Is confidence really necessary?

Reader: Is confidence really essential, and can I obtain it?

Me: YES and YES! Absolute, 100% YOU can!

Reader : Why should I even try?

Because confidence is going to help our survival.

Long time ago we needed confidence to outrun a tiger, so we won’t be his dinner. Later on we needed confidence to stand up against the popular belief (Galileo, Copernicus). Then we needed confidence to conquer the enemy (WWI, WWII).

Today the shield of confidence touches on a more personal level.

Living in an age of consumerism, some industries have to brake us to make us their clients. That is a dangerous game, because it attacks our self-perception in a very negative way.

More and more people rely on anti-depressants and mood-uppers just to get through the day, that definitely isn’t normal. We are not born broken, we get broken by countless opinions of people whose opinions shouldn’t matter in the first place.

And that’s why we need confidence, to discern the truth and protect our minds from the flaming arrows of those downers out there.

Take the cosmetic industry for example. As a woman passing by the cosmetic counter would you buy a face powder that costs the equivalent of 3 days of your earnings? Probably not on the spur of the moment.

But the industry will skew your thinking to buy it.

Open a magazine, the models are perfect, you’ve never seen a woman like this walking down the street, but seeing those models you start thinking to yourself “I’m not like her, my (...) is too small, and my (…) is too big, I have ugly (…) and not enough (…). I need to look more like her!”

No one mentions that this model was airbrushed, placed into position to conceal any shortcomings, fans were switched on, lighting was adjusted, 100 photos were taken, this one was chosen, then it was digitally enhanced, so there is a light year distance between the reality and the image you’re looking at.

But… but.. it did the trick, looking at the photo you think of yourself as not good enough, not pretty anymore, ugly in fact, you can’t compare, you don’t belong in a world of these beautiful people, you are damaged goods, second rate, you need improvement.

And so you go and buy that expensive powder to conceal some of those new-found imperfections, but as soon as you apply it, you notice that your eyes look too small. Solution - off to the store to get something to make your eyes look better… soon after you discover that you still come short to that model, seek confirmation of your thinking in the mirror and sure enough your ears are too big, your face is asymmetrical, and at that moment a bell chimes cha-ching (money sound) in the ears of some plastic surgeon.

Why in the latest polls do we chose the most average looking people to be the best looking people? Because they look like most of us - average.

Good for them, the rest of us need confidence, so others won’t screw with our minds.

Beauty, personal power, sense of personal value, a sense of your own worthiness, a knowing that you belong (Yes, YOU do!) doesn't come from any outside factors, It comes from you, and you only. Always. Start seeing yourself as the person you truly are, not as the person someone along the way in life told you that you were.

And if you forgot who you are, let me remind you:

You are enough.

You are beautiful inside and out.

You are smart.

You belong.

You are worthy of respect, care, true love, and all the good things that are coming your way!