How To Prove Yourself, To Yourself
When we are trying to grow our business, increase our influence, grow our audience, or increase our sales, we often think that what we need to do is prove ourselves to other people.
We need to convince our potential customers that what we have to offer is worth paying for and that it will do what we say it will do.
We need to convince people that what we are writing, singing, saying, filming, or performing is worth their time and that we are someone worth following.
We need to convince our clients to sign up for our services, proving to them that we are worth their investment and that we have the answers to the questions they have been asking.
There is a significant amount of time invested in wondering how we are going to do this proving and this convincing. How can we make them see the value that we do in our products? How can we make people see that we are good at what we do and that we care about serving our customers? How can we make people choose us over our competitors?
No doubt, there are plenty of business books, online mentors, Ted Talks, and other resources available within just a few clicks that attempt to help us answer some of these questions. And, there are answers to those questions.
The problem is, those aren’t always the right questions to be asking, particularly when we are just getting started.
Our biggest challenge when we are getting started is convincing ourselves. We have to prove to ourselves that we are someone worth listening to. We have to prove to ourselves that we have something valuable to offer. We have to prove to ourselves that we can get the job done.
But, there’s another layer.
More important than the outcome based thinking mentioned above is the proof that we have to see regarding who we are on the inside.
If you are a creative, a small business owner, an entrepreneur, a new parent, or anyone aspiring towards anything, chances are that you have asked yourself some of these questions:
Who am I to start this?
Who is going to listen to me?
Why would anyone follow what I’m doing?
How am I ever going to _______?
There’s no need to continue, but the list goes on, right? Most of the searching that we are doing here has to do with what’s on the inside, or better yet, what we worry that might not be on the inside.
Toughness, resilience, intelligence, curiosity, interview skills, being a “real” writer, being a successful __________. We wonder if we have what it takes. We want to possess these skills, we feel like we need more of them, and we wonder if we’ll ever have enough of whatever it is we think we need to get there.
So, the proving is to ourselves, not anyone else, at least not initially. What can we do to start believing that we are tough enough? What can we do to start believing that we are knowledgeable enough? What can we do to start believing that we are ready?
There’s a great principle called the As-if principle that you may have heard of. William James sums it up best with this quote:
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
Sometimes, quotes are easier said than done. While I love this, and William James is certainly a brilliant and influential man, I think we can add a piece to this that will help us accomplish this goal, and prove the things to ourselves that we are currently doubting.
The encouragement is to ask yourself this question when you come upon an obstacle, or when you hand yourself the burden of proof.
What would someone who is _____________ do in a situation like this?
We could ask, what would a person like me do in a situation like this, hoping that we’ll go, “Yeah, someone like me who is brave and bold and willing to risk it all would just go for it right here!” The problem is that we don’t currently feel like we are brave and bold and willing to risk it all. So we might readily answer with, “Well, last time you wimped out, and the time before that, when you did go for it, you failed miserably. So someone like you would probably just do that again.”
Instead, we think about the person we are becoming, and we ask,
What would someone courageous do in a situation like this?
What would someone who fully believed in their product do in a situation like this?
What would someone who didn’t need validation from others do in a situation like this?
Get it?
We can take that burden off of ourselves, and focus on the trait we desire. Yes, it’s a bit of a psychological trick. Most of our paths to successes and failures alike are. You have to play the game, but you get to decide how you want to play it.
What about the proof?
The proof comes after you start making decisions based on what a _____ person would do in a situation like this. You have to get the reps in. You have to start believing. You have to start convincing yourself that you are brave, or bold, or a good public speaker, or a writer, or whatever or whoever you are hoping to become.
When you can start consistently asking the questions, and acting on the answers,
What would a ____________ do in a situation like this?
Then you will start to believe that you are indeed a person like this.
Simple, but not easy, just like a lot of things. Once we are honest about the answers, which usually isn’t too difficult, we have to then do the thing that we have acknowledged that a kind, intelligent, patient, hardworking, person might do in a situation like this. But I love this line of questioning because at least initially, it takes the pressure off. We don’t have to decide what we would do right now. Instead, we can decide what someone else, who possesses the traits we are aspiring towards, would do.
Ultimately, just like a lot of things, it will then come down to our decision to act.
You’ve probably looked at someone else, or at least at their character traits that you admire or long for, and said, “Man, I could never be…”
Of course, you could. The challenge for us right now is that we just haven’t been…enough times yet. And that’s fixable. We just have to start being more…more often.
We can do it.
Our biggest obstacle is us.
Most of us require a lot of proof. So let’s start giving ourselves a little bit of proof, bit by bit, so we’ll start to believe it while we are becoming it.
I’m pulling for you,
Bryan
