THE CONFIDENCE CHRONICLES PART V - CONFIDENCE IN YOUR CONFIDENCE
This is post 5/5 of my “Confidence Chronicles” series, in which I discuss the mindsets, actions and thought processes I’ve applied to build/rebuild my confidence in different aspects of my life. The goal of these 5 posts is for you readers to be able to apply relevant points to your own insecurities in order to combat them, and hopefully build your own confidence over time.
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So… we’re finally at the last post of the Confidence Chronicles. It’s taken its sweet (long-ass) time, but we finally got there in the end. Furthermore, it’s almost exactly a year ago since the idea for this series popped into my head, so this really has ended up coming full circle… albeit unintentionally. Not going to lie, it’s kind of a bittersweet feeling - it’s going to feel strange to not focus so heavily on confidence anymore, but on the other hand… I don’t have to focus so heavily on confidence anymore. Finally, I can bring my other post ideas that have been collecting dust in my drafts to life!
The funny thing is that although I started this series with a plan for what I was going to write about in each post, I never actually settled on what aspect of my confidence I wanted to end this series with. I figured that when the time came to write this, I would have a clear idea of what would be an appropriate note to wrap up the series on.
Of course, at that point in time I didn’t know that the latter half of 2019 was going to turn my life upside down. I didn’t know that I was going to find myself in a massive slump due to stress, confusion and anxiety over my career, my direction and purpose in life and my role in the grand scheme of the world. I know it all sounds very melodramatic and like an excuse to not apply myself to complete my projects - which might be partially true - but the truth is that these questions have been weighing on me for a long time. Long before I started working on my mental health, long before I started this blog, long before moving back to the UK. I’ve been able to ignore these feelings for a long time, but lately they’ve been making themselves extremely hard to avoid. I think that the reason lies in that I’m soon going to be on what society likes to call the “wrong” side of 25, and that I still feel like I’m figuring out where my life is going… i.e. running around like a headless chicken.
However, this blog has really forced me to confront my fears in a way that counselling or confiding in someone I trust ever could - simply because it makes me work through my innermost thoughts and feelings alone. Attempting to address deeply buried issues in order to make my peace with them so I can move past it has been a very triggering process, and also extremely reliant on trial and error.
When you make an error in your healing process, it can be devastating and a major setback in your daily life. But when you get it right… the pain and hard work all becomes worth it. Trust me. There is nothing more satisfying than thinking of a past situation that used to make you feel like you had the weight of the world of the shoulders, and realising that although it felt like it at the time, it didn’t kill you. Hell, you’d even be able to go through it again and be confident you can make it through again, if you had to. One day you’ll even be able to laugh at the situations that once tore you down, and with your newfound confidence be able to realise that at the end of the day… it wasn’t that deep (or, at least, not deep enough to kill you).
For this reason, I want to tie the messages from the previous posts of this Confidence Chronicles series together to make this post - confidence in your newfound confidence. Once you build a solid foundation of confidence in all aspects of your life, the next step is learning to adjust to the newfound energy, positivity and motivation that this confidence manifests itself as. I personally learned (and - in certain cases - am still learning) how to harness this “power” in the following ways:
1. Slowly but surely trusting myself to believe in my own capabilities.
Do you want to know something that’s funny but at the same time not funny? If not, tough sh*t because here it comes: despite writing so extensively about confidence, my own levels of confidence are somewhat unreliable at best.
As I’ve mentioned countless times before, I never write blog posts when I’m in a bad place mentally. In fact, every single post (except one) on here is written when I’m in a great mood, my mind is clear, my confidence levels are unbeatable and I can write about my bad times in an objective manner that doesn’t end up making me sad. A quick scroll through my past posts prove that it’s so easy to assume that I’m 100% over the hard things that I’ve written about on here, simply because I’ve become so good at realising my own past mistakes and how I should move forward. However, in reality, there’s usually not a day that goes by without the topics crossing my mind.
