Confidence not Arrogance

Everyone knows the importance of confidence. And yet so many people struggle with it. Why? Why is it so darn difficult to build confidence? The simple answer is: because it is work. The slightly more elaborate answer is: because it requires constant hard work and honesty. I believe that when people hear that they should become more confident, they end up becoming more arrogant, which is counterproductive.

Both confidence and arrogance start with someone not feeling good about themselves. The problem with arrogance is, that it is what happens when we try to make ourselves feel better, without being willing to acknowledge our problems. We try to make other people believe, how great we are, because we cannot believe ourselves, when we say “I am awesome.”. We hope that when other people believe, that we are great, we can believe it ourselves and find a way to be at peace with ourselves. In other words we are trying to put up a show. The show that we are awesome. The show that we enjoy our lives and that we are in control.

Another very characteristic thing that is an indicator for arrogance is, when we feel the need to be acknowledged and approved by others, but most importantly: when we always want to be better than others. We constantly need to measure up against other people and be better than them, in order to be able to feel good about ourselves. This sometimes goes as far as we feel the need to put other people down. We feel the need to be seen. We feel the need to brag. We feel threatened when someone is better than us.

And while we keep all this up we end up being exhausted and still not at peace. The reason for this is simple: we lack honesty. Everything we do is nothing but a show. We know exactly that we are not as great, as we want to make other people believe. And we end up never being able to fool ourselves. Because we are not stupid.

Confidence is knowing that who we are is good enough. And that knowledge needs to be based on facts. If we are not confident, we need to consider the possibility, that there are some things we need to work on. Gaining confidence starts with honesty. It starts with figuring out, who we are. What are the things we like about ourselves and what are the things we do not like? For me some things that I did not like were and still are that I do not study enough and how much I tend to complain. Often these things are the very things standing in between us and our happiness.

We do not need to despair. Confidence is not only when we have eliminated all our flaws. Confidence is, when we know we are working towards it. We are improving. Because we started being confidence by being honest, we are still being honest with ourselves. And we get to tell ourselves that we are handled our flaw brilliantly today. Or even just that we improved compared to yesterday. Or that we kept going, even though we did not feel like it. But we can say this without lying to ourselves.

Confidence is not about what other people think about us. Confidence is what we think about us. Confidence allows us to be at ease and gives us peace because we do not have to fear our own thoughts. Of course there will be days where it is more difficult than on other days. And that is where discipline comes in. Confidence is more than just a nice feeling. I said confidence required hard work. And it does so, because it is not always easy to improve ourselves. And sometimes we just want to give in and stay in bed. We all know the feeling. But confidence is what we gain from getting up nevertheless.

We cannot be happy without being confident. And we cannot gain confidence without honesty and self-discipline. We need both. We can acknowledge our flaws and do little to nothing about them. That is just immature, maybe even cowardly behavior. It showcases a lack of self-discipline. And while it is true that some naturally have more than others and some build it easier than others, I do not believe that anyone should allow themselves to use that an excuse to not be confident. If we are self-disciplined, but not honest about our flaws, we are wasting our energy, or maybe we are not as disciplined, as we thought we were to begin with.

I get it. I am struggling with discipline myself. It’s tough. And being honest with ourselves is a bench. But the reality is that we all want to be happy. And being honest with ourselves only hurts us, if it means, we have to work on ourselves. Why would we try to deceive ourselves? Arrogance is, when we try to deceive others in the hopes that at some point we end up believing it ourselves. We need to understand that it is our own decision. No one is making us build confidence. No one is making us be honest with ourselves. But I will rather be honest with myself and put in some work in order to gain peace and happiness. In order to be able to live with myself.

The people who are constantly stating we need to be more confident conveniently forget to mention how much work it is, because they are aware, that if they admit that, some people will choose to not start this journey. But I think, that we need to understand the choice that we have. And it is no good to us, if we think we are confident and still feel so insecure. That insecurity is most likely coming from some flaw within us, that we have not addressed yet.

