When I take a moment and look at Office Politics, I see misguided expectations, missed communications, manipulations, I see who grows and who doesn’t, who is promoted and who isn’t, and a myriad of other things we as humans experience.  I see one true killer – DOUBT.

Doubt makes us hesitate, doubt makes us wait, doubt makes us quiet, doubt makes us put our eyes down, doubt makes us worry, doubt listens to fear.  Doubt creates bullies.

I remember when Taylor Swift was coming into stardom at the ripe age of 16 years old or something.  I think it was a speaking engagement at a college on the east coast where she mostly took questions from the audience.  Someone asked her if she had doubts.  She responded almost comically that she doubted herself hundreds of thousands of times – I think she implied that was every day.  But with every doubt, she decided to move forward anyway.

Doubt is a human condition.  Animals listen to their intuition and act accordingly – that smells funny – don’t eat it; that animal is mean – don’t introduce yourself; that animal is hungry – run.  If they doubt, they don’t live long enough to tell about it.  Humans don’t have that swift mechanism to keep doubt at bay.  Doubt has been allowed to grow and become a persistent bug in our psyche – a loud, noisy, irritating, hard to kill bug.  Like a beautiful hot summer day where you’re supposed to be enjoying the picnic, but the flies have found you and landed on everything.  They have poisoned the moment.  Now you’re swatting at them unsuccessfully, your head is down, you’re worrying about the food, you’re getting emotional and hot, now the sun is beating down on you…it’s a cycle we get into to when we listen to doubt.

When that fly starts buzzing in your ear, when the doubt starts creeping in – I shouldn’t say anything, what do I know, I’m sure I’m wrong, I’ll get in trouble…the list of shitty things we say to ourselves is never ending and gets meaner.  When it starts, simply ignore it.  Decide that you are worth it, and it is worth it to move forward.  Keep your head up, raise your hand, raise your voice, be honest, be open.

If it’s scary – start with something like ‘I don’t know if I have all the facts, but I believe the problem is …’; ‘I would like to take that assignment on – is there anyone who would like to help me?’

As we try things, we fail.  That’s ok – we learn a WHOLE LOT more when we fail than when we succeed.  As we try more things, we succeed.  That’s ok – it helps us try new things.

We get stronger by small actions on a regular basis.  It’s like strength training – you must grow slowly and surely. 

You got this! fffffffffff