HINT: It’s not about you.

Try this:

Think about walking into a room full of higher-ups and proving yourself to them, your worth, your value. Feel the feeling of being everything you have in that moment. It’s just you and your ability to justify the air you breathe. You start to engage in conversation as just you: your accomplishments, your job, the money you make, your status, your clothing, your education, your relationships.

Now, think about walking into that same room with an idea or a message or something tangible you believe in. Feel the feeling of standing not to prove or defend yourself but to express or present the value of something else. Perhaps it’s your business, your art, your services, or a cause.

You are now not just you, you are simply the custodian of something other than yourself. The pressure relaxes as you stand for something other than yourself. The need to validate or justify the skin you are in softens and you can start to feel a freedom, a lightness.

In the second scenario there is no pressure to have a specific identity – to use confidence as a front. The focus is on something beyond the self, even if that thing moves through the self – like ideas or writings or emotions or even love. They move through you, but they are not you.

Reduce Yourself to Zero

This is the key to getting out of your own way.  Over-identification with the self is a process that feeds the ego and stresses our separation from others. It magnifies our identity and thus feeds into our obsessive insecurities around personal worth and value and confidence. If we feel we are on our own and are all that we have, of course we are going to focus on how to bolster that image above all else. 

I’m not confident because of me. I have confidence because of what I stand for, how I am of service, what I have to give, because I am a tiny but integral part of the whole and I have the whole to back me up. Because I am a conduit, a vessel, a custodian for creativity, expression, thought, love and change.

This idea is core to many wisdom traditions and was popularized by Ghandi. The more we give the more we have, which means that you are infinite just as zero is infinite.

Honor the Creation, Not the Creator

So when you feel stuck around your identity and what you think you should be worth, focus on nurturing and elevating your offerings above all else. What have you created? What do you have to give? This is the garden where confidence grows.

When we get too wrapped up in how we should be honored personally, we kill our present or future babies in order to feed our own ego. This focus on the self rather than the output leads us to a cycle of feeling unfulfilled and inadequate, losing sight of our contributions.

No matter your craft or job, the idea is to be in service to the product or service or purpose.  What you create is your master. Be of service to that which flows through you, and the self will get out of the way – bringing true confidence back to your essence.

The truth is, humans are flawed.  If it is about and for ourselves we will never be happy. To quote Marianne Williamson, “Jesus didn’t say ‘love thyself,’ he said ‘love thy brother.’”

And in this vein, you don’t have purpose – you follow it.

And, you don’t follow your passion, you bring it with you.

At the end of the day it just isn’t about YOU.