Hi everyone! I don’t know about you, but for me, much of my lack of confidence came from past experiences. For example, growing up having a family friend call me the poster child for Ethiopa, with buck teeth and awful hair and coke bottle thick glasses really hindered my ability to see myself as beautiful when I was a young lady – no more braces, contacts for my bright blue eyes, long, lush hair, and a little more filled out.
I was always picking myself apart like a buzzard waiting in the wings. “Wait, am I starting to feel GOOD about myself? Better rush in and kill it before it survives and takes root in my soul.”
Look at this progression of pictures. I’ve come full circle. As a baby, I was the only one I’ve ever seen who looks like she just smelled her diaper – not a cute baby pic by any means. But I was happy then. I was happy being me. The two middle pictures (they let me take my glasses off for the school pic thank God) are when I felt ugliest in life. I felt like I didn’t compete with others. Even going from that buck toothed, bowl haircutted kid on the left to the posing Santa on the right, I had NO MORE confidence in the later years than before. It wasn’t until NOW – on the far right – that I’m as happy as I was when I was a baby. I might have faults in the looks department, but I am happy with myself – all of me.
What happens when you go seeking confidence development tips for any area of your life – and the past is too painful to dredge up? I don’t like looking at that poor little ugly girl. I recall all the teasing, the times people made fun of me, saying I could eat corn through a Pickett fence.
It hurts! To this day it hurts – even if it’s in a tiny amount. It also hurts to see my prettier self and think back to all the times I felt unpretty and maybe I drank wine coolers (making a fool out of myself) as an underaged teen – just to give me confidence at a party because I felt inadequate. All past pains I like to move past, thankyouverymuch!
I know some other people who have spoken about their past on this blog. You were shaped and your opinion was formed by others’ influence on you growing up. If someone said you were in trouble if a project wasn’t perfect, then you brought that with you into your world today – perfectionism – because you didn’t LIKE the feeling of someone making you unhappy and you do whatever you can to avoid that now.
Can you just ignore the past and go on? I say yes! I know it goes against the grain of everything we’re taught. We’re taught to address the past and move on – and that’s ONE way to do it. But not everybody wants to relive past hurts.
I look back now and think how awful those kids were who teased me. Because I am a parent and I know I raise my kids to stand up against bullying and reach out to the ugly kids (they got a lesson using my picture). I DO confront my past and think to myself, “You know what? It wasn’t that there was ANYthing wrong with ME – buck teeth and all. The OTHER kid had something wrong with him that he would get satisfaction out of being cruel. What a horrible life for him/her.”
You could do the same with your perfectionism. Face it – think of the person who belittled you – even if it was someone you LOVED dearly – and wonder why THEY were the way they were – and pause for a moment to pity them in a kind way, because that’s no way to live life. Pity them for not being the full-hearted, loving person they could have been – because they didn’t get to experience that and it’s a wonderful way to be.
Or, if you go seeking out confidence developments tips and you flat out refuse to face the past and pull up all those awful feelings from the murky water, then do it! Don’t look back in your rearview mirror. Look ahead. Say goodbye to whatever hurt you and bury it. End of story. But don’t be the type of person who then keeps doing U-Turns to revisit past hurts.
That’s almost like battered wife syndrome – going back to an abusive situation. Even though you’re OUT of the situation now, you keep removing the scab to feel the pain. You have to catch yourself thinking about those past hurts and literally scold yourself for it! Stop in mid-sentence if you have to. Do a ritual if you have to, like starting a fire and burning a journal with all that pain.
Your past can’t shackle you and prevent your success – you shackle yourself. Everyone’s different. Some want to face it. Some want to bury it. Some don’t really WANT to get away from it because it provides comfort from what they don’t yet know – success. It’s MUCH easier to blame your past grievances than literally walk away from them, taking their power away from them – and moving forward.
Success is scary! If you’re finally free to go – it’s intimidating! What if you fail? Well guess what – then you fail and start over. What’s the worst that can happen? It surely won’t be having your past thrown in your face. The worst that can happen is that you have to try again. And that’s really not that hard at all.
Tiff 
This
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is the thing that once I got it and I mean really GOT it, I started to to become more comfortable in my own skin. Which is leading me to believe and act on that belief that I have the stuff of success. Falling down and getting up isn’t just getting easier, it’s getting fun. Why? Because I can look back and see the distance between the last fall, but only when I’m standing up.
I totally get that LaShae! It does become fun.
