These things don't have to hold you back.
You can in fact use them for your own benefit and for your own good and for what you do want.
A note that I wrote down is realizing that we can have what we want despite anxiety insecurity fear, et cetera.
It's living there within our fears, within our insecurities.
They're telling us what we are afraid of and what we need to do.
Thank you.
Hi guys!
Today I wanted to chat with you about the persistence of insecurity.
This is an observation that I have made over a long period of time.
There were a lot of things that I told myself.
If I had accomplished or achieved certain accolades, certain milestones or certain ages, or went through certain situations, that I would no longer feel insecure.
Insecurity sometimes is a little bit more deep-rooted in us than we believe.
I have overcome plenty of insecurities and I feel like such a different person than I was even just last year.
I have also noticed that there is a lingering sense of self-doubt.
That just doesn't really seem to go.
It was shocking to me when I realized how much insecurity still lives within me and how much of it would come out when good things would happen to me.
It was very confusing because we think that we'll feel the opposite.
When i'm supposed to be proud of myself or pat myself on the back or have a moment of relaxation, it's usually filled with this internal monologue of you're not good enough, this is going to be taken away from you, just all these very fear based scarcity feelings.
And insecurity is just sort of a great umbrella term for all of it.
Because insecurity goes deeper than just not liking what you see in the mirror.
It's very internal, a feeling that pollutes our thought patterns.
It can be how we feel about our looks, our financial situation, our personality, our friendships.
Like insecurity is not just superficial, it's just not feeling confident, not feeling secure.
People say to just be positive or look at the bright side.
I never want to sound repetitive and I think I talk a lot about gratitude and being optimistic, but let's not get it twisted.
Sometimes allowing ourselves to embody those feelings of peace or satisfaction or gratitude is actually a lot more complex than it seems.
I don't know if you can see, but our flowers are sitting on a little stool right here.
Look at these beautiful pink winter flowers we have.
We have some peonies.
I actually also have some roses in here as well, and i'm just really excited because i have some new frog pins and a new vase.
Oh goodness sorry, i decided i would put a little crystal here for the looks of it, but i don't even think you can really see it.
I'm really only able to stay in a grateful, optimistic headspace for so long until i notice my focus inevitably shifting over to the fears of what i am lacking or what i could be doing more of, or where i'm not good enough.
The reason why i wanted to make this video is there were things that i told myself once i had i would feel confident, whether that was a monetary goal or a physical goal or just any situation in life.
There were so many things that i told myself once i had i would be confident or i would no longer feel insecure.
And after i've watched those things happen or those experiences start to come into my life and I still feel insecure, it made it obvious that the insecurity runs a lot deeper than I realized.
Things that just happen on the outside or on the surface level don't necessarily cure that insecurity that might be at the root of how I'm really thinking about myself or perceiving my life.
When i do achieve something that i used to fathom would cure my insecurity, i usually just sort of get like a slight little ego boost and then that immediately goes away and i'm filled with a lot of doubt and fear and worry as to what's going to happen now.
How do i sustain this?
How do i keep doing better?
It feels like fear in my body.
It doesn't feel like the satisfaction or gratification that I dreamed would come with certain experiences.
And it was valuable to realize that because it made me stop longing.
It made me realize that, oh okay, how I feel right now is going to come with me no matter what, unless I get to the root of this.
How persistent insecurity is because it's at the root.
Whatever grows from that root is also going to be infected.
I've been viewing insecurity kind of as an infection, because infections are something that are ongoing.
And let's look up the true definition of infection.
An infection is when germs or pathogens enter the body, multiply and cause the body to react.
If you're thinking about insecurity as an infection, it is something that enters us from a situation or a time in our lives, maybe when we were young, anytime really and it does multiply through thought.
And through those thoughts, belief systems are created and hardwired into our brains and our bodies.
Even how we carry ourselves.
We store insecurity in our minds and in our bodies in such interesting ways that I don't think we always notice.
