Are you insecure? How to gain self confidence

There are no completely safe people, Although there are those who may appear otherwise. We all know uncertainty, either because we would like to control the future or because we don’t value ourselves enough.

But if we learn to live with our own doubts and limitations, and we are aware that there are things in life that are beyond our control, we will gain security because we will know how to deal with our fears.

“I will only do it when I feel confident in myself”, we often say when faced with a great challenge of a work, affective, social, family or economic nature. If we were asked when we would be sure, we would often answer “I don’t know”. That is to say We are not sure of the answer either.

self confidence

What is self-confidence? If we ask the question to a wide variety of people, we will find so many different answers that it may surprise us.

There are those who will say that being sure is have no doubts about what should be done and how to do it. Others will affirm that being sure consists of act despite doubts and trust the results of the action. For some, it is about be immune to criticism. For others, it consists of knowing how to listen to those same criticisms without falling into self-devaluation.

Perhaps this last option allows us to better understand the dynamics of insecurity, in such a way that we can overcome it.

There is a direct relationship between valuation and insecurity and it begins in our early individual history.

If we are valued for who we are, that is, because we are here, for the simple and wonderful fact of existing, if that appreciation is transmitted to us through gestures, attitudes and words, if our achievements are recognized and our skills are used, we will soon understand that we are important to others.

From our early experiences we will feel that we are not required to justify our existencethat we are not loved in exchange for what we do or stop doing, but because we are considered worthy of love, like this, without consideration.

Unconditional love and appreciationwhich are given to us because we exist, are basic pillars in the construction of security.

False ideals about self-confidence

When we have not learned to feel valuable by ourselves, it is likely that we will go looking for models. An internal voice tells us: “As I am, I am not worth much, my resources are scarce or weak; Being the way I am, I will achieve nothing, so I must be like So-and-so, or like So-and-so, they do feel sure of themselves”.

We award to those models all the conditions that, as we imagine, make up the safety of a person. That is, we put in them everything that we do not recognize in ourselves.

Thus, we will see them as beings who do not doubt, who feel strong, who do not admit objections, who go through the highways of life like huge and powerful trucks before which all other vehicles move aside.

We create an ideal of security which, like all the ideals of the self forged from shortcomings, becomes an unattainable goal and, by its mere presence, painful.

It is worth saying that to make up for our feeling of insecuritywe propose a security model so far removed from true human emotional constructions that it ends up being impossible and, in the end, it creates even more insecurity for us.

It must be said soon: there are no people who do not doubt, who do not fear, who are unaware of uncertainty. Those who claim to be outside of these human experiences hide, in truth, a great insecurity.

When the possibility of defeat is not admittedof the mistake, of the doubt, of not having control over something or someone, when one fears criticism, when one lives under the overwhelming pressure of the demand, one often appeals to compensation mechanisms created to hide all that.

doubt as a path

Thus, the greater the doubt, I will try to demonstrate greater conviction; The greater the fear, I will try to oppose it with greater temerity; the more hesitation, the more momentum.

I can convince others that I am a safe person, but I will never convince myself, I will live all my actions with a great load of internal tension, pending that I am not seen as doubtful, uncertain, fearful. And that will have enormous present and future emotional costs.

To sustain that image I will have to close every door that leads inside myself, I will have to censor all questions about myself, my feelings, my searches and needs.

Denying insecurity does not make us safe. It turns us into beings that block areas of their psychic and emotional world and, therefore, they are left in a situation of greater vulnerability. On the contrary, accepting doubts, fears and uncertainties allows us to ask ourselves what we need to face each situation in our lives.

And it leads us to explore what resources of those we need are in us and in what state of development. What do we need to strengthen them? And, also, what help should we ask for and from whom, how to achieve it in a balanced and functional way. That is, it helps us to transform and grow.

Those who build an image of unshakable security and appear in the world clinging to it are prisoners of that façade.

Those who admit their shortcomings, their imperfection, are more whole and freer

The great psychotherapist Viktor Frankl pointed out that when a person discovers and accepts their values ​​and aptitudes, they stop configuring themselves by chasing external models, often illusory and false, and gain the freedom to be in their own way.

