I've been struggling with anxiety for a long time & a little bit of depression, sometimes a lot depending on the day. I've been trying to pin point where exactly this started in my life, why I've become so fearful, shameful, and felt unworthy. Where did this come from? I could blame it on a million different things, but I could never actually figure out the root of the problem. Until one day during my research, I looked up the definition of anxiety.
anx·i·e·ty
aNGˈzīədē/
noun
- a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
If we are worried about an event with an uncertain outcome, then we have a fear of the unknown and being nervous or uneasy might mean we aren't confident enough to face whatever that "uncertainty" is. So for me, having anxiety boils down to not having enough confidence & feeling like I need to control the outcome of everything, which is impossible. I started looking on Amazon for self-help books about how to grow my confidence, and I came across a book that had a review about Brene Brown's TED talks. One afternoon I took 40 minutes out of my day and watched the following TED talks by Brene Brown, I highly recommend these by the way.
After I watched these videos, it clicked. I started looking at my blog posts with the most views over the past year; besides the coconut oil hair growth (because everyone wants to grow their hair), and the guest post by the amazing Lisa over at Copper Anchor (because she's got great insights to marriage). I realized one thing, the rest of my most popular posts that got the most views were the times I was the most vulnerable. The times where I would over-think writing about it, and once I did write about it, it sat in my drafts because I'd ask myself "what if it wasn't good enough?" "what if no one cares to hear about it?" "what if it's TMI?"
(Just like this post, that has been in my drafts since March)
One of my favorite parts of the second TED talk is when she talks about shame, and she talks about it being gender organized.
She explains that both men & women experience shame, but they experience it in a different way.
She uses a commercial to explain what she means, an ad for perfume that says;
"I can put the wash on the line, pack the lunches, hand out the kisses and be at work from 5-9, I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan & never let you forget you're a man."
She goes on to say that for women, shame is; "do it all, do it perfectly & never let them see you sweat."
It was this part of the talk that I realized how shameful I am, how often women are comparing themselves to each other, how often we think we aren't good enough. A good enough wife, a good enough Mom, a good enough daughter...etc. All of this stems from our confidence, we would never have to ask ourselves if we were good enough if only we had the confidence to know that we were. We wouldn't need people in our lives to compliment us, because we compliment ourselves. We wouldn't NEED to have someone in our life to love us, because we loved our-self & when we did find that person that loved us it would only add to the love that we already have for our-self.
How do we practice self love & self confidence? Well for starters, we can stop saying negative things out loud. My parents quoted this to me my whole entire life "what your mind will conceive & believe, it will achieve" and as much as I hate to say it, they were right. How can we focus on the positive every single day when there's so many negatives around us? How can we become confident women no matter who or what we're up against? How can we be okay with who we really are and not compare ourselves to someone else? Imagine how different our days would be if we took every little negative thought we had, wrote it down, and then crossed it out and wrote something positive. Now take that positive affirmation, and say it out loud to yourself, replace that negative thought with a positive one. Try it! Here's just a few examples I've used in my own life.
As I'm writing this to myself I'm thinking I'm such a hypocrit . I'm one of those people that is really good at giving advice but I could be a lot better at practicing what I preach. This is one reason I blog, not only am I wanting to inspire others, but being the blogger behind it all, I believe it all & this reminds me to practice it more.
Now, I think we all know what Pinterest is, and I think we all find ourselves pinning things we hope to end up doing one day or crafts we want to be able to do, or even places we want to go. But do you use Pinterest to find positive quotes & inspiration? If not, I challenge you to! I have a board on Pinterest called Quote My Life and that's exactly what it is, I have pinned so many quotes & over time I have tried to weed out the negative ones and just focus on the ones that inspire me & motivate me to become more confident.
Here are just a few of my favorites
Do I believe every single one of these to be true? Absolutely! Do I live them day in and day out? No, but I can! I can remind myself each & every day of the positive things in life, and I can focus more on what makes me happy VS what makes me angry.
Did any of these quotes inspire you? Which ones were your favorite, or do you have a favorite quote you go by? If you have a board on Pinterest of inspirational & motivational quotes please paste the URL in the comment section below, I would love to follow it!
My favorite quote is: "If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you're right." Great post, girly! Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDelete