Confidence. It’s an important attribute to have for every aspect in life. Whether it’s about making friends, finding and maintaining a healthy relationship, landing your dream job. Almost every rewarding goal in life requires a good deal of confidence. Before I start, it’s important to remember to not take the title of this article too seriously. Obviously low self-esteem is an extremely complicated issue that goes way beyond one reason or one cause. However in my opinion, while there may be many different indirect or secondary reasons, the effect can always be traced back to one main cause: caring what others think.
As a young child, we are all confident. As a kid, all you care about is watching your favorite TV shows, eating your favorite junk food, and hanging out with your friends. Your worries go as far as hoping your parents will let you stay up late on a school night. You could care less about confidence issues. This is why kids are so brutally honest. They have yet to experience the constant grind of adult life where everyone is constantly judging, scrutinizing, and criticizing your every word and action. So the first important thing to understand is that generally we are all born confident. But we lose it over the course of years of criticisms from parents, classmates, friends, teachers, co-workers, and bosses.
So how do can we reverse this, and regain the child-like, carefree confidence we all once had? Simple, by just not caring about what others say or think. I know it sounds too simple, or too good to be true. But just think about every confidence issue you might have, and you will it all ultimately traces back to caring too much of others’ opinions.
What if you want to start writing on Steemit? What’s stopping you? Maybe you are intimidated by all the whale accounts with massive followings and thinking you will never be able to compete with that. Maybe you’re scared what someone will think when they see your articles haven’t gotten much attention. Maybe you told your friends and family about this wonderful new platform with so much monetization potential, and you’re scared what you’ll have to tell them should you fail. But at the end of the day, is it really a fear of failure or a fear of how others will perceive it? After all, even if you fail, if you never make a single penny, the result will be exactly the same as if you never tried.
Scared to approach that cute girl at the bar? Why? Logically you know that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, you know if you talk to her, even if she rejects you, the result will be the same as if you just never approached her. The real reason you are scared of rejection is because you are scared what others will think. You are scared she might think you’re a loser or laugh at you. You are scared the other people in the bar might see you fail and laugh at you.
What if you want to start your own YouTube channel? So many people have this dream, and so few even try, let alone succeed. But what’s stopping you from trying? One thing and one thing only: fear of what others will think. Fear that people will laugh or criticize your vids. Fear that no one will watch. Fear that your friends or family members might laugh at your first few vids that don’t get any views. But if you are truly passionate about whatever you want to talk about, who cares? Who cares if no one watches, or if people make fun of you. 99% of the people who make fun of you will never even have the guts to make one single video themselves. Unless your friends or family members or other critics are YouTube celebrities with massive followings themselves (in which case they should be helping you if they are true friends), why do their opinions matter even 1%?
Again I want to emphasize that there are obviously many different reasons for low self-esteem/lack of confidence that is deeply individual and personal to all of us who suffer from it. The point of this article is not that there is literally only one reason for this complicated issue, but rather than it’s one main cause that creates many other secondary causes which have stopped too many people from pursuing their dreams, and living the life they want.
So whatever it is you want to do, just go do it! Want to invest in crypto? Buy some Bitcoin! Want to learn a new language? Start speaking today! Want to start writing on Steemit? Make an account and post your first article! Forget what everyone else is going to say or think of it. Those haters are just sitting behind a computer screen, where it’s easy to criticize and ridicule everyone else while doing absolutely nothing with your own life. By taking the first step and just trying, if you ever get even a single view or upvote, you will have already done more than 99% of people ever will.