This is, in my opinion, the most powerful antidote against insecurity. The more we know ourselves in our possibilities and in our limitations, the more we value ourselves with what we have and with what we don’twe are in better conditions to assume our existence in the here and now.

fear of the future

It is precisely in the here and now where our life really takes place.

Insecurity, such as fear or anxiety, it is related to what has not yet happened and we do not know if it will happen. It is not in what is happening at this moment but in what is to come.

What will happen if I’m wrong? How will they react if I don’t get it? What will become of me if I don’t? Review the main verbs in these sentences and you will see that they are formulated in the future tense. Add other phrases, taken from your own collection and referring to insecurity, and you will see that the same thing happens. Insecurity displaces us from the present, it takes away our axis of life.

In his beautiful book The Wisdom of Insecurity (Ed. Kairós), the philosopher Alan Watts points out how we cling to the illusion of controlling the future. We believe that if we could look at it with certainty, we would know what to do and what to avoid, where not to go. Where not to peek? What to choose?

The illusion of controlling the future it leads us to believe that, if it were possible, we would live a completely secure life. And there we come to the other great source of insecurity. The first, as we saw, is not having been sufficiently valued and accepted with our own idiosyncrasies.

The second is the non-acceptance of uncertainty as an essential component of life. Life is a succession of uncertainties. Insecurity is therefore inherent in it. Accepting it will make us live more secure.

The pillars of self-confidence

Let’s analyze this paradox. When I know that not everything depends on me, when I recognize that there are factors that are beyond my decision, my will and my control, when I verify that my possibilities have limits, my freedom and my capacity for choice grow.

By accepting everything that does not depend on me and about which I can’t guarantee anything, I can concentrate on what does concern me, on my resources and possibilities.

When I know I can’t with everything, I’ll do better what I can

The safest person is not the one who knows and can do everything, but the one who knows what he ignores and applies what he knows. So that, we can list the pillars on which security is built:

Sincerely explore the inner world to know one’s own resources and accept one’s own limitations. Accept who we are and value what we arerather than aspire to be someone else, to be an ideal of illusion. Assuming that, in life, many events are out of our control. We cannot give assurances about them nor can we ask for them. Focus on those steps that depend on us and apply our available resources to them. Include doubt, uncertainty, perplexity, as possible companions of our actions and decisions, knowing that they are part of human emotions and sensations, and without fighting with them.

It is not the absence of doubts, of fears and questions about what will make you a self-confident person, but your ability to act with them, your satisfaction with the processes rather than with the results. What gives us security is having been faithful to our thoughts and feelings, and honest in the use of our resources.

Do your thing with your heart and detach yourself from the results, would be the watchword that leads to safety. When you become attached to the result, and how others will value it, you incubate the germ of insecurity.

Thus, we will see them as beings who do not doubt, who feel strong, who do not admit objections, who go through the highways of life like huge and powerful trucks before which all other vehicles move aside.

We create an ideal of security which, like all the ideals of the self forged from shortcomings, becomes an unattainable goal and, by its mere presence, painful.

It is worth saying that to compensate for our feeling of insecurity, we propose a security model so far removed from true human emotional constructions that it ends up being impossible and, in the end, it creates even more insecurity for us.

It must be said soon: there are no people who do not doubt, who do not fear, who are unaware of uncertainty. Those who claim to be outside of these human experiences hide, in truth, a great insecurity.

When the possibility of defeat is not admittedof the mistake, of the doubt, of not having control over something or someone, when one fears criticism, when one lives under the overwhelming pressure of the demand, one often appeals to compensation mechanisms created to hide all that.

doubt as a path

Thus, the greater the doubt, I will try to demonstrate greater conviction; The greater the fear, I will try to oppose it with greater temerity; the more hesitation, the more momentum.

I can convince others that I am a safe person, but I will never convince myself, I will live all my actions with a great load of internal tension, pending that I am not seen as doubtful, uncertain, fearful. And that will have enormous present and future emotional costs.

To sustain that image I will have to close every door that leads inside myself, I will have to censor all questions about myself, my feelings, my searches and needs.

Denying insecurity does not make us safe. It turns us into beings that block areas of their psychic and emotional world and, therefore, they are left in a situation of greater vulnerability. On the contrary, accepting doubts, fears and uncertainties allows us to ask ourselves what we need to face each situation…