Starting out strong
I was beyond excited when I finished negotiating my first service provider contract to work with a small fashion company and apply all I'd learned in the past years and even the last months. I had been formally unemployed since last December so I gotta admit that yes, I was excited to tell people I was officially working again and that I have an income. My intuition was telling me this was a good move and I was very confident.
The second I was in the first meeting, setting myself up for my tasks, and organizing all of them, I froze. I started staring at the screen, not being able to type or think about the next step. I lost focus, began procrastinating, and felt instant boredom. What if this was the start of another terrible period of my life? What if I can't deliver anything I promised? What if they hate my work? What if they see the impostor I am?
How I manage my impostor syndrome
I, then, started to reflect on the first voice inside my head, the one telling me all this, basically in a WTF state. Where the hell did that come from? Why was I thinking that? Why was that so paralyzing? So I dove into it, and this is what I gathered:
I was scared
My mind was quick to make associations
Impostor syndrome hit hard
My work self-esteem is at an all-time low
Am I ready to start working again?
Let's recap: I was laid off from the last companies I worked for because of a lack of delivery and productivity caused by a very severe burnout, along with a lack of investment in one of the companies. I froze because I saw myself going down that path again, hopelessly. So began reminding myself that I'm a different person now, who practices more self-awareness and care.
For starters, I had enough time to recover and reflect on the past choices I made, my previous mindset, and the goals I was trying to reach. I had to rethink my entire approach toward work, all of which I registered here in various posts, and because of that, I decided to go for a somewhat different route. I decided to dive back into my passions and skill up on things I was actually interested in, considering all my previous experience. In other words, I asked myself what made sense for me to continue doing and what didn't. What did I genuinely like doing in past positions? How does my knowledge fit in with my passions and my new targets and goals for the future?
The person I was last year and the person I am now are visibly different. I feel more mature and more confident in my choices and I like to think I began trusting myself more.
The aftermath
After thinking about all that, the first thing I did to break free from the frozen state I was in was to open Trello, get my contract open in another tab, and revise, task by task, what I was meant to deliver long-term. I organized the tasks into four main groups and thought of the company as my own. If I had no one to report to, no one to approve of my efforts and deliverables, what would be the things I'd do to reach the long-term results I set myself up for?
And as simple as that, ideas started flowing. That was the moment I also realized how much external opinions of me and what I do really get to me. In hindsight, I became avoidant because I was scared to do things I was possibly going to be criticized for. And my ego couldn't take it. It was still hurt from all of what happened last year and it couldn't bare the thought of it happening again.
Going forward, I think it will be important for me to open up about this with the people I work with, once I get more comfortable with them. It's important to share your struggles with people that might come in contact with their side effects and this goes in every aspect of your life, whenever it makes sense.
As the hours went by, I managed to get my first deliverable finished and sent and decided to take each day as they come. I will make mistakes, but I cannot let them dictate my mind, especially when they didn't even happen yet.
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