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*Sigh* oh how hard it is to be confident with your looks…
I myself have battled with low self-confidence for years. For me, I started having insecurity issues when I started high school.
As we all know high school can be a real b*tch!
Even when high school came to an end it was hard for me to work on my self-confidence.
It was non existent for many years.
I would always look up to those who had so much self-confidence with themselves because it was just so admiring to me. It was admiring to see people who didn’t care so much about their looks because my looks was something that would get in my head a lot.
I would think to myself “wow, there’s people who actually go about their day not caring about what they look? That must be nice, real nice.”
Loving myself and the way I look seemed like something that was impossible to feel.
I’d watched videos on how to be more confident and even read articles on google…
Which is funny because that’s what you’re doing now and then there’s me writing about a topic that I’d never thought I’ll have the answer to. It’s actually very wild to me that I can write about this topic and help others into being somebody I thought I’d never be…
A confident person.
Now, I am not saying I am the most confident person in this world and that I never feel insecure, I would be lying if I’d ever said that. However, I have grown into a person who doesn’t care too much about other’s opinions anymore and grown into a person that doesn’t let their insecurities take over life.
I still battle with insecurities like everyone else but now I have more confidence in my self when before I didn’t have any. I have more things I am grateful about now where as before I had way too many things to COMPLAIN about.
For years I had lived life caring too much about how I look and what others think and only for the past year I have lived life way differently and more happier actually because I let this negative trait of mine go.
The negative trait being not loving my self and all of this happened after going through the most hardest moment in my life that taught me a real lesson (we’ll touch on this topic a bit later)…
Living Life Insecure:
Now, I’m going to get more personal and talk about things I don’t really talk about but my goal for my blog and the reason why I made this blog is so that I can be somebody people can relate to. In addition, make people feel less lonely because I was someone who kept a lot of my true feelings and thoughts to myself and that definitely made me feel lonely.
Anyways, during my high school experience I had lived my life wearing things that would hide my insecurities. At this time and still to this day the beauty standard/trend for girls is having curves and a small waist…
However, growing up skinny because of my genes, it was hard to kind of feel beautiful because of the “beauty standard”, the only time I felt real confident in high school was in freshman-senior year because I finally gained some weight which was the MOST hardest thing for me to do.
But then I lost the weight…
I almost feel like I had body dysmorphia because everyday for those last 2 years of high school I felt like I was a walking stick but when I look back at pictures, I had a healthy weight.
At times walking in school just made me feel anxious to a point where I wouldn’t make eye contact with people because I always just thought people were judging me.
Anytime people would compliment me, I would think it’s a joke and they are just secretly judging me and making fun of me (making me just sit there and laugh out of discomfort).
At times wearing leggings or anything tight would make me feel like a stick (making me feel anxious wearing them). A lot of the times I would wear baggy pants to make me feel better.
When it came to makeup, I would wear fake eyelashes and have my eyebrows filled in and whenever I didn’t wear them (which was hardly ever), I would feel like everyone was judging and I would feel less confident about my self.
It was to a point where I feel like I needed these things to be beautiful.
This went on all the way to when I finished college. There were definitely good days and bad days.
I even would gain some confidence for a few weeks or months and it would just completely disappear again. A lot of the times it was all about just faking it too.
Honestly, regardless of how insecure I would feel some days, I am still grateful and honestly I feel lucky because I had a boyfriend that helped me a lot. There wasn’t ever a day I had felt insecure with him and if I didn’t date him in high school I think I would have had a much harder time dealing with my insecurities.
The Lesson I’ve Learned:
One more personal experience I would like to share before I get into the real tips that will help you feel more self-confident with your looks, is an experience that was absolutely the worst but it was also what transformed me into being the person I am today (a person who will never complain about my self again)…
In the end of 2020, I had suffered from TSW (topical steroid with-drawl), something that happens to those who suffer with eczema.
I am not going to go into too much detail about this and explain the entire thing and explain what the condition is because that’s not what this post is about.
However, in short-form, it was a horrible skin condition that took over my whole body from head to toe and it got worse and worse. For 6 months straight all I felt was complete discomfort and pain. It was the worst feeling and even till this day it’s hard to explain because it’s a different kind of pain and discomfort.
For those 6 months I wasn’t able to sleep, walk, eat or shower comfortably.
My skin got so bad where I completely stopped looking into a mirror because I felt like I didn’t even recognize my self.
I put away all the mirrors in my household to avoid seeing my reflection. I used the washroom in the dark and kept all the lights off in my room because with any light on, my horrible skin was more visible for me to see.
I did not want to see my self or be seen.
Whenever I would go out which was only to go for a walk with my dog, I would cover my self from head to toe.
