“The way you see yourself and feel about yourself will have a tremendous impact on how far you go in life and whether or not you fulfill your destiny.” -Joel Osteen

I’ve felt stuck trying to figure out what it is that I want to write about. I think my thoughts in my mind are a little bit of all over the place and I don’t think I can focus on answering a deep question to myself today. Instead, I decided to ask a few people closest to me a question: If you could use three words to describe me, what would they be?

Sometimes, I wonder how many people forget their value and worth because they spend more time trying to be something that other people will find intriguing instead of doing and being the person they themselves find intriguing. I strive to be the person I am at my core. I want people to see the person I see myself to be, not someone I am pretending to be in order to please others.

The first thing I did was make a list of words I would use to describe myself. After all, I believe the most important opinion of who you are should be your own. These were some of the describing words I came up with for myself. 

I am passionate. I am intuitive. I am insightful. I am humble. I am driven. I am unique. I am creative. I am free-spirited. I am resilient. I am self-aware. I am empathetic. I am curious. I am complex. I am me.

I asked a few people closest to me this question: If you could use three words to describe me, what would they be? I received 12 responses. I listen them into groups. I compared them to the words I used to describe myself.

Others believe I am caring, loving, open, magnetic, understanding, empathetic, and kind. I believe that I am intuitive. I am empathetic. I am humble.

Others believe I am smart, intelligent, curious, and introspective. I believe that I am self-aware. I am insightful. I am curious.

Others believe I am hard-working, self-driven, independent, responsible, determined, strong-willed, and successful. I believe I am passionate. I am creative. I am driven.

Others believe I am unique, different, reserved, and complex. I believe that I am unique. I am complex. I am free-spirited. I am me.

The reason that the concept of knowing who you are, finding confidence within your flaws, and radiating your full energy to those around you is that those around you will feel the energy and vibe that you radiate. I value authenticity. I am not going to put on a fake mask to please those around me. I want people to know me for who I am, not for who I try to be. I own the things I love and dislike about myself and I work hard to continue growing into the person I want to become.

The responses I got all seemed to be fairly similar. What I find very interesting is that the one response I got the most was Independent. 7 out of 12 people gave me that response. I did not list that in my own responses because to be honest, I am still working 100% towards being fully independent. I think for me, something I am struggling with is that I have become more lost within my life and within myself. I frequently find myself saying this to those around me: save me from myself. What does that even mean? Save me from myself? It’s easy for others to see me as being independent on the outside because I can save myself from outside sources of pain. I can also save myself from the toxic people that have come in and out of my life. I just cannot figure out how to save myself from my own actions and my own thoughts sometimes.

I feel insecure sometimes. I care too much about what people think about me. I worry about my image. I worry about the impression I made on someone. I feel insignificant. I feel like I am losing myself in the process of consuming too much alcohol. I feel like I am bargaining with myself instead of holding myself accountable for my own actions. I feel like I am losing my sense of drive and motivation. I know for a fact that I am hard to love. I want to be fully independent in every way but I worry I am not. I think we all have insecurities and the one thing I have needed to do for a while now is admit to having them. Once I am able to recognize the problems, I can start to find solutions to cope and manage the insecurities I feel uncomfortable with.

I feel like I am fraud sometimes. I can give advice to others, write blogs that resonate with others, and try to motivate others, but I am unable to do these exact same things for myself. Yes, I’ve shown improvement within myself and I’ve found more confidence in who I am as a person. However, I am still a sensitive soul, with a big heart, and an active mind that has overly-consuming thoughts running through it all day long. I just want to be authentic, real, and raw with people in order to help become a healer for those who need guidance along their journey.

I wrote this blog several days ago actually and to be honest, when I read it out loud, I felt in my soul that something was missing in it. I could not figure out what that something was. I know that going back and reading the describing words I had listed for myself really helped me. Within the past few days, I’ve felt very defeated. I’ve struggled a lot with myself and with my own actions. I am so critical of myself. I feel like I am my own worst enemy. Half of me is in “growth mindset” which means that when something bad happens, I find the positive side. When a situation happens and it causes me to feel pain, half of my mind says “it’s okay, look at all that you’ve learned from this. Look at all of the good things that have come because of this.” The other half of my mind is in “pity party mindset.” That side is the one that says “I wish I could go back to before this happened. I wish this never happened.” I spend too much time feeling sad and sorry for myself. I know this seems confusing but I feel like my mind is at constant war with itself. Stepping into a dangerous and vulnerable zone is so hard, scary and intimidating but at the end of the day, my growth mindset is chasing that uncomfortable feeling in order to find ways to become more comfortable within the unknown.

In order let go of a lot of your insecurities, you have two options: you can either work hard to change them or you can accept them and learn how to own them. I’ve done a mix of both, and let me just say, it has made a significant difference in the way I see myself every day. The fact that not only do I see the positive things within myself, as you can see, other people around me notice those same things too.

We compare ourselves to others and compare our progress to the progress of someone else. We lose sight on the progress we’re making towards our goals because we get too distracted on the unnecessary and unimportant nonsense along the way. When you radiate your own positive energy and affirmations, people will take note. Confidence is something a lot of people have trouble finding. Some struggle to see the difference between being confident and being arrogant. Remember, self-confidence does not mean that you believe you are better than someone else. To be confident within yourself means to feel secure in who you are: to be secure in your flaws, to be secure in your strengths, and to be secure in the fact that your self-value is not determined by someone’s inability to see your worth. Confidence won’t come overnight, it takes work, dedication and time to feel confident within yourself. While you might have confidence, you may always have insecurities as well. This happens because we are all human and we are all uniquely flawed.

My goal in life is to radiate such an authentic energy that others can feel as well. I want to be real, honest, truthful, accepting, understanding, and open. I don’t want to put on a fake face for people, I want those around me to see the scars, the flaws, and the wounds I’ve healed throughout my journey. I want those around me to know who I am to my core. I want to remain confident in who I am, own the mistakes I’ve made, my insecurities, and all. I want to encourage those who feel lost to find themselves, to start where they are and realize that only we can heal ourselves. I want people to find inspiration to become vulnerable with themselves and/or with others and seek out opportunities to become better for not only themselves, but for others as well.

If you spend your whole life trying to find the value of yourself by relying on the sum of the opinions of others, then you’re doing all of your math wrong. When you add together all of the positive beliefs you should hold and form within yourself, you’ll find a stronger sense of self-confidence. Once you start radiating your confidence, you will see how quickly people’s old opinions of you will change. You’ll come to realize how those same opinions you once depended on no longer matter anymore because your opinion of yourself is more than enough.

The one thing I’ve come to find is that the person that people see when they look at you is a sum of all of their perceptions of you that they feel within themselves. Each and every one of us view things from a different, unique lens. How we see someone might be different from how someone else sees them. Don’t let blurry vision of someone else define the person that you see when you look at yourself in the mirror through your own lens. See yourself through your own lens, if your vision seems blurry, clean the lens and try again.

How you see yourself is the most important opinion in this world. When you look in the mirror, who do you see? Do you see the same person that others see? What do others see within me that I cannot see within myself? My next goal and step in my self-discovery is to really dive deep to find the things that I cannot see within myself that others can. If I feel so lost, how is it that no one else sees that? Why do I internalize so much in order to keep others safe from myself? These are questions I must examine and I fully intend to write a follow-up post about them. Until then, I am going to continue walking along my lost path through the forest and hope to find guidance from the universe, and to feel it within my soul. To my readers, I hope you have a blessed and great day.