While it is true, that confidence is not about how other people see is, rather than about us being please about us, we also have to understand that we are humans, which means, we have emotion and rationality. What I have described tackles the topic of self-confidence from a rational perspective. But sometimes there is no rational reason for us to feel insecure. Sometimes we are truly confident rather than arrogant, and still feel insecure. This is a mere emotion, and we really know, we are good enough. In such situations it can help to approach the problem from an emotional side, because the problem is purely emotional to begin with.

Let me illustrate this with an example: I have been very insecure about my appearance and my body since I was a little girl, even though there was no reason for that. When I got into uni and felt insecure, I imagined what I would think about me, if I saw myself. Since what I thought was never really negative, I have been able to tremendously improve my body image. Because what I felt was perfectly irrational. This would not have worked, if I had not been taken care of. Which is, why I advise to take a rational approach to confidence. We naturally try to deal with our insecurities emotionally. But we can do that so much better, if there are actually facts to back up our positive self-talk.

It is also important to understand the difference between being arrogant vs. being confident and competitive. Both types of people may feel threatened when they come across someone who is better than them. But the arrogant person may try to talk them down or talk themselves up, maybe even do some improvement to keep up the facade. The confident but competitive person will take this encounter as a motivation to improve further. That is a good thing as long as we don’t try to improve, just to be better than that person. A confident person does not care if someone else is better at something, they don’t care for. They acknowledge and praise the achievement. But they will not go out of their way to be better than the other person.

Say we meet someone who runs faster than us. Us trying to beat that person is not a bad thing. It may benefit our health and mental state. But it becomes problematic, as soon as we endanger ourselves, or when it makes us feel threatened even though running that fast was never our goal to begin with.

This illustrates beautifully not only what it means to be confident, but also why it is so “in” to not care about what other people think, because if we are confident, it does not matter, what people think, because we know our flaws and we also know we are working on them. In summary confidence is about knowing ourselves. Knowing who we are today. And knowing who we want to be. It is about working towards that in order to not lie to ourselves when we say “I love who I am.”.

What we want to vs. what we have to do

There is no such thing as “I have to do this.” But the alternative is to deal with the consequences.

Last week was exhausting. I had a midterm on Friday and the whole week I kept thinking: “I am so exhausted. I don’t want anything but sleep, but I have to keep going. I need to study.” But when the midterm was over and I had some time to make new to do lists and think about my whole situation I noticed a few things.

My real problem was my mindset
I wanted to study. I did not want to be sleeping or binging TV
But I couldn’t, because I was so tired
I’m not tired because of the workload, I am tired because of my mindset and the season

The more we force ourselves to do stuff, we don’t feel like wanting to do, the more tired we get mentally and the less energy we have. Often we just need to remember, why we want to do something. And remember, that we really don’t have to do it, if we don’t want to. This is a very empowering shift in mindset. It allows us to get back in control.

The other problem is the season. There are really nice aspects to it: it is cuddly weather and we get to wear the comfy clothes and drink tea and hot coco all Sunday long. It is perfectly acceptable to just stay in bed and do nothing for a little. We get chestnuts and gingerbread, chocolates and cookies. We light the scented candles and start listening to all the beautiful winter songs again. On the other hand there is the darkness and the cold. We get a Vitamin D deficiency. We dial back our physical activity. And this is what makes us so tired. For me there really just is one thing: more working out and a better sleep schedule. It gives a sense of control and it battles the exhaustion.

And again: we do not have to work out. But I want to. Because I want to study. And I want to be confident. And I want to have energy. And I know that regular work-outs will provide all those things.

From a full on Bullet Journal to a simple Book of Lists

For those of you who do not know what a Bullet Journal is, I suggest asking Google. 😉 I do not intend to repeat what others have written about and explained a thousand times.
I used to love Bullet Journalling. One could say I was full on obsessed. Back in school it was my every day companion. My trusted system. I swore by it. Then I came to uni and things changed. My phone became my every day companion. My schedules started being digital and as I had my phone, wherever I went there was not need for me to copy everything into a physical copy. Quickly Google Calendar started doing the job that until then my Monthly and Yearly spreads had done. My weekly spreads became repetitive, I stopped using trackers. And at some point I stopped using the Bullet Journal all together, because setting it all up was more of a hassle than it was any use.