I would wear a baseball cap to hide my scalp that was affected (I became bald on both sides me head). I would wear a face mask which I am grateful that it existed because it hid majority of my literal crusty face. I would wear clothes that covered my entire body and lastly I would wear gloves to hide my horrible hands that were also horribly affected.
I wish I had pictures to show you guys how bad my body and scalp got but another thing I avoided doing was taking pictures.
Anyways, while going through that difficult time, I would constantly look at old pictures of my self…
Pictures of when I was in high school and pictures of me when I was in college.
Now that really taught me a lesson!
I had looked at my self from another perspective.
I was looking at those old pictures of me while sitting there with horrible skin (looking like a completely different version of myself) and I started to feel like complete sh*t, I asked my self why did I ever feel like I had the right to complain about my self?
How dare me. How dare I complain about things people might not have.
I had perfectly healthy skin, healthy hair, a healthy body etc…
Honestly, for the first time ever, I said to my self “I look beautiful” while I was looking at those pictures.
These were pictures too that I had never posted because I thought I didn’t look good enough.
I even started to feel bad that all I use to care about was looks because after months of going through discomfort and pain all I wanted to do was to sleep, shower, eat and walk properly.
For a while I just wished things can go back to how it was. I wished for my life back and if I did get it back I promised to never complain about my self again.
Which is exactly what happened.
Beauty Standards/ Trends Are Always Changing:
To get started with the real tips on how to help yourself build more confidence and how to love yourself more…
You must first understand that beauty standards/ beauty trends are always changing throughout the years.
I feel like many of us are concerned with our looks because we compare ourselves to a lot of other people.
People who represent the beauty standard. In today’s society, the beauty standards/trends for women is having an hourglass shaped body, having long hair, having big lips, having a small nose, having thick eyebrows, having long lashes etc…
This is all we see on social media now a days and these are certain qualities girls wish to have. These are qualities I wish to have as well.
But who can blame us when this is all we see. We see this as the norm. We even see women with these features get praised by others on social media, we see these women become famous for how they look, we see these women get a lot of attention etc…
(not saying these girls only get famous for their looks but it is one of the reasons people admire them)
Also I am not saying this is EXACTLY the reason as to why girls wish to look like the typical beauty standard (to get attention), it could be the reason for some but for others…
I feel like the main reason as to why girls feel the need to fit the “beauty standard” is because simply they just want to feel included, appreciated and beautiful as well.
With this whole beauty standard thing, I feel like it has changed the world where girls only feel beautiful when they represent the beauty trends.
However, you shouldn’t feel like you’re any less beautiful for not having the qualities that fit the “beauty standard” because they always change.
Are we going to keep changing ourselves and getting things done to ourselves just to fit in with the standards when in a few years the beauty standards will be different?
What will happen then when you had already done all you could to fit the most recent beauty trends but in 10 years things like having a hour glass figure, having curves, having clear skin etc… will be considered “ugly” 10 years from now.
Are you then going to loose all your self confidence again? Will this be the reason you will feel insecure again?
For example, I was always insecure about being skinny because of how it’s like now. I would always try to do everything I could to gain weight. I would drink supplements and drink protein shakes just so I can gain weight to fit the beauty standard.
But when I was younger, I remember my sisters when they were in high school and the beauty standards were completely different where it was okay if you didn’t have a body like the kardashians.
Everyone actually wished to look skinny.
Now imagine how horrible people would feel back in the day when the beauty standard was being “skinny”, imagine if they did the absolute most to change their appearance to fit in with the standards but years later their natural selves became THE beauty standard.
Will it only be then where they realize that they were always beautiful but it’s just that the certain qualities they had during that time was just simply not “trendy”
You get what i’m saying?
We shouldn’t rely on this to feel beautiful.
Every single person is beautiful in THEIR own way (the most annoying and repetitive quote but it’s true).
Every single person on this earth has a unique look but because of the standards everyone wants to look the same.
If you don’t match society’s definition of beautiful then who cares, their definition of beauty is always changing.
Just because you don’t look like the girls you look up to doesn’t mean you are any less so stop stressing about not looking like this or not looking that and stop stressing about your insecurities because guess what those insecurities will probably be the next beauty standard.
Embrace yourself. Embrace your own beauty.
Whether you look like this or you look like that, be happy with the way you look and don’t rely on fitting in with the beauty standards to feel confident because their always going to change their definition of beauty but you will always be you. Beautiful You.
Take A Social Media Break:
Now that my biggest tip is done.
A simple tip I have to helping yourself become more confident is taking a break from social media.
Whether that means deleting all social media apps or completely deleting your accounts, I find that taking just a little break from social media can be really helpful when it comes to feeling better about yourself.