I am trying very hard to leave my past behind me. I have blanked out a lot of it so I can’t go back and review it. Most of what I know caused me to be who I am is gone from my mind. I do know that when I get ready to get down to 200 pounds or below that that is my hardest mark because then I am beginning to get skinny. I don’t have to worry about that for a while yet because I am up to 250 but I will have confidence the next time I get down there.
Thank you for this wonderful post. My life was like that, too. Well, I don’t know about the baby picture thing. LOL but the rest. I am glad you became happy with who you were. I am working on that now.
LOL! Hey now – I know I’m unique in my baby picture. All babies have cute little slants for eyes – look at mine! They’re HUGE and my nose is all wrinkled up like something stinks. Poor baby.
I think that expression says, “holy crap, look at all the possibilities!” LOL even then you were ahead of the pack…
LOL Is that what I was saying? I LOOK like I’m on a Tiff rant, don’t I?
How someone handles past pain really is an individual preference. Some people do best through confronting those that hurt them, some do best with just dusting it off and moving forward. The type of situation being dealt with also comes into play. There is no one size fits all in how to deal with the past.
People made fun of me in elementary school. By high school, I found myself doing the same thing to people at times. Later in life, as I remembered those incidents and ran into those people, I apologized to them.
My own mother said things to me that still affect me to this day. Many of them I’ve gotten over, but there are some things that I’ve just recently “remembered” and they still sting. I don’t wish to confront her. She’s in her 70′s and doesn’t need that crap, so I have to figure out how to “get over” that on my own. One way I’ve learned to get over things is to prove it wrong. When I was at the age that I wanted out of her house she told me the world was this big, ugly place and no one out there gave a damn about me. I’ve proved that wrong. People do care about me, probably more people than I’m actually aware of.
Is the world a big, ugly place? It can be, but I choose to see the beauty in it. I know that good exists and the whole world is not out to get me. For awhile, she had me convinced that it wasn’t a pretty place.
Anyway, I completely understand being in your 40s and still dealing with “other people’s bullshit.” That’s all it is. People teach you what they are afraid of and what they don’t like. It often takes you a long time to realize that it’s their fears and their mindset and it doesn’t have to be yours. You can change yours.
It’s truly sad how we are conditioned from birth. I do realize that most people have good intentions, but they don’t really understand how their actions and their words affect the subconscious in a young person…and even into adult hood.
Agree w/your first paragraph Patti – some want to face it, some don’t – and you’re right – it’s ALSO situational! I too picked on a girl ONCE in middle school (once I had braces and contacts). She punched me in the stomach and it taught me a lesson instantly. It woke me up. Never did it again and befriended her later.
It’s taken me more than a year to finish writing a little piece of fiction mainly because of confidence issues. Writing unearthed painful memories, of very long ago. The more I wrote, the more vivid the memories of the attacks (and attackers) to my confidence emerged, mostly in my dreams (or nightmares). Sadly, we don’t have a delete forever button, so I decided to embrace the little monsters, and write them down. I even created my very own jerk, gathering personality traits of those that demeaned me…
Pay back is not a bitch, she is a writer.
Ha! I love that Sandra! I’m sorry you’re having to face it. I always get some image in my head from Home Alone – remember when Kevin fears the basement because of the furnace? He imagines it roaring at him? Then one day he walks down there, sees it roaring, and boldy tells it to “shut up!” I love that
I was just telling my daughter yesterday how mean kids can be. And we carry those words with us sometimes forever. Glad you have moved on and look at the gifts and talents you offer!
Kudos!
EXPECT Success!
Jackie Ulmer
Good to have those discussions with our kids. AND to ask for feedback about if anything we do makes them
feel anything less than great.
In the 5 love languages book I’m reading for my marriage, it talks about kids having love languages too.
I think that if someone really felt that they had to keep going back and tackling all those gremlins of the past, they’re often missing the achievements that they have made since then and all the things that are working out for them NOW and even in their future.
I’ve never seen the direct benefit of keep looking back at the past. I think that it’s so easy to use those things that happened in the past as an excuse to not really reach your true potential in the current moment. There are many people that feel as though their past self was a victim and one to be pitied and they’ll argue for their own limitations in the way that other people put them down back then.
