Getting To The Root Of Insecurity & Lack Of Confidence
We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.
~ J. Krishnamurti
Feelings of insecurity and lack of confidence often come from comparing yourself to your own idealized version of yourself.
You judge yourself for the gap between the two, and you imagine that others do so as well.
So you walk around trying to manage people's perception of you, so you can prevent them from judging you for all the things you imagine that you lack.
First of all…
Other people can't see the imaginary perfect version of you that only exists in your head. They are not comparing you to that. No one else is automatically assuming that there is something wrong with you.
If you look within yourself carefully, you may find that all the things you're afraid of being judged for are exactly the things you're already judging yourself for.
And because you've been conditioned to believe that those aspects of yourself are somehow "bad," they are also what will trigger you in other people. In other words, they are the same things you judge other people for.
Notice if the things that annoy you about other people aren't things you don't like about yourself.
Things that other people do to trigger you can be a great opportunity to learn something about yourself.
Remember the first time you fell in love?
Those intense and powerful positive emotions often arise because it's the first time you felt accepted for all those aspects of yourself, including all the things you couldn’t accept about yourself. But when you suddenly feel like you are worthy of being loved, not just in spite of, but BECAUSE of those things, for the first time you finally feel whole.
Then you ascribe it to the other person, thinking they are responsible for making you feel so good. But it was you all along, who through the eyes of the other, finally accepted yourself as you are. You ended the internal division; stopped waging war against yourself in your mind.
As the inner separation from ourselves end, we feel whole. And we say we are in love.
And if you've ever had your heart broken, you know how it feels when all of that is suddenly yanked away and your whole world falls apart.
It feels like the world is falling apart because in a sense, it is. The foundational keystone upon which you built your conception of yourself is removed, and all of a sudden the whole foundation crumbles, and the walls start caving in.
The trick then, is to realize that you don't need another person to do this.
We, ourselves, can let go of our judgments, forgive ourselves for all the things that make us feel guilt and shame. Using only our will, courage, and honesty (and perhaps a pen and some paper), we can end the internal division and separation and feel whole again.
And so we begin to fall in love with life.
My new YouTube series “Advanced Emotional Mechanics” is now live. It will show you some guided processes for actually letting go of these internal emotional blocks that separate you from yourself and cause feelings of disconnection.
==> https://www.youtube.com/user/linusrylander
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Photo: Bruce Christianson