I sometimes wish social media or any media didn’t exist because really and truly it’s the source to everyone’s insecurities, I find we always compare ourselves to people we see on instagram now a days and I imagine how easy it would be if it didn’t exist because we wouldn’t have people to compare ourselves to…
But this has been going on for many many generations before instagram even existed. Even though instagram didn’t exist a few years ago there was still television, magazines, movies, billboards, all sorts of media outlets, that would influence many when it came to how to dress, what hairstyles are trendy, what make up looks are trendy etc…
There was always something that had influenced us in how we should look and we can’t stop it or make it go away. Society and people who always have their opinion on how people should look. It’s ourselves we have to work on.
No, we don’t have to work on our looks.
We have to work on how we deal with these situations.
Once I realized that everyone on social media is not as perfect as they seem, it made me open my eyes to the fact that nobody will ever be perfect, we are all the same in the way we are just constantly comparing ourselves to other people and wanting to be them, wanting to be what the media considers “beautiful” and no matter how much you try to perfect the media and society will always have something to say about you and your looks.
Whenever I see my self starting to feel like sh*t about myself from comparing my self to others on social media, I simply just delete all my social media apps and focus on other things.
Disconnecting my self from social media really helps me just focus on me and not anything else.
Taking a break from social media is honestly a rewarding feeling because I find that when I do this, I start to dress like how I want to dress. I start to do my makeup the way I want to. I stop fantasizing about a body I wish to have based on what I see on social media and appreciate my own body.
I stop doing all these things just from simply taking my eyes off of what I constantly see on social media.
When I take breaks from social media and not use them for a while I start to realize how much time I actually do spend on it when I have these apps on my phone. I could be on it for hours and not even realize that the longer I spend on it the longer I am imagining to be someone else.
It’s like reading a book. When your reading a book that is highly interesting to you, you become invested in the story. You keep wanting to read more and more until you don’t even realize you are imagining yourself actually in the story.
You imagine yourself as the main character in the story and having this person’s life style, having this person’s love life, having this person’s group of friends, having this person’s looks and then when you stop reading and shut the book and look around in your surroundings you realize that you’re just reading.
That’s how I feel with social media. When I scroll for too long and look at so many different instagram stories for so long of people traveling, modelling, working etc… I start to imagine my life being like that and so when I shut my phone off and see where I’m at with life that’s when I start comparing a lot.
That’s when I start wishing to have a life that I seen based on social media and stop being grateful for the things I have.
So my point is, social media can influence more of your thoughts and feelings more than you think.
It can trigger your insecurities more than you think.
And so whenever you feel like you’re starting to feel like sh*t and feel really insecure.
Whenever you start to notice your doing a lot of comparing with yourself and others, try taking a break from social media until you’re better.
Even just a week can make a difference.
Say Affirmations:
Affirmations was something that actually helped me with a lot of things including with feeling more confident and with feeling better about my self.
It’s something so simple but it was something I’ve never done.
Affirmations is a great practice for positive thinking.
I’ve never noticed how negative I was and how much bad things I say about my self until I discovered positive affirmations.
There are many many affirmations you can say to yourself almost about anything but when it comes to feeling more confident some affirmations I personally like to say is…
“I am beautiful”
“I am perfect just the way I am”
“Perfection doesn’t exist”
“I am grateful for the qualities I have”
“People think I am beautiful”
I like to say these affirmations whenever I start to see me criticizing my self too much and whenever I start to say negative things about my self.
It really has made a huge difference to when I used to say…
“I hate my self”
“I look disgusting”
“I wished I looked like her”
“People are judging me” etc…
What you say and what you think can really affect how you act and feel about yourself.
Constantly saying bad things about yourself will make you feel like sh*t about yourself and the more and more you start to say those negative things the more you believe in them.
So why not change those negative words into positive ones so that you can feel good about yourself.
You will see that the more and more times you say good things about yourself, even if you don’t believe them in the beginning, just keep saying them and you’ll see how much it makes you feel better.
And soon you will start to believe in these positive words.
That comes to an end to today’s post.
I know that may have been a lot of information but really and truly it’s simple.
Be grateful for the way you are and the unique qualities you have.
Beauty standards are always changing and so we shouldn’t feel any less beautiful if we don’t fit those “standards”, society will always pick and choose what is considered “beautiful” so you must learn how to love yourself.
Loving yourself can take a very very long time and it’s not the most easy thing to do.
Trust me, I’ve been through it and if I had never gone through that horrible experience that changed how I looked then I wouldn’t have been able to look at my self in a different way.
Don’t let bad things happen in order to learn you’re so much more than you think.
Or hey maybe you need to learn a lesson like I did because no matter what I did I was still always insecure until the day I learned my lesson.
Keep practising saying positive affirmations and take social media breaks when you need to and don’t feel bad if you have some days where your not so positive, it happens.
What matters is that you pick yourself back up.
