Selling Short

By Renee Shay, Harvesting Thought

–explore–

I recently put in for an opportunity to move across country which would be back to an area where I have lived in the past.  It would be for the same job I am doing now but in a different city than I live in now.  It would come with all sorts of newness like where to live, what to drive to work, who I would be working with?  What to wear?  Will they even select me?  Was my resume good enough?  What will my current boss think?  Will I have the confidence to overcome challenges of working in an unfamiliar environment with new people?  Can I do the job even though I have years of experience doing the same job already?  Self-doubt, uncertainty about whether it is the right decision for me while minimizing the potential of me getting it creeps into my mind.  I wonder how much of this selling short has prevented me from taking other actions in my life.

Where do I sell myself short?  Why do I sell myself short?  How do I develop confidence in the areas of my life that I have sold myself short?  These are the questions I ponder this morning while contemplating a career move.  As I walk into my living room, turn my lights on, waiting for my cup of coffee to brew, I look around and notice a photo that I have hanging on my wall.  There is nothing personal about it other than the memory of when I took it.  The reason I have it on the wall is that it is impersonal.  If you are going to sell your house, you should minimize and put away personal items so that prospective buyers can see themselves in your space not see you in it.  I have been staging my house for years in anticipation of selling, but just have not taken any significant step toward doing that until now.  This photo I had taken while out on a day trip up the coast from Scotts Valley to San Francisco, California while driving on Highway 1, it catches my eye this morning?  It anonymously draws introspection when you study it. 

Driving, taking photos, and exploring is something I love to do.  This photo was taken not on my first visit to the Hi Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel in Pescadero, California, but somewhere I have been to numerous times, a destination along the way.  The image is of a young man with his back toward me, standing on a rock while leaning his elbows on a fence, peering out toward the Pacific Ocean.  You can see the worn-out white paint on the picket fence around the area he leans on.  It is a very contemplative image and the most interesting part of it to me is the fact that it is unintentionally out of focus like stain-glass imagery.  Why this image is out of focus when the rest of my photos on that trip were not is baffling to me.  What is ironic about it catching my eye this very morning while I consider a move cross country, why I write about it, is the fact that it is from the same area of the country I am considering moving back to.  So, it just may be unconsciously not a coincidence at all.

–challenge–

Why do I feel the need to sell myself short?  Is it if I am let down, it is not that far down to go?  Is it because I am not all in anyway?  There are costs to change, am I fearful of them, whether monetary or personal?  Every day someone makes a change, packs up their home, their belongings, and heads to a new adventure.  Some take jobs in other cities and do not pack up; they live in both places, never fully committing to the new place.  I see that a lot, people taking promotions in other cities and leave their families behind.  This is not a new phenomenon.  Heck, I even did it, took a promotion in a different city before but never moved there.  I would spend the night in cheap hotel rooms when I was too tired from long workdays, split shifts or the weather was too bad to drive.  I even rented an apartment for a few months but mostly drove the distance back and forth for two years until my relationship at the time had ended and I had to decide on where to live next.  So, it is not as foreign to me as it might seem now that I am thinking about it.  The cost you could say is not always about money now is it, come to think about it.

Ideally, I do not want to leave the area I live in now.  It has lots of fresh waters, lakes, rivers, and woods where I can explore, fish, four-wheel and go camping.  It has the four distinct seasons that you tend to miss when you have lived in an area that is not much more than rainy and cold for a few months then hot.  But the other place, when I am there, I also feel at home.  I have family in both places, and it would be great to reconnect with the others I do not now get much time with.  I have more stuff to deal with if this happens, like a house, animals, toys, vehicles, unlike before when I just has a few personal belongings.  It was nothing to load up and head out but now is different, isn’t it?

I was recently sucked into playing the lottery.  I do not play it because I do not like spending the energy on dreaming of something that the odds of happening are so great, it will not happen.  But every now and then, when the excitement of a large jackpot is high, I jump in and play and say to myself, someone must win, why not me.  I did not win this last time even though I bought a couple tickets, and I went through the dreaming for a couple of days.  Alas, someone else won; good for them.  I then moved on with my day after hearing the news.

But what about the things in life that I do not have such big odds to overcome, the odds are more in my favor than I think?  It is riskier putting in for some of those things is it not?  I might win and then what?  The then what, oh my, more action will be needed, fear and panic set in.  It is scary sometimes to think about the “then what?”  How I spend time talking myself out of it and sometimes relieved that nothing changes in the end.  How many times has that happened?  I hold back, I do not give it my all, is that so I can lessen the sting of losing?  It that why I sell myself short? 

How often do I attempt to match my expectations with my own false perceptions of my worth based upon what I believe others may think of me?  Do I have this all backwards?  I reduce my self-confidence on a matter to match some preconceived notion of what others might think my talents, my capabilities are?  Meaning, I bring myself there first not the other way around?  Selling myself short before others get a chance to?  Talk about competitive.  I beat them to the punch at my own peril.  I win every time I do it but am I really winning when it is just me beating myself up?

–expand–

There is one area of my life I never held back.  I went into it with confidence and that area was sports.  I never sold myself short in that area of my life.  I stepped onto any court, any field and believed in myself.  Of course, there were nerves, but the confidence was evident, and the nerves only lasted through the first dripple of the ball or crack of the bat.  Why is that?  What is the difference for me between sports and other areas of my life like a career? 

Can I learn to approach my work, other interests in my life, like I approach sport competitions?  So often in a game I do not know what the final score will be, who will win or who will lose but I give it my all with confidence that I am talented and capable of playing the game just as much as anyone else.  I see others playing the game of life and think they have it all worked out ahead of time, but they do not either.  Others that I see doing the things like taking new jobs in new cities have the same stresses about where they are going to live, about how they are going to make the move, similar doubts, and fears as I have. 

I keep getting pulled back to the photo hanging on my wall with the young man leaning on the worn-out white picket fence that I mentioned earlier. Is this proof enough for me that he was not the first to stand upon that rock and will not be the last? I do not have a decision yet to make, but if there will come the time to have to make one about moving, do I believe, do I know, that I am not the first or the last to have to make such a decision?

I am hoping as I go through the next few chapters of my life that I do not continue to sell myself short.  If it is this opportunity that further develops into a new reality or something else, I do know that I am now opened to explore the possibilities of a new adventure. The door is now open. Just like the lottery, no matter the odds, I cannot win the game if I sit on the sidelines and decide not to play.  I need to stop selling short and believe that I have what it takes to win in every arena of my life.