I think that the best way to be is to look at where you’re going (or at least the best parts of the present moment) and just appreciate that without having to keep analyzing the past. It can be so easy to use past events as an excuse for the reason that we develop the insecurities that we now have. In many ways it’s easier to blame a past event as the reason why we’re not living up to our true potential in the moment. It’s easier to blame about what someone else did all those years ago instead of having to admit that the reason you’re not achieving what you want to achieve right NOW is because on a fear and lack of confidence to move forward.
I’m not really too sure how someone would expect to keep going forward if they’re too tempted to look at the past. That being said, I don’t think it’s always a bad thing to look at the past. Maybe the parts of the past that we remember and often dwell on only reflect back our current situation. If people could truly appreciate where they are right now, how many good people that they have in their life and how many things are going well for them, they wouldn’t have any reason to look back at all that crap because they’re now better than that.
I think, if we really need to look at the past then it should either be for the positive aspects of the past or at least just choose to accept the past for what it was. In many instances those past events helped us to become stronger and helped to shape who we are today. I suppose we can either use those past situations for the greater good and we can even appreciate them for making us who we are.
It’s much better to appreciate them and use them to help give us focus than to just blame them and feel as though we’ve got to tackle every little bad thing before we can feel good again. My grandmother always says, “Stop dancing in sh**!” – as if to say just move away from the problems and stop bringing them back up.
In essence though, Tiff, you weren’t really the true victim back in those times when those photographs were taken. The real people that will suffer are those that were doing the bullying and the teasing – they’re the ones that were living to only a shadow of what they could have been. They say it takes one to know one and if they were really appreciating everything and themselves in the way that kids should do, they wouldn’t even feel the need to tease others because they wouldn’t feel as though they had anything to prove. Trying to push everyone else down just to feel better about yourself is a pretty futile thing to do.
Some people would use the fact that they were teased and hurt when they were younger as an excuse to not live up to who they could so easily become. Whereas others, like that girl in the picture, would later use that to forge a greater sense of morals and ethics and she would become a fantastic mother with a fantastic family and have thousands of people following her work, and her as a person, because they liked the fact that she feels no need to apologize for being true to who she is.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a case of whether or not we should look at the past – it’s what we focus on and what we then choose to do with it that makes all the difference. We could use it to always stay a victim or we can use it to better ourselves and help others. It’s all relative.
By the way, every one of those pictures are perfect.
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
You said:
You have to catch yourself thinking about those past hurts and literally scold yourself for it! Stop in mid-sentence if you have to. Do a ritual if you have to, like starting a fire and burning a journal with all that pain.
My ritual comes from Ally McBeal. Fish always said “Bygones” when something from the past came up and while he was a little more cynical about it, when my brain starts looking at past failures, I stop mid-thought and say “Bygones!” to my self and remind myself of everything I have accomplished since those days–works every time.
Instantly recognized it (hubby bought me the whole series on DVD for my bday) and I love bygones RIGHT when he does something inappropriate or something.
Pretty baby, lovely girl, smashing young woman, beautiful woman and a great mum, I say.
Nathan nailed it, and I have to second Sandra. My novel reflect a lot of garbage I’ve stored in my backpack for way too long. Mostly unaware of it. Not until editing that work did I realize most of it was a ghost of the past in my own mind. I wrote a brain wash, not a novel. Time to do some real work now.
Last year I started a text file and wrote down everything I achieved. It sports a wow-factor every time something new is added and reading what have been done. Wow! Did I do that?
Thanks Agneta!
The one time I fully fleshed out a fiction story, I started writing it and pulling in painful things from my past and I realized it SUCKED spending time that was supposed to be FUN writing about yucky moments, so I threw it away. LOL Next time it’ll be ALL fictional 
when I was growing up, starting in my early teens, our family was the “bad ones” in town… four boys, mom dead, daddy too handsome, no money, and “smart mouths”. As it happened, after the first few times we ran into this idea (our mom had been dead a couple of months by then) us boys got together and decided if we were gonna have the name, we’d have the game, too. Didn’t matter how bad they thought we were, we could get worse… watch us!
My dad was a strong guy, and so was one of his brothers.. and dad and mom had both raised us right. We went far enough, but looking back, we had nothing truly horrible to forgive ourselves for, by adult rules. But it taught us early – the only real opinion that mattered was family, and everyone else could go er, climb a tree LOL.
Later, we had to add God into the mix…but that’s another story.
Meantime, you can’t fix yesterday, and neither can anyone else – so guess we need to make sure there’s not so much to fix today.
