Confidence is something that people struggle with every day. In today's world, especially for millennials, confidence is measured by the likes on our latest Instagram posts, or how many retweets our last selfie got. Learning to get past the likes and shares, to get past the mental barrier you've built yourself over the years is hard, but this is how I learned to do it.

Alike most teenagers, I use the three typical social media platforms among others, and yes at one point I did allow myself to fall under the category of someone who measured my appearance by the count of interactions I got. Getting past the buzz of social media interactions is hard, I'll admit it. You get so caught up in the comments full of positive emojis and the hundreds of likes, but it gets old. Once it gets old, it's likely you'll start posing different or just posting on different sites, but that's not what gets old. The real reason, or at least what I believe is the real reason, that it gets old, is because you haven't found that confidence within yourself, you're not able to see what the others see in you and it gets old, you wanna break to the next thousand of followers because you want something new, you're hoping you'll hear something different, but at the end of the day what you need to hear is yourself.

It's very cliche, I know. But, that was my first step in finding my confidence. I finally realized that there's much more to me than my cutest selfie. Yeah, I still post pictures almost daily and hope for a good amount of likes and comments, but I don't depend on them anymore, and I won't delete my picture because I'm embarrassed by how many likes I didn't get.

This lead me into the next step, I honestly just slowly stopped caring about what others would say or think about what I wear or how much makeup I do or do not have on. Personally, I can go a week without wearing an ounce of makeup and be completely fine with it, or I could treat myself like the princess I am and wear a full face every day of the week. To get to that point, I've had to convince myself that I'm not the only one who struggles with confidence issues, and in order to get past those issues I have to face my fears and make bold choices. Okay, I get that you're totally making fun of me for calling the decision of wearing or not wearing makeup bold, but let's be real, in today's world it is. You're always making a statement, always.

The last step I took was back. I took a step back to look at myself from a different perspective. I wanted to see what other people see in me, what is my first impression, is it something I can be proud of, is it who I want people to see me as? I not only took a step back from myself but from everyone else. I learned to be independent, this gave me the strength to go through with everything else, it helped me find motivation to make me who I have always wanted to be. Why should I care what people think? If someone doesn't like me for 'changing' into the person I have always aspired to be, then maybe they're not fit to be in my life for the long run.

You have to extract the poison in your life, and it all starts with you. It's a huge mental game and it's hard, but it's so worth it in the end. Confidence doesn't require being cocky either, it's honestly just finding it within yourself to be more proud than ashamed. Not to mention, you gain a lot of respect for yourself.