What confidence means to each one of us is different. Some of us find confidence in doing what we are really good at, while some of you may find it in your personality or appearance. There are also some of you out there who may not be confident in any of the following because you either don’t believe in yourself enough, or grew up learning that confidence equals arrogance.
This article isn’t one to give you the whole self-help kind of guide, but rather here to tell you to do whatever you want to, as long as it brings you joy. I am here to tell you to be ugly, be bad at chemistry, dance clumsily and maybe even run away from the basketball passed to you because you don’t owe it to anyone to be the best at everything.
Nowadays, everyone talks about how we should love ourselves regardless of what we look like because we should not conform to society’s standards of beauty, and we try to teach ourselves that true beauty comes from within, or that we are all beautiful in our own special way. While it may feel good to think this way, an honest fact is that none of us do or will wake up feeling like sunshine and roses every day. We are freeing ourselves from one trap, just to be put in another one. What I mean by this “trap” is that, we still believe that it is necessary to be attractive in our own or others’ perceptions. So, whether or not we choose be society’s definition of beautiful, we are still stuck thinking that we even have to be beautiful in the first place. We have to rid ourselves of the belief that being beautiful is a necessity rather than a choice, and that we have to believe that being beautiful will increase confidence. What we should learn is that true confidence is going to come from accepting our flaws, and being okay with not being considered beautiful or smart or talented.
Another thing we seem to do frequently is backing off from doing certain tasks or activities we genuinely enjoy doing because of the fear of not doing it well enough. No matter how much we love doing that one thing, we hold off because we doubt ourselves with, “What will others say if I do this, I’m not even that good at it?”. I have always enjoyed writing, especially creative writing. I may have always been writing in my diary, in the middle of a boring class, on a plane, but until recently, I never put my work up online because I had this big fear of getting judged for what I wrote. I didn’t want to be told that I am not a good writer. But as scary as it seemed, I decided to start an Instagram account to post my writing anyways. All I can tell you is, whatever you’re thinking of doing, just go for it. Forget about being the best at it, or even being good at it. I may not have a New York Times Bestseller published, but writing helps me clear my head and allows me to be vulnerable, so I write. That is all the reasoning I need to continue. As we start allowing ourselves to do the things that bring us joy and spark our creativity, we unknowingly start becoming more confident. And it is already a known fact that practice makes perfect, so as we continue doing these things, we unknowingly get better.
Confidence doesn’t necessarily have to come from being good at something, or looking like a Greek goddess, because who even made the rule saying you HAVE to be exceptional at a certain task to feel good about yourself or love yourself? So be fearless, be ugly, be bad at a subject or sport, but also be willing to improve at all of these things, because that is how your confidence will truly shine through.