Chasing confidence

Hasn’t it been a hot minute? I intend to break this habit of monthly blogging. We need to return to fortnightly updates. Team, we’re going to break free. And yes, that was a deliberate pun as this month is the anniversary of the release of the ✨ iconic ✨ High School Musical movie. I will not apologise.

As per usual, there is always some key theme that is on my mind. Currently, that theme is confidence. More specifically, how to re-build your self-confidence after noticing that you’ve been swimming in self-doubt, barely able to keep up, for longer than you thought.

Here’s the thing, my friends. You have always been so supportive of me and the things I choose to do, even if there are many or they seem ambitious or unconnected to what I’m already doing. Your confidence in my abilities and capability to achieve is so deeply appreciated by me, thank you.

And yet, how is it that I have been struggling to ‘back myself’ recently? What is causing this disconnect between what you and I see? Or rather, what is causing the disconnect between what you see and what I feel?

From the beginning, self-confidence has been a tumultuous journey for me. I have grappled with confidence in my appearance due to weight-shaming and conflicting messages. I have struggled with my academic confidence when anything less than excellence felt wrong. More recently, I have been doubting my technical and analytical abilities because I can’t seem to keep up with all the moving parts.

So, when I noticed my self-doubt testing my self-confidence, I wondered where this might be coming from. In part, this boils down to me questioning what my contribution is, whether I am doing things that create positive impacts, and all the while not quite being able to shake the feeling that I could be better ‘living up to my potential’. Perhaps these thoughts were set off because I’ve been putting myself out into the world – being visible and authentic – more than I ever have before, and that can be quite vulnerable. I have also been introduced to so many cool people doing cool things that I want to celebrate! But if I’m not careful, I fall into old habits of overthinking and perfectionism and start to wonder why the things I’m doing are not as cool as what they’re doing.

At this point, I already feel the eruption of friendly fury from some of the avid blog readers. Because, as I said earlier, you have and are constantly supportive of me, so what you see is different to how I feel. I feel you ready to DM me and tell me all the cool things that I’m doing and my contributions to the world (and I appreciate your readiness to do so). This post is not however, about me gaining compliments based on what I’m doing or who I am. This one is to show you that I have doubts and struggles because I am human. It is not always easy, breezy, and beautiful in my world (even though the perfectionist in me wishes it to be so). And even though self-doubt is something that I’ve minimised before (and written about before), doesn’t mean that I won’t ever have to overcome it again and re-learn what it means to have confidence in oneself. This is part of me practicing how to validate how I am feeling, rather than rationalising something because I see where it’s coming from.

So, Reader, where to from here? Well, as I said in the beginning of this post, this month marks the anniversary of the very iconic High School Musical movie. I believe that in order for me to break free of self-doubt and re-establish my confidence in line with words like ‘soaring’ and ‘flying’, then I gotta put in the work to do it.

Here are the initial steps for how I am going to grow my self-confidence again:

1. Taking care of my health, particularly physical health

I have needed to step up the self-care as my asthma has suddenly flared up after many years. This has required me to make sure that I’m hydrated and that I check-in with me before I commit to something where I will over-exert myself. This also means small things like getting new light bulbs for my lounge so that it’s a more comfortable space to write in, or a drain auger to clean the sinks in my apartment. And in feeling more settled in my home and physical body, then my self-confidence has a wider platform on which to grow.

2. Genuinely accepting the kind things that people say

Acknowledging and genuinely accepting the confidence boosting things that people say is different from simply hearing a compliment (and not taking it to heart). I am determined to actually listen to these reassurances that people give when discussing my abilities and capabilities, from now on.  

I’m also thinking back to my supportive high school teachers who could see my potential and would encourage me to do the things that I didn’t think I was very good at. Now, I can see all the lessons that they taught me and a lot of the skills that they encouraged me to develop, are the ones that have become my dominant traits now (love for public speaking and writing).

3. Do more things that make me feel good!

A moment where I realised that I needed to be doing more of these good things is when I found myself saying “I’ll just finish this thing, then I’ll make myself a cup of tea.” I had been saying the same thing for weeks, as if I would only reward myself only after finishing tasks (but spoiler: the after never came). So instead, now as soon as I think that I need a cup of tea, I make some tea. Simple as that.   

I’ve also noticed how much I have missed writing but also remembering how good writing makes me feel! It’s my main way of processing and learning from my own thoughts, and I love that so much. I think my need for writing suddenly kicked into gear after I was feeling so inspired by the Korean Culture Festival that I couldn’t help but write this article about my experience there.

I think that by focusing on the things that make me feel good, my self-confidence will blossom again. Shifting into a state of that radiates warmth, joy, and excitement, making it easier for the self-affirming words to stay put.

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I hope that whatever journey you are on with your own self-confidence, is one that you can treat with care and love. And I hope you know that if you need a friend to be with you in those moments where your self-confidence isn’t the best, that you can turn to places like this blog or flick me an email to say hello.

We’ve got this, team. Let’s get our head in the game 🏀