Underestimation

I have noticed that lately I have been underestimating myself severely. That I have been undermining my ability to perform things that I am otherwise great at. And I have found this is a common thing with everyone.

It is worrying that things are this way, that we position ourselves below our capabilities due to the fact that we judge ourselves more harsher than society judges us. We see ourselves more critically than the general public, and I think that is much more demeaning to one's character than the latter. To judge yourself critically is to shatter your determination, which ultimately destroys your ability to perform in a manner that is great. And I found that today, I did this to myself.

I did this to myself whilst waiting to perform my first ever slam poem, and my first ever public slam poem. For a month I had scrapped the entirety of the poem thinking that it will affect nobody, that it is worse than any slam poem that I have witnessed and that I should give up altogether. Over the course of the month I would add to it, then scrap it, and repeated this process until the night before today's performance. I thought that the hybrid self-portrait I had completed with newspaper clippings that told a story would suffice, but upon second glance of my pieced-together slam poem, I thought otherwise.

And I am glad that I did. I am glad that I decided at the very last minute not to scrap that slam poem, because today, I performed it in front of a crowd of around eighty students. I put myself into the zone that I was aiming for, a zone where I would see faces but not focus on them enough to recognise them and feel embarrassed. I had stood up in front of them all, and managed to deliver the slam poem, otherwise read separately to the clippings on my canvas and read in a fast manner so as to make it sound like a rap song, flawlessly. I thought that I would get tongue-tied, that I would be too cowardly to go ahead with the performance, that I would never amount to the level I placed in my head. But I was wrong.

In fact, I was so wrong that when a student from my class complained that I raised the bar too high, my teacher responded with "don't worry about Nicole. Don't be intimidated by her, that stuff is in her DNA." And that hit me. I went from the most nervous and hopeless wreck to floating high above the expectations of myself and of others, and in the most amazing way possible. There I was, delivering a piece of my very soul and there they were, responding to it in such a positive manner. And I pulled it off so well that they are assuming that greatness runs in my family. It does not. I started it, and I will continue it and ensure its longevity.

And what I was happy with the most was that my slam poem actually resonated within everybody who complimented me for my performance. They actually listened. One man told me that he "did not understand half of the words" but he enjoyed it thoroughly. And even though it was difficult for him and some others to comprehend the long words that I had crafted into my verbal piece, one thing was for certain, that the main message of verbal convergence was sent across and that despite my shaky nerves afterwards which resulted in me virtually bouncing in my seat, I am proud of my achievement today and I will be sure not to ever underestimate myself again.