I’ve been told many a time by friends that while I’m excellent at giving advice and knowing exactly what measures to take to get over a situation, I’m not very good at applying said advice to myself. It’s very true, and very frustrating - reading my own posts back makes me realise that I already have the tools and capabilities required to be able to heal, but so far I only seem to be able to use these tools when I’m in a good place. For this reason, I struggle a fair amount with self-doubt in my authenticity as a mental health blogger, because what’s the point of preaching about self-love, self-care and bettering your mental health if your own mental health is in a complete shambles from time to time?
However, it’s not all bad, because the more I apply myself to think of solutions, apply said solutions to my own life and start seeing the benefits of constantly working on myself, the more confident I become that one day I’ll get to a stage where I can confidently write about my issues without this nagging feeling that I’m a fraud. Additionally, g-checking myself from time to time and making sure that I am actually following my own advice makes me increasingly more secure in the knowledge that I am extremely emotionally intelligent and do have enough experience to change my own life, as well as others’.
I think the main thing here is to keep on doing whatever it is you’re trying to improve upon, and allow yourself to appreciate how far you’ve come on your journey as opposed to solely focusing how long you have to go. Regardless of if you’re doubting your capabilities in the workplace, your body goals, your ability to adapt to new situations or your creative ventures - or a combination of all four - it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate your progress.
Giving yourself a well-deserved pat on the back and focusing on how far you have come since the beginning gives you the chance to fully appreciate the hard work you’ve put in towards bettering yourself - which leads to you gradually feeling confident in trusting the power in your own capabilities over time.
2. Stopping the negative self-talk.
As it so happens, I have quite a dark and self-deprecating sense of humour - and so do many of my friends and my sister. Calling myself and others every offensive name under the sun as a joke is something that used to occur on a near daily basis, under the guise that it was all harmless banter. I’ve literally been doing this for as long as I can remember, but the past few months or so, I’ve really been trying to stop for a few reasons.
The main reason is that regardless of how harmless belittling your intelligence and capabilities as a joke may seem, doing it on a regular basis can lead to you internalising these notions and gradually starting to believe them. Although I genuinely thought that I was mentally resilient enough to be able to separate jokes from reality, whenever I’d fall into a bit of slump the first things that would come into my head were the things I’d said about myself as a joke. They would sting a lot, because in those moments I would genuinely believe them.
“God, I’m such a dumb b*tch”.
“Ugh, when did I become such a d*ckhead?”
“I swear to God…. I f*cking hate myself”
“Oh, great, so on top of being a dumb b*tch - I’m also a fat b*tch. Excellent”.
The mad thing is that I’m actually laughing while writing this, simply because I’m in a positive state of mind and know that it’s all a joke. I know I’m neither dumb, a d*ckhead, or fat. Nor do I hate myself anymore. But as soon as that Sunday night sadness hits (I know you all know what I’m talking about!), there I am - trying to choke back tears because I’ve managed to delude myself into thinking that the above is, in fact, true. For this reason, I’ve also tried to stop doing it to my friends, because I’d hate to think that they may be internalising something mean that I’ve said to them as a jOkE.
It’s also interesting to think why self-deprecating humour comes so easily to a lot of us. I can only speak for myself and certain friends that are similar to me in this aspect, but I genuinely think it’s because we’ve - very sadly - grown accustomed to being verbally abused and/or having our weaknesses constantly being picked at during our formative years - either in our home environments, school environments, or both. Instead of devising healthier methods of coping with and eliminating these internalisations, we’ve become reliant on using humour as a source of escapism from our nagging insecurities cast upon us by people around us.
When I started seeing self-deprecating humour in this light, it actually made me quite sad. There I was, thinking that I should get into comedy for being so hilarious, when really it turned out to be just me being too scared to deal with my own insecurities. That’s when I knew things needed to change, and I’ve been working on this ever since.
Personally, the easiest way for me to reduce my negative self-talk has been to try to visualise how I would feel if a stranger (it used to be friends, but then I remembered that most of my friends are as tapped as I am) was saying it to me. I soon realised that if it had come from anyone else but myself or my friends, I’d be ready to throw hands over this literal verbal abuse. I am now trying my best to speak to and treat myself in the same way that a stranger or acquaintance would - with dignity, respect, honesty and with a regard for my own feelings (because, lo and behold, it is possible to be brutally honest and kind at the same time).
