Steph Claire Smith

And I do know that like it's just like I just that's just the way it's going to be unless my stomach was literally concaved.

Did you say it in front of other kids?

Um, no, I remember I was kind of, like, off the side.

I remember it was an indoor basketball court and I was, like, off the side.

We were, like, doing an activity and I was standing there, I think, waiting to go in and she'd said it.

So, like, maybe someone else had heard it.

Like, I wasn't alone with her, but it wasn't... It wasn't something I ever spoken about or, like, as in said to my friends, like, oh, I can't believe she said that or whatever because I was so, like, taken back by it and felt so insecure about it.

And then the other one from like that era of my life that really stuck with me and really made a difference, I think, to my confidence, particularly as a businesswoman and taking myself seriously and all of that sort of stuff because I think it's where my internal dialogue of not being very smart or intelligent honestly probably started was I remember talking to a friend through VCE and she was really nervous about the exams.

She had picked a lot of,

very challenging subjects and some that she like outwardly say, like, I'm never going to use this in my life, but it gets marked up basically.

And was trying really hard to get a really high enter score, which like each their own, whatever.

But when I mentioned something about being nervous or whatever, she said to me, yeah, but you've picked all of the easy subjects, so you've got nothing to worry about.

And at the time, I certainly laughed it off and was like, yeah, I have.

But then I was like, I really just picked the subjects that I like and that I'm good at.

But then what happened was I really struggle in exams and I performed really well in all of those subjects all year, but in some of my best subjects really didn't do very well at all in my exams.

And therefore, like, even though I wasn't going for a particular enter school or anything like that, my results made me feel like, oh, you picked the easy subjects and you still didn't do good in them.

And it just, honestly, it was like the base of me just, okay, I'm just like not very intelligent.

And yeah.

So it's, yeah, it's just, I feel like those years particularly were

really, and I think now as a parent, really worries me at how a simple, sometimes not even meaning to be insulting, can really start an insecurity in someone.