My heart can swell as chemicals

Swirl through streams within my brain,

Filling me with confidence.

It may have all been falling through

But still I powered on,

And reaching the sweet finish line

Was something of a miracle

That helped me grow towards the light

That shines on all the chosen ones,

The ones that always win at life.

It’s no secret that I have had some horrible self confidence issues throughout my life. I have always doubted myself and it has meant that I have never really gone for it as far as careers are concerned.

What is worse is the fact that even when I did take a leap into the unknown and at least try something that was going to push me, I would curl up in a ball and die at the first stumbling block. I just didn’t have the resilience to take it on the chin and get up and carry on.

I feel awful saying it, but I know that a lot of these issues were because I was living with my mother and she always told me that I couldn’t; so I believed that was true.

I’m sure that she only said these things to protect me from getting hurt, but the damage it did was monumental.

Now that I’m away from that I’m really coming on and I noticed something really positive just the other day when I taught a class on my own. The teacher left the room and while she was gone the power point turned itself off and I couldn’t log back in, I couldn’t play the video clips I’d found and a girl had to leave the room because I had upset her with the subject matter.

It was the first time I had taught this class on my own, and quite honestly, it was a cluster fuck of disasters.

But I got through it. I thought on my feet and I carried on and the kids all had a piece of work at the end of it.

And you know what? That made me feel so much more confident. I didn’t run home and think I was a failure; I thought that I was great because I got through it and the outcome was the same as it would have been if all the technology had worked.

It’s one of the most valuable lessons that I’ve learned over the past four years: I can only control myself. Everything else, I just have to go with it.

I hope that if you’ve had a catalogue of disasters happen, you too can see how well you’ve done just to get through it. I think that we learn more from the less than perfect events in our lives, and long may the technology issues continue (with any luck we might go back to blackboards and chalk)!

Much Love

Rachel xx