SICKLY SELF-ESTEEM

He who taught me confidence indeed duped the world. She who inculcated the scion of high self-esteem into me put the universe at a junction of peril. I do not regret who I have become, but I dread the chances that I may violate the constraining borders that come with realization of the mettle that I am made of.


Before I came to know who I truly am, I was a fruit cake and in every sense of it a whimsically timid young fellow. The thought of striking a five minute conversation with even a blushy infant always made me shudder and retract in fear let alone try out one. And so I settled in the meadows of anti-socialism. I kept it all to myself and nursed my issues in solitude. I failed to rise up to opportunities and stand up to challenges.


Then commenced the game where I compared myself with others; their achievements and personalities. To make the scale even more unfair and unrealistic, I plotted a mental graph of their strengths against my weaknesses and made a flawed deduction of how incompetent I was. I perceived myself as dung and undeserving to express myself where others with even the most silly of opinions vented out their stupor.


I shunned relationships that would have taken me places and avoided deals for the sheer fear of flopping. I gave up attempts of working and settled for mediocrity with a twisted notion that it was an act of humility yet it was the gravest form of self-denial; rejecting oneself.


But the day I learnt that I am a man, with equal and even more sturdiness than others, awareness was restored unto me. I could talk to a senior, staring him right into the face and make a blatant lie without blinking an eye. And oh yes the day I learnt that I was a man with a pair between his legs, my chest thumped up, as if my pair were the largest of all the male species.


I talked with confidence, I drove a point home without fear of criticism or contradiction, my presence became infectious, and my charisma became evident among my peers. Even though my nature and personality being that of an introvert, I knew I could do whatever I wanted, have whatever I wanted and be with whoever I wanted. It all starts in the mind.


I learnt that everyone is fearful, especially if questioned. So all that one needs to do is to face every situation as if it were questioning them. Now, the beauty with this is that the best way to respond to a question is through a question. To be confident, try be a question in yourself. Let it not be lucid of what your weaknesses are and in the same way let your strengths, bounds and threshold be questioned.


And with this let it be that you are the only one with the copy of who you are, it will give you sense of being armed, security and a cutting edge to dazzle your opponent; of course if you truly have cultured and grown substantial content within you. Otherwise you risk shaming yourself, then you’ll slide into the pits of low self-esteem.