Confidence & Competence: The Power of Self-respect
This is an ordinary story of a (lack of) self-control or how to expand the human heart to life's full measure.
A wise woman once said: “Whenever I get stuck on something, I'm like, 'What would I do if I wasn't afraid? What would I write if I wasn't afraid? What would I say in this situation if I wasn't afraid?”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of the most celebrated persons in the UK. She is cute, smart and brave. Fear is the enemy. Why do we believe it? It lives inside of us, without our invitation occupying the biggest rooms and not paying the rent at all.
We cannot even hide in our own mind, nowhere. Not in a place, not in time. Only if we develop strong self-respect and we do not want to waste any second anymore, realizing the futility of constant defensiveness, we can say we became more confident.
And I believe once we are more confident, our competence comes out more clearly. At least, that is how my mind works. I constantly doubt why would anyone want to hear anything I have to say, even if I have been deeply immersed in a topic for decades?!
OH, HOW I HOPE FOR A CHANGE
I decided I will start writing, start talking as if someone is listening, as if someone cares about what I have to say. This coincides with Mitchell’s Memories. A lovely man from Brooklyn I met in Waltham Forest Town Hall who started recording his life story today and who just posted it on his YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVgRyE0Ps_c&t=23s
He is such an inspiration. He forwarded me this first part on WhatsApp half an hour ago and it touched me deeply. It immediately reminded me of my favorite book “Hadrian’s Memoirs” by Marguerite Yourcenar. That incredible story, I read in many different languages, but the one translated by Grace Fink, her lover is the best ever. My French is not good at the moment, but one day I will learn it, gain more self-control and I will read the book in the original. I learned German in six months and it never left me. I studied, wrote and talked fluently ever since. I have to remember that I can.
Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour is someone I admired since my childhood. I lived in books, day and night. I slept on books.
I used to share a room with my brother and there was only a wardrobe dividing the room, so the night lamp was out of the question. I had torchlight under my cushion and piles of books because if I liked an author I would get all of the available books in the local library, continuing my reading marathon with a torchlight under the duvet until the early morning hours, when my dad would come and tuck us in and open the windows to get some fresh air in.
“Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man,“ Marguerite Yourcenar wrote and I can really testify that.
My husband now tolerates my Netflix marathons. Thank God, there are not many shows I like, but if I do, I watch three series in three nights. I have no self-control. I am not patient. And I am terribly curious. That is why I am so slow in my process of rebirth. I get so easily distracted. That is why I chose to be a journalist! You are an expert for a day or a week, as long as you work on a piece. Then you move on.
Tonight I decided to write, but tomorrow I might get mesmerized by some other idea. Anyway, I wanted to share it with you.
YES, IMPOSTER SYNDROME IS REAL
Confidence to speak is not something I lack, yet uncertainty in my competence has just moved in here, inside of my head. I never had inhabitants of this sort before. I couldn’t even understand what people were talking about. But now, I definitely can relate to it, especially since so many people tell me that I might have it. Well, I have decided this night not to be afraid, not to allow uninvited guests anymore in my top room, a room at the top, or the loft: my mind.
Two days ago someone contacted me and asked to write an article about the top ten pieces of advice for meditation. I said, sure and in no time an email was sent. If I had time to think, I would never ever write this article. Not that quickly or not at all. Who am I to write about meditation after Shantideva, Thich Nhat Hanh and so many masters who embodied it?!
Nevertheless, now when I think about it, if nothing else in my life gives me the credibility to write about it, I left the “normal” world in 2006 to join a 3-year retreat. I did something remarkable, people keep saying. For me, that was not even a matter of choice. It was the only thing to do. Until 2009, constantly studying and practicing, I accomplished similar marathons, this time not literature or movies, but in so-called preliminary practices: 100 000 prostrations in order to purify pride, for example, 100 000 of mantras to develop compassion and purify jealousy, 100 000 mantras for purifying hatred/aversion, 100 000 of mandala offerings to purify attachment, and many millions of other mantras. That was mostly night shift accumulation as during the day I worked and attended teachings. We were isolated, just like now, except we have chosen it ourselves. So there was not much distraction. Not much sleep either.
SIMULTANEOUS AND GRADUAL METHODS
It seems like I had some self-control after all, living for ten years on the top of the hill, without cappuccino or a movie theatre. For somebody who lived life to the fullest, who always lived in a city, who never learned to drive the car as I was usually driven by my colleagues, photographers or who could just walk to the next interview and then party all night long, just to finish the article at 7am, that was - a bit different.
My friends said that they were not surprised when I left everything and that only me would do such a radical change. I learned early in my life that I am not a gradual approach person. I am all or nothing. And that is something that gives me a lot to think about.
But let me leave it all now for some other time.
It is getting late. I could easily pull an all-nighter, but hey, I do want to change and I also have a full day of yoga classes to teach.
And as Marguerite Yourcenar said in her autobiography: “Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.” I respect myself for that the most, I have done things, I moved to unfamiliar lands and I have become a country on my own. I live in my heart. All I wanted is to expand it so everyone can be embraced within it, in an unbroken experience of my life’s full measure.
And also I need to go to the toilet.
In 1980. Yourcenar was elected the very first female member of the Académie française, an institution renowned for its dominance of male members only. The bathroom labels needed to be changed in the academy, so as to then read as “Messieurs | Marguerite Yourcenar”. Can you imagine? In 1980?
OK, OK, good night.