Hypn07, Day 4: You cannot use what you do not have
This covers Day 4 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I’m collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here.
I have skills.
Nay, I have mad skillz.
I have a fierce, almost unnaturally healthy drive to do better. I have learned to work better/harder/faster, it would seem, as a matter of survival. The various “characters” who have buffed these skills out to a high gloss to save my damn bacon have come forward eagerly, willingly, wholly, in the first few days, introducing themselves and making their complaints heard. They’re, like, over it.
There is one skill set, however, that is virtually non-existent: my inner She-Ra.
Most people would likely never guess at the frighteningly low levels of self-confidence I operate under most of the time. But it’s true. Greg put me under and the poor, sad, half-formed, 98-lb.-weakling that is my Self-Confidence showed up to prove it. She has no “age”, like the rest of the characters, because she was never allowed to develop. It just wasn’t a priority. (Or maybe, disappearing act was its own act of self-preservation.) She has no shape, no strength, no presence, no say. She is Self-Confidence who isn’t.
And yet to look at me, you’d probably never know it, just like if you saw me in most social situations, you’d probably never guess what a roaring introvert I am. I have gotten very, very good at doing things I’m not particularly suited for.
I’d feel terrible about my appalling lack of self-confidence except for one thing: I know it’s there, ready to be developed, and I know that all of these other mad skillz will only be enhanced when they don’t have to pull double-duty, standing in for something they’re not.
Curiouser and curiouser, this trip down the rabbit hole…
xxx
c
Image by massdistraction via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
TOPICS: change, Hypnotherapy Project.
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
SteveC
A friend of mine states: inside every extrovert there’s an introvert frantically trying to stay there
Steve
Jul 11th, 2007
dailytri
This examination hits home for me. How can introverts be so damn good at communicating? Perhaps it’s all the listening and observing we do. I, admittingly, feel very OOP at social functions and it’s a TASK to walk up to a stranger and engage in conversation. Ugh. Hate it.
Jul 11th, 2007
Jeremy
I remember some “management” training I got once, which included the customary session on different thinking styles. While I’m no fan of detailed labels like those supplied by the MBTI, one of the things I learned in that session, and really took away and to heart (I hope), was the need to give introverts a little time to prepare themselves to communicate.
As an extravert, it is hard to keep your mouth shut, even if only for 30 seconds. And as a session chair (or whatever fancy new name you want to give to whoever does that thankless task) it can seem rude to tell those who are itching to speak and can’t keep their mouths shut that their turn will come. They hate you for it, especially if they have not been “trained” and sometimes even if they have.
Jul 13th, 2007