I would venture to say that everybody has at least one something they’re prone to feel self conscious about - a little corner of yourself that you’ve never quite felt secure in.
A lot of the insecurities we have, we take on in our childhood. These are the uncertainties we tend to hold onto (more so) out of habit even after it becomes clear that we’ve outgrown them. Case and point, from the ages of about six to eleven I was a heavy child. It was an issue that eventually came to even out well though with a little help from puberty and a lot of self education about exercise and proper eating habits. I haven’t been “heavy” since the seventh grade yet I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I am still very much a weight conscious person. “Miss Fitness” is what my aunt likes to call it. To this day, I’m very mindful of what I eat; and unless I have a bug or it happens to be that one day that comes around every month like a utility bill (excuse me guys), I’m deliberate about getting my exercise six days a week. I lost the excess weight I had been carrying around a long time ago. But the mindset of the girl I was, dressed in that overweight body, is in some ways still with me. How quickly would those thoughts of inadequacy I used to berate myself with come rushing back to me if my weight were to ever get out of control again? It could be said, and I would be hard pressed to much dispute it, that I have been working hard to never have to know the answer to that question. I could chalk my present sensitivity up to having suffered the humiliation of teasing during my heavy years (which did happen), but that would be a cop out. It’s the fault of others that I’m this way. That’s never true. What is true, and what I only in my later life came to understand, is that the only pain I experienced from the jokes I used to be the butt of during those awkward years, came as a result of my having accepted as true the put downs that were voiced by other people. Had I not actually validated those spiteful words with my own belief in their legitimacy, they never would have harmed me. I never would have lived that hurtful experience. I get that now, and I’m so glad that I do because it saves me a lot of pain.
Allow me to share with you a lesson it took me years to realize: Any judgment that another directs at you only actually becomes about you if you accept their judgment as true. Whenever you feel demeaned or belittled by what someone else says about you, know that it’s not that person that is causing you to have this experience. It’s you. If you ever feel degraded by criticism it will never be because someone else is judging you, it will always be because you are judging you. It is your own judgmental thoughts that are creating the experience you’re suffering through. Your thoughts - not theirs. You are doing it all to yourself because (like a mental copycat) you are the one who is now also thinking those destructive thoughts. You are the one who is accepting those destructive thoughts as legitimate. And therefore, you are the one who is experiencing the consequences of what you, yourself, are creating.
We all create our own worlds, our own experiences in life. And the only way to claim the undeniable power you have to change those things about your experience you may dislike is to own up to your responsibility of having created those undesirables to begin with.
