When I was a teenager, I started experiencing an interesting phenomena: once you do a statement about yourself, it becomes very hard to convince people in anything contrary to this statement.
In some gathering I said that I’m not really in to watching lots of movies in my free time and since then, when people from this group were discussing a movie I was treated like I haven’t seen any movies in this world at all. No matter what I said, no matter what I did. They’ve preferred assuming my old exaggerated statement over my actual reaction to the current discussion. For example, if I said how I’m feeling about some characters from the movie they were discussing, a few people will share their attitude to the movie after me, then someone will turn to me and start to tell me what this movie is all about, what are the main characters and all that crap I obviously already knew.
Apparently, this can be used to make people think you did something that you haven’t done or achieved. I just hate to lie, and when it comes to characterizing myself I prefer lowering the value of my achievements. That’s bad for business I suppose )))))
Here’s an example. Wedding photographer Neil Van Niekerk, as I can see from his blog, is sure that he is brilliant in what he is doing. He posts an average looking picture and writes an article about how he had done it. He describes his style, he describes his techniques, he even wrote books about it as if it is something worth worshiping or at least learning from. Well, it actually is, for a beginner. As I see it, it is much more in his words than in his pictures, that whispers you “He is great!”. Pictures are good but not brilliant, in my opinion of course. Here’s the girl in the tunnel, here’s the girl near some building, here’s the bride lying on the couch, and here’s “look how i posed them!”… There’s nothing in what he posts about what I can tell “oh, that picture takes my breath away”. I don’t want to say that he is a bad person or unprofessional. Nothing personal, just a perfect example.
But first you read and believe what you’ve read, and only then, probably in one case out of ten, you start to explore the matter and build a real opinion. Usually it takes time.
The point is, most of the time people just believe without thinking. Something matches the stereotype and we respond mindlessly. We can’t be experts in everything and when someone claims to be one, we usually believe him without a doubt and without wondering what he had done to claim himself as an expert. Furthermore, we believe everything he says.
This is an intriguing phenomena for me because in my case this is the other side of the Moon. I usually underestimate and pretty much devaluate myself and my efforts. This is a real lifetime problem. I say that something I’ve done is simple to do when it’s absolutely not, that something is easy when in reality it takes a lot of time. I make myself cheap and “yes, you can have my help any time”. I see how this influences my life everyday. Bless the people close yo me who don’t believe my “easy” bullshit and know the truth.
The thing I really want is to be in the middle of this two examples. I’m trying to convince myself that value of my efforts, time and work are really bigger than I’m used to think.
Problem is, I really don’t know how to do it without damaging any features in me that I like and that people are attracted to.
But I’m working on it, baby steps )))