The Confidence Conflict
I am going to tell you this right now:
This is not going to be a moment that we are going to flounder in our insecurities.
Or reflect on experiences of low self-confidence.
Or identify what they are, what triggers them and how they make us feel, because they have already robbed us of so much joy and light, that the why behind the confidence conflict, is a waste of time and energy.
And I am not about to sugarcoat this either.
The coach in me has clocked in and it is time that I blow this shit wide open.
Insecurity is often talked about in low, secretive conversations (if discussed at all). And it can make you feel as if what you just admitted to is embarrassing or as if the worst cuss word has just rolled off the tip of your tongue.
That is because culturally, we tend to associate insecurity with weakness.
And at a time where we are proving our {well} worth as women, we do not want to show our stripes of low self-confidence or anything that may mean we are lacking stability.
This means that less and less women are talking about their conflict with confidence.
We keep pushing it down, further and further, making it worse on those days that we experience insecurity and heightening the alarm bells to feeling as if something is wrong with us because we don’t think others experience insecurity as much as we do.
That we are not strong enough,
resilient enough,
or worthy enough.
And that’s just bull shit.
This is exactly why I don’t feel compelled to compose a how-to guide on “How-to Feel More Confident” or make it sprightly and airy.
I want to cut to the chase and shed light on the strength we can receive from gaining awareness of the number of people who are impacted on a daily basis.
This piece is not prescriptive, rather it is conversational.
My goal is to make you feel the common humanity behind insecurity.
That you don’t have to fight it in confidence,
that you understand that it is prevalent in everyone
and that there is nothing wrong with you experiencing various shades of it.
That you are not alone with your insecurities.
Strength in numbers
EVERY person - insert notable names here - experienced and experiences their own woes with confidence, and we need to take our power back and grant ourselves more self-compassion that it is a common emotion.
That if it is not addressed properly, or discussed, a ripple effect can ensue similarly to the following:
Carol is experiencing low confidence. She enters a dinner party and projects that on those around her. Those around her question themselves, because Carol’s lack of confidence that day led her to say something she regrets out of self-protection and BAM there you have it, one person’s lack of identifying self-confidence has robbed others of their joy, too, and added a shitty token to their insecurity bucket.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Maybe, if we were a little kinder to ourselves, knowing that insecurity is a lot more common than we think, maybe if we talked about it more, maybe if we became more vulnerable with one another, healing may come more naturally. That authenticity will unite us together. And that more support will come through when we most need it, all because we put down our armor and our sword, and genuinely asked for help.
And it is in these moments that we know that we are not alone, that a glow within our chest expands, as we take our power back from an emotion that has robbed us for far too long.
“I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.”