Almost everyone has dealt with feeling bad about themselves at times. Insecurity creates the thoughts that you get that try to cut you down or make you feel bad about yourself. Insecurity leads to thoughts such as, “You’ll never amount to much,” “You can’t accomplish anything,” or any type of thought that lowers your confidence.
Everyone has experienced times when their confidence was at a low point. You may have experienced it when you started college if you struggled throughout the semester and suddenly got thoughts where you told yourself that you weren't trying hard enough or that you wouldn’t pass your courses.
Feeling insecure can have a lot of negative effects that can lead to trouble down the road. It can cause depression or stop you from succeeding. If you feel insecure or feel that you’re not good enough to succeed, then it will be harder for you to build up the confidence or motivation to try to succeed. For some people, insecurity can take over their lives, stopping them from doing the things that they love the most.
I have always dealt with feeling insecure about myself. I experience it the most when I'm writing stories. Whenever I try to write stories, I start out feeling the most confident and happy about my own writing. However, I eventually hit a rough spot where those thoughts start to pop up in my head. I tell myself that I am not good enough at writing, that my writing is average, and that nobody will like the stories I write.
I end up never finishing the stories that I write and go months or days without writing because I let those thoughts stop me from doing the thing that I enjoy the most. And it’s not just with writing, but it’s often with a lot of things in my life: school, playing piano, working or any other activities. I sometimes let these thoughts control my life and bring me to a low where I tell myself that I am not good enough, that I am average.
However, one thing that I discovered when I first went to college was that you can’t always be perfect. One of the first ways to deal with insecurity is that you have to tell yourself that nobody is perfect. Everyone has flaws of some sort.
You have to take a moment to breathe and look for some of the things that you love about yourself the most. For example, if I start to feel insecure about my writing, I may stop criticizing myself and look at some of my previous stories and writing that I loved the most.
In addition, you have to stop comparing yourself to other people. Often one major part of feeling insecure is that you compare yourself to everyone else. You look at others and think that their lives are perfect or that they’re better at certain things than you are.
However, each person is different, including yourself. There's no point in comparing yourself to others because everybody has different qualities or talents. Their lives may be completely different than what you may believe. They may seem like they are perfect at one thing but struggle with something else. Once you stop comparing yourself to others, you are able to stop feeling insecure about yourself.
Whenever you feel insecurity taking over your life, you can stop negative thoughts from entering your mind by thinking of something positive instead. For example, instead of thinking that you can’t do something, you can stop and think of what you’ve accomplished in the past and tell yourself that you can do it. By using positive thinking, you can combat any negative thoughts that are caused by any insecurity that you feel.
The last thing that you can do is use your insecurity as a way of helping to strengthen your motivation. I know what you’re thinking. Insecurity is supposed to weaken your motivation; how can you make it strengthen your motivation? Well, there are a few ways.
According to Bustle, you can try pushing yourself to do things that you’re afraid of. If you tell yourself that you can’t do something, for example, you can take a moment to prove to yourself that you can do something through doing it anyway regardless of your thoughts.
If you think you can’t write a term paper, you can push past those thoughts and write the paper. Once you push past the thoughts, you can prove to yourself that despite what you think, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, which will help give you more motivation overall.
So, whenever you start feeling insecure, use these methods to help overcome any insecurity! Everybody feels insecure from time to time, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it control your life. Having thoughts that stem from insecurity can often try to define how you see yourself as a person, but if you use the right methods to overcome it, you can start seeing yourself in a more positive light and gain the motivation to accomplish anything you set your mind to.