When I was in the fourth grade, I started public school for the first time. Having moved around quite a bit as a child, my mom had chosen to home school us up until that point, rather than pull us in and out of classrooms. I was excited to go, but very scared.
Two things happened that I can remember.
One, because this was my first time in school, I had to take a standardized test to determine my level of education. I was a very anxious child, and I remember being terrified of this stranger sitting in front of me, asking me to answer endless questions and grimly timing my response.
I did average, and they placed me in an average class.
Two, as the year went on, I gained more confidence and my grades reflected this. So well, that my teachers wanted to place me in a gifted class.
I remember this day so clearly.
I walked in, looked around at my peers. They gave me some worksheets to do. I nervously observed the other students. Everyone was zipping through the assignments, finishing quickly and moving on to the next set of tasks.
I was overwhelmed, and this feeling consumed me. Shame ate at every edge of my newly built assuredness, shredding my self-worth and promptly handing it back to me like garbage.
And in this state a little voice spoke to me, quietly but surely enough:
You are not smart.
I took that voice in, placed in in the middle of my chest, and continued forward with my life.
As the years went by, I still did well in school. I still took classes that were above average, still got good grades. But the voice, and the anxiety, they were always there. They teamed up like too old friends, kicking me down if I got too relaxed, feeding me fear to keep me in line and on my toes at all times.
This thought, this feeling, this identity, this not being smart--it followed me. I believed it, I spoke it, I let it dictate exactly how many chances I was willing to take.
Or rather how many failures I was not willing to endure.
It kept me in a box.
Fast forward past college, grad school, and into my first year of work as a clinical counselor in NYC. My coworkers are all of varying intelligence, some graduating from Princeton and others not even high school. But here's the difference:
I am the only clinician besides my boss.
I am the first female to ever work in this organization as a counselor for men recovering from homelessness.
I am the solitary person under the age of 50.
And because of all these things, the odds should have been stacked against me.
But.
The context had changed.
I was now a valuable asset, something unique to the team. I was young, I was educated in the field, and I was a woman. There wasn't anyone else like me there, and the knowledge I was equipped with was new to everyone else.
I was seen as smart.
Bright.
Capable.
And people would tell me this. And I would shoot them down. I would say it's only because I am a woman or young or because no one else is trained. I would say trust me, if I was anywhere else I would have had my ass handed to me several times by now.
But still, people persisted to tell me this thing, this thing I was sure I wasn't allowed to believe.
After about three years, my curiosity started to rise. What if I was smart? What if I was capable, was bright? Could it be that all these people are wrong?
I went back and thought through my life, through all the situations I had been in, all the different learning environments. And it was true, in some places, I was not even close to the smartest person in the room. And in others, I was most certainly at the top.
It depended on the context.
So, what did this mean for me? About how I was going to label myself moving forward?
Because in some contexts, I was a brain child.
And others, slow as a sloth.
Did it make a difference?
The answer is, in no uncertain terms, yes.
But not so much whether I was intelligent based on my IQ or my ability to succeed in assessments.
But what I believed myself to be.
You see, once I started identifying myself as smart, I took more chances. I was able to answer questions more easily, I found I could memorize things quicker and process information at a higher level. I went after more challenging courses, tried my hand at solving problems no one else could solve.
I did more simply because I believed that I could and because my anxiety wasn't eating at my brain.
Because a new context had taught me something that an old one did not.
And the truth was that while one environment pushed me to shrink and the other to grow, my capabilities would have been the same in either context.
But I read the wrong context clues.
I made the wrong inference.
And I limited myself because of it.
So, what have you based your identity on because of the context you are in?
How are your surroundings benefiting or binding you?
Context can shape you.
But don't let it define you.
The place where you are the smartest? Bravest? Most full?
That is who you are.
It is what you carry with you no matter the context you are in, because the context is only a clue.
The answers are already within you.
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