Today, during a fairly routine encounter with my boss, he revealed to me that one of the things that I struggle with the most (like on a daily basis), he considers to be one of my strengths – organization.
See, organization is totally a learned skill for me. I think that if you had spent any time with me as a child, you would have never thought that I would grow into an adult who was considered to be an above-average organizer. My third grade teacher was in despair over the state of my cubby, my inability to turn in assignments on time and … well me in general.
Her disapproval, especially when I had never before encountered anything but praise from teachers was startling. But it made an impact and this was the start of a long progression towards me being having to learn to keep myself organized. Luckily, I also have an above-average memory and for years, I was able to leverage it to keep my shit together.
Slowly though as I aged and added family members and *ahem* aged, I had to come up with even more systems, habits and routines to keep everything together. Trust me when I say that it’s a huge deal and I spend lots of time not only working on it, but also thinking about it.
Anyhow, even though I’ve done all this work on this particular skill (one that, by the way, I think is something everyone needs), deep down, I still have all these crazy doubts about myself and my ability. In this arena, for sure, but also in some others.
So I got to thinking about how hard it is for adults, particularly women, to have great confidence in their abilities. We tend to minimize our abilities and brush off compliments and we need to cut it out and remind ourselves of our strengths and take pride in the fruits of our hard work.
I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of the things that I’m good at, no qualifications, no minimizing.
- Organization!!
- Mental math and well math in general
- Handling money
- Keeping my commitments
- Writing
- Design & graphics
- Cooking
- Scheduling
- Making & keeping goals
- Drinking my water
- Hosting parties
- Planning events
- Public speaking
- Photography
- Delegation
- Training Cocoa
- Programming
- Data analytics
I think this might really be a fun activity to do with my Girl Scouts. They are in the tricky tween stage and I notice becoming a bit more unsure of themselves. They all have strengths and even non-strengths that they can develop and I’d love to help them realize that.