We all have insecurities.
No matter who we are or what we’ve accomplished, there is pressure within us to appear (or to not appear) a certain way.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to transform these insecurities into strengths so you can show up as your most authentic, badass self and be truly loved for who you are.
Identify your insecurities
Maybe as a child or in a past relationship, you felt emotions deeply and expressed them freely only to be labeled as “unstable,” “too much,” or “needy.”
Maybe you were shy or introverted growing up but felt forced to put yourself out there in the way an extrovert would, causing immense social anxiety in adulthood.
Whatever it was you learned was “wrong with you,” I’m willing to bet the only reason you knew to feel insecure was because somewhere along the line, someone told you that you should be.
It may have been a parent, an acquaintance, kids on the playground, an employer, someone you considered a friend, or just society itself.
Someone looked at the invaluable little human being you are and rejected part of you.
This causes a hypervigilance in us to hide whatever it was that felt so unacceptable, especially if it’s something we can’t control.
The hardest part of this is that our hypervigilance around our insecurities creates disconnection within ourselves and with others.
We end up creating a False Self.
And as our False Self, we are incapable of true connection.
This causes our belief that something is wrong with us to cement itself even deeper into our brains since people can sense when we’re acting out of a False Self and tend to pull away when we lead from it.
Vulnerability versus transparency
In the last decade or two, there’s been a lot of buzz around vulnerability.
Vulnerability is a powerful tool and it helps us to heal under the right circumstances.
The only problem with it is that by design, when we’re vulnerable, we are opening ourselves up to danger.
One of my favorite life coaches of all time, Preston Smiles, talks about transparency over vulnerability.
When we’re choosing to be transparent, all we’re doing is owning who we are in this moment.
Transparency isn’t about sharing EVERYTHING; it’s about leaning into your own experience and verbalizing it.
Every time we do this, we are choosing to operate out of our Authentic Self instead of our False Self.
Owning your insecurities
When you feel your False Self rise up and your instinct is to hide what you’re really experiencing, take a moment to pause.
This is your chance to own what’s going on and thus, communicate with transparency which invites connection.
If you’re experiencing anxiety, the pause might enable you to say, “Man, I’ve got some anxiety coming up right now.”
If you were previously encouraged to suppress your emotions and you start to feel a wave of sadness, you can say, “I feel really sad when I think about that.”
Putting this into practice will look different for everyone, though the basics remain the same: own your experience and share it without casting judgment on yourself or others.
That’s it!
If you realize later you missed the opportunity to pause and share, that’s okay.
That means you became aware you had other options after the fact.
With increased awareness, you’ll start to recognize the signs of your False Self earlier and earlier until you can stop it from surfacing in the moment.
The benefits of owning your insecurities
When we choose to be transparent, we open ourselves up to deeper connections.
Here’s how:
The moment we own what’s coming up for us, the person we’re talking to has the opportunity to respond to our Authentic Self.
While it’s true that they can reject us in that moment (which says everything about them and nothing about us), they are also given the opportunity to meet us in that place of transparency.
This is what the vast majority of people do since almost all of us are incredibly inspired when we witness someone taking up space without expecting anything in return.
Either way, we’ve learned valuable information.
They are either a person we can continue to connect with or they aren’t, which is information we do not receive when we operate from our False Self.
Your Authentic Self will attract the right people and freak out the wrong people.
Both are wins as we can keep the good and rule out the bad.
Takeaways:
- For every person who rejects your Authentic Self, there are 100 more who will be inspired by you and feel connected to you because of it. Transparency is the only way to know the difference.
- When you lean into your own experience, you give others permission to do the same.
- Not only is it courageous to own your insecurities, it’s an absolute must to figure out for sure who to keep in your life and who to let go of.
No matter where you find yourself on the authenticity spectrum, you can start to step fully into yourself right now, leading to deeper and safer connections.
Authenticity happens in moments, especially the hard ones.
Show up as you are and you’ll win every time!
