“Playing small doesn’t protect you, it steals from you,” Loren Ridinger.  When we’re kids we are fearless.  I shared the story when I was 8 years old and I wanted to walk home on my own and how mad my mom was that I wouldn’t let it go.  Or how my friends and I would go into town on our own.  Spend the day at the library or even hanging out in the creek.  It wasn’t uncommon for us to be wild like that, exploring, creating.  My own son wants to walk home on his own and we are in the process of teaching him how to do so safely.  I don’t remember at what point I started losing trust in my ability to do things on my own, when I started listening to the bullshit I was being told about my “weak” points and what people thought of me.  I don’t remember at what point I felt like I had to fight to prove myself and started wasting my time showing people they were wrong about me.  And I don’t remember at what point I started to believe the things they thought about me.  As soon as that happened, all that confidence seemed to evaporate.  Being nice and accepted became more important than being seen as me.  Regardless of when it happened, I can tell you I remember how awful losing that sense of self felt.  I didn’t trust myself to do anything I said I could and soon, I lost the ability to do what I wanted to because all I could hear was that I couldn’t do it.

 Society likes us to think in extremes—we have to either be larger than life or we make ourselves so small that we can slip between the cracks, unnoticed.  If we aren’t careful we will convince ourselves that it’s true, that our worth is determined by the number of people who see us and tell us we are valuable—and that is exactly the trap I fell into. It became easier to slide through the day unnoticed and quiet because I wouldn’t face as much ridicule or harassment from people.  I’d share the answers, speak up and talk about things I knew but I’d always leave space for being wrong.  When the overwhelm for being “right” hit me, I started keeping quiet even in those realms as well.  I do remember as I got older that the feeling of losing sense of self took over and I started compromising on what I said I wanted including going away to school.  It was those early choices (or not making those choices) that led me to extreme confusion and settling.  I stand by my choices in the regard of not taking a huge leap when I literally knew nothing about what I wanted to do, but if I could have taken the confidence of my 8 year old self and just said screw it and made ANY choice, I would have reinforced playing a bit bigger than I did. That 8 year old version of me would have never looked back for a second because that 8 year old version of me knew what was right for me more than I allowed the adult version of myself to.

Seeing the confidence kids have today amaze me.  The boldness in what they try out for whether it’s a sport or an instrument, something on computers or singing. I see their dedication to who they are and to me, that is admirable.  I’m working really hard to not instill the same doubt I felt into my kid because I know If we start feeling any sort of doubt in what we can do, we will doubt what we can do and question our confidence—and I don’t want him to doubt himself like I started to.  As soon as I had an inkling of doubt, it spread like a cancer and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  If we think our dreams aren’t achievable, we won’t act on them and then we struggle with confidence, we struggle with knowing who we are until we find ourselves in that box where we think it’s easier to play small and not draw attention to ourselves.  If we allow ourselves to stay in that box we may as well be buried underground and do nothing because we have just stolen our opportunity to live from ourselves.  We need to consider the idea that we have to dream so big it’s scary—and I will tell you putting ourselves out there after any period of playing small IS scary.  But we will get nowhere if we stay in that box.  If we can find that confidence we had as kids, the knowing that we could do anything, all that goes away and small isn’t even an option.  We need to remind ourselves that it isn’t for anyone else to understand what we do no matter what the consequences we can imagine—we need to understand our path because we are the ones walking it.  If we aren’t brave enough to go for what we want, that’s on us.  So don’t let our own thoughts talk us out of living the life we want.  Invite that childhood version of ourselves to come play for a bit today until we get some of that confidence back.