CheckMate

I’ve mentioned Louise Fletcher at Blue Sky Resumes before - she wrote another priceless post a few days ago about not telling yourself what you can’t do called “Are you getting in your own way?”.

I have a feeling this is one of those things that happens to a lot more people than you realize - maybe all of us at one time or another. You get excited about something you really have an interest in, feel you might even be really good at it, but then start listing all the reasons why you can’t do whatever it is, and talk yourself out of it.

There’s nothing wrong with an honest assessment of your capabilities, likes, personality, the thing you’re thinking about doing, or the possibility of your success doing it. The trick is to do that without crossing the line into unnecessarily talking yourself out of something.

The way I figure it, things are already tough enough on their own, and there’s already plenty of people out there (some of whom say they are your friends) who’ll be very happy to tell you why you can’t do something, so why do the job for them?

Read all of Louise’s post, and if you take nothing else from it, remember her closing sentence:

“…whenever we find ourselves saying ‘I can’t do that,’ we should challenge the assumption and maybe give it a try anyway.”

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