Confidence
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence ~ Mark Twain
I've always believed in 'fake it till you make it' when it comes to confidence.
I am absolutely rubbish at appearing confident in front of others. I'm embarrassingly shy, nervous and just feel uncomfortable in my own skin. But, I have figured out a few tricks to act confident when in these uncomfortable situations that I am all too familiar with. Find a focus point as soon as you walk into the room, make sure the point is about eye-level and is something visually appealing. I like to use this when I am lacking confidence and have used this numerous times throughout debating rounds! I find this also really helps when in a social setting because normally an introvert will look down at the ground and appear to lack confidence whereas when you are looking around at eye-level you automatically look a whole lot more confident. Taking deep breaths can also help immensely! Again, in public speaking situations I tend to be very nervous and fumble a lot (!) so I like to just take 3 -5 long, deep breaths to collect my thoughts and regain focus. Another way to fake confidence is to stand up tall. Whenever someone is slouched over they immediately draw unwanted attention to themselves and also appear to lack confidence. However, standing up tall makes it seem like you've got everything under control and are not secretly freaking out!! Finally, speaking slowly improves your (appearance of) confidence. This is my one downfall - ask my old debating coach :-( The faster you speak, the more nervous you appear and this is where I am a complete failure. I can fake the other aspects of confidence, but when it comes to speaking in front of any kind of audience I'm pretty sure I speak so fast no one understands what I'm saying :-(
Body Confidence, here's something I'm still working on. I have always (up until maybe a month ago) hated my body. Let me (try to) justify why. I totally understand that I let my body become the way it is by myself so there is no one else to blame but myself. I was always the chubby kid, everywhere I went. At school all the girls were a lot smaller than I was and I just couldn't come to accept my body. I know I shouldn't be comparing myself to others and it's really not healthy to but I just couldn't help it! I tried a whole bunch of drastic things to try and change what I looked like and it began changing the way I felt. So (bringing it up again) that shitty thing happened in my life about a month back so I put all of my energy into bringing the old Emma back. I really like the old (regular) me. I feel like for the past five years I have been (to an extent) pretending to be someone else to please other people. I received a text message the night shitty thing happened from a friend and it really changed (whether it was supposed to or not) who I was/am. I reverted back to the old Emma. The happy, loving, smiling, positive Emma. I am no longer super negative and I really enjoy it. I've gone back to the Emma who is happy about who she is (look at me talking in third person). Anyway, long story short, I am in the process of gaining my self/body confidence back. I've started taking care of myself (eating right and exercising regularly again) and am slowly getting my body to where I feel most confident. It was only a month ago that I finally accepted what I looked like without make up on and allowed myself to leave the house with a bare face.
In fact, here is a photo of me today. I'm wearing 0 makeup and am wearing a bikini at the beach (for the first time in a very long time). We can all excuse the fact that clearly I don't go in the sun very often and immediately turned brown after about an hour in the sun because my body went into shock and just tanned - so bonus!!! I no longer look like Casper the ghost!
Thanks for sticking 'round 'til the end. You're the best :-)
- Emma xo
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