Confidence.

That is something that just doesn’t come naturally to me. Self doubt invades almost every facet of my life. But mostly with respect to my brain. Do I even have one? Sometimes my incessant struggle with decision-making reinforces the lack of any gray matter in my skull. In fact my ability to ever make a decision at all is sketchy. The “what ifs” cloud any chance of telling myself “OK THIS is what you need to do”.

This can also be called being an over-thinker, which I most definitely am – about almost everything. I can stew and stew forever, never really getting anywhere. On the one hand, over-thinking can be positive. The consideration of all pros and cons of a decision is often necessary, especially when the decision involves other people or major life events. On the other hand, over-thinking is, I now know, a method of stalling the making of a decision. It goes something like this. “Hmmmmmm. If I do ‘A’ this might happen and how joyful would that be. But if I do ‘B’, the joy might be even greater despite the difficulty that doing ‘B’ will no doubt involve. What if I just do nothing and stay the course? That might be ok too”. This goes on and on and on. If I had a greater measure of confidence in myself and my judgment the inner argument might be extinguished or at least be a bit more brief.

Oddly, at the same time with certain things I can be a jumper. Like when it comes to having pretty things. I have little resistance when it comes to that and tend to leap right in – this is NOT a good trait for someone whose main concern at this point is to avoid aging in a tent on the side of a highway with a shopping cart named Karen. It is, I know, also another way to have immediate gratification and fill some void that I am otherwise ignoring. But that’s another topic altogether.

Having confidence in myself – both personally and professionally – is something I long for. And it’s not as if I have a solid reason for my lack of it. I’m sure it has something to do with my childhood – doesn’t everything? Particularly the day I graduated from law school and my Dad, God bless him, said “Don’t you worry Rose (his nickname for me), you’ll always be able to have a job because you are such a good typist”. Seriously Dad what were you thinking as I stood with my law degree hot off the press? Probably you were just giving me a bit of faith that I would always be OK. Still it really didn’t do much to bolster confidence in my new hard earned profession.

I have never really been sure about why this too is so hard for me. Except of course for the #1 ball and chain I drag around with me – the “imposter syndrome”. I still think there is another Karen Butz who passed the bar and that it surely wasn’t me. I guess since I’ve been practicing for over 30 years and no one else has shown up to claim my Bar number, I should give this one up.

I am definitely more confident than I probably have ever been but there remains the deep sense that – surely I can’t be right about this or that. Who do I think I am to be right about anything? And to be honest I’m fucking sick of it. It annoys me and pisses me off each time I doubt myself. Maybe that’s the beginning of letting it go. That glowing ball of light that embodies confidence seems bigger now but still just out of reach.

Courage

And so now on to courage – the other glowing ball of light. This one is big but really just an extension of confidence. Because if you have confidence in yourself and your choices, then stepping into a change that will make them reality should be a no brainer. But for me, the “what if I’m wrong” mantra usually causes suspended action. I freeze in time and space. Sometimes for so long that it’s easier to just kick the decision to the curb and stay the course. Courage goes out the window. I grab the hand of the cowardly lion and we just skip along, around and around the circular yellow brick road we go.

Making change of any kind takes courage. I’ve made a lot of changes over the course of my life so I guess you could say that I have some modicum of courage. But for really deep set reasons having the courage to make big changes often escapes me. A consideration of all outcomes – and there’s the over-thinker again – tends to delay change, which again can often be positive. Some things should not be rushed. But at some point – as I tend to say more and more these days – there is no more time to waste and courage has to take the lead.

Or I guess you could say it’s time to have the courage to take a leap of faith. And maybe that’s the crux of it. Having enough faith, or dare I say confidence, in your choices to jump in. To stop asking is this the right thing to do? What if it’s not? What if a, b, c or d happen and the result sucks? Well my answer more and more is “so what”. Maybe it will suck. And you’ll deal with it in the best way you can. That’s all any of us can really do isn’t it?

So what’s the end game here? I’m not sure there is one. But I think that lack of confidence and the courage to move can easily lead to regret. There is one thing I am certain about and that is this: regret is something I don’t ever want to have. I can think of little worse than reaching the end of life and wishing I had made those moves that always seemed too scary or challenging.

Funny that I use the word “move” since free physical movement is one of the things I struggle with. And I do know that Karen 1 is the root of that. After all she couldn’t move for far too long. If you haven’t yet met Karen 1, you can read a little bit about her here: Karen 1.

Maybe it’s all connected. Actually there is no maybe about it. Confidence encourages moving freely from the inside out (see how I did that?). And there it is. For now.