Too often we let our insecurities get the best of us. We let them ruin friendships, relationships, jobs, opportunities--the list goes on. They cause you to continuously have a sense of void or needing to be something, somebody else, or to be validated for your actions. However, instead we need to learn to embrace our insecurities in order to better ourselves and learn to love ourselves unconditionally. Once we are able to identify them as they are, we then gain the ability to turn those weaknesses into strengths.
Furthermore, many people can't admit or are often unaware of their lack of love for themselves, which is a very important aspect of being insecure. Everyone always says, "love yourself" blah blah blah. However, nobody ever really sits you down and tells you exactly what that means. They don't teach you in school how to love yourself, and I'm sure if they did many of us wouldn't even take the course because a large percentage of us are unconscious to the fact that we actually, don't love ourselves. Why? Most likely because we aren't even sure how to.
Loving yourself means refraining from judgement because you know you're not perfect. Loving yourself means being comfortable with the actions of others and not letting their words or actions disturb your peace. It means that you are filled with confidence and strength in everything that you do. When you love yourself unconditionally, it means that you want nothing, but love and greatness for yourself as well as others. So in turn, you reject anything or anyone that doesn't value you, the way that you value yourself. It means that you are so comfortable and secure with yourself in all aspects that you don't desire anything or anyone to make you feel complete. When you learn to love yourself, you learn that you are deserving of all good things life has to offer and that nothing has the power to get in the way of your happiness.
So often, we as humans enjoy pointing out other peoples' flaws or mistakes, but always fail to look in the mirror and recognize our own. This is a huge sign that many of us aren't yet capable of loving ourselves. We get extremely caught up and so distracted by this, that many of us don't even realize that we're guilty of it.
Just imagine if we spent the same amount of time that we do worrying or talking about other people--and rather focused that energy on ourselves. Can you imagine how much better we would be as individuals? If we loved ourselves so much that we focused more on how to fix and better ourselves, rather than on others we would all have the potential to be so great.
A lot of the time, insecurity becomes a huge subject when it comes to relationships. If you are in a relationship, I'm sure many can relate when I say, we often blame our partner for everything or make them feel bad about things that they probably already recognize--rather than take responsibility for the way we feel.
However, just like everyone else-- including you, they will also make mistakes and shouldn't be criticized and judged by someone who loves them. When you learn to love yourself, you begin to want the same for them. Wouldn't you love to see your partner embrace their flaws, mistakes, and insecurities in order to grow and learn from them? When you begin pointing the finger, you do the complete opposite and instead hinder their growth rather than promote it. Although it may be coming from a place of no harm, recognize that you don't enjoy the feeling of being criticized by someone who doesn't have all of their shit together either.
When you're constantly criticizing, arguing, and blaming others for your unhappiness--you have let yourself become a victim of your own insecurities. You, and only you are responsible for your thoughts, actions, and ultimate happiness. Loving yourself means allowing yourself to be happy, which can only be accomplished by letting go of all the thoughts and feelings that don't promote that happiness. Once you begin complaining, reacting off of emotion, and pointing the finger--you have forgotten what it means.
Start by forgetting what others think. Forget what they think about you, your job, your appearance, your financial situation, your relationship, the list is never-ending. In the end, you have no control over the way people view you. There are always going to be those who don't like you or judge you from afar, but you can't live your life worrying about what others think of you. So many people live their lives trying to be a people-pleaser in hopes that everyone will like them, only to find out that in the end it caused them to be everything, but happy.
In addition, focus more on yourself from now on. Learn things about yourself and lessons from yourself. Begin to be aware of your emotions. Learn what types of things or which people trigger you to be happy, mad, sad, or otherwise. Once you begin to recognize and learn these things about yourself--rather than be a victim of your emotions, you will instead learn to control them and understand the importance of consciously recognizing them and the reason they arise. This will further lead to your ability of gaining a higher emotional intelligence.
For example, let's say something someone does makes you very angry. First of all, I'm sure we can all agree that we don't enjoy being angry. So if you have no choice, but to be around this person all the time and they continue to make you mad--once you become aware that whatever it is that they do makes you mad, are you going to continue to let it anger you every time? Now that would just be crazy, to be aware of something that makes you mad, only to continue to let it bother you over and over again. Most people would say that instead of handling the situation within and learning to let the anger go, they would choose to confront or scold this person for their action.
However, this goes back to pointing the finger and blaming others for the way you feel, when ultimately you are the only person truly capable of controlling your emotions. Now the same goes, when I say you also won't like everybody--and you don't have to, it's natural to not get along with everyone. But you can't live your whole life sitting around waiting to nag everyone about something they do, and at the same time expect to live a happy life. The two aren't in parallel, it just doesn't make sense.
Another thing we should all learn to do is to try and stop complaining so much. We love to complain about anything and everything; the weather, our job, our money, etc. Complaining is a sign of insecurity in ANY situation. Try and be more conscious and aware of when you are in an uncomfortable situation where you feel the urge to complain. Now, rather than complain--just recognize it and evaluate and reflect as to why you feel uncomfortable with it. Notice how much better you'll feel and how much happier you become when you learn to eliminate complaining from your life. If you can control it, change it or do something about it--if it's out of your control, let it go and don't worry about it anymore.
Once you rid yourself of insecurity and instead turn it into a tool for growth, you will be better suited to love not only yourself unconditionally, but others as well. Although it is still an ongoing process, nobody told me these things, I had to learn on my own and from my past.
Not all of us will mirror the same insecurities or situations, however these are some important lessons I have learned from observing my own, as well as other peoples' experiences--as I find them the key to living a happy and peaceful life.
Once you learn to see the beauty of everything about yourself, you will also begin to see the beauty in everyone and everything surrounding you.
