Reveling in Competence
A vital touchstone for every self-doubter
Listen to a clip of my interview with Rob Jolles (Pocket-Sized Podcast) on doubt, competence, and mindset. To listen to the entire conversation, visit www.Jolles.com/podcast.
Intense bouts of self-doubt re-paint our world, both on the inside and the outside. Like depression, which can de-saturate our perception of color and flatten our emotions, self-doubt affects how we process information and circumstance—often without realizing we’ve made a shift.
In a doubtful state, we may lose sight of objective validity in two key ways: (1) by relying on distorted self-perceptions and/or (2) by exhibiting a temporary inability to fairly and reasonably evaluate an external circumstance, including its associated risks and outcomes.
For example, suppose you are ordinarily a confident public speaker, but after a series of events that cause you to question your value (whether to others or to an institution, or both), at your next speaking gig, you tremble at the podium, your throat goes dry, and you can’t read the words of your speech.
That happens because your self-perception has been heavily influenced by a doubting frame of mind. Your sense of your role, your place, your capacity to manage your environment has been challenged. Your amygdala interprets this challenge as a threat and your body registers that with a fight-or-flight autonomic response.
Or suppose you’ve been known to take calculated risks with your marketing budget, making big bets on, say, Facebook and Amazon ads, which historically repay you (your company) with profit-making sales gains and customer retention opportunities. Until you hit a rough patch and your marketing ROI goes to hell for a couple of quarters. And suddenly, you hesitate to approve any advertising campaigns; you freeze up and find yourself unable to calmly evaluate even seemingly modest opportunities.
Again, this is because you’ve slipped into doubt mode and your ability to make a rational, calculated decision—to take a well-informed risk—is derailed or perhaps dysregulated by your deep-seated second-guessing and fear of future failure.
What’s going on here?
Every time we lose sight of our proven capacity to be responsible, resourceful actors in the face of challenging circumstances we also lose sight of our competence.
A sense of competence serves as the quiet bedrock of our professional and personal identity and performance. Competence implies a sense of reasonable mastery over our own impulses and actions as well as with respect to how we respond to external stimuli.
A sense of competence develops over time as we mature and usually depends on, and deepens, as we amass a variety of successes, both large and small. We rarely feel competent as a result of completing one task or hurdle. Running your first-ever 5k race may inspire a desire for competence in this field—but you are unlikely to call yourself a competent runner until you’ve completed multiple races. First-time parents rarely feel competent at the outset, but by the time a second or third child arrives, a claim to reasonable competence generally falls into place.
When self-doubt comes on strong, our core belief in our competence often flies out the window. Yesterday, we were unbeatable. Today? We’re total losers. The switch can flip fast. As sales coach Dan Gordon put it recently on LinkedIn, “It's so funny that I can hit home runs day after day, but one pop fly to second base, and I start wondering if I still belong in the major league.”
Once a doubt state is triggered and our competence seems to come untethered, we may find ourselves deeply embarrassed, struggle with a sense of lost self-control, and experience anger or rage, which we turn mainly on ourselves for coming so unglued.
Self-doubt leads us to believe the rules of the game have been changed without our knowledge or permission. Situations that appeared simple and certain now look fraught with peril. Decisions we were set to make without losing sleep suddenly loom as irresponsibly risky bets.
This dynamic sets up a spiral that leads us to conclude that we don’t know what we’re doing. Not anymore. If this feeling persists long enough, mental health can truly suffer. A competent middle-manager who finds herself out of work for over a year is likely to experience—and even to mourn—a deep loss of feeling competent, as external circumstances would seem to suggest she has indeed “misplaced” her competence. That feeling is likely to spread, like an emotional cancer, to other areas of her life, which can lead to isolation, depression, and potentially suicidal thoughts if strong support networks are not in place.
Here’s the funny thing:
Throughout this period of discomfort, while we’re in the grip of doubt, our competence hasn’t actually gone anywhere. We’re still the discerning, experienced people we were before. Our knowledge is intact.
What has changed, however, is, first, our willingness to trust in our competence. And when we lose that trust, we lose connection with the core part of our identity that reminds us we are competent in the first place—and how.
And second, the context in which we practiced and asserted our competence on a daily basis may also have changed. The out-of-work manager no longer has tangible projects and goals against which to measure and assert her competence. The consultant who loses out on four proposal pitches in a row loses sight of what winning looks like. These shifts in context, however brief, trigger the self-doubting mindset.
The good news: Both the suspension of trust and the sense of a shifted context are temporary states that can be mitigated or reversed—if we’re willing to pay close attention to how our mindset operates.
First and foremost, make it a habit to deliberately revel in your competence.
Remind yourself every day how, when, and why you achieved success, completed projects, reached milestones, etc. If need be, ask friends and colleagues to remind you what you’re particularly good at and how that has shown up in various ways.
While reveling in your competence, nod to your doubts, acknowledge their power to potentially help you make even better decisions by forcing you to revisit plans, but do not treat them as final arbiters.
Notice that your competency has longevity, it’s ingrained, whereas doubts are often fleeting. Even when they’re not, there’s a distinction between, on the one hand, your enduring capacity to problem-solve, analyze difficult issues, juggle competing priorities, set and attain ambitious goals, and, on the other hand, your capacity to adapt to changed circumstances by learning new skills and tools that enhance your existing core competencies.
You are not your doubts—but you are, in part, your competencies.
Focus on your power to make things happen, while noticing the doubts that hold you back. Revel fearlessly in your competence and push your doubts to the margins. This mindset will help you weather the downturns and prepare you for new wins.
WRANGLING THE DOUBT MONSTER: FIGHTING FEARS, FINDING INSPIRATION by Amy L. Bernstein
“Once you begin to read it, you will be tempted to devour the whole book in one session. But once you've done that, take it one day at a time and savor the dilemmas and the solutions. And get back to writing.” –Leslie Baldwin Goetsch, Director, Northern Virginia Writing Project
I needed this today Amy!