Last Friday I had a dinner date with my bestie, we talked for hours, we had lots of catching up to do! For the sake of privacy lets call her Mia. At some point Mia asks me, what she calls, the 3-selfs questions:
- Do you have SELF-confidence?
- Do you have SELF-worth?
- Do you have SELF-belief?
Just to be clear I’m not writing a psychology article although it may sound as such. What I want to do is share my thoughts on our evening and give some tips that have been passed on to me by my mother.
What bothered me most was the amount of detail placed on the definitions of each phrase. When in-fact, the definitions are quite simple. At first It confused me.
Before I give you dictionary definitions, take a minute to think and answer each question truthfully for yourself.
Ok now that we’ve done that, here are the definitions copied & pasted from the world wide web:
Self Confidence: realistic confidence in one's own judgment, ability, power, etc.
Self Worth: the sense of one's own value or worth as a person; self-esteem; self-respect.
Self Belief: confidence in your own abilities or judgment.
If you look at the definitions, you can see they are all inter-related. If you’re lacking in one, you’re lacking in all and vice versa. Mia kept on ignoring the fact that these words have a set definition. Countless times she repeated that she has self confidence but not self worth or self belief. To me that sounded strange: if you value yourself and have trust in your abilities you automatically have self confidence. As our conversation flowed I tried to understand her, I asked her what self confidence meant to her and why she thought she had plenty of it. Her answer was: because she accepted her self: her quirkiness, her openness to new experiences, her kind and caring nature. She truly accepted all of her pro’s and cons. That’s great however, that’s called self acceptance NOT self confidence.
It was at this point when I realized my bestie is lacking in all: Self confidence, self worth and self belief! Slowly, I began pushing her. My goal was to explain to her, that she didn’t need to overanalyze these phrases but just feel it. Feel her power, believe in her strength to achieve, know that she is amazing and thats that!
After much conversation, we were able to push forward. She saw the difference in the definitions and accepted that yes indeed, she does have low self confidence.
I gotta say when it dawned upon me that my friend, the girl I love and care for so much has little self confidence in herself I kinda lost it inside. If you were to meet her you would never come up with such a conclusion. You’d say she’s young, quirky, fun, loud, honest, caring, full of life, and has crazy curly hair thats fun to play with. Never in a million years would anyone think she has low self confidence, worth or belief in herself.
That’s the tricky part, the people around us: husbands, wives, children, best friends, parents, acquaintances…. They can all put a smile on and pretend everything is perfect but the reality can be different. You can’t save the world but you can take a look with in.
Our children are mirror reflections of us. We are their role models. If we have low self confidence our kids will to. I invite all of my lovely readers to look within yourself. Before going to bed tonight look at yourself in the mirror and smile back at who you see. Name three positive things about yourself and let it carry you throughout the week. Each week repeat the same routine naming 3 new positives every time. Not only will your self confidence, self worth, and self belief sky rocket but your little ones will emanate you on a subconscious level. They will grow up believing they can achieve anything they set their minds to because that is what their care givers believe about themselves.
As far as my friend goes, we talked it out. She’s working on herself to gain her confidence and believe in herself like I believe in her !
As a side note…. I mentioned earlier this is not a psychology article, I think I lied. Re-reading my own work, I kinda think it is a psychology article. Oops! Well I hope you enjoyed it anyways. Toodles, my beautiful people.