And that’s actually preachier than I’d ever planned to get today, but hearing that you’d come so far, while believing so little you’d ever get there, kinda pulled my story out a little…
Tiff, when you’re feeling low enough not to be proud of yourself, borrow our opinion and let us be proud for ya until you can pick it up again
Thanks Hagar! It’s rare I have low self esteem these days. I really tend to turn it on someone else, yet I’m very open to seeing things I need to change in myself too.
I have mixed feelings about my past. It’s one I wouldn’t wish on anyone but one I had to confront. It totally robbed me of any self esteem and confidence for too many years. When that happened I faked it, smiling and pretending to be this wonderfully self confident woman.
I was bullied and physically beaten up in school. I did get one of my bully’s back in later years. I managed a block of flats and she couldn’t pay her rent. She thought that because we were at school together I’d give her more leeway. Wrong! That was satisfying.
My mother saying to a 10 year old me that she should have called me Jane because that’s what I was, a plain Jane, no longer hurts. Mind it’s taken many years to get to the place where it doesn’t hurt. Her telling me, when I was in my 50′s, that as a 2 year old I was a lying manipulative bitch threw me but I let it go and refused to let it affect me. As a child and adult, it was expected that I would fail in anything I did so I over compensated and am still fighting the perfectionism that caused. I’ve long given up on what remains of my birth family, they’re not worth thinking about and they’re the ones that are losing out in not knowing me.
I did confront my past. It was necessary, extremely painful and took many years. Like others I’ve written about it and perhaps one day I’ll publish. At the moment it’s still too raw.
However that confrontation has resulted in the survivor that’s me. My past shaped me and made me strong in ways that I could never have been if I’d had a ‘normal’ childhood. I’ve finally learned to love myself and can now look at myself in the mirror.
I think my crowning achievement was giving my children the childhood I wanted. One filled with love and laughter. And even though they’ve both left to start their own lives, they still call this place ‘home’ and love coming back and spending time with us. To me my family is the most important thing in my life. I’m happiest when all four of us are under the same roof.
On a much brighter note, your post a couple of days ago about perfectionism and procrastination struck a chord with me as I sat down that day and wrote over 1000 words for my new blog. Then the next day I created the header and later today or tomorrow I’ll have it online. I’m not procrastinating here, honestly, but the Australian Open is on and I absolutely love watching tennis . I’m good in that I only watch a little bit at lunchtime then go back to work. I’m even surprising hubby!
Kathy I bet that felt good getting some revenge – it’s not over-rated IMO. I’m so glad you didn’t use your childhood as an excuse for bad parenting. Instead, you did what everyone should do – be the opposite of what you got.
There’s no doubt about it, your past does shape you and you can’t just forget all that happens to you, but you need to get to a stage where you can say OK, that’s happened, I am going to move on. What gives one person the ability to “move on” whilst another takes solace in drink, drugs, violence and crime? How does Dave Pelzer who started his biography in A Child Called “It” survive that sort of trauma and sorrow and turn into a decent human being? It’s a question that interests me greatly.
I have had fabulous success with Kinesiology to help me with issues over the past years. It helps to take the sting out of the emotion so that you can function properly. I had an awesome session not long ago (I go once a month) and finally laid to rest an issue that has been haunting my self confidence and my views about me and my achievements since I was 16 (now 54)! The issue was being pushed by some work issues from a couple of years ago and what was going on with my marketing (lack of confidence and self belief) but the Kinesiologist got to the root of the cause where the emotions and beliefs were coming from and now they are gone. Literally after that session I have had a complete 360 degree turn about how I feel about myself and my confidence. I have been to Kinesiologists on and off for many years but I go regularly because we work in a very tough environment at work and all of us go to counsellors or psychologists but I go to a Kinesiologist!
I haven’t heard of that but I’ll look it up! Glad you got some resolve Jan
Tiff,
I am more for your idea of just going forward. I cannot undo the past. I cannot change the actions of others.
As you have said before, we can decide how we react to what others do.
I decide to go forward.
And you are adorable in all your pics!
Debbie
lol thanks Debbie!
Tiffany,
I got the message loud and clear.
Today is a new day — no more perfectionist. I’m going to get stuff done and get it out there, even if it’s not perfect!
My new training site isn’t complete, but I’m going to start submitting content to outside sources to drum up traffic. I can always “build it as I go” instead of waiting for it to be completely finished.
Thanks for the inspiration!
*hugs*
*hugs* right back atcha Bonnie