Putting yourself down

Lifestyle Relationships
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I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only one in this boat.

In our culture, being modest about yourself is strongly emphasised. However, in recent years I’ve found that I’ve taken this to extremes - I’m even more modest to myself about my own self than I am about myself to others.

I’ve noticed this mainly in my professional life ,where I cannot give myself due credit for how capable I am. Time and again I always doubt my own professional abilities going into an action, though the outsome always shows that I excel at it.

I always go into professional activities with the mental feeling that “I can’t do this”, despite the fact that I know that I’ve excelled at every professional task I’ve ever been given.

A case in point is how I once had to meet with Germany’s biggest specialist consulting company in my field, and had to talk to a consultant with 10 years of experience. I felt horrified, daunted and downright panicked that I was representing my company alone in the meeting. I was convinced that I was not the right person for the task, convinced that I did not know enough.

Much to my own amazement, I ended up lecturing the experienced consultant on important facts that he had clearly overlooked and told him to come back after rethinking the plans he presented.

Despite this validation of my abilities, the next time I was given a task to do, my first reaction to myself was “Why are they asking me to do this? I can’t do it, I’m not the right guy!” . I ended up doing extremely well, but then had the same thought on the next task.

It becomes even more of a problem for me because in my company you need to list your accomplishments for your pay and promotion review - your management then use that list to make decisions. Being modest is so deeply ingrained that I struggle to mention what I’ve accomplished because my gut is telling me that would be boasting. I end up thinking in terms of “What can I exclude from the list”, rather than what I can include on it.

Anyone ever felt the same? Got any ideas what I can do about it, if anything? In a nutshell, I can look at the facts of what I’ve done in 3 years of working and logically conclude that I’m an excellent junior manager. Yet emotionally, I can’t help but think I’m just a gawky kid in a serious job.

I guess part of the problem is that I joined the company at a very young age. Normally, people my age or even a year older have only just joined, so my peer group by age basically does consist of gawky kids who are only just starting to transform into serious professionals.

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Re: Putting yourself down

You're victim of your own success :o

This is not a case of modesty, I don't find you shy of talking about your professional achievements, I guess pretty much all old timers know that you work for a multi national as manager, you don't brag which is good. Could you be perfectionist/ lack confidence or uncomfortable with challenges? Your comfort zone needs to be stretched, a lot.

In your last para you've justified your professional reaction, for a start stop finding excuses for your attitude towards your own success. Tell your self that you've worked a lot to achieve what you have and you can do better. Aim for higher goals instead of looking at tiny little stuff as problems. Define a long term professional goal, and treat every successfully completed task as a step forward in achieving that goal, instead of proving to yourself to yourself.

--What is your worst physical Mistake:D
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Re: Putting yourself down

I must say you will be a very romantic lover.

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Re: Putting yourself down

maddy using your foot as an example..it is safe to say you openly flaunt the “maddy foot” on gupshup at least..tap into that side of your personality and all will be well :bravo:

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Re: Putting yourself down

bhai, you just tareefified yourself repeatedly on the counts of being modest as well as excelling at every professional task you have ever been assigned to, yet the talk of modesty? Your problem though seems to be either a lack of self-confidence or plain laziness in accepting new tasks or just as you mentioned ... being over-awed by the presence of senior managers around you.

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Re: Putting yourself down

I guess opening this probably isnt the best thing you have done deducing from the replies above :hehe:
however i get your point. It would be putting yourself down (instead of humbleness) if you ended up running away or werent appreciated (which i guess you are since you were chosen to deal with the german). Maybe you are the sort of person whose optimum performance comes out with the nervous energy. I dont think you are putting yourself down, just being modest and there is nothing wrong with that.

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Re: Putting yourself down

I don’t count it as tareefying. I’m starting to view modesty as being a liability to me rather than an asset.

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Re: Putting yourself down

Hmm Maddy i maynot have anything worthwhile to add here (could this be an example of modesty?Hmm...) but i would like to comment that i once was in a similiar boat.I actually still do the same at times, its hard to shake off the old habits. I have noticed this is fairly common and sometimes expected of us in desi culture. But during my work experience which has been with all non-desis , i learnt they dont hide, they exaggerate! And when getting nominted for awards etc i was getting overlooked because even though i knew my job wayyy better than the person getting the so called award, i wasnt coming out and saying, "i belive i deserve a nomination also because i can do this work 10 times better than XYZ". I realised i actually had to be prominent instead of shying away. Hence i slowly started coming out my shell and etching away from the behaviour when i saw folks stepping all over me.

Another thing that helped: i was working on my resume and showed it to a friend for advice. He was straightforward when he said that taht resume of mine was never going to land me a job. And then he proceeded on asking me questions abt my old job and the things that i did for it. It was only then I realised that there are a lot of things no one else experience of or advantage of over me. And i needed to include such bullets on my resume instead of being modest and thinking "oh thats not much, sure that would be a waste of space on my resume". And ofcourse, even though my work exp isnot related to my degree at all, it does impress some folks out there.

So this maynot be all related to you but i do feel i can connect. I hope my exp help u a bit.

introduce your friends
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Re: Putting yourself down

If you are good at something.. you should be proud of it.. tell others that you are the best project manager, programmer, scientist, doctor, writer or whatever u do.. have some faith in yourself and when someone tells you that you are praising yourself too much tell them to go to hell.. u deserve to be proud of yourself :-)

How 'YOU' doin..?
How 'YOU' doin..?
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Re: Putting yourself down

wow maddy - a part of you i never knew about. Modesty isn't a bad thing, but never doubt yourself for a moment. You are confident, intelligent, succesful and capable - be proud, but not conceited.

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Re: Putting yourself down

It's good to be modest but you need to know when your modesty is hampering your chances. An opportunity to excel lost just because of lack of self confidence could bite you in the back later. If I were you, I would write down all my accomplishments and bring them up during job review. Accomplishments don't have to be major ones..it's the role that you play in problem solving.

Have you been working at the same company for the past three years? Any intelligent person in the same job would feel smarter than the newcomers because he has been there done that. I would suggest you acquire more technical skills at this age. A managerial title sounds good for the company you are in but you might have a tough time selling yourself elsewhere for a managerial position. In I.T you should change your jobs every three years to secure yourself in the job market. It's very easy to feel on top at one comapny and a nobody at another.