How confident are you in your knowledge of who you actually are? Of your personal taste, your truest opinions, your most authentic, unfiltered expression? For many people, it can take a lifetime to realize that they’ve been outsourcing their sense of self to other people. In my case, until a few years ago, I was the kind of person who would always ask others for their opinion on every decision, big or small. Should I get a haircut? Should I wear this? Should I go to this thing? Should I change careers?… Sound familiar?
It wasn’t always like this, though – and it rarely ever is. I think that when we’re kids, we have a much clearer sense of self. When I was very little, I used to throw tantrums every time I wasn’t allowed to wear exactly what I wanted, often to the dismay of my poor mom who would somehow have to appease my breakdowns while also making sure I wasn’t going out on a freezing cold day in summer clothes. And that’s because as kids, we have a very clear and direct connection to what we want, to our personal taste and intuition. We know what we like and what we don’t like, based on nothing but vibes; we’re connected to the valuable instinct of how we want to express ourselves with nothing in the way to dim it down. The older we grow, the more our connection to this instinct gets lost.
You may be able to recall a couple of early memories where you expressed yourself confidently in some way, only to get your first bits of criticism. When I try, I can pinpoint a few – they’re marked by the feeling of confidence that I felt, and then by the harsh disappointment that came with the judgement or doubt instilled by others, often without them even meaning badly. Every such moment, often so small that it’s so easy to forget, stains your sense of self-trust little by little, leading you to rely less and less on your personal instincts and natural taste. And it’s only natural, as it takes a lot of intention to keep believing in your natural expression if you don’t have any external validation that it’s any good. As a result, we have so many adults who look externally to source their decisions and opinions for the smallest things, unable to trust their own intuition, disconnected from their authentic expression. And it carries into much bigger things: we become chronic people-pleasers, staying in the wrong jobs, relationships, in life paths that don’t serve us, because we haven’t learned to listen to what we actually want, and to see that as valuable.
Every time I see someone post an Instagram story to do a poll about something personal like whether they should cut their hair, I feel a tiny little tinge of sadness. Because especially with the ease of social media and constant communication, we’ve normalised asking for people’s opinions on virtually everything. When we make that into a habit and make no conscious effort to connect with our own personal intuitive taste instead, we get further from our authenticity and our genuine expression. We become an amalgamation of other people’s opinions, other people’s tastes, a collection of elements that aren’t really ours. Our sense of self and real confidence becomes weaker and weaker, because we’re constantly looking externally instead of internally. If someone says they don’t like something we’re doing, our confidence falters – if someone praises it, we feel like we’re on the right track. But on whose track?
It took me a while to figure out I was living pretty much like that – I didn’t know how to ask myself what I really wanted. It’s not a mystery to see how I ended up there, because at that point I was close to people who constantly led me to doubt myself instead of helping me grow into myself instead – the wrong relationships and friendships, which is extremely common. But thankfully, today, it’s completely different; thanks to some very intentional changes that I made once I realized it. If you feel like you’re on a path that isn’t entirely yours, or that you’ve lost connection to your most personal taste, or like you don’t trust your own intuition enough, here are the things I did that helped me completely rebuild that confidence in who I actually am.
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