Give Yourself Some Credit
I'm going to be honest, half the time I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing at work. Actually, probably more than half. The financial industry is new to me. Economics was never my strong suit in college and as I got older I wrote it all off as a bunch of made up bs. To be honest, I still think that's true. However, someone, somewhere, somehow has made it make sense. Not to me, but they have seemed to convince the larger part of the world economics as we know it is very much a real thing.
That being said I often feel insecure about my job. That I don't know what I'm talking about or how to talk about it or how to propose ideas or even what's acceptable and unacceptable. After all, this industry has a lot of compliance issues attached to it.
As much as I feel like I don't know what I'm doing every once in a while I have someone stop by to tell me what a great job I'm doing. My boss expressed to me yesterday how happy she is with my work and that she feels I'm a great asset to the team. Another co-worker told me in the break room how her boss (one of the company's vice presidents) commented how "that Nicole girl really has her shit together." Apparently he's rather particular too, but despite never meeting me is very happy with my work.
Of course that level of recognition makes me feel great and reminds me that sometimes while you're busy panicing on the inside everything is actually going really well on the outside.
I remember about a year ago having a candid conversation with a former co-worker that started when she asked me, "How do you manage all of this?" I laughed and responded, "I've been wanting to ask you the same thing." We both realized that while we were busy thinking to ourselves how we don't have our shit together from the outside people didn't perceive it that way. I always perceived her as being so organized and she happened to perceive the same about me, although neither of us saw that in ourselves.
The moral is this: Even though you're unsure of yourself you're probably doing just fine. Maybe even great.











