You read that correctly – let people underestimate you.

So why would I want you to do this?

When people make an assumption about you at any point in your life, whether it’s an assumption they’ve just made or made 5 years ago, or whether or not it’s accurate or true – let them hold that thought about you in their mind.

Don’t bother trying to change their mind. More often than not when people hold these assumptions or estimations of someone else, they’re not likely to change their opinions unless there’s solid proof for them to do so.

Let those people who think they’re better than you or have something over you think that, let them underestimate you. Eventually, when you have the proof to show them or have outgrown that label they decided was yours they think, “Oh wow, I didn’t see that coming, not from them.”

You don’t even have to go out of your way. They’ll see you doing good, either when they scroll through their feed and see you sharing your successes or by word of mouth. You get to turn that quick judgment around and surprise them.

Those people who made that underestimation of you may honestly resent you for it because that’s where a lot of judgment comes from – bruised ego. OR they’ll be like “You had that in you. I didn’t even know. I underestimated you.” And it’s because they either didn’t know what exactly you were capable of or they didn’t take the time to get to know fully well what you’re able to do.

It’s so empowering not just for yourself but for others as well to see that it doesn’t matter at any point what anyone thinks of you. As long as you work on yourself and you keep your mind focused on achieving what you said you were, you’ll do it. What other people assume you can’t do has no effect on your output unless you let it.

Let’s say you have this dream goal of onboarding more team members and delegating tasks to grow a new aspect of your business. You have someone sort of close, an acquaintance maybe says, “You really think you can pull that off in x amount of time.”

Rather than feeling like you have to prove yourself by saying “Yes I can because x,y,z.” just say, “Yes, I can.”

And leave it at that. No need to let them know your plans, the hours of planning and research that went into it. That doesn’t matter to them. Passion, determination, and grit to get something done does not need to be measured in numbers to be there. Even just a spark can ignite the fire that gets the work done.

If you feel the need to prove yourself to someone, they’re not the people that deserve to hear it. If you let them occupy that headspace, remove that. Otherwise, you compete with that version of who they think you are and that’s not fair to you, your family, or anyone else.

When you’re finished, you can sit back and let those people either come to you in disbelief or shy away in embarrassment.

Let the others fly by. At the end of the day, their underestimation does not make you less or more. No one is better than anyone else.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Daisy