Insecurity Is 99% Optional

Everyone has insecurities. That’s a part of life.

How you deal with your insecurities will make a huge difference for your happiness. It will also influence how successful you are in the years to come.

Why? Because people who deal poorly with their insecurities spend a great deal of their time trying to prove themselves to others. The more time and energy you spend ‘proving yourself’ to others results in having less time and energy for building in your life what is most important to you.

This would be similar to investing large sums of money and time having tennis courts built in your backyard in order to impress the neighbors (you know, Biffy, Bunny and Jenzo who brag about their country club membership). But what you would really like to have is a secluded little area in the backyard that reminds you of the far away Orient, Pacific breezes, and sandy beaches.

Insecurities, for the most part, are interpersonal. Not a 100% rule, but even so true most of the time. This means that most insecurities are attached to how you imagine others might think about or otherwise respond to you.

So the thing to keep in mind, the question to ask, is whether it is truly important how others view you? (SPOILER ALERT: The answer is “Sometimes it is, but most of the time it is not”).

It’s a choice. You can focus your efforts on impressing others in order to feel less insecure, or you can focus your efforts on improving yourself.

By focusing on impressing others you will end up reinforcing your insecurities, and becoming less confident in the process. Why? Simple. This path leads you to become servile to a neurotic desire to win approval from others — often people you do not know well, or respect. It places you in a chronically obsequious position of adjusting your life, or the way you present yourself, in order to garner favor. Don’t go there.

Focus on improving yourself, however, and you’ll soon learn that you can live without impressing others. What’s more, you’ll become a more interesting person for having spent time on building a meaningful life. That’s a “twofer” if you’re counting.

You may be thinking that this is easy to say, but very tough to accomplish. And you would be correct but so what? Many things in life are difficult, yet still need to be done in order to live a full and meaningful life.

It may be that you think this is all fine a well but your insecurities cause you to become anxious and miserable and the best way you’ve found to be rid of these uncomforatble feelings is to “give in.” That is, to just bend to the desire to show that the insecurity has no basis in reality.

If that is the case then you very likely spend time trying to show others that you really are [pick one or more of the following areas where insecurity often rises up]:

Extremely smart

Popular

Sexy

Funny

Wealthy

Tough and strong

Fearless

Here is the problem with giving in and trying to get rid of insecurity by ‘proving’ yourself in this way. It doesn’t work.

Ever heard of Sisyphus? No? Well, he is a figure from Greek mythology who was punished by having to roll a boulder to the top of a mountain, only to have the boulder roll back down. He then had to perform the task again… and again through eternity because the boulder would always roll back down.

The same thing happens when you give in to insecurities and try to prove yourself to others. It’s never enough. It always has to be repeated. When you take this approach you are acting like Sisyphus.  What’s the lesson? Step away from the boulder.

At first this will be tough, but in time you’ll grow more confident. You will come to realize that the main thing you need to prove is that you are a person of principle. Of high character. Someone who treats others fairly and who pursues their own interests and dreams.

When you begin to do this, to focus on the deeper and more meaningful aspects of your life, you will also find yourself attracting certain types of people.

They will like you for who you are, not who you pretend to be. This will build your confidence, and the insecurities you fought against in the past will begin to fade away.

It takes a little time to make this approach work, and it also takes some serious effort. But in the end it is much easier, and more satisfying, than the nonstop focus of trying to impress others.