Politics

It’s Okay to Be Insecure

its_okay_to_be_insecure

Insecurities, we all have them.

I was standing on the escalator at my local mall, scanning the store fronts below me. Pictures of insane looking women looked up at me with their pouty lips and airbrushed bodies.

Later I went to the gym and saw a Sex and the City re-run and was amazed first at the picture quality (was it filmed in the 1960s?) and second at the skeleton of a Carrie Bradshaw starring back at me, cigarette in hand.

Then I watched the Jimmy Kimmel and Emma Stone epic lip syncing competition and was aghast at how thin she had become. It’s no wonder we all feel pressure to be thin. But for many women, including myself, we feel pressure to be thin AND confident.

The goal for most of us is to embrace the healthy, positive self image, we had when we were kids. Feeling a sense of freedom of living within our bodies, not trapped by our self-hating thoughts.

I grew up telling myself over and over again that I was super confident. My friends asked me what they could do to have the confidence I had. But here’s the kicker: I was just as insecure as all of them. I too worried about who liked me. I self scanned and monitored my body in a way that felt like a trap.

And even though I am older, wiser and yes, more confident, I still have moments of insecurity. In the same way I was being hard on myself for not having Courtney Cox’s stomach and J-Lo’s ass (at the same time of course), I would also be hard on myself for feeling insecure. That’s nuts!

So as I stood on the escalator, slowly descending to the ground floor of the mall, I realized: it’s okay to be insecure sometimes. We don’t have to be the world’s most confident person.

The goal for me, is to do the work necessary to dissolve those insecurities over time. The hope is they will continue to fade and take a less prominent role in my life. And in the meantime, I will try not to be hard on myself in those moments.

And then I ate a cheesy hot sandwich, and enjoyed every bite.

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