Confidence & Creativity
We’re at war with ourselves under the issue of self-confidence. Our thoughts have so much power, and when our thoughts team up with others’ negative opinions, it makes it that much harder to win the battle for our self-confidence, even when those opinions lack insight and only see what is on the surface.
How do you even survive in this social media age without confidence?
Everything we put on social media feels like it depicts who we are all the time. Even when we delete an old post, some people remind us of them, as if they are current. As we change, we only hope that others will see us in our new forms rather than focus on who we were in the past; however, that may require too much compassion and isn’t always the case.
You have to find confidence in yourself frequently. The natural thing for us as humans to do is to focus on the negative. We look at our peers on social media; we see all of the good in their lives and can’t help but compare ourselves; we don’t realize how this distracts us from seeing our blessings.
“She unfollowed me,” “they unfollowed me,” “they never followed me back,” are my thoughts as I look through a social media insight application. My subscriptions are low from my YouTube that I just started. It has one video that I was ashamed to put up, but I instantly get validation from a small group of friends. Once I do, in my mind, the video is going to go viral; in reality, the video hits 30 views.
I spend the next couple of days wondering, do I matter? Or why do I matter? I reflect on all the hard work that I’ve done to get me to this point. Still, I want the most validation from the people who remind me that I’m not enough because my work has not yet produced any benefit for myself or them, such as a house, car, followers, etc. I’ve increased my network to sell myself to the world. But what good is it if I’m continually being rejected or ignored?
Is my content not good enough?
Everyone more successful than me seems to have been an overnight success until I do the research and learned that it took believing in themselves for others to believe in them.
They all focused on being consistent and building a team. Issa Rae and Jordan Peele, to name a few, share the experience of rejection, and through that rejection, they would navigate to the people interested in taking a chance on them. That’s one of many things I’ve learned on my journey. You’ve got to filter out all the nos to get to the yes.
The time it takes is based on how prepared you are. The preparation doesn’t stop at the opportunity; instead, it evolves into how you deal with adversity during uncertain times.
There were moments that I would establish a great relationship with someone. They would promise me the world and then disappear. I learned that things were happening to them that made it hard for them to live up to the expectations that they had set for themselves.
For example, one time, an editor left me “on read.” Another time an agent unfollowed me on Instagram after agreeing to work with me on a project. I can laugh at it now, but at the time, I would have preferred better communication on whatever issues they were facing to find empathy rather than thinking that I was the problem. I often felt that I said too much or didn’t say enough.
While listening to a sermon from Dharius Daniels, a leader at Change Church, I learned that a theologian named Søren Kierkegaard gets credit for the theory that “life is lived forward but only understood backwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard is articulating a principle called the direction of perspective. This principle suggests that it is where you sit, that determines what you see and what you see determines what you do.
Often we don’t know what is happening in the life of other people. We only know how other people’s experiences affect us. When their life isn’t going great, we overlook that some of us may be in a season where we may be battling with depression or anxiety.
People can see things from the outside because of how they may act towards the people that mean the most to them. They often project their insecurities onto others that they expect to save them from their situation. They can’t do for themselves, so they come down on you because they feel you are holding them back; when in actuality, what is keeping them back is themself.
If you take some of those attacks personally along with your negative thoughts, you’re delaying the process of success. We don’t all have the strength to fight off our negative thoughts; however, I’ve learned that we can acknowledge the negative thoughts and change the focus; when you eliminate toxic people from your life, it is easier to align yourself with people who cheer for you.
Nothing good or bad lasts forever.
I’ve come to learn that the bad is preparation for the good you’re about to receive. The most challenging times are where we develop the most. Even in the times where we feel alone, we must rely on ourselves and push through. The only thing stopping us from moving forward is us, and frankly, our goals don’t care about our feelings.
