believe in somebody else’s belief in you until your own belief kicks in.”

It seems so obvious, really. We all want people to believe in us, but when they do, we discount their faith: “Oh, she’s just saying that because she’s my friend,” or “That’s all very nice, but he doesn’t really understand.” The truth is that the people who believe in us aren’t idiots, nor do they have low standards. They just see us the way we’d see ourselves — if we didn’t have all that useless insecurity. Because they don’t see or feel our insecurity and self-doubt, they can only see our better selves.

Today, let’s pay attention to the people around us who believe in us. Let’s have faith in their faith in us and resolutely ignore the whiney voice of our smaller selves.  And while we’re at it, let’s thank them for their support by reflecting back to them their better selves. They’re worth it, and so are we.

Make a great day.