Don't wait until you feel confident

I came across this fabulous quote from #Working Women and it said, "Don't wait until you feel confident enough before you act or you might wait forever. Confidence is the gift you receive after you have done the scary thing."
Boy do I wish someone would have told me this a long time ago. Maybe then I would not have missed out on some of the opportunities that have come and gone. Opportunities I watched slip through my fingers because I was too afraid I would fail. Too afraid I was not ready. Ashamed that I lacked the confidence to be who I was. To challenge myself to be more.
Had someone explained to me the only way I can grow myself is to just do it regardless of the outcome then maybe my life would have been a little more colorful than it is right now. But I sure am glad to have found this quote because it is challenging me to challenge myself.
The challenge to do what frightens me so that I can gain confidence and not wait for confidence to come while everyone else around me is moving on. Sometimes we are fed the line that only with experience can we get ahead. But I now know this is far from the truth. If we stand still where we have mastered whatever it is we are doing,  we can never gain experience and therefore never gain the confidence to be more. to experience more because the only way we can achieve either is to keep going. To keep colouring outside the lines. To move beyond the confinement of our minds. to move beyond our comfort zones even in the face of adversity.
Keep going even on those days when it feels like nothing is going our way and we are so afraid that we want to hide. Those are the days when we are being asked to go. To move forward. To not wait to feel confident enough because we are never confident enough until we try. Until we take the first step.
And now that I am a mother, I try to encourage my children to go for it by offering them the opportunity to try whatever it is they are interested in to see if they are capable of receiving the gift of confidence when they have been scared but kept going. When they walk into new situations where they know no one, where they have never been before and end up paving their own way without anyone holding their hand. Without anyone telling them what to do and how to do it. That way they are prepared for life's mishaps and missteps. That way they will know there is a big wide world out there and the only way they will know they can is if they try.
I think back to the day I met a man, a crotchety old man who I interviewed with while I worked for a man who did not believe in promoting women and this old man told me that one day I could be running the operation if I came to work for his company. My answer at that time because I had been beaten down so much was I did not have the experience. To which he responded, "Young lady, no one is experienced until they have done the job. Don't ever tell anyone you lack experience because no one is experienced really." This wonderful quote from Working Women could not have come at a better time because it is a reminder to me to not let the naysayers get in my head. To not let them make me believe that I am not good enough. Because I now understand that being good enough equates to confidence in self to do what scares me.
Here's to doing what scares me in order to receive the gift of confidence. After all I have watched my son and daughter this summer push themselves in new places with new people and come out the other side full of confidence and triumph. A lesson I gave to them and they gave back to me. What could be more wonderful than that. Giving and receiving at the same time. Parent and child at the same time. Each of us growing the other when we realise confidence only comes from trying and learning. Not from waiting. Not from standing still and hoping. It comes from doing that which scares us.