I’ve been reminiscing on some events that have happened in my life over the last couple of months. I haven’t always been a confident man. In fact, growing up I was very much NOT confident. Even though as a kid I was pretty outspoken and extroverted, as I grew up that started to change. I believe I have always managed to somewhat successfully project an image of decent self-confidence, but to be honest with you, deep down, I always knew this was a facade. It served its purpose though. It helped me become successful socially and professionally, even if I always had to contend with a somewhat persistent imposter syndrome that told me I wasn’t really who other people saw.
This became apparent in my first relationship, in which I involuntarily started being confronted by some demons I had kept hidden deep within my psyche. My late teens and early twenties were a time of much introspection, motivated in large part by the self-improvement journey I had chosen to embark upon.
I chose to take a deep look at myself, however painful it could be to see who I really was. One thing that became clear was that all the confidence I was showing to the world wasn’t real, and it was just a mask that I had learnt how to put on. My first instinct was to try and develop the confidence I clearly was lacking. At this point I was not a man of very strong faith, so I undertook this pursuit completely separated from any sense of the spiritual.
To make a long story short, I succeeded. I researched, practiced, and learnt as much as I could about confidence, desperately trying to rid myself of the insecurities I had somehow developed during my early years. And for the most part, I did. At least in daily, normal life, I managed to stop the overthinking, the constant anxiety, the feelings of insufficiency.
On the surface, I had cracked the code. I felt good, confident, solid. The problem was that I was still young and naive, not really having been confronted by life and its tribulations. As I grew older, the baggage I carried started getting heavier, and the materialistic and rational foundations I had built ceased to be strong enough to support it. The years started to pass, and that once youthful confidence began to be replaced by uncertainty, doubt and fear, all exacerbated by failures and disappointments. All the wins I was getting weren’t enough to bring peace back into my soul.
I had built my sense of worth and my self-confidence on sand, not rock, and when the weather got stormy, it all came crashing down. I hit rock bottom, and it was there were I found the real answer. It was there I learnt where true confidence comes from, and the beautiful thing is that once I finally understood it, I knew I’d never again build on sand, but on sturdy, everlasting rock.
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