Believing in Yourself

  I did not get much sleep last night. It’s that full plate thing and it is weird because there is nothing inherently bad or anxiety causing in what I have taken on. I have embraced the idea of being a heretic, please refer to Seth Godin’s Tribes for the meaning of this word and this EntrepreneurialSpirit blog post.

  I am not a religious person but I am a faithful person. I embrace the idea of faith, hope, love, and all of the entrapments that come with this territory. People need a restoration of faith, not in the religious sense but in the deeper meaning of the faith that comes from within oneself.

  In many ways, I grew up not having faith in myself. I misplaced it in objects and other people. I don’t follow Christianity but the general broad sense of the definition of faith that crosses all boundaries of religions. There is a universal truth that comes from all the religions and I am a believer in the Universe and the Universal Truth. Some people call it God. I don't think we can personify nature or the course that nature takes since we do not fully understand it.

  While I have been cleaning, my “work” playlist on Media Player has been shuffling through various songs. Some of these songs were from my youth and while they are enjoyable, another revelation hit me this morning. I was an angry teenager and twenty-something year old. I was very bitter about being forced to follow the status quo. I was also angry with many other things as well. One of these things was the feeling that I was not going to amount to much or ever be good enough. I had a lot of serious self-confidence issues. I was never at peace with myself.

  I could have let events of this past year push me further back into the abyss of non-belief. I did not. I realized it was time to fight back with full force. Every different turn of my life in the past year has led from one step of building self-confidence to another.

  It has also been a year since my husband and I called it quits. In my May subscription of Self magazine there was an article about Discernment Therapy, where in less than five sessions, a marriage counselor can help you decide if the relationship is worth saving or not. From this article, I have determined that I was never committed to the relationship to begin with. I had serious doubts and he knew it. I went through with it because it was something I thought I was supposed to do by my mid-30’s; get married, settle down, and have kids. Another revelation, you cannot commit to a relationship if you are not committed to yourself first. I thought I was fine. Little did I know what emotional tumult I would experience in a few years. I am not a commitment-phobe and I do believe I will find someone someday. But I can’t if I haven’t committed to my internal self and my well-being. And yesterday’s blog post about that scenario was another step in the direction of commitment to self. It sounds so selfish but it is absolutely necessary and something I feel that a lot of people are missing out of their lives.

  I can’t live in the shadow of other people anymore and continue to follow the status quo. After all, deep down inside I have always been a heretic and that is why I have been so unhappy for many years trying to be just like the Jones’. I’m not. I am my own person. I am the hero of my life story. It does not belong to anyone else but me.

  Even during the times I felt like I was following the status quo, I rebelled. It may be where my understanding of sarcasm came from. I’m still sarcastic but it is usually to obtain a laugh from a friend. Getting people to laugh at something you say or do is a gift to me.

  I don’t like pessimistic people. In my past marriage I was seeking self-confidence from my husband, the eternal pessimist. Then when you find a person that makes you feel good about yourself and then quite suddenly ends the relationship? Yeah, heart-breaking. It must have been difficult to sustain my self-confidence when you have issues with your own. There have been other moments in my life when I was at that point many times and I did not like what I saw, which eroded ever more at my self-confidence.

  Now that I understand who and what I am, I am ready to change the world around me. It is something that I have always wanted to do. I challenge my students, my friends, and my family. Why not the rest of the world?