I got up this morning with a very dreadful thought: I don’t like myself the way I am. And I started thinking about why that is. This article is about my insecurities and negative thoughts.
It takes me hours to be satisfied with how I look or how I am dressed. Some days I don’t even dare go outside. I look at myself in the mirror dozens of times every day. My red nose always stands out, my eyes are always tired. My arms are not muscled enough, my hair does not look well enough. Those are only a few of the ‘exterior issues’ I worry about. And then there’s all the rest. Layers on layers of insecurities.
Something that has been playing through my head for the past few weeks is the reaction I got from someone in my own family. I received the comment during a family visit that you can barely see anything from my fitness efforts. And the fact that someone commented something like that stuck with me.
Especially since it takes serious perseverance and effort from me to motivate myself every day to start exercising. I have my own business and therefore work full time and many more hours outside of office hours, that I find time to exercise at all I found very brave myself. So that comment really hit home and plummeted my self-confidence again.
Because self-confidence is something I already have very little of. Not only because of a lot of physical (I think) shortcomings can I feel bad for hours. I also sometimes want to beat myself up over stupid things or things that are not so bad at all.
I’ve overcome a lot of personal obstacles over the past few years. You would think then that by overcoming those I would have a lot more self-confidence, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I keep carrying those issues around constantly and don’t give myself a chance to breathe. As if I’m letting my shoulders carry extra weight because I once did stupid things. Things that I still have to bear the consequences of now.
And I also know that some of those things were quite heavy and so it is certainly strong of me that I am still here in life with as much desire to work. But then there are moments when I think: if only I hadn’t done that, I would be much further on. And in those moments the insecure Angelo comes forward super hard. Then I block and I just don’t know what to do anymore. The past few weeks I have been working hard for clients. I had one collection launch after another and pushed myself to the limit. I am really happy about that, but now that those launches are over, it seems like I am questioning myself again.
I find it exactly very difficult to give myself a pat on the back and thank myself for the effort I have given. And then I start doubting everything. Did I do it right, could I have done more? Haven’t I neglected myself now and all the hard work in the gym has been for nothing, because you hardly see any of it. These things are constantly haunting my mind. And I run up the walls because of it.
That’s mainly why I started writing this article, because my thoughts are all over the place. I hope that I can let it go a little. Or at least read it again and maybe put certain things in a better perspective.
With this article I also want you to know that a period of uncertainty and low self-confidence can happen to anyone. And although my social media often shows a positive Angelo, behind the scenes there is a very insecure me. And that’s the side I want to show too. In the hope that you and I can both benefit from this. Until the next one!
