I am currently listening to “Confident” by Demi Lovato on purpose to set the mood for this post. iT definitely sets the mood for me.
I have had low self-esteem for most of my life- if not my whole life. There was always the silent competition between my triplet (twin?) sisters and I right from the get-go. What is so and so doing, and why aren’t you doing it? There was the comparison game that occurred all my life. It was difficult to deal with, to be honest, but mostly annoying because I did not establish myself at those points of my life when it was happening to me. I was confused with what I wanted to do with myself, as an individual. But I realized (a lot later than I should have) that I am an individual and I did not need to be compared to my sisters and be affected by it.
I kept struggling with confidence even after I stopped comparing myself to my sisters. Part of it has to do with struggling with depression and anxiety. The constant anxiety of thinking ” do these people even like me?” or “am I annoying these people?”, and “am I annoying them at all?” etc. I could not get myself to love myself, and I simply loathed being myself. There was always something that I wasn’t happy with, whether it be my short and small stature, my intelligence (school), and pretty much anything you can think of. I was not confident in myself at all. But I can happily, it took almost 20 years for me to get to this point, where I can actually say to myself and to other people ” I am a great person”. This may sound silly, but it took a couple of people repeatedly telling me compliments about myself to get myself to truly believe that I was a good person. That I was a person worth losing, and that I was worth something to someone, if not a few people that are not my family. It took people that I admire (quite a lot) that told me that I was a great person to be around, that is what made me truly realize that I am an amazing person. If someone of worth to me said that, it humbled me/ shocked me but at the same time kind of felt like a bang to the head saying “BELIEVE THEM”!!! They wouldn’t say that just because they wanted to say something (not of worth).
I realized that yes, I am a person that is worth being around, I have a decent personality, I can make others happy and cheerful, and that is something worth keeping in mind. It was liberating. Really liberating. It took me 20 years for me to get to this point, so I think I have some right to be able to say, I am confident with myself.
I guarantee that it won’t always be like this for me (being confident) but it is also a huge stepping stone for me nonetheless. And I appreciate it a lot, getting to this point. I am going to say it will definitely be a long journey, especially for people that have low self-esteem and/or mental illness(es) because those factors would affect confidence.
But I encourage anyone, even if they already have confidence in themselves, to be mindful of how awesome they are. You are worth something to this world, even if you may not realize it or know the particular reason behind your existence etc. Just let it be, let it be that you are confident about yourself in at least ONE aspect of your life.
I got to get back to studying for my exams, so I will leave this post for now. I will probably go back to the topic of confidence later on, hopefully in a future post.
As always, thank you for reading!
-SDOS
Small Dose Of Serotonin 