Rediscovering your Self Confidence
Confidence building is a practice that you must work on daily. It will take time to reprogram your mind, how you see yourself and how you think others perceive you. In doing so you will realize a lot of the negativity you once told yourself or absorbed from outside sources over time was not what it seemed. Clarity will teach you to re-frame your thoughts and re-frame your belief system. Eventually you will learn to re-frame your mind and everything you know to be true about yourself. It starts with believing in YOU and believing in YOURSELF.
Let me tell you…
I am a woman who didn’t always think highly of herself. My lack of self confidence revealed it’s self in a number of ways. Mostly in the way I carried myself but the largest way it showed up was in the unhealthy friendships and relationships I attracted & maintained long after their expiration date.
My lack of self love, self identity and self confidence and self control ran rampant throughout my life for many years. It started when I was about 11 years old and in the sixth grade. I had to have eleven baby teeth pulled out by a dentist. Ten on the top and one on the bottom. The reason was that my baby teeth never fell out like they do for most first and second graders. I was eleven years old with several baby teeth in my mouth.
Crooked Smile…
The summer before my 6th grade year began- my dentist assured my parents and I that these teeth needed to be extracted. We were sure my teeth would come in rather quickly- well before school started. We were right to some degree. My teeth did come in but not in the way they were supposed to.
My teeth came in but they were crooked and some stayed impacted which made it look like some teeth were missing but weren’t. By then my parents were experiencing tough times. There simply wasn’t enough money to take me back to the dentist to get them fixed — so that meant I will live out the reality of my teeth looking the way they did. I had to endure the affects of my teeth being messed up from about eleven years old until I was about eighteen years old.
At 18, I was old enough to fix them myself it cost me thousands of dollars but honestly by then my self confidence was damaged. I went through the most impressionable years of my life, middle school & high school with impacted, crooked teeth and was deemed “different” because of it. I was made fun of daily, picked on and taunted — just for my teeth being different. Something at the age of 11, I had no power to change on my own. So I endured a tremendous abuse cycle during middle school and high school. Huge hits to my self esteem and self confidence.
Those were the years where I should have been learning myself, learning who I am and getting comfortable with myself. Yet, I spent that time hiding, being embarrassed, shy and being the brunt of all the jokes & bullying. Girls hated on me, guys liked me in private but publicly ignored me. Needless to say, early on I adapted some false beliefs about myself because of this.
The repercussions were that I looked for love, attention and validation from outside sources and because the outside sources were making fun of me and making me feel small, I spent many years with low self esteem, no self worth and no self confidence. In adapting this way of thinking I allowed outside sources to dictate the way I felt about myself. I was young, uninformed and isolated in my own judgment and fears. There was no one to affirm me, to acknowledge me and help me see my value and worth. That’s why I’m writing this blog — to be a voice of affirmation in your ear.
Fast forward…
I am now thirty eight years old, my teeth have been fixed for over twenty years. That dim time in my life has now become the epicenter of change. Self Love, Self Confidence, Self respect, self esteem — SELF is the center of my existence. Not only just for me, but to pass the message on to other women struggling with their own self confidence.
When you spend so much time not seeing your value, your beauty and your inner glow — you won’t want to waste another second on anything less. When you FINALLY find it, whatever it looks like for you- it’ll change your life.
Truly loving who you are, loving who you were and loving the person you are becoming takes time, so be patient with yourself. When you’ve been brutalized not only by outsiders but you’ve also caused your own self inflicted wounds and brutality, it takes time to undo that kind of hurt and pain. Make a choice to see the beauty in who you are as a person.
Power from within…
You have to learn to be the positive voice in your ear, affirming yourself, acknowledging yourself and cheering yourself on regardless of what others think or say. You are uniquely made with purpose, grace and light. Your individuality has reason and purpose. So to bring the light to shine from within at it’s brightest, you have to understand that Self is the center of your existence and it’s okay to make yourself a priority. You put too much emphasis on what others thought of you, not knowing that the only opinion on YOU is YOURS. You are beautiful, you are worthy, you are deserving and you are wonderfully made. Speak life to yourself, speak it so much that you cant hear anything else but the words of self power and self focus.
Confidence lives and breathes within you. It actually reflects outward. Someone who is truly happy and secure within themselves as a person, radiates that energy from within out. Yes, my teeth are now fixed and they have been for 20 years or more, but I am still the same person I have always been on the inside. Yes, that short time in my childhood when my teeth weren’t fixed became a root issue for my confidence. But finding your root issue and cause will kick start your process. Your confidence work will begin in healing that hurtful space.
Here are a few things that worked for me on my journey to Self Confidence. Give them a try or feel free to leave me a comment and tell me what you did to build your self confidence.
Self confidence building is a ongoing route, with no clear destination. So let’s keep each other uplifted in love, light and peace.
- I allowed myself time to mourn, to cry to feel all the feelings I needed to feel. There was a time when I was angry, hurt, lost, upset, sad and a host of other emotions. I regretted choices I made, people I allowed in and I blamed myself a lot. I had to accept that all emotions are normal. All emotions need to be felt so that they could be accepted. I read a lot of self help books on forgiveness of others, self forgiveness, energy healing, PTSD, trauma and abuse/neglect. Understanding what others did to me, understanding what I allowed and accepted and accepting where I was a victim and needed protection was huge. In doing this I learned to protect myself, to be my own body guard and force field.
- I had to learn to let go of anything that was no longer serving me. I am still battling with this. Because you learn to accept unhealthy people or situations and it sometimes takes you awhile to recognize it for what it really is toxic. I found it to be beneficial removing or keeping my distance from people,places or things that are not adding value to my life or purpose. Even jobs now, I realize working in a unhealthy work environment with people who do not see your potential or your value, can cause you a lot of issues with your confidence. Learn to let go. Create an escape plan or route. You are not stuck in anything or stuck with anyone.
- I had to learn to accept me for me. The truth is you are stuck with you, yourself and your body for the duration of your lifetime, so you better learn to love the skin you are in. Love who you are. And if there is anything about you, that you don’t like, change it. But you can’t beat yourself up. You can’t bully yourself, because you are stuck with yourself. The sooner you realize you can’t be anyone but you, the sooner you can begin to build the confidence you need to be YOU fully and unapologetic-ally.
- I had to learn to sympathize with those who hurt me. The people who made fun of me or hurt me, were actually exposing who they are and showing their insecurities more than they were exposing mine. Happy and content people with themselves, don’t need to talk about others to build a false sense of self. Once I realized that part, it was easier to look at my abusers as victims of their own circumstances more so than their words actually being a reflection of who I was as a person.
Find beauty in every part of who you are.
Find it even within the mistakes you make or the things you can’t change. Give yourself grace, go easy on yourself & learn to love and protect yourself. Guard your heart and soul with all understanding. No ones opinion of you matters, outside of your own. The road to Self Confidence starts with SELF- YOU!
