Self Your Esteem

All---

It was a simple  exercise.  Teacher Mark called Teacher Joann and myself to the front of the room so that our literacy-level ESL students could practice describing us.

"Teacher Mark is a man.  Teacher Nevets is a man.  Teacher Joann is a woman."


"Teacher Mark is tall.  Teacher Joann is short.  Teacher Nevets is average."


"Teacher Mark has short hair.  Teacher Joann has long hair.  Teacher Nevets has average hair."

Teacher Mark didn't realize that he was about to shock and confuse me.

***

As a young teen I was overcome with allergies and asthma that severely impacted my ability to exercise during parts of the year.  At the same time I was also given a lengthy regimen of steroid medication that through off my body's ability to get any weight-related benefit from the exercise I was able to do.  I spent over twenty years being heavy, after being a scrawny, monkey of a kid.

I never quite shifted my mental image of myself.  At my heaviest, I was 240 lbs at about 5'9", but I never quite felt like I was as overweight as I was.  Some folks have remarked since losing weight that they hadn't realized I'd been 240.  Even when I was that heavy people would sometimes remark, "You're hard to figure, because you're overweight, but you just keep going."  My weight didn't stop me from doing forensics in tight spaces, from doing archaeology, or from throwing my all into whatever sporting activity I was trying my hand at.

While my mental image of myself probably underestimated my weight, I wasn't blind of stupid and I knew I was overweight and that I had a lot to lose.

Over the past 18 months or so, I've managed to lose quite a bit of weight.  At the beginning of October, I was down to 164 lbs.

***

"Who's fat?" asked Teacher Mark.


"Teacher Mark is fat," the class answered with no prompting.


"That's right.  Who's average?" asked Teacher Mark.


"Teacher Joann is average," the class answered with no prompting.


"That's right.  Who's skinny or thin?" asked Teacher Mark.


"Teacher Nevets is skinny," the class answered with no prompting.


"That's right."


***

I was completely thrown-off.  As soon as Teacher Mark has started that exercise, I had already cast myself as the model for the average descriptor.  I think I actually made a googly-eyed expression of surprise.

***

I'm not going to say that the words of others are unimportant.   There are few words for how angry I get when I see others actively undermining the self esteem of others and destroying their belief in their dreams and aspirations.  It's also true that we all sometimes need a little validation, an outside check to assure us that our estimation of ourselves and our work is accurate.  And, yes, the encouraging words of others can be a valuable and powerful buoy to a flagging spirit.

But, to me, the lesson I learned the other night in class was this:

It's all too easy to undermine your own own self-esteem.


People who've known me compliment me for my weight loss.  Teacher Mark and the class were all in agreement that I'm thin, even though they never knew me at near my heaviest.  If anyone isn't sure that I'm thin, if anyone is uncomfortable describing me as thin -- it's me.

Just me.

It's my own body image.

It's my own willingness to compliment myself and accept my own success.

***

Eminem, photo by www.glenjamn.com

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?
-- Eminem, "Lose Yourself"


So here's the point of all this.  This isn't about weight loss.  This isn't even really about me.  This is me saying to all of you, to any of you who happen to be reading this, Own your self esteem.  Yes, others will have an impact on how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself, but your self esteem is, by definition your own.  Step up to the plate and claim it.

I'm not selling the power of positive thinking or self-actualization.  What I'm doing is asking you to consider these questions --

Are you an author, trapped in a self-image of "trying to be a writer"?

Are you an artist, keeping your paintings to yourself until they're "good enough"?

Are you a guy, not asking out out that girl who you think might like you, because you can't imagine why she would?

Are you a woman, afraid to step out after your dream because of a parent who told you that you wouldn't be able to cut it?

You may have been wounded by others, but maybe it's time you re-cast how you think of yourself, because maybe your self-image is lagging behind reality.  Even if others are getting you down, there's no reason for you to pile on to yourself.

.Nevets.

What Confidence Is - and What It Isn't

All---

Starting next week, I will be running a new series on my blog featuring stories from successful authors, in their own words, about the dark side of publishing.   As an archaeologist, I know you have to push through a lot of mud to get the artifacts.  As a forensic anthropologist, I know you have to slog through a lot of goo to get to the bones.  As an IT guy, I know you have do a lot of installs to get the right to trouble-shoot something interesting.  As a writer, I know that you have to face a lot of challenges to get where you want to be, too.  The stories I will be featuring will give each author an opportunity to focus on a challenge they had to face, how they overcame it, and the success that was waiting on the other side.  There's no easy route, but the hard path can be traveled, and that's what I want to encourage my blog's readers with.

So please stay tuned for more information on upcoming posts in that series, starting next week!

