Why Easy for Me Can Make You Undervalue Yourself

You’re the person your strengths feel most normal to. That may make you the least qualified person to judge how unusual they are.

Sometimes the things we are best at are the hardest things for us to recognize as strengths.

I think part of the problem is that we are standing too close to them.

You might do something without much effort, understand something quickly, or explain it in a way that makes sense. Maybe you notice connections other people miss. Maybe you can organize something, create something, solve something, or make something beautiful without having to force yourself through every step.

Instead of thinking, I might be really good at this, the thought is often:

Well, this is easy.

Or:

Everybody probably knows this.

Or:

Someone else has already said that.

And suddenly the very ease that might be evidence of a strength becomes the reason you discount it.

I’ve been noticing how much this has affected my own ability to create.

There are things I know how to do that come so naturally to me that I have a hard time believing they could be valuable to someone else. Enjoying the process can almost make me more suspicious of the result.

If it didn’t feel like work, was it really worth anything?

If I came to the conclusion fairly easily, is it even worth sharing? And if I didn’t struggle to figure it out, why would anyone want to hear me explain it?

Somewhere along the way, I seem to have picked up this idea that valuable things are supposed to feel difficult to produce.

I don’t know exactly where that belief came from, but I can see what it does.

It makes me run an idea through a filter before I ever give it a chance to become anything.

“Everybody Already Knows This” 

This is probably one of the quickest ways I talk myself out of creating something.

I’ll have an idea I want to share, and almost immediately another thought appears:

People already know this.

Then I start thinking about all the people who have already talked about the subject. There are books about it, videos about it, and probably thousands of posts about it.

So why would I need to add mine?

I used to think that was a pretty reasonable question. I don’t want to repeat something just for the sake of repeating it.

But I’m beginning to see a difference between asking whether I have anything useful to contribute and automatically assuming that I don’t because somebody else has discussed the subject before.

Almost everything has been discussed before: relationships, money, parenting, creativity, fear, love.

That has never stopped us from needing another conversation about any of them.

We don’t only respond to information. We respond to people.

Someone can tell me something I have heard ten times before, and the way she explains it finally makes me understand it. Maybe it’s her example or the language she uses. Maybe I recognize myself in her story, or I’m simply in a different place in my life when I hear it.

The information may not be new.

But my ability to receive it is.

I’m realizing that “someone has already said this” may not be a very useful standard for deciding whether I should say it too.

Why I Underestimate What Comes Easily to Me 

The other thing I’m realizing is that I have a very distorted view of what is easy.

I know what is easy for me.

That’s all.

Because I live inside my own mind, it’s tempting to assume that whatever comes naturally to me must come naturally to everybody else.

Of course, it doesn’t.

Other people do things effortlessly that completely impress me.

One person can look at a room and immediately know how to arrange it. Someone else can walk into a tense situation and know exactly what to say. There are people who understand numbers in seconds, while another person can take a complicated idea and explain it so simply that everybody in the room finally gets it.

The person doing it may barely notice.

She might shrug and say, “I don’t know. I just do it.”

I think that’s part of what makes our own strengths so easy to underestimate.

We experience them as ourselves, not as spectators. Some of the steps are so automatic that we don’t even notice them, and our own thought process feels normal because it’s the only one we’ve ever had.

What feels ordinary from the inside might not be ordinary at all.

Ease Doesn’t Automatically Mean Lack of Value 

I’ve also been questioning my tendency to connect effort with worth.

If something took ten miserable hours, somehow it can feel more legitimate than something I created joyfully in two.

Why?

The person receiving it doesn’t experience the hours I spent making it. She experiences what it gives her.

If something I say helps another person understand an idea she has been wrestling with, does it matter that the explanation came easily to me?

Maybe something I create saves her time. Maybe it gives her language for something she couldn’t describe, helps her make a decision, or simply makes her feel understood. Its usefulness doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how difficult it was for me to make.

I think I have been measuring value from the wrong side.

I’ve been looking at what something cost me to produce instead of what it might offer the person receiving it.

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Creating Is Also How I Find Out What I Have to Say 

There is another problem with filtering everything this way.

It doesn’t just stop one idea. It can stop the process that would have led to the next one.

I keep coming back to this strange little paradox:

In order to create more, I have to create.

I don’t think I can think my way around that.

Creating is how I discover what I actually think, which ideas have more underneath them, and what patterns keep showing up. It also helps me get better at explaining what I mean and makes my voice clearer.

One thought can turn into another one I couldn’t have planned before I started.

That doesn’t happen when every idea has to prove its originality, difficulty, or importance before I let myself make it.

Sometimes the creation itself is part of the discovery.

And I think that’s what I’ve been interrupting.

I’ve been expecting myself to know which ideas are valuable before I’ve fully created them, almost like I’m trying to make the finished judgment at the beginning of the process.

Maybe “Easy for Me” Is Actually a Strength 

I’m still catching myself doing this.

An idea comes to me and I think, That’s too obvious. Or I wonder whether it came too easily to be worth sharing.

What changed is that I’ve started questioning that reaction instead of automatically believing it.

Maybe easy doesn’t mean insignificant. It could mean practiced, familiar, or simply clear to me.

It might also mean this is one of the things I know how to do.

And the fact that I can’t fully see the value of it from where I’m standing doesn’t mean there isn’t any value there.

I may never be completely objective about my own gifts.

I’m the person they feel most normal to.

So I’m practicing not requiring them to feel extraordinary to me before I allow them to exist in the world.