One extremely common phenomenon is, unfortunately, for people to have an idea of how they’d like to express themselves in terms of their personal style, but to then hold themselves back purely out of issues stemming from low self-confidence.
Perhaps you’ve been interested in labret piercings for a while, but are convinced that you’d look like you are “trying too hard” if you actually got one. Or, maybe there’s a dress that you’ve kept in your wardrobe for months, if not years, but have never had the courage to wear out because you have some half-formed idea floating around your subconscious that everyone would point and laugh at you if you did.
Resolving confidence issues typically takes time and work. But here are a few home truths that might help you to move past your hangups, and express yourself as you’ve always wanted to, sooner rather than later.
As far as anyone knows for sure, you only live once, and time ticks along quickly
There are plenty of different philosophies, religions, and personal theories about what happens once we die, including the possibility of reincarnation.
The truth is, anything’s possible. But it’s worth keeping in mind that, as far as anyone knows for sure, you only live once, and during that life, time ticks along quickly, at an unforgiving pace.
If you were to imagine yourself on your deathbed (yeah, not the most upbeat thought experiment ever…) Do you think you’d regret that time you dared to wear a dress that you felt a bit awkward about? Probably not. But you might just regret allowing your insecurities and hangups determine how you lived your life.
When you confront your fears, they retreat – when you retreat from your fears, they advance
It’s a pretty well-known phenomenon in psychology, that when you confront your fears, your confidence expands, and your sense of faith in your own ability to meet adversity head-on, specifically, grows.
So, for example, if someone is scared of a particular activity, gradually exposing themself to that activity in measured doses can help to break the cycle of fear.
On the other hand, it’s also known that when people retreat from their fears, their fears “advance” and they become more frightened of an ever greater number of things.
Forcing yourself to disregard your hangups and dress how you’d like might seem like a pretty small thing, but it’s a step in the direction of confronting your fears, and boosting your confidence overall. Backing off, on the other hand, is a step in the opposite direction.
It’s only by expressing yourself that you find out what really works for, and matters to, you
To a large extent, life is about testing things out, “discovering” what works for us, and what really matters to us, and then “creating” ourselves via what we choose to focus on and dedicate ourselves to.
There’s a good argument to be made that it’s only by expressing yourself that you actually find out what really works for you, and what really matters to you, in any given area of life.
So, treat your personal style exploration as a journey and self-discovery and self-creation, not just as a matter of looking pretty when you leave the house.
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