A few weeks into the second semester I started writing a To-Do list on a sticky note as well as a daily motivational sentence. After doing that for two weeks I realized that I could have all those stickies in a safe place and I bought a cute little book for my daily to do lists. And who would have thought it… it turned into a safe place. Filled with more than just to-do lists. It also contains my gratitude log, my “feel-good-activities”-list, a list with all the things I need when going to university.

I would write down visions and goals for the next semester in that book as well as the plan for exam prep. The thinks I need to get done at some point but do not yet put into a daily to do still are on sticky notes. But they get carried on from week to week. If I feel the need to track my habits, I print a template and stick it to the page with washi tape which is so much faster than lining the entire tracker out myself.

But my schedule as well as a few fast-lived lists like shopping lists I keep on my phone. In Google Calendar or Google Keep respectively. And there is no rule as to which lists go to Keep and which to my book, it really comes down to convenience and sometimes I even take a picture of my book and make it a Keep-Note.

Having a few good quotes with you is always handy and great for motivation

However as I am now approaching the end of my little book, which has served me well for about 17 Months, I decided to go back to an A5 notebook again and start a new Book of Lists there and see where it takes me. I intend it to be an inspiration as well as a place to keep track of all my to dos.

Balance and Making it count

“Eating is an absolute waste of time. Keep studying!” and “If you take a break now, you will never get back to work!” are just two of the sentences the little voice in my head screamed at me last Thursday. When we try to work. When we try to pour our heart and soul into something, when we try to be good at something, it can easily happen, that we want to make ourselves spend more time with whatever that is at the moment. Because we have a goal that we want to achieve no matter what. This drive is incredible. It can make us become great people. There is just one problem. It is absolutely out of balance.

Also on Thursday I caught myself being irritated constantly. Being mad and impatient. I was swearing and screaming because I go frustrated, because it felt like nothing was working the way I wanted it to. The printer did not print. And I had failed to finish what I had planned the days before. I just hated everything. Then I realized one thing: It had been weeks since I last worked out. My body was totally out of balance. I had been challenging my mind to be disciplined and study, but at the same time I had failed to challenge my body. And this was when I got grumpy.

We may not all need exercise. But balance we all need. Because, eating and sleeping and taking breaks are not just a necessary evil, that we do in order to keep functioning. This is what I tell the little voice in my head. But what we really need is fulfillment. That is what will keep us going. If we do only one thing for days and only eat and sleep because we have to, we run the danger of depending on that one thing to fulfill us. Which can easily become an issue when that one thing starts getting on our nerves for some reason.

That is why we need hobbies and friends and work and family. And all these categories have the right to exist. And all of them have the potential to fulfill us. Sure, we do not want to choose friends that we do not actually like, but we should not rely on our friends to make us happy. Or our family, our jobs or hobbies. They all are wonderful and to lead a happy life, all of these need to be more or less intact. But we cannot depend on one or another. Because that will most likely make us neglect the others and thereby make us unhappy in the long run.

Especially recreational things like taking breaks, eating and sleeping should not be things we think of as necessities. We should be able to draw energy from them. We can actively help doing that, by creating little rituals around going to sleep for example. Or having a designated spot, where we read when we are on a break. Whatever it is, we need to convince ourselves, that we deserve those breaks. And we can be grateful for them and for deserving them, rather than hating on them. We need to believe that it is alright to not study 10 hours a day. Yes, maybe we feel like we might fail the next exams if we stop studying, but if we cannot take a break and recharge, there will be no efficient studying and then we will definitely fail.

We can take this even a step further. Which is typical for people with a positive mindset. We have to go to a doctor or dentist for a regular checkup. Most people would get annoyed by it. Consider it a waste of time. But very few see it as an opportunity. We can talk to our doctor about any concerns we might have and if we don’t we had a checkup and we know for a fact that we are fine. Not to mention the fact that we get out of the places we are on a regular basis. Maybe we can walk there and enjoy the sunshine. Or maybe we just enjoy the time to ourselves. The very same thing goes for running errands and doing groceries.

