Give myself a break

This morning I had a meeting with an outplacement agency here in Zurich, who are helping me to find a local job and looking at ways to improve my professional profile. My previous two meetings were in English.....but this morning I was meeting a different gentleman....who started off in German so I continued in German.

The meeting lasted over an hour.....and while my German was far from perfect, you know I more than managed. The feeling I came out with from the meeting was that in this respect, and in others, I really need to give myself a break and not be so hard, so critical on how I perform in certain areas. Recognise my successes and failures, and learn from both.

When one thinks of it though, are we not all the same??? I am sure that many of us have areas of our personality/abilities where we are overly negative and critical about, unnecessarily downgrading our ability and thereby ensuring that in reality....we do NOT perform as we could. It really is about confidence but also, to recognise and ACCEPT when one does well. To not see anything wrong in doing so.

Personally, my failure to accept that I am not a failure in certain tasks at times, comes from past depressions (thankfully a long way back in my past) but also from a cultural trait in Irish people. I am not 100% sure why, maybe it derives from years of colonialism and the subsequent effect it had on the Irish psyche, but Irish people can have a real tendency to put themselves down in a joking manner or otherwise.....a tendency to not wish to be seen as arrogant, a show off, a know it all, etc. While there are many many Irish people who do not fall into this bracket, it is interesting to see how many of my Irish circle (but not all) show some or all of the above traits. Maybe it is just that similar people attract each other into the same social circles......or maybe not.

One to think about.....