It comes out in our reactions how we handle our everyday life, how we see others and how we see ourselves.
That infection, it may have been planted in us a long time ago.
I mean, it doesn't have to just be a long time ago, but I feel like a lot of my insecurities are deep-rooted within me from a young age, whether I was told something or whether somebody made fun of me for something when I was little.
Like that stuff kind of sticks, and maybe you don't feel exactly like how you did when you were little, but that root is there and things are growing from that.
That lives within us, like even the way that we carry ourselves says so much, And that always got to me because I was like no, like it all lives up here.
It's not actually in my body, but it is definitely somatic as well.
It's things on the inside that I am not processing and I am holding in me.
I find myself just like, holding my breath and being very stiff in moments of stress.
And it just, it all correlates and ties to each other.
And I'm saying this because these things run deep.
We beat ourselves up for being insecure and why can't I just be confident like this person?
My life would be so great if I loved myself and if I was confident like that, or if I could dress like that or look like that or have enough courage to do this thing.
But you got to realize like, That insecurity is living there, festering there, for a reason.
It is hard sometimes to become aware of the patterns that live inside of us.
So of course they're gonna stay and they're gonna multiply and they're gonna keep growing and subconsciously we allow that.
It feels correct in our brains.
If we've been thinking a certain way since we were younger, if an insecurity is planted within us and those doubts and those feelings grow and our thoughts around it are always moving and moving in our head and being produced and we're continuing to validate them and reinforce those thoughts over and over again.
They're hardwired.
That's just inevitably how we perceive ourselves now, because that is the story we've been going over again and again and again through your thoughts, through how you treat yourself, or even how you treat or see others.
It's living there.
We beat ourselves up about it, but it makes sense that we hold those insecurities within us if we are justifying the same stories and beliefs over and over again, subconsciously or consciously.
I know all of this can feel sort of overwhelming like, oh my gosh, the infection of insecurity is living inside of me.
But don't worry, we're gonna get to how to dismantle it and it is an ongoing process.
But just know that you're not alone.
Every single person Even if you are confident.
I think if you are confident, it's because you know how to work with your insecurities.
Being a confident person means having a relationship with your insecurities that is not fear-based.
It is an accepting relationship of your insecurities and what they're trying to tell you and how to use them for your benefit.
We have this idea that confident people just don't even know what feeling insecure is like and that's something so far away.
But no, maybe they know it the best.
They just know how to deal with it and how to work with their insecurities.
At least that's the only way that I've been able to build confidence is looking very close at my insecurities and what they are trying to communicate to me.
And it sucks to observe and analyze what you're so insecure about.
But I know that it is valuable.
If we are constantly reinforcing our insecurities and our beliefs by the people that we hang around or the language we use when we talk to ourselves or the stories that we have in our head about our lives and who we are, that just sort of continues to feed the insecurity that is rooted within us and feed that infection.
It's kind of gross, but it is true.
Insecurity feels gross and getting to the root of that insecurity and the root of that infection is what brings us relief at the end of the day.
And, of course, changing things on the outside help us embody confidence.
But no matter what you're trying to alter and change on the outside, the root of what exists is going to stay there and it is going to come out into those experiences.
It's going to override the changes that we're trying to make on a surface level, if the root is the problem.
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Okay, so I kind of want to talk about the scarcity slash survival feeling that is so associated with insecurity.
For so long I found myself trying to outrun my insecurities, thinking that I could sort of just talk myself out of them or I could just forget about them and just reinforce confidence and positive affirmations over and over and over again.
And of course that is effective in its own sense, but I didn't like the feeling of trying to run away from something and trying to silence something in my brain.
Separating my identity from my feelings of insecurity and accepting those feelings of insecurity for what they were helped me in the process of transmuting them into confidence.
Trying to outrun them or get rid of them just continues to aggravate them.
It's just not helpful at the end of the day when trying to transmute those feelings into confidence.