So to sum it up: there are things we need to do and we need to balance the different parts of our lives, to be able to draw energy from them. But while we are at it, we might as well think about how we can make the the small and absolutely necessary things in our lives matter. This is actively employing a positive mindset and will fulfill us and make us happy.

The Dawn

I never wanted this to be a space, where I pointlessly whine about how I feel. I started this blog with the purpose of expressing, why someone would harm him-/herself and I wanted to share, how I manage to deal with the fact that I turned against myself. I wanted to share, what I have learned one can do to get better. But I also wanted a space, where I am allowed to openly speak. So here is a quick update on my mental state:

It has been two weeks since I last saw my therapist and had my finalizing session. My last actual therapy session was five weeks ago. I last cut three weeks ago. Those cuts healed without triggering me again, which is nice. I have not yet made any attempts to get a new therapist. Though I really wanted to do that, but I honestly think, that I might benefit more from DBT, so I will talk to a professional before I make a decision.

Over all I am fine. It feels like I am finally re-orientating. It feels like I can breath again. Like the darkness has made space for the sun to dawn again. Because I can be myself again. Do not get me wrong. I know exactly, why I feel like this now and not a few weeks ago. There was a change in my life, that was necessary. I was depending on someone who did not respect me for the person I am. And that lead to me disrespecting myself. It is stupid. I know. But now this is over and I can finally focus on the woman I want to be.

It is a lot of work. Putting effort into studying. Trying to redefine my vision. Depending on only myself and people I know I can trust. But I know one thing: It is absolutely worth it. I want to be myself. I can be a strong woman with her own mind. I just have to make up my mind first. And I have to work towards believing that my view on the world is valid, no matter if other people agree with me or not. And that is what I will be doing for the coming time. I do not know how long this will take. But I will never find out, if I do not start.

Getting worse, without actually feeling it.

I am supposed to study. Supposed to deal with my self-harm. Trust me, it’s not that easy. It is not as straight forward. I feel the darkness is just getting stronger. I am running in circles. Questioning whether I am developing an actual depression. Why I am I suspecting it? Well, I am crying. A lot. The weekend I spent binging TV. And that’s how I spent every weekend in the last 7 weeks. I am aware that a TV addiction is not a tell tale sign for a depression, but it can be one of the symptoms.

This morning I woke up with a tinnitus. If I think about it, I know that I am worse than I’ve been for a long time, but I feel strangely okay. Just a big bulk of nothingness. And I know that’s not good. Because nothing is exactly what will get me cutting eventually. The keyword is “eventually”. For now I am okay. The problem is: I may feel okay, but before I know why, before I know that something is wrong, I end up cutting. And I don’t feel bad. Neither before nor afterwards. It is like I just don’t care anymore. So I am just doing what I can: trying to study. Trying to fill the void of nothingness with knowledge. It does not work. But I gotta keep trying.

Happy by Choice

I have spoken about positivity before. And in my last post I talked about how a vision can help fighting negativity. So I thought I might elaborate on being happy a little more. Because I find, that I choose to be sad and hurt and angry most of the time. I let all those negative emotions get to me. And feeling them is not evil per se. But there is a limit to it. And we overstep that limit, if we find ourselves, being more sad than we are happy.

Please do not get me wrong. I am not saying that someone who for example suffers from depression is choosing to be sad. I think we all have phases in our life, where choosing to be happy is pretty much impossible. We all have to decide for ourselves, whether or not we are able to work on choosing happiness… because we really are not always in a position to do so. But sometimes we are. And I think, if we can, we should be happy.

But how? I think it is a mindset. It means that we focus our mind on the positive. Like our vision of ourselves. Or the beautiful sunset. Being positive by choice means choosing to not complain. I often do that. Just complain about everything. Finding a reason to pick on everyone around me. And yes: I know this is toxic behavior. This is why I am trying to work on it. Because at some point I realized, that complaining is for immature people. Because either we do something about whatever is annoying us, or we shut up. Why talk about something that makes us unhappy and thereby remind us why we could be unhappy? There is literally no benefit to it. There are so many awesome things in this world we can go on and on about for hours. That will wake the fascination and love in us and make us feel happy. Why talk about something that does the exact opposite? Sure sometimes we need to face a problem. I am not talking about productive criticism. I am talking about pointless complaining.

