That’s me when I was around 4 years old (funnily enough I have a very similar polo shirt that I wear now!). Of course, at that age I had no idea what was in store for me, and just a couple of years later when I was around 6 years old I remember being asked by my primary school teacher what I wanted to be when I grew up. I reflected for a moment and torn between two options I said ‘I’m not sure. Either an artist or an inventor.’

I had two pictures - one of me in a huge studio, being swept along in the moment as I created magnificent works of art that would make people weep, and another of me in a lab coat with crazy hair surrounded by bubbling test tubes and all manner of electronic devices as I used all I knew to build Something Amazing (TM). Those two sides have always been there for me (I’m a typical Gemini) - the art and the science, the creative and the logical, the head and the heart.

In my 20’s I got sidetracked by a successful but personally damaging career in IT, which lead to me hitting my quarter-life crisis, losing my self-confidence and having to rebuild myself piece by piece, and I can see that part of the reason for hitting that crisis point is because I came to live purely in the logical part of me and pretty much ignored the creative side.

As a 6 year old boy I’d identified that both themes were hugely important to me, but ended up paying an extremely high price for it when I went forward with a life that didn’t reflect that.

Those two themes persist for me to this day, and a day where I can use my logic and my creativity is a great day because I get to use the things that have always been there and still persist for me.

Another memory that’s been a puzzle until fairly recently, is when I was 13 or 14 in my Religious Education classes. In some classes we’d ditch the normal teaching format in favour of a debate, where the teacher, Mrs Evans, would lead us all in a debate on particular topics related to religion in the world. One day, she asked me to come up to the front of the class, invited me to sit in her chair and told the class that I was going to lead the debate that day.

It felt great - I was sitting in the big chair at the head of the class, I was letting people speak and counter, and I was managing the flow of the whole thing. I remember clearly how much I enjoyed it.

Mrs Evans asked me to lead the class in a debate 3 or 4 times, and never asked anyone else. Why would she do that? I think the only reason can be because she wanted me to see something. To be honest, I’m still figuring out exactly what, but I think it has to do with leading people and bringing out what’s important to them.

Thanks so much Mrs Evans.

The great thing is that my work now - both the coaching and the ad project management - is a fantastic combination of head and heart, thinking and feeling, creativity and logic, orchestrating and leading - and that’s why it works.

I share this all with you because I’ve worked with hundreds of people who come to me with low confidence, not knowing what they should be doing, and they want to figure out how to be more confident so they can go forwards with something that feels right.

They feel stuck, like they spend just a tiny amount of time doing what they love and want more out of their lives and careers. Some of them even wonder if wanting something more is too much to ask for.

In my opinion and experience, having work that includes the things that have persisted for you is absolutely critical in terms of loving your work and getting more richness out of your working experience.

So figure out what your themes are. In your early days at school, what did you want to do when you grew up? What did you want to be when you were a kid? In your teenage years or at college or university, what did you really want to be, regardless of whether you took that route or not? What have been the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the jobs you’ve had?

What patterns can you see? What are the themes that come out and what still persists for you to this day?

Look at the patterns and themes that have always been there for you. Those things aren’t going anywhere, and ignoring them is ignoring who you are and who you’ve always been, and that’s a sure-fire way to lose all confidence in yourself.