Confidence: an experiment
Odd fish chronicles I - Confidence: an experiment is the first in a mini series about my experiences (1)
How it started
It can take me a month to recover from attending a conference. But in the before times, there was only one way to come together. That one way was in a large noisy group to squint different at a distance stage. And that stage, for me, was usually in central London.
So it was. I staggered through the tube journey to Westminster to a venue with no accessible tube stop to be assaulted by the voices of 1000s under glaring lights
Juggling the sensory overload and the intense pain from my journey, I can’t offer much apart from my physical presence. But that’s what’s been asked for. So here I am.
In this much pain, there’s very little that I remember. But this conference is different because today, as I hunch in my chair waiting to be excused, I’m going to hear Lauren Currie.
And she’s about to tell me about the importance of people telling their stories. About clearing obstacles for others through sharing the ones we face — even if we don’t, at that moment, overcome them. She’s about to say it…
You can’t be what you can’t see.
I managed to get to my train that afternoon. And I wondered if there might be more people like me everywhere across the country. Asked to enjoy the theatre of conferences, along with all the other challenges of expectations of professional life, in a way of working that simply wasn’t built for people like me. Maybe one of them was blogging a Top 10 ways to attend conferences without sensory overload? Or even a series with a pathway through the challenges of being disabled at work?
So I searched. And searched. I found some amazing blogs from other people, navigating their paths, but none of them seem to be very much like mine. So deflated, I pressed the power button on my phone. I was left with nothing but a black screen showing me my own reflection.
Fake it til you make it?
In my 20s I didn’t come across as unconfident. People shared that they read my straight-talking, honest expressions and answering of rhetorical questions as confidence. I could pass as confident. I was surrounded by people who seemed effortlessly confident and it made me feel equal parts stupidly slow and determined. I decided that all I had to do was work much harder, and longer as quietly as possible… and then deliver a seemingly miraculous outcome.
Occasionally this meant standing on a stage and presenting. I wouldn’t sleep the night before but by the time I actually needed to present I had spent the time memorizing what I needed to say. My first presentation to the board, my first conference appearance — each was accompanied by insomnia and migraines but these were thankfully rare occurrences. There was always a colleague more than happy to present my work and I was grateful for their help, sitting at the back of the room to answer any questions. Even better, I had decided that what I needed to be as confident as those around me was very straightforward — I needed a more senior title and more qualifications. I might feel slow and stupid but these indicators would prove I was neither. This would mean people would listen to what I had to say, even if I couldn’t deliver it like Steve Jobs (which was — I had heard loud and clear — the only way to present anything about anything).
No one quite got around to telling me that working harder and longer than everyone else might have an unwelcome side effect. Sure enough, I ended my 20s completely burnt out and leaving my corporate career behind me.
Thankfully, the qualifications I had been collecting meant I could start again with a new career as an academic. I’d be doing my PhD where I’d be such an expert that my confidence would be secure — I’d only be presenting on a topic I knew everything about. What could go wrong? Surely my confidence would arrive in the same envelope as my PhD certificate. Wouldn’t it? Until then I could just carry on faking confident presentations and when I needed to present I would just… work harder and longer at my presentation than anyone else. But my work-harder-and-longer coping mechanism was about to come to an abrupt end. I was pregnant.
My approach to my working life changed a great deal in a short 12 months. Negotiating my high-risk pregnancy was my main focus. At eight months pregnant I reached the end of a diagnosis journey that resulted in my discovery I was neurodivergent — my brain operated on a completely different set of software than the average. Later, I’d see how my long hours — coming in when it was quiet and working once everyone else had gone home — were a coping mechanism in an open-plan office I struggled to work in. That my migraines in conference centers were more than a “normal” level of energy drain in those spaces. And my straight-talking, honest expression and responses to rhetorical questions? That would be my inaccurate response to social cues. But that was years later. First I welcomed my healthy, happy son to the world. He arrived with none of the possible worries from a high-risk pregnancy, perfect from head to toe. But I haven’t ever recovered from my pregnancy. Instead, I have a permanent disability which puts me in the community of 4.4 million disabled people working(2). In daily pain, my mental health plummeted. My history of depression meant I was already more likely than others to join the 20% of women who develop postnatal depression(3). But the end of my marriage turned my health challenges into background noise — I needed to get back to work.