I used to carry this stone to University with me every day. I used to have it right next to me while I studied. Just to remember that I was not being forced to do that. But that I had chosen this myself.

The next step of being happy by choice is believing that we can do, whatever we want to. It is working on us becoming the person we want to be. Becoming our vision of ourselves. Sure thinking we are absolutely invincible is not helpful either. Some occasional “If I do not work hard enough I will fail.” is perfectly normal. But can you see what this sentence implies? It actually comes from the mindset of “I can do this.” because it gives the condition under which we fail. Not the condition under which we succeed. And it also implicitly explains how to not fail: Work hard enough. So, if we doubt ourselves, which is normal. Let’s try to figure out in what cases we fail and formulate it such that the very same sentence that presents the problem holds the solution.

Now why would we go through all that trouble with all those details? Why does it even make a difference how exactly we put our doubts into words? Because what we say has a direct impact on our mind. And positivity is a mindset. So formulating the problem alongside with our solution will make ourselves understand that there is a solution to whatever problem we are facing.

So choosing to be happy in the end comes down to acting and talking like a happy person. Because after doing that for a week or two. Our minds believe us that we are happy. Doing this alongside with having a good vision of who we want to be, sets us up to actually becoming happy. And it boosts confidence incredibly. This I say from experience. I am not just rambling here… I once was very happy. I once had pretty much reached my vision. I stopped being positive. And I stopped being happy. Ever since I have been trying to get back into that positive mindset.

All I am saying is: it is possible to be happy. Despite everything that is hard. Despite all the pain that comes our way. Because happiness can be worked for. Yes, there are times, when all we do is try to get through the next day. Through the next night. Through the next our. Next minute. Without hurting ourselves. Without hating ourselves. But when we finally wake up from our pain. We need to remember that positivity is a choice. A mindset. One that we need. Because it will make us happy.

The vision of who we shall be

I got lucky enough to know that my fear had a deadline. To know that at some point I would have an answer. And I got lucky enough to get the answer I had been hoping for and not the answer I had been so afraid of.

But now what? When we are lucky enough to get the chance to leave our fear behind. What do we do next? When our entire life had been evolving around that fear. (It does not have to be fear. It can really be anything you have been evolving around and now stopped.) How can we move on?

I think there are two crucial parts: One is looking back and figuring out what went wrong. And what went well. This is important, but I think it is quite self-explanatory. It allows us to deal with the emotions and not bury them inside us. But we do not want to live in the past. We shall not be devoured by regret. (In fact this could be the topic for a whole separate blog post.)

The other part is looking into the future. And sometimes, when we have been so caught up in something we need to actively create a vision of ourselves. But why would that be helpful? A vision allows us to measure our actions by. If something makes us more like the person we are in that vision, it is a productive action. But why do we need that?

Because we need a direction. Until this point we have been evolving around whatever it is we are leaving behind. Now it is time to evolve around something positive. Around the person we want to be. In my vision I never say: “I am not a self-harmer.” I say things like: “I am a strong, independent woman.” Such a positive vision, a vision of what we want to be rather than what we do not want to be, is very powerful, because it motivates us to go on. And it gives us somewhere to go. Somewhere we want to go. And every time we are able to take a step towards our vision, we will be able to love ourselves a bit more. Because we did something that made us better.

In the self-harm and self-hate context this is so important. Because we tend to be trapped in all that negativity. And I know I could not even have written this post last week. I think us hating ourselves… as sad as it is: It is part of who we are. And yes, we do have to fight it. But we cannot fight negativity with more negativity. We cannot fight the fact that we hate ourselves, by hating that we hate. That’s… recursive. So instead we need to find something about us, that we can love. And that is why we need a vision: because we want to be like the vision. And every time we get a little closer to who we want to be, we are allowed to be proud of ourselves. Love ourselves a bit more. Trust ourselves a bit more. Experience that we are actually not as much of a failure as we always like to make ourselves believe. And that I call taking control of our lives. Actively fueling our self-confidence instead of letting negativity destroy us.

