It’s no secret that many people struggle with low self-esteem. I used to believe it was something that occurred only in adolescents and young adults, but in fact, low self-esteem is common among people of all ages and backgrounds. For example, only 4 percent of women are comfortable enough to consider themselves beautiful. This means that the other 96 percent consider themselves less than ideal. I, too, fall into this latter category.
From the time I was 10 years old, I always felt that there was something wrong with me. I was the chubby, awkward, shy kid with her nose buried in a book. I wanted to be fashionable. I wanted to be slim and fit, rather than the girl who didn’t have an athletic bone in her body. I wanted my hair to be shiny and lay flat, rather than the tangled fiery red mess it was. I wanted my pale complexion to do something other than burn when exposed to the sun’s rays. Most importantly, I wanted so desperately to fit in with what I perceived as “normal.” Entering adolescence, this innate obsession with normalcy only snowballed into depression and anxiety. Everything about my appearance and personality seemed wrong, as if I was waiting for one day when suddenly things would be fixed, and I would become “normal.”
I later learned that this minor obsession was called contingent self-esteem: self-esteem based on either the approval of others or social norms. That being said, I spent the majority of my high school years feeding off of everyone else’s reactions. This constant need for reassurance unfortunately transcended into the beginning of my college years, despite projecting a false attitude of self-confidence. I continued to think this way, seeking every form of approval possible whenever I was in public.
As you can imagine, eventually my state of mental well-being declined sharply. Any person’s mental health is filled with ups and downs (quite literally), and mine slowly began to accumulate more downs than ever before. I was never going to be good enough, unless someone else confirmed it. It was at this moment that I did something so stupidly simple, I regret not thinking of it earlier. I took a step back and thought to myself, so what?
I had wasted so much time waiting for other people to fill a void that I had created for myself. So what if I decide to wear sweats to class? So what if I get less than stellar grades after putting in my best efforts? So what if I run a little slower and don't have washboard abs? Part of the independence I learned in my first year of college included this: everyone else is so fixated on the complexities in their own lives that they hardly have time to consider what’s happening in yours.
Low self-esteem sometimes gets the best of us, and it’s time we learned how to combat it. I'm not guaranteeing that tomorrow you'll wake up, free of any insecurities you’ve ever had and ready to take on life with the fearlessness of Kanye West. I can, however, say that a multitude of small steps eventually leads to long, confident strides. So when you do roll out of bed tomorrow morning and remind yourself of everything that’s wrong in your life, consider just one aspect that may be going right. When taken one day at a time, difficult changes often become easier to make.
I cannot assure you with complete certainty that this works — after all, I still deal with raising my own self-confidence every day. However, the next time your self-esteem is in the gutter, remember this: you, and only you, are responsible for creating your own happiness. Not your family, not your friends, and definitely not the strangers you encounter every day. After all, they’re fighting their own battles, and you may not even know it.