As a little bit of my own prelude to that, I wanted to talk a little about confidence.  We all know it's important, but as I sit here facing down three do-or-die tests that stand between me and my EMT certification, I am aware that I am confident, but also nervous.  Confidence cum nervousness seems a bit paradoxical, so I thought we could explore the ises and the isn'ts of confidence.

Confidence is...

• Trusting in your strengths.
• Being able to face your weaknesses without fear.
• Being willing to admit your weaknesses without embarrassment.
• Comfort with where you're at in your development.
• Eschewing intimidation.
• Have pride in yourself and your product.
• Having humility and appreciation of others and their products.

Confidence is not...

• Boasting or swaggering.
• Feeling invulnerable.
• Wanting to prove yourself.
• Wanting to disprove your critics.
• A  sense of superiority.
• Complacency with your development.

That's where I am as I look at these tests.  I'm confident in my competency and in my ability to function as an EMT and to satisfy the requirements of the test.  But because I'm confident I can also admit that in a testing situation I'm vulnerable to focusing on the big picture at the potential expense of careless, little mistakes.  I'm confident that I will be certified as an EMT when all is said and done.  But because I'm confident I can also confess to you that I am the world's worst at waiting, and my impatience can make me careless.

So, yes.  Confident and nervous at the same time.

Which seems like a good place to be.

And I think it's where we need to be as writer's too.  You want to be confident in an authentic way, that includes humility.  When you truly believe in yourself and your writing, you're okay with admitting your weaknesses, because you trust that you can overcome them.  When you're confident in your writing, you should trust in yourself and your stories, but it's okay to be nervous, too, because it means that you're admitting to yourself that you're not perfect and that not everything is under your control.

Feeling invulnerable isn't confidence.

It's ignorance.

And ignorance may be bliss, but it doesn't make you a better writer.

I deliberately left the lists incomplete, avoiding even a few other items that came to my mind, because I'd love to hear from you all: what are some other things that confidence is -- and isn't?

.Nevets.

Believe It Yourself

All---

Just a quick mid-day word of would-be wisdom.  I was thinking about forensic casework this morning for some reason, I was in particular remembering how important it was to be confident.  Before any analysis was completed and prior to the writing of any reports, the lab supervisor would sit down with the techs and walk through our notes.  The single most important thing we had to do was to be confident in our conclusion.  If we felt something was indeterminate we could say so and if there was a technique we didn't know we could indicate that as well.  But we had to trust our measurements, trust our impressions, and trust our conclusions.  And we had to talk as if we believed ourselves.

If we didn't, the supervisor would be uneasy, and would start peering closely at the reports.  And then everyone would be miserable, the work would be redone, and you'd end up quibbling over measurements that, in end, you may have done wrong but to a degree that had zero impact on the outcome of the analysis -- but once there's uneasiness, it's a double-check not a walk-through, and once an error is found if you look shaky, the floodgates are open.

This is key to your writing.  Be confident when you're writing.  Know you're saying what you want to say, how you want to say it.  And be confident when you're talking to others about your writing.  Respect yourself and your work.

When you do this, your readers and your crit partners will approach your work with a difference sort of confidence, too.  They will enjoy the experience more, and you will get a higher level of feedback.

.Nevets.

Tactless Tuesday on Wednesday for a Hamburger Today

All---

So I again didn't realize it was Tuesday yesterday. I love the Christmas / New Year stretch, but I think my ordinarily impeccable sense of date and time goes haywire and becomes truly peccable.

Now for Tactless Tuesday, on time-delay. The FCC requires a delay in my blogging now because I'm just that hardcore. (cough) Ahem. Anyway.

Today's message: you're not trying to be a writer; you are a writer.

At the risk of sounding like some cornball, "power of positive thought" message, I do believe that the terms in which you regard yourself have a powerful impact on you. Many of us recognize that the boy who thinks he's dumb can get himself caught in a spiral of failure. Most of us even seen how the girl who thinks she's unattractive can pull her entire presence down through low expectations for herself. Some of us might even acknowledge that the sports team who knows from day one that they're shooting for middle-of-the-pack in the standings can often doom itself to playing below .500.

A lot of unpublished or little published writers, however, don't notice when they do it to themselves. "I'm trying to be a writer." "I'm working on becoming an author." "I mess around with stories."

Hold the phone!

Are you writing?

Then you're a writer. You're an author. And you're writing stories.

I'm all for pushing yourself to publication, but I think too many young-in-the-profession writers get themselves mired down by focusing on their potential rather than embracing their actual and helping it become even more. I know I did this for a long time, and I can't adequately describe for you the impact that it had on my confidence and my writing ability when I stopped being timid about it and just started calling myself a writer.

I'm not an aspiring writer. I'm a writer aspiring to publication.

I'm not struggling to become a writer. I'm struggling to become a full-time, self-sustained writer.

I'm not trying be an author. I am an author.

And if you're writing, so are you! Don't trap yourself!

Freedom!

.Nevets.