Of course, this is so much easier said than done - especially if you, like me, love a cheeky self-drag and dragging others (out of love, of course). However, this doesn’t have to mean that you can stop having fun - I’ve found that an eloquently worded drag meant to act as a wake-up call for me/someone else to improve my/their situation without having to resort to insults and name-calling is infinitely more creative, satisfying and efficient. Furthermore, I’ve found that g-checks that are based on constructive criticism as opposed to cruel insults give you a clearer image of how to improve yourself moving forward - which can only be a good thing.
Basically, just be patient and kind to yourself and others. Take on the constructive criticism received from yourself and your friends/family to work towards bettering yourself, and your confidence will follow.
3. Learning to trust the feelings of positivity and self-love.
This is by far the hardest one for me - and for good reason. When you’ve spent a large part of your teenage years and early adulthood believing that your capabilities and strengths are inadequate, that you’re ugly, that you’re not worthy of love and happiness, that your life has no purpose and that your family and friends would be better off without you, it’s nearly impossible to break free from this toxic downward spiral and to unlearn all of the behaviours and thought processes that have manifested as a result of these feelings.
The keyword here is nearly.
Obviously, I can only speak for myself, but I would like to think that this could be applied to others as well. When I started this jOuRnEy, I honestly thought I’d never get to a place where I genuinely love every aspect of myself. Despite this, I kept pushing myself through the extremely triggering task of unpacking my toxic feelings - until one day I suddenly didn’t have them anymore. Or, at the very least, they suddenly no longer hurt me. Seemingly out of nowhere… I felt okay.
The sad but still understandable thing about suddenly coming to terms with who you are, what you’ve been through and feeling confident enough to move forward is that you don’t trust the feeling at first. At all. You tell yourself that it’s just one of the little upswings before everything comes crashing down around you again, dragging you back to step one, and you try to mentally prepare yourself for said downfall to happen.
But it doesn’t.
Sure, you might have little dips every now and again. You know that healing isn’t a linear process, so you assume that these little dips will lead to you spiralling again. But, to your surprise, they don’t - and you find yourself picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and moving forward with your life relatively unscathed and with more experience and wisdom than before. You start to get suspicious and a little scared because things are actually going alright for once. You’ve become so used to your life being so riddled with anxiety, insecurity, sadness and chaos and the good times being fleeting, that this new reality is extremely alien to you.
This is where things can go one out of two ways.
Either your anxiety kicks in and you start self-sabotaging in different ways because you’re afraid that the longer things are going well, the harder the fall is going to be - so you might as well save yourself the pain by not pursuing things that could allow you to be happy. Or, you are able to tentatively start trusting and accepting the waves of love and positivity as your new reality - making you find the strength and confidence to move forward despite the past pain and hurt.
Personally, it took several rounds of self-sabotaging before getting to the point of learning to trust the positive feelings and my confidence in all aspects of myself. I try not to beat myself up over all the opportunities I’ve turned down simply due to genuinely believing that I’m not good/smart/pretty/talented enough, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t make me sad from time to time. However, the more time that passes I get more and more confident that new, even better opportunities will come up for me - and I’ll be confident enough to embrace them without any hesitation when the time comes.
To wrap up this whole Confidence Chronicles series, I want to leave you all with this simple but true statement:
It gets better - if you’re willing to put in the work.
Regardless of which of the posts resonated with you the most, I need you to understand that building confidence takes time. I would even go as far as saying that it’s a never-ending journey, and that the learning to fully love and trust yourself and your capabilities is a never-ending process as life progresses. However, the more you work hard on your own betterment, the easier and smaller the challenges that arise from time to time become.
My ultimate wish is that we all one day can get to a place where we can trust ourselves enough to be happy and confident, regardless of what life throws at us. That whenever things that would usually send us down that spiral again pop up, we can just take a deep breath, count to ten, and be confident in the knowledge that the situation no longer has power over us, and that we will easily be able to work through it.
Until that day comes - never stop fighting.
Love,
Liv
