What exactly is confidence? I still don’t really know the answer, but to me, a part of it is allowing yourself to make mistakes, learn, and be easy on yourself.
In my experience, confidence is not something that you one day wake up and decide to have. It’s a long process. A journey. A journey that I still haven’t fully figured out yet, and that’s perfectly okay.
If I’m being honest, this past year has proven to be the most challenging for me and my self-confidence. My senior year of college brought with it a lot of anxiety and fear of what would be my next step in life. Am I enough? Do I even have the right skills to be successful in my chosen career path? What if I fail? These thoughts often plagued my mind as I got closer and closer to completing my degree.
Even now, as I am working at an internship that I fully enjoy, I still have a lot of thoughts of self-doubt. What if I mess up? What if my skills aren’t what I thought they were? What if I prove to myself that I am not enough and undeserving of success? The fear and doubt is endless. But what I’ve learned is to embrace these fears. My fear motivates me. It motivates me to work harder, to trust myself, and to be easy on myself. So what if I make a mistake? It may not feel good in the moment, but it will allow me to learn and better myself. To me, having confidence means believing in myself even when I make mistakes. I would be lying if I said it was easy and that I am always easy on myself. I think in these moments what helps me is to remember that I am not the first person to go through this. That I am not alone. Many people have struggled with these feelings but still managed to move forward and be successful. I will too.
I still have a long way to go in my self-confidence journey, but I am fully committed because I believe in myself.
