Thought of the Week: Confidence, Self-Belief and Positivity.

So, you may have noticed that I’ve been absent for a few days. I’d like to tell you that it was because I was really busy, and just didn’t have the time – but that really wasn’t the case. If I’m honest, I just didn’t feel like I could write anything last week. I wasn’t happy with anything I tried to write, any topic I came up with or any photographs I took. I then got trapped into a bit of a vicious cycle of negative thoughts, and lost all confidence in myself and my blog.

I’m pretty sure it all started with anxiety over the general election. That was quickly replaced with anxiety about the outcome – and that was then replaced with anxiety about all the stupid people on the Internet who don’t seem to understand how democracy works. (Lets move on swiftly because that is another rant for another time). The trigger is not of so much importance in this conversation. But you can read up on my coping strategies for Anxiety here if you would like to.

It’s amazing how the tiniest indication of vulnerability can leak into all aspects of someone’s life. I went from being concerned about politics to believing I wasn’t good enough at just about everything. A small concern can morph so rapidly until eventually a whole week of your life has been wasted worrying about the quality of your Instagram photo’s, or comparing yourself to every other person on the internet.

How can confidence decrease so rapidly?

If there was no one to compare myself to, then would I be more content with my life/job/blog? Would I be more confident with it? 

Last week, I had a negative thought about the future prospects for the country and the world and it bred so quickly until every thought I had was negative. I wasn’t good enough at my job, my blog, my life because there were other people out there who were more successful than me.

If a person wants to do something, and they believe they can, they are probably much more likely to achieve. But if they don’t think there is any point because the world’s falling apart anyway or whatever excuse they might be giving, then they are much less likely to even try. There will always be room for improvement,  and without that drive to improve and succeed, life would probably be quite boring.

Maybe we need to compare ourselves to others for motivation? We all need something to aspire to, but we need to make sure our thoughts in relation to the comparison’s are positive ones. I think it’s time we start viewing each other as inspiration, rather than competition. We are all individual people, we will have individual lives, and even though we may think we want to land at the same destination as someone else, it is highly likely our journey’s will be very different. If we are constantly comparing ourselves to each other with the view of it being unachievable we will only be increasing our insecurities. If we stay positive, and believe in ourselves then even when something does go wrong, hopefully, we will be able to move forward more easily, and more successfully than before.

So, again, I don’t really know where I’m going with this. But I hope it either helped a little, or made you think. You may well be the most confident, positive person out there – in which case – hopefully you’ll just remember that not everyone is, all of the time. So yes, stay positive, believe in yourself and have confidence in your abilities because somebody has to be successful and it may just as well be you!