You’ve got this. I’ve got this. We’ve got this.

Photo credit: Patrice Johnson

by Amy Heydlauff

“You’ve got this!”

A junior high math teacher recently claimed this as her mantra with her students. It’s an awesome short sentence used for a variety of reasons: It inspires self-confidence in the listener, conveys optimism, and it transfers ownership of the outcome to the listener.

You’ve got this” also signifies the speaker is willing to let go, and it places no time constraint on its recipient. It allows room to try and get “it” partly right but fail, to try again, to get closer and fail, and to try until one succeeds.

Better yet, the phrase doesn’t carve anything in stone. The speaker reserves the right to judiciously step in to prevent catastrophe. This, for junior high math students could entail avoiding embarrassment in front of their peers, and the same may hold true for those of us well beyond junior high.

Sometimes the sentence may serve to self-motivate. “I’ve got this” can bolster a job hunter before heading into a job interview or the next Taylor Swift before stepping up to a karaoke microphone. The phrase can prepare a person for a difficult apology to a friend, help tackle increasing exercise, plan a first date or gently share difficult news.

When things don’t go the way we had hoped, “You’ve got this,” may simply mean we learned something. Junior high students may now understand percentages but not yet fractions.

The point? Our lives are richer for the effort, and we know something or did something we didn’t know or do before. We grew. We are now more capable. More ready.

The sentence conveys a fundamental optimism. I wish I had used it more in years past, and I’m determined to start using it more now. Let’s encourage ourselves and those around us. Let’s fail forward and be optimistic.

We’ve got this!