But how can we create a vision? What inspires such a vision? There are many sources for that: People we admire. Ideologies. Quotes. And more mundane: Books, movies, series, music, pictures. I usually work with 4 categories:

Me and university
Me and my hobbies
Me and myself
Me and others

In each of these categories I determine what is important to me. I write it down and that is how my vision is born. Then I take one or two points in each category and figure out a way to actively improve that point. I make a plan. And most importantly: I try to ask myself on a regular basis: “Is this how the person in my vision would act?” or “Is this bringing me closer to the person I want to be?”. This is not entirely about accounting for the progress we make in becoming the vision, it is mostly about remembering that positive vision. Getting into the mindset of that vision. Because we can so easily forget, what we want to fight for. So reminding ourselves of it is always a good idea.

Just another Darkness

Yesterday I was afraid. Today I dared. I am the only one guilty of this crime against me. But I am not mad at myself. I did not push the blade down. I just let it slide over my skin. Feel the tickle of the metal. My fingers are sweaty. I guess I am still afraid. It is fascinating how such a thin piece of metal can have such a visible effect on a human even if we don’t actively try to make a big impact. I do not know how much harm I would do if I got mad at myself and cut… if I felt unheard and felt like I needed to scream louder. Cut deeper. For now: these cuts… mere scratches are enough.

So much pain comes from such a tiny thing…

I am sliding back into addiction. Why? Because I am so afraid. So afraid that I suddenly just think: I gotta leave. And I walk out and into a bathroom until I feel able to return. Or I start crying in the middle of a lecture. Sometimes I see my chest vibrating with the beating of my heart. I shiver and sometimes my hands tremble.

I know I should be fighting the fear without hurting myself. I know I should just be handling the pressure. Study harder. Trying to distract myself. I should be talking back to the voice that says I could be cutting. But all I really say is that I do not want to be alone. And then again… I want to be alone. And I isolate myself because being around people does not make the fear go away. All it does is drag those people down along with me. Just… seeing that I’m everything but okay… it hurts them. And I still cannot talk. I wish I could.

I have been in therapy for two months now. Nothing changed. Absolutely nothing. Actually… when I started therapy I was better than I am now. I thought… I might learn how to prevent me slipping… but I didn’t. I did not even get started in finding a way. I have no idea what went wrong. I thought it would help. I think I will see another therapist. I am not ready to give up yet. Just another darkness that I need to survive… Another darkness that will leave its scars on my skin.

I am so sorry. This whole thing is such a mess… and I created it. I was fine before I was so incredibly stupid. And then I created this blog to share what would help me get better… and all I am doing is explaining why I hurt myself. And… how it feels.

“Touching the flames tonight.”

There is a girl on the train. Watching the rain fall outside the window. Her lips tickle. Not in a good way. The grey sky vanishes as the train enters the tunnel and stops. The girl gets up. Enters the labyrinth of the main station. Every single step of hers in synch with the beating of the music.

She enters a store. Does not care about the people around her. She cannot hear them. Her entire being is filled with nothing. Music in her ears. She finds the hygiene division of the store. Finds the section with the razors. One deep breath and she is on her way to the checkout. With one single item. Classic razor blades.

She spares a thought on how that must seem. A young student at 8am buying razor blades. Is it not obvious what they are for? She feels the power she has. Because she can just buy those blades. No one can stop her. Then. She feels nothing again. The blades fall into the depths of her bag. She will inspect them later. She will be touching the flames tonight. Fire. And Flesh. And Blood. If she was feeling something it would probably be fear.

Yes. That girl… it is me. And I should probably have bought chocolate instead. My one and only enemy is me. How will I forgive her who wouldn’t forgive? How shall I live in peace with the one who always wants to hurt herself? She is me. And I hate her. And I love her. I need her. I invite her to come. And she hurts me. And I am her. I hurt myself. If this was a book, I’d write “A single tear is running down her cheek.” But there is no tear. Just me. There is no other, evil me. No demon. There is just me.