I struggle to remember much of my first months being back in the office. A patchwork of childcare from friends and family and a pharmacy of medication meant I survived. But the idea that I’d be confidently juggling working and parenting seemed beyond laughable. Fake it til you make it? I didn’t even have the energy to fake it!
You can’t be what you can’t see.
It would be nearly three years before I heard Lauren suggest there was another way to be confident. To share the challenges so others could share theirs — perhaps even offer a way forward. So I tried. I wanted to be able to give a presentation — to my team, at a conference, anywhere really — with confidence and without losing sleep the night before.
I signed up to speak at a D & I conference and tweeted my challenges about attending. I accepted an invitation to open a UX session where I opened my speech with “I’m tired and I want to go home” in front of a ceiling-height glaring screen. I even manage not to burst into tears when I said “You can’t see what you can’t be” when I transposed my words. But I didn’t feel confident. And I still lost sleep every time, expecting the fraud police (3) to burst in to tell me that no one wanted to listen to someone who couldn’t even make it up the stairs to the stage. Needing more help I was relieved to find out that Lauren Currie held workshops. Later she even launched an online course with a community @upfrontglobal. These events gave me hope and a new framing — there was no envelope of confidence that was going to arrive in the post. But I could try and build confidence through experimenting with being visible. And not visible in an attempt to sound like someone else — just as me.
Visibility Experiment
For nearly a year I’ve been experimenting with being visible. I’ve started this blog series you are reading now. I’ve been much more active on twitter — not only sharing the opinion of others but attempting to articulate mine. I also tried saying yes to invitations to speak. All of them.
Most of my challenges speaking-while-a-disabled-single-mum are logistical. Where is the childcare? How do I time my painkillers so be able to use a train AND have a clear head for my speech? How many stairs are there? Is there somewhere quiet and dim I can reset before I speak? But then 2020 happened. We had to stay at home. Children interrupting became the norm. So I said yes.
I said yes to the podcasts. To the seminars. To the conferences. To the masterclass. Each time I spoke I shared on social media… and the invitations started coming from people who had heard me speak and wanted me to come to their event!
So did I feel confident? No. Have I stopped losing sleep? Also no.
But slowly and surely I’ve met other women who show up and speak clearly and passionately without a perfect night's sleep. Who share with me that they don’t feel 100% confident before speaking. And they do it anyway.
So I’m still experimenting, still trying to find a way to be confident that is “my” way. And even if I haven’t figured out how to sleep well before a speech I’ve managed to stagger my way through an exhausting year doing work I’m proud of. Now I’m invited to speak I can invite others — I even helped launch a speakers directory. Now I’m confident enough to ask for feedback I hear that people don’t notice I’m bone-tired when I’m speaking passionately about what I believe in. And now I’m learning in the open I can connect people to the advice I wish I’d had from the start, and so desperately needed coming back to work after my maternity leave.
You don’t need to change.
Confidence needs to change.
And you can help change it.
You can join me and many other amazing women conducting their own confidence experiments at the #upfront Global bond https://www.weareupfront.com/membership
You can also explore the online confidence course from Lauren Currie at https://www.weareupfront.com/
I’m listening to
I’m reading
Fear Less by Pippa Grange
References
- Odd fish chronicles is a mini blog series written by me reflecting on my personal experience inspired by the quote attributed to Einstein “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid”.
2. 4.4 million disabled people are in work. https://www.scope.org.uk/media/disability-facts-figures/
4. Visualisation of the Dr Brenee Brown quote from @fabricofthemind on Instagram
5. You can hear about the fraud police (who are not coming for you or for any of us) from Amanda Palmer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA8XiC3m7vw