I was sitting in this noisy coffee shop and I was reading my email and I saw that it was this great email that I had been waiting to receive.
I thought that I was gonna feel so happy whenever I did, but instead I just felt such an overwhelming sense of insecurity come over me.
I was like okay okay okay okay, let's not become this, let's watch what's going on here.
Let's just take a seat, get our popcorn and watch the show.
I watched that insecurity kind of seep in and, like I said, it's not, it's not just the mind, it's not just the mind.
I watched my body kind of be taken over by it too.
I felt my shoulders tensing up.
I felt my breath getting a little bit shorter.
I started to become aware of the thoughts that were coming out and I separated myself from it, instead of trying to change it, and say no no, don't feel that way.
Don't feel that way.
I just let it happen.
That is when I learn the most.
All these sort of fearful lack based thoughts whenever they're coming into my mind.
I just pretended that they were all coming from one little character and I was just watching him yell at me and watching him say what he wanted to say.
And he, you know, sometimes says some really nasty stuff.
But the more that I detached from that and sort of just watched the insecurity and what was happening, it became sort of endearing, picturing it as a little character.
It made me not take it as seriously and it led me to believe that this part of myself that sort of produces these immediate fears and insecure thoughts and feelings in times of achievement or celebration definitely has a function or a motive of some sort.
Why else would it be there?
What is it trying to do instead of feeling gratified or fulfilled.
Like, why is it still there?
Through observation, my best guess is just that it's trying to keep me safe, because when gratifying events happen in my life, there is part of me that doesn't feel safe accepting that, which really shows me kind of the misalignment in my life around what I'm saying I want versus what I actually believe I'm worthy of.
If we're saying that we want something so bad and my life would be so great if I just had this Do you actually believe you are worth having that?
And that is a tricky question because sometimes we can say, yeah, of course I do.
Why would I want it in the first place?
But when it actually appears in our life experience, sometimes our bodies and our minds don't know how to accept that because we don't feel worthy it.
We're trying to outrun these feelings of doubt and scarcity, but through that process we are just creating more and more of it if we're not giving ourselves that time to sit down, to be in the present moment, to appreciate the gratifying events or things that we've worked for, things that we should be happy about or proud of.
I never really understood why sometimes people who looked like they were living my dream life were so miserable and stressed out or succumbing to drugs or alcohol or just other forms of escapism.
I didn't understand it.
I thought how could somebody feel that way if they have this and if they have that and if they have that?
And I, over time, now understand that it's because it's overwhelming and we reject things that we don't feel comfortable receiving.
If my mind and body don't feel familiar or comfortable with a positive belief about myself, then why would I just magically start to feel that whenever a good thing happens to me?
If I'm already thinking negatively about myself or about my life experience and I'm expecting those things and I'm so used to living in that feeling of not being good enough or lacking something, then why would I magically just feel fulfilled and happy when something good happens to me on the outside?
If I don't feel familiar and comfortable with a positive belief about myself or about what is possible in my life, then I am going to reject it, even if it's subconscious.
If my mind and body don't feel safe accepting a positive belief about myself, then that voice we were talking about, that insecurity.
Its immediate response is to dismantle the possibility of satisfaction.
Because I'm not familiar with satisfaction in those areas of my life.
It wants to keep me in what is familiar.
It wants to keep me in that familiar thought loop of I don't have enough, there's something lacking here.
It wants to keep me safe. because that is what I know and that's what I've always known.
Why would I just magically feel something different?
But yeah, personifying and observing that voice of insecurity can be difficult, but I really encourage that to really like listen to it too.
I think it's very scary to do that because we want to attach our identity and ourselves with it.
But the more that we practice kind of just observing those thoughts and feelings when they come, that is when we can really reap their value.
What is it so afraid of?
What is your insecurity screaming at you?
What is it telling you that you can't have?
How is it trying to belittle you?
What can it not fathom being possible?
Why is it trying to shoot you down in moments of success?
Like what is that vulnerability there.
