How To Be Confident At Your Workplace (As An Immigrant)

Because it’s already hard to be confident at your workplace, and it’s even harder as an immigrant.

Photo by kate.sade on Unsplash

I will tell you something: it’s not easy to be an immigrant. Every day I question my decision. Is the UK the right place for me? Am I making the right choice? And all this questioning comes from a lack of confidence in myself and in my work. So I am breaking down some challenges I face as an immigrant to see how I can be more confident. And I hope this can help you as well if you are in the same position.

First challenge: the language

I work full-time as a content writer, and I need to use English daily, not only any English but an “English” with quality and very few mistakes. Yesterday, my boyfriend told me I used the wrong pronunciation of the word ranking, I said “hanking” during a call with my boss. This is a difficult one for Brazilians. And my thought was: from hundreds of words that I spoke correctly, are you really going to pick on one? He said: I just want to help. You told me to spot when you speak something wrong. Well, that was true, but I felt down because speaking English is hard. I have been using this language for more than 20 years, and still, I face challenges because it’s not my native language.