Posts tagged with "confidence"

I Fucking Rule

Someone made me feel ter­ri­ble the oth­er day. She igno­rant­ly belit­tled almost every­thing that I’ve worked for in my life. To have this per­son so insou­ciant­ly give me advice on some­thing that I’m still try­ing to accom­plish was com­plete­ly insult­ing. Yet I can’t blame this per­son, because the com­ments made were in igno­rance of how hard I’ve tried, how much I’ve worked, how dif­fi­cult it’s been to make myself a bet­ter per­son.

With most oth­er peo­ple, I could­n’t care less about their opin­ions. But I respect­ed this per­son. I held her in the high esteem. This per­son was already most of what I want­ed to become. And, nat­u­ral­ly, this made her opin­ion impor­tant to me.

I don’t know what her back­ground is, or how she’s come to devel­op as the per­son that I know, but I do know that mine has made things dif­fi­cult on a men­tal lev­el.

It takes me longer than oth­ers to get over things. I only trust half a hand­ful of peo­ple. I’m still emo­tion­al­ly weak in some respects.

I’ve come a long way, and even though I still have much fur­ther to go, that does­n’t dimin­ish the fact that I’ve suc­ceed­ed thus far. Or the fact that it’s been a fuck­ing strug­gle. Or the fact that I’m fuck­ing proud of who I am now, and what I’ve already accom­plished.

So what can I say, real­ly, about these things said in pass­ing? Nothing. All I have to keep in mind is that what I’m work­ing towards is much eas­i­er to some than to oth­ers. That it’s me who’s in con­trol of my amour pro­pre.

And that, in the end, all that tru­ly mat­ters is self-sat­is­fac­tion.

Amplitude

Sometimes it feels as if I’ve changed in an infi­nite num­ber of direc­tions. Every change comes as a result of some unsat­is­fac­to­ry char­ac­ter­is­tic of my for­mer self. The result, hope­ful­ly a series of what I con­sid­er improve­ments, becomes the oppo­site of traits I once pos­sessed.

Confidence is an exam­ple. It’s only now, after more than eight years of con­scious work, that I’ve gained some form of con­fi­dence, of self-respect. And I appre­ci­ate it now, not only in myself but in oth­er peo­ple as well. It was my own dif­fi­dence that drove me to become an assertive per­son. This isn’t to say that it’s some­thing I’ve stopped work­ing on. I’m not quite sat­is­fied yet, because I’m still learn­ing to pre­vent over­con­fi­dence, but oth­er than that I think I’ve come quite far.

The same goes for quite a few oth­er things. Having no friends has made me a bet­ter one. Being alone has made me a patient lover. Being shy has made me more out­go­ing. Having gone through emo­tion­al ups and downs has made me more sta­ble.

Being weak has made me stronger.

Balderdash Englightenment

I’ve late­ly been get­ting into dis­cus­sions where I gen­er­al­ly show a strong sense of con­fi­dence in my con­vic­tions. The role of dis­tance in a rela­tion­ship relat­ed to the lev­el of com­mit­ment, as a sub­ject per­haps, or instruc­tions in becom­ing a more socia­ble per­son, as anoth­er. I’ve been answer­ing ques­tions of life, love, and hap­pi­ness almost as if I know the answers. Yet I can’t fig­ure out where these opin­ions are com­ing from, or even where I’m get­ting the strength of my beliefs.

Have I gained so much strength so as to affect my think­ing? Have I become blind­ed by over­con­fi­dence? Or do I con­sid­er my expe­ri­ences to be suf­fi­cient enough to give advice when peo­ple ask me? This may pos­si­bly be the case even though I gen­er­al­ly don’t like to give advice, since I only speak when I feel that I have a suf­fi­cient under­stand­ing of the sub­ject.

The truth is that I don’t know where my assured­ness is com­ing from. In the last few weeks I’ve felt an odd sense of wis­dom, and my cer­ti­tude seems to be com­ing from this feel­ing. Perhaps an over­flow of emo­tions has caused me to feel this way, and every­thing I’m feel­ing now is tem­po­rary. The most impor­tant thing I try to keep in mind is the fact that I may be wrong in almost any­thing I believe. I need to keep an open mind. Yet late­ly I feel as if I do know much more about the way things work, the way life goes, the way the world turns.

I think of what I do know now, and try to remind myself that there is still a great deal I don’t know. I sim­ply have a strong trust in my judge­ments, deci­sions, and con­vic­tions made with the lim­it­ed amount of infor­ma­tion one always has in fore­sight. I’ve late­ly become more cer­tain about my life, and the direc­tion I want it want to take. I cer­tain­ly know what I want, but I try to remain flex­i­ble.

In the last two months I’ve learned more than I have in year before that, and the sud­den surge of con­fi­dence I’ve gained in my opin­ions seems to be relat­ed to this. I real­ize that I’ve learned a great deal through the course of my life.

But I have much more to learn as well.

Janus

Sometimes I see the same movie twice with a large gap of time between view­ings, and I under­stand the char­ac­ters, thoughts, emo­tions, and actions very dif­fer­ent­ly each time.

A few days ago, I came to the real­iza­tion that I’ve been a dif­fer­ent per­son in every rela­tion­ship through my eight year dat­ing peri­od. Not all of me has changed, but there are a few aspects which I believe would be impor­tant in such a bond.

I’ve gained more matu­ri­ty and more con­fi­dence. I’ve gained a fair amount of intel­li­gence (though I still feel like I have infi­nite­ly more to learn). I’ve changed career goals, rela­tion­ship goals, and hap­pi­ness goals. I’m more out­go­ing, more tol­er­ant, more secure, less pre­ten­tious (I hope), less arro­gant, and less igno­rant. I’ve changed my opin­ions on chil­dren, abor­tion, and reli­gion. I’ve even changed my actions based on these shift­ing beliefs.

Although I view most of these changes as being good things, they may put strain on a rela­tion­ship nonethe­less. After all, change is change, and unless a rela­tion­ship is strong and flex­i­ble enough, it can­not endure such stress. It’s a lit­tle scary to think that I may be bring­ing extra strain into a rela­tion­ship, sim­ply by being myself.

At one point in my inex­pe­ri­enced youth, after hav­ing changed a fair deal already, I believed that I would­n’t change any more. Now I real­ize how stu­pid­ly obliv­i­ous a com­ment that was, and am of the belief that I’ll nev­er stop chang­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind through all of this is whether the change is for the bet­ter, and as Tom has helped me real­ize, rela­tion­ships (friend­ships or oth­er­wise) should form around this idea.

Whether or not a rela­tion­ship will work out in the end is not based on one per­son, but the foun­da­tion and dynam­ic of two peo­ple.