I was speaking on the phone with my younger brother earlier this week, and we were discussing confidence. My brother happens to be one of those people who is not that good at accepting compliments. He blushes, he denies, he changes the subject. When asked why he does that, he responded, “because I have been trained to think confidence means cockiness."

I thought some more about this. Why is it that our society conditions us to believe that, if we exude too much confidence, people will view us as pompous? Why are we told from so early on that confidence is good, but not too much confidence, because a big head is a negative thing? Confidence is a unique state of mind because it is the result of defeating what we are told is a bad habit: being insecure. Insecurity is arguably the most wide-spread psychological issue plaguing our society today. It crosses everyone’s mind, “I am not ________ enough," or even “I am too ________." What’s interesting about this is that we are taught to quickly tell people that their insecurities are illegitimate, that “don’t be ridiculous, you are not ________," or "you’re ________ enough." We dismiss these insecurities like they're nothing in an attempt to aid the other person's confidence, but does this really help? Are we fueling a dangerously large ego?

Here, we are presented with a double standard. It is normal to feel insecure, but if you express these insecurities in any kind of public way, you will immediately be told you’re silly for thinking that way about yourself (by the way, when we receive these well-meaning, yet aggressive reminders, we still think the same things we did before; they don’t change our minds). It is ideal and encouraged to feel confident, but if you’re too confident and talk about it publicly, you’re just an a**hole. So how do we beat this? How are we expected to maintain this perfect balance in which we immediately choose to ignore how we feel about our stomach rolls and rock a crop top with confidence? How is this fair? How is this realistic? It’s not.

One way we may be able to combat this fear of confidence is to become more comfortable with insecurity. The worst mistake you can make on a journey to confidence is believing that confidence means you are free from an acknowledgement of your flaws. Newsflash: this is impossible. Even the Kardashians worry about cellulite. Appearing cocky is to be in complete denial of your flaws, again vocalizing this to people who instead see these flaws as rather apparent. You’ve heard it a million times, and I’ll say it again; nobody’s perfect. Our society has developed this mantra, reminding us how common insecurities are, then immediately telling us to ignore them and just “be confident." Funny how simple they make this sound.

I believe another step in the right direction would be to raise our children to not be afraid of liking themselves. An encouraging parent will say you are awesome a million times a day, but the majority of parents will scold you when you make observations like this about yourself. Help your children to see themselves in the light that you do, because why shouldn’t they? Repressing self-love is arguably more detrimental to self-esteem than fluffing your ego every once and a while. This doesn’t make you pompous. What makes you pompous is vocalizing these self-complimentary thoughts to an audience who truly doesn’t care. This is all about self-encouragement and private character building. Every once in a while, remind yourself that you are awesome, you are capable, and begin every day with a resounding anthem, saying, “I am enough”.