What a battle insecurity is (picture me shaking my head). I, for one, have and continue to struggle with feeling insecure. And there isn’t just one thing or element that is a part of feeling insecure. Insecurity shows its ugly little head by developing from all sorts of emotions and thoughts that we have towards ourselves and others (i.e.perfection, self-doubt, low self-esteem, etc). Pause here…thoughts. Take a moment and consciously think about what was going through your head before you started reading this. Was it negative, towards yourself, someone else, maybe how stupid this blog is but it’s interesting enough to read a little. The mind is where insecurity begins. I consent to it. I allow it because I don’t check what I am thinking about. And the struggle is real and constant…so let’s switch to a lighter note.
No one cares about you the way you think they do. Okay, so not so light but the truth. A truth that is freeing. No one is concerned about how you wear your hair. Yeah, maybe someone might have a fleeting thought about it, but no one truly spends more than two seconds on developing an opinion about you. People are too worried about themselves and potentially what other people are thinking about them…which happens to be another fleeting thought.
Now I am not saying that no one cares about you or I. I always feel secure with my family. My husband is my rock and I can say and do some pretty stupid things, but he consistently loves me and thinks highly of me. But the no body (who thinks they are somebody) doesn’t care about me walking down the street with my flip flops on and smart wool in March. So I focus on knowing the people who do care about me and not the people that my mind thinks I should allow have an opinion over me. I encourage my readers to find what is important to how they see themselves. It may be spirituality, family, a childhood friend. Whatever it may be, it must be consistent. It is not your rock if it can easily crumble you.
So I’m going to hurt feelings here because when I had this realization, I too was mortified. I too denied what I am about to tell you. Why do we think that people would have an opinion of us? What makes us believe that no one would like us or what I said or didn’t say in the past was stupid. Here we go folks…because being human means we are born self-centered. Yikes! I know, I hate to think of myself as selfish, because how could I be selfish when I give money and practice nursing for a living? I am selfish because I put “I” in the center of everything I do. I do this and I do that. We put ourselves in the center of our lives and we believe everyone notices what we do, say, look like, our weight, our curly hair, it doesn’t even matter. It only matters because we allow it to matter. We put ourselves in the middle of everything we do which then turns into insecurity when we didn’t get the look we wanted, the praise we deserve, we didn’t get that “A” on the test, I didn’t come up with the best answer for my patient at work. Whatever it may be, we have to stop looking at ourselves. How do we do that? Here is my secret, be thankful. Believe me, this is hard for me to do, especially when I have an emotion turned on inside of me, like insecurity, regret, guilt, feeling inferior, but when I adjust my thoughts with one little, thank goodness they were there, or thank goodness that didn’t happen. I feel peace come over me and a sense of strength that I control the emotion and the emotion doesn’t control me. I’m not saying a compliment isn’t amazing because it is, but the presence or lack of one should never define us.
But insecurity is a two-fold concept. We know that as humans we are by nature self-centered (lovely). We also have to balance how we see ourselves. We have to approve of ourselves. Now, I know, this sounds kinda counterintuitive, am I right? First, I am saying we are self-centered and then I’m saying we need to approve of ourselves without approval from others. But this is the great realization I had for myself! By not needing others approval and being able to walk down the street with head held high wearing a dirty flannel from the farm and hair that is totally wind blown. By liking myself for just who I am, I am taking me off of my mind. I walk down the street enjoying life instead of insecure about what others may think of me. I have the ability to notice if others need a compliment. I notice if others need help. I notice the wind in the trees (which is one of my favorite things). Insecurity is self-centeredness but being secure is resiliency in its perfect form.
I have so much more to say about this topic but there are so many underlying elements with insecurity. So to finish this first posting, I will tell you a story of a girl, okay this girl is me. One of my personal issues with being insecure was getting over my personality trait of perfection. Oh my poor younger self…I wish I could have talked to my 14 year old self and told her how wonderful she was, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have believed myself. I was so stuck on myself. I needed YEARS to grow up and learn the difficult task of not being self-centered. As a perfectionist, scoring well on my high school science tests meant everything to me, it defined me. I was such a perfectionist that if I didn’t make a 100% on my biology test, I would loath myself. Oh brother, slap that little girl across the face and give her an ice cream cone. But instead, I would actually take a pocket knife and cut my hair and sit in my room and tell myself how much I hated myself. Now perfectionism is a whole other topic but it drove my insecurity. My self-talk did a lot of damage. Damage that took me years to reverse. I am so happy to look at the adult version of that little girl and be able to say, I like myself. I like who I am and who I have become and I’m excited to see who I will be next year. Life is a journey. And if we can always remember this, we can constantly grow and feel secure with exactly who we are right now reading this because everyone isn’t were they need to be yet!
