Growth: new roles and responsibilities

Taking on different new roles and responsibilities can be quite a stressor. In my context, I realise that there are many new areas of roles and responsibilities I am taking up in the workplace. I can now better empathize with people who are going through life stage transitions. It's tough!!

There's always that nagging self within me that doubts whether I am competent enough or not, whether I can meet up to expectations of people around me, of myself as I compare myself with what I perceive is the ideal person who is performing the role well, and as I compare myself with others who are in similar roles. It's easy to slip into beating myself up or to just feel like giving up.

On the other hand, maybe going through this is not such a bad thing. I am even more inclined to depend on God for my sense of security and self worth, and to depend on Him who is still the grand weaver of my life.

I have observed that there is a self justifying nature of the human heart. We tend to rely a lot on our successes and achievements to prop up our self esteem and sense of feeling like we are good enough. And when this happens, we don't turn to the One who truly justifies and is Giver of our worth. There's nothing bad with achieving success, it is the meaning that we make of it and whether that meaning impacts our self worth that makes the difference. And I feel that it is all-too-easy to equate the success we find in fulfiling our roles (whatever roles we predominantly play in our lives) to our level of self worth. So the greater success, the greater self worth we have, and vice versa.

I do want to be competent in my role at work, because all my gifts and talents are graciously given by God to put to good use. It is also important to think through how I can best use my gifts here for the better of society, individuals, and the environment. But I also recognize that it is a process that will be filled with a mixture of potential failures, risks and successes. Perhaps at this point in time, I will experience a greater sense of uncertainty and possibly, failures/setbacks along the way.

In any case, I'm thankful that at the end of each day, and even in moments I feel at a loss and incompetent, I know that my setbacks, failures, weaknesses in fulfiling my roles and responsibilities do not determine or change my self worth.

One of my ex-supervisor's at work once wisely said that our person/being and our skills/knowledge can be seen quite distinctly. If we lack in knowledge/skills, we can spend time to hone our areas of lacking, but our lack of knowledge/skills should not determine how we feel about our worth and confidence as a person/human being.

And I'm thankful that I can rely on who I am as created in God's image and as a child of God because of Jesus to continue to shape how I see myself as a person. If not, then how can I even conceive of what being a person/human being means?

Conversely, knowing who I am helps me to be braver to take risks and accept failures/setbacks in the areas of knowledge and skills, knowing that I am still loved and accepted, and that my life is in His hands no matter what.