I was never arrogant, I never thought I was the best at something, I never expected anything from my self in the hope that I’d never be disappointed. But I always thought I was worthy.
That changed recently. I had a lot of setbacks and everything seemed to be going wrong. I faced rejection here, there and everywhere. From my (now) ex-boyfriend, from friends I thought would never leave, and from jobs and graduate schemes I was applying to, when all I really wanted was the feeling that someone, somewhere, had faith in me. My work started to seem impossible too and I started to think I had no chance at getting a decent degree. In a short space of time I went from feeling like I could take on the world to feeling like I couldn’t give the world anything.
I dealt with this all wrong. Instead of telling everyone and everything that had rejected me to do one because they were missing out on a loyal, hard-working, enthusiastic and fun individual, my mind turned all of this into a negative reflection of myself. I started to think there was something wrong with me. That I was boring, annoying, and incapable. That I didn’t deserve anyone’s time or love. I didn’t deserve to feel good about myself.
I lost my confidence.
It took time to realise how irrational I was being. I didn’t need another person or personal achievement to be a great person. I just needed self-confidence. It didn’t matter if it seemed like nobody had faith in what I can achieve – what matters is that I have faith in myself.
So when life gives you rejections, use them to make progress. Don’t let setbacks in life destroy your confidence or who you are as a person, and certainly don’t ever let setbacks stop you from going after your dreams. If life was a smooth road in which we got everyone and everything we wanted it would be a pretty boring existence and we’d never be thankful for what we do have. You’d never get that jumping up and down, excited, butterflies-in-your-belly feeling when you get that acceptance letter and you wouldn’t feel so on top of the world when somebody tells you they love you if you hadn’t suffered rejection beforehand.
Don’t let anyone or anything question who you are or what you can achieve. Be confident. If someone or something turns their back on you, it just simply wasn’t for you. Don’t take it as a negative reflection on yourself – it just means that whoever it was stupidly failed to notice what you have to offer. They are the losers – you are the winner, for rejection, failure and stupid mistakes are nothing but a necessary step in your journey to success.
So please don’t build your confidence on the basis of something or someone else, build it on you, build it on everything about you, your imperfections and your best qualities, for you are brilliant. You just need to believe it.