Like, what is it telling you that you're so afraid of?
When is it coming up the most?
Who are you around when it's coming up?
Observe these things.
Watch it.
Watch what it's doing.
Get to know it well.
We run away from it because it is scary.
We don't want to know those things.
We don't want to listen to those things.
That's why I feel like they live in our subconscious so much of the time is because we don't want to wake up feeling miserable and insecure.
We kind of stuff that away.
It only comes out in... our passive-aggressive comments or how we feel about this person.
Confidence is uncomfortable.
The journey to confidence is not glamorous.
It is full of everything we're insecure about, but I promise you that is going to take us there.
I learned this exercise from The Artist's Way.
I've talked about it before.
Whatever you want to feel or whatever you want to be true.
Writing that down and then saying it out loud or reading it to yourself and seeing what that voice of criticism and doubt and insecurity has to say about it, and write it down right next to it.
I need to do that again actually, I did it a few months ago and it was really eye-opening.
Sometimes putting that voice's beliefs and thoughts right next to whatever you're trying to believe about yourself shows you how silly it really is or shows you what it is that you're really battling internally all the time.
What is that belief that you have surrounding the thing that you want?
What is the belief that is holding you back?
What are you secretly telling yourself that maybe you're not even aware of?
Try it out.
Like I said, it's not fun to be aware of all those bad thoughts about ourselves, but we gotta get them out somehow.
We can't just keep shoving them down and expecting them to go away when good things happen.
Seeing everything that we hate about ourselves written out on a piece of paper or observing it in our own mind.
That is yes, a valuable process, but it's also a very, very vulnerable one.
It's only fun to be... vulnerable, right?
We're doing all this so we can sort of detach our identity from our insecurities, but still like looking at them for what they are and listening to the things that have been living in our subconscious.
It's sad to see those things that we think about ourselves, and it's sad to realize where they came from, why they still live within us, how we are reinforced, forcing them in our lives.
Whenever you are personifying that voice and you're detaching from it and you're observing it.
It's so important to have that neutral headspace and to realize that we are not our thoughts and our feelings and all of these things.
We can use them and they're a part of us, but it allows us to actually take the value from them.
That is such an integral part of this process, because if we are watching all these insecurities and these thoughts that we have deep down about ourselves come out and we are immediately attaching ourselves to them and we're feeling a certain way about it and we're getting so involved, that's doing the opposite.
It's just kind of counterintuitive.
It's just sort of deepening our feelings of insecurity.
I think it's very important to come at it with a neutral headspace.
And, like I said, insecurity feels like such a fear-based safety mechanism.
Sometimes being able to recognize its motive allows us to appreciate its intention instead of aggravating it over and over and over again by trying to just get rid of it.
If we can hold that neutral perspective and just sort of thank our insecurity and fear for what it's trying to do and what it's trying to reinforce every time it comes up, what its intention is to keep us safe, that little voice of fear and insecurity and doubt can sort of feel heard and seen and acknowledged and like part of its mission has been fulfilled.
Because at the end of the day, I feel like that is kind of what all the parts of us are trying to do is just be seen and be heard and if we can come at listening to them with a neutral headspace where we're not attaching to them, that is the key to mental stability.
It's something that I am always trying to practice and something I'm learning more about from experts, as I encourage us all to.
But i think the cherry on top of all of it is being able to communicate to that fearful part of ourselves that we are safe, and thank you for your hard work.
I see that you want to come up in moments of celebration and i just want to thank you for being so diligent, for being on it, for trying to protect me, for trying to keep me safe, for trying to keep me in a comfortable good, familiar spot, like i see what you're doing and i appreciate it and really me that, because it's true, thank god, we have these aspects of ourselves that are trying to keep us safe and are trying to protect us and want us to feel comfortable.
It's doing what it knows and i think just thanking it for that and appreciating that and saying there is a time and a place and i do need you, but we are okay, we are safe.
Right now My camera dies because I use a camcorder.
Okay,
Everybody asks me what I use to film.
I use a camcorder that I have.
The camcorder is charged by USB, I can't just have multiple batteries.
So if anybody knows a solution as to how to keep my camcorder alive and running for longer than just one charge, then please let me know, because I have run into this issue quite a bit.
But this is probably better quality anyways.
This is my digital camera that I'm using.
I was talking about the so what method?
And my friend, who also deals with anxiety, a few years ago she presented this mindset to me where she was like okay, what if, Whatever you're so afraid of?
What if that happens?
It could.
Let's just be okay with that and sort of approach this from a more neutral headspace.
So like if your mind is telling you that you're not good enough.
In a certain way, it's like okay, that might be true.
And so what?
I can learn.
I can keep getting better.
A big fear of mine is like, what if I'm actually a shitty writer?
So what?
That might be true.
But some people might not think you are.
And if you think you are, you can keep learning from people.
You can keep improving.
You can keep putting yourself out there.
You can try again.
You can produce work that you don't like and that you do like.
Like, there's just, so what?
What if you are your worst fear?
What if the worst outcome does happen?
How are you gonna deal with it?
Like.
I think that's why we stop ourselves sometimes by taking certain risks or making certain decisions is because the anxiety and the fear of the unknown and the insecurity that we have in ourselves is just too much and we allow that emotion to win.
But sometimes, when you do things like writing it out or saying so what?
And understanding what it is that our insecurity is trying to make us so afraid of it, it shows us how silly it is and how yeah, those things are scary and it makes sense that we're insecure, we're afraid about certain things, but does that fear really hold more gravity than experiencing life and enjoying life and doing what it is that we want to do?
The fear of failure.
What if I fail?
What if you fail?
Oh my god.
Okay, then you're probably better at what you were trying to do in the always going to be a benefit or a positive outcome from a situation that we're fearing so much.
It's just about our perspective and how we are willing to embrace it and view it.
Learning that I can still accomplish what I want to in the face of failure or disaster or things going wrong or the unknown.
I can still do what I am setting out to do no matter what happens.
No matter what insecurity lives within me, I can still do it.
If I don't feel good enough in this way, I can still try.
I can find inspiration.
I can find others who maybe possess some of the same things that I'm insecure about, and how did they do it?
I can keep learning.
I can keep going.
I can keep listening to my insecurities and what they're telling me to be, so a That's the thing that I want to get across, and that I want you guys to realize too and feel empowered in, is that these things don't have to hold you back.
You can in fact use them for your own benefit and for your own good and for what you do want.
The insecurities that make you feel so opposite of what you really want to be like.
Those are part of it.
That is part of your journey.
You need those to teach you what it is to get to where you want.
A note that I wrote down is realizing that we can have what we want despite anxiety insecurity fear, etc.
This allows us to accept the concept of our desired reality.
Therefore, we are more likely to make it happen.
Knowing that all those things we view to be so negative can exist alongside our dreams allows us to feel as though what we want is actually possible.
And if we feel like what we want is actually possible, then we can accept it.
If we can't even imagine that it's possible for ourselves or believe in it every day, then why would we chase the things that would make our dreams a reality?
We're not going to take action if we don't even think that it's possible.
And so that's why I'm really emphasizing that what you want is possible.
Because of your insecurities, because of your fears.
They're pointing you in the right direction.
They are showing you what is in your way.
And if we didn't have that knowledge, then I don't think we would be able to get to the root of what is holding us back, what we were talking about earlier.
What is that insecurity telling you, and how can you respect it and listen to it and take what you need from it?
What is the fear, what is the belief and what is the opposite of that, and what does that feel like?
We're so familiar with what the hardwired insecurity feels like, but what does the thing that we're saying we want actually feel like?
Becoming Familiar with that over and over and over again allows us to take action in those areas of our life.
That mindset and that feeling seeps into how we see ourselves and how we see others, and we got the information from the insecurity.
The insecurity helped us imagine what the opposite could even feel like.
What do I really want?
How do I become more familiar with what I really want?
And that insecurity will dissipate and transmute into whatever we're putting our focus in.
This process is a lot less satisfying than just letting our minds go down the usual hardwired path that we have and reinforcing those familiar belief systems.
That's a lot more comfortable.
We want to fulfill a familiar and secure thought pattern that we have, because that is what is satisfying to our brains.
We want to validate what is already there, what we have been validating our whole lives.
If we're not doing that, anymore.
It's jarring to our bodies, to our nervous systems, to our mind.
If we put a halt, the more that you continue to power through and put that intention into observing how you feel it pays off.
I swear to god it does.
And if you're watching this video with any interest right now, it shows that you have that willingness to introspect and to think about these things.
You're already 10 steps ahead, is what I'll say.
Most people don't want to go through the process of looking at their insecurities or detaching from them in the first place.
It's confrontational and vulnerable, but I promise you, the results are life-changing.
They have changed my life.
You guys don't even know how crippling my insecurities were for most of my life and how free I feel now.
Even whenever insecurities come up in my life, I can recognize them for what they are.
I don't let them dictate my experiences or my decisions.
My life has drastically changed because of that.
We don't have to cut parts of ourselves off.
We don't have to hate ourselves into loving ourselves.
We don't have to shame ourselves.
All of these things can exist in one and we can accept them for what they are.
What we truly desire and what we want, it's there.
It's living there.
Within our fears, within our insecurities, they're telling us what we are afraid of and what we need to do.
And realizing that it's not so much of a journey of fighting and fighting to get somewhere and do something.
It's more about coming back and melting away all these things that we've created, these hardened belief systems that have made us live in fear and tension.
We can look into it, we can melt it down, we can transmute it, we can find what is really living there for us and what we really want.
Fear and insecurity is very easy to validate.
We can do it through our body language, through the things that we avoid or neglect, or just through the beliefs that we hold so tightly to.
And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of being afraid that we can't have enough or that we're not enough.
Therefore, it dictates the mindset that we exist in and the outcomes that we produce in our lives.
What we are afraid of, and the more that we listen to that as the truth and attach ourselves to it, the more our life will continue to become that.
Sometimes we don't even want to do this work because we believe it's so hard to change these hardwired beliefs and insecurities.
It is very scary and weird to put a halt to our usual train of thought and our familiar ways of being.
It becomes so much easier and so much more enjoyable the more that we continue to show up for ourselves.
Why do we think this way?
Why do so many of us struggle with fear-based thinking and insecurity and lack?
Is it so admirable when somebody is confident and doing things out of abundance and joy and embodying their success?
Like, why does that feel rare?
Why do most of us seem to be living out of insecurity and fear?
And I think it's because we live in a world full of ego and comparison.
So we're constantly encouraged to think in a lack-based mindset.
Also back to what we were saying earlier about survival and how our bodies and minds are just trying to keep us safe.
I think it is a very primal survival tactic to believe that we don't have enough, so that we don't get too comfortable and sit back and run out of things.
I think our bodies and minds are meant to keep doing what we need to do and to keep us safe.
And what's the next thing?
And how can I be making sure that I'm doing enough?
All those beliefs are birthed from a primal survival instinct and I'm grateful for that.
I am grateful that I have that instinct.
It just doesn't need to be active all the time and acting out of fear and shame and lack all of the time and having that be our motive can only be so productive at the end of the day.
The willingness to dismantle these insecurities that bring us so much mental and physical discomfort shows us that we are capable of coming back to a state of satisfaction, to a state of peace and fulfillment.
Yeah guys, that is... really what I wanted to say.
And thank you so much for having this chat with me, for making this arrangement with me.
I'm about to put it in my desk space and it's gonna brighten up my little workspace.
I'm very excited.
But yeah, thank you guys so much for everything.
Thank you for your support.
I cannot wait to chat with you again very soon.
