FROM SELF-CONSCIOUS TO SELF-ASSURED: MY PERSONAL GROWTH STORY

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Hello friends, after going through todays juneinleo prompt, I suddenly felt excited ,I guess it is because I am about to share my personal story, a very remarkable one at that, this story is what have helped me to be who I am now and I am sure you will learn a lot from it.
Before I share my story, let’s have an insight of what self-consciousness is all about.
In a very concise and simple way, Self-consciousness is when you care too much about what people think of you. Self-consciousness is like being in a cage, you tend to see yourself through the eyes of people this robs you of being who you really are.

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I am grateful to God that I finally overcame this act, it had a gripped on me right from childhood till I turned eighteen years. Growing up I have always been a very reserved, shy and an introverted person, I always had this fear of being rejected, being judged wrongly by people. My self-consciousness made me look like an outsider trying to look in, I could not even express myself, I struggled to express how I truly felt and I could not even err out my opinion in public because I was afraid of my opinion being rejected or disapproved. So I barely let out my views, I always keep things to myself and I became so very shy.

This was not the end, I was not satisfied with myself, I had low self-esteem that I will always seek validation from people before doing anything I wanted to do, I could not even believe in my own self and abilities because I was scared of making mistakes or being laughed at and this made me feel negative all the time about myself, I’ll always find myself comparing myself with my peers feeling like I did not measure up. I never got to be happy with myself, I was always moody all the time.

I can vividly remember one incident that happened, it was during an examination, I read quite well and prepared for it, in the exams hall the questions were distributed and we started answering, one of my classmate who I assumed was more brilliant than I am sat next to me in the hall. After answering my questions, I peeped through his booklet and discovered he had different answers from mine, because of self-doubt I immediately cleaned my answers and filled the same answers that he did. After the exams, I flipped through my books and discovered I was very correct and he was wrong, but it was already too late to make any change, I regretted my actions so badly how I wished I believed in myself that would not had happened.

After that day I learned to believe in my strength and abilities, I started embracing my imperfections and learning to express myself gradually.

MY JOURNEY OF SELF DISCOVERY

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Most times in life, we all need people to help redefine us, it is okay to ask for help. Okay I met this girl in my class, she was always very outspoken and confident, I approached her one day and asked her how she grew to be so confident, I thought she would snub or ignore me but I was surprised she actually responded well, we started gradually and later became friends. For the first time I could tell someone how I truly felt, she was the only person I could really express myself to, she helped me to find my identity. Getting close to her I learnt so many things from her.

I learnt to accept my imperfections, she always tell me that nobody is perfect and those words resonated deeply within me. I learnt to make mistakes and learn from them without feeling bad with myself.

I practiced self-love: I embraced who I really am, most times I look at myself in the mirror and speak positively to myself, I learnt to love myself and my flaws.

I focused on my strength, instead of letting my weaknesses overwhelm me, I focused on the things I could do better while learning to improve on the other things I could not do well. This helped to boost my self-confidence.

I learnt to trust and believe in myself, at some point I stopped caring too much about people’s opinion of me, I stopped seeking too much validations from people and I learnt to err out my opinion in the public.

I started feeling happiness and joy radiating from my inside, I no longer felt like I was in a cage, I was able to do things freely without thinking of what people will say. Kudos to my friend who helped me in my journey of self-discovery. Right now I am no longer self-conscious but self-assured, thank God for the transformation.

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This post is in response to the juneinelo daily prompt
Thank you for visiting my blog.

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