How to adequately assess their success
TEXT:Olga Miloradova
How is it possible to evaluate yourself and your abilities adequately? Are you a good driver or a bad one? Excellent worker or not? And how about your social skills? Objectively assess your abilities really difficult, almost impossible. Imagine that you have set some new task. You will certainly try to do it well, but how do you know if you have done well or so-so? You tried your best, perhaps, but what was the result?
How can this blind spot be circumvented to understand whether you overestimate yourself or underestimate yourself? As you know, the truth is somewhere nearby, and the answer to this question lies more outside than inside. If you overestimate yourself, then most likely you will blame not yourself, but external circumstances, for all the failures - and who honestly admits? If you underestimate, then perhaps you are so steeped in self-incrimination, and here you may find that you value yourself at least honestly and not notice anything either. Among the group of American surgeons-interns, a study was conducted: they were offered first to independently assess their skills, and then they conducted the exam and assessed the real situation. Almost no one was able to assess their skills in accordance with the real state of affairs, but on the other hand, their comrades were able to clearly assess them. That is, the best way to evaluate yourself is to ask someone else.
But here, too, lies an additional problem: most people will not tell you the whole truth in the face, and if they do, it is a completely natural reaction in such a situation when you attempt to attack our personality - to take everything into hostility and defend yourself. From this position there are several exits. One option is to try to find someone who can evaluate your work without becoming personal, you may not even know that the work belongs to you, and will offer your comments. Another option is to observe what people are doing in such situations and think: would such an idea have occurred to you? Do you act as effectively, interestingly, outside the box?
So, if you still managed to figure out which way you were wrong, and it turned out that you are prone to reappraisal, then you probably should not be told that such self-confidence in most situations and professions can be dangerous. The way out is clear: try to improve your skills and abilities or not try to exceed your capabilities.
Compare yourself today with yesterday: what have you learned new things?
But, unfortunately, there are much more chances to face the opposite mistake: we have a strong enough tradition of education through punishment or through negative reinforcement, but positive, alas, is used infrequently. Many of us grew up in an environment where the five were met for granted, and scolded for two. Do you know phrases in the spirit: "So what, that everyone failed the control, I care about your result. Four? And why not five? Artists sit on the Arbat, do you want to try all your life or get a normal profession?" As a result of such upbringing by hypercontrolling and tough parents, a person grows insecure, unable to rely on his own opinion, but at the same time with a wild desire for perfectionism and the inability to ask anyone for help. It is not a secret that troechnik eventually grows into much happier and more talented people than honored students who are forced to follow the rules and requirements.
So, if this is about you, then what to do? To begin to stop trying to bring everything to the ideal. On the one hand, the ideal is unattainable, and you will always assume that you are not good enough. On the other hand, if you’ve stuck on something for too long, you probably don’t have time to do something else and become ineffective - this way you are digging your own grave, and (oh, horror!) Your bad opinion of yourself by reality. For you, as a person who is afraid of doing something unfinished, the slogan should be "the worse, the better."
Try to switch the attention spectrum from the result to the process, try to join in the present moment, here and now, pay attention to what you are doing well, and not to what is not enough. Finish the case as soon as the request is executed, and immediately take up a new one. Do not compare yourself with anyone else. Someone can always be better, it is inevitable. Compare yourself today with yesterday: what have you learned new things? Where have you moved? Do not forget that mistakes are not failure, but the next steps of learning. Give yourself the right to make mistakes, of course, trying to learn from this some lessons. Do not forget that the people around you could become victims of the same upbringing as yours, and just can not reproduce a positive affirmation. So, if your actions are not accompanied by praise, but silence, by this logic, everything goes exactly as it should.