Confidence

I'm not a confident person. I wish I was but I'm not.

Pretty much all my life I have been a shy, introverted and timid person. Never the one to immediately raise my hand in class, never the one to speak out in a group and give my opinion for fear of being judged and always the one to be quiet and awkward when speaking to cashier staff in shops. 

I think I can sometimes come across as confident, I'm quite a good leader and I think  I can be quite loud and perhaps a bit bossy at times but that's because I'm comfortable being a leader of people I know well. But you put me in a group of people I've never met and I'll be the quite one who appears to be a moody bitch who thinks she is better than everyone else but is actually just scared of being judged or of seeming stupid (I promise I'm not a moody bitch!!). 

With university coming up in September and the inevitable encounter with new people I don't know I know I need to be more confident and I'm trying to encourage myself to speak out more. But when you have anxiety, putting yourself into situations where you make yourself more vulnerable are scary. I have a little niggling voice in my head that tells me just to keep quiet or not enter that situation at all because that way nothing bad will happen. But I realise this is not a way to live life. 

I somehow need to venture out of my comfort zone, into the unknown and just be myself. Because there is nothing wrong with being me, right? I am the only me there is (I think) so if I'm not going to be me, who else will? I need to ignore the fact that some people may not like me. If they don't it doesn't really affect me and it's not a reflection on who I am as a person it is simply the fact that our personalities are not the same. 

I remember as young child I was actually super confident in certain situations. I was still shy around new people and I think I remember hiding behind my parents a lot but one very vivid memory is always going up to the waiter in restaurants to ask for the bill or for another drink so confidently but something changed as I reached my early tween/teen years. I think I probably became more aware of my appearance and felt a lot less happy about myself and became increasingly quiet. As I entered secondary school I was thrown into an environment where many of the girls were already much more interested in makeup and clothes than I was and had more access to these things.

It was from here that my confidence really fell quite low and it was enhanced by the fact that I really wasn't good at sports, I wasn't very clever and I became so shy. I have always been so much taller than all my peers and I know I do stand out a lot and I really think this is a factor which has decreased my confidence. Then I did find rowing and my confidence has definitely increased as rowing is a world made for those who are not so vertically challenged. 

But I'm still not the confident person I hope to be. I look in the mirror and I'm still not happy with what I see. I want more defined abs, I want a more symmetrical face, I want narrower hips. But I cannot change most of the things I don't like (aside from my abs and I am working on them) and I really need to learn to accept myself but it is so hard! I believe Louise (Sprinkle of Glitter) is a really good role model for body confidence because she is so confident in her skin and it seems to radiate off her. But then I know she didn't develop her confidence overnight, it would've taken time to truly become 100% confident in who you are. 

So my confidence is a work in progress. I'm getting there but I am nowhere near my final confidence goal yet. I want to be able to look in the mirror, admire my flaws and know that they are my flaws and they are fine, they don't devalue me as a human and I should not be ashamed of them in any way, shape or form. 

Thanks for